‘Too Little Too Late’: Bankruptcy Booms Among Older Americans

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I never got how people just…up and moved like that. Where do you stay? How do you tide yourself over while searching job searching? Where does the money to actually move come come? How do you find somewhere that’ll even let you stay there while searching for a job? I’m not bad with money, but moving is expensive, and there’s a good chance that moving to a lower COL living area would require starting over and with the adjustment I’d be dropped back to $8 or $9 an hour once I found a job.

For me - what I’m trying to do is put myself through an online program, which would both allow me a better income but also allow me the kind of job where people are willing to consider you if you don’t already live in the area yet. The problem at the very bottom is that with job searching, you’ll get told to come back and apply when you live in the area, and you’ll be told you can rent an apartment once you can show 2 paystubs from a job in the area.
 
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Our hospitals use a lot of volunteers. It seems they never get enough money. I wonder why??

They have people at the front desk, cafeteria help, courtesy car drivers, etc. Some are retired nurses. They all work for nothing for at least 4 hrs. a week for each volunteer.

My father never had a very high opinion of hospitals. He used to say “When you go in, you never come out.” In his case that was right.
 
Health care has been an American failure for a while. We are number one with a bullet on spending for health care, yet number 31 in the world on keeping people alive. The WHO has us ranked at 37th on actual healthcare. So when you here all the rhetoric about socialized medicine, realize that capitalism medicine is mediocre and costs a lot more. It is no surprise senior citizens cannot afford the ever increasing out of pocket their “safety net” requires.

The only president to ever attempt and address this problem was Obama, and he failed miserable with his laughable named Affordable Care Act. That huge bill only addressed insurance and not the root causes of rising medical expenses.
 
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At least they could have negotiated medical fees which Medicare attempts to do.
 
No offense and I understand you’re describing your experience to highlight a point but don’t you want to just travel the world or something or focus your endeavors on hobbies or spending time and making memories with your family and friends if you could? Also, I understand some people kick the bucket after leaving work but doesn’t retirement especially when leaving stressful jobs actually lengthen the lifespans of others?

Also, by the way isn’t retirement like the working world’s way of passing the torch to the younger generations thus granting them opportunities and helping them be part of the greater entitlement. I understand economics isn’t a zero-sum game and this can come across as off-putting due to the entitlement sentiment but didn’t a lot of millennials and young adults struggle to find good opportunities if any work due to the fact that many boomers and older folks held off retirement (and now automation plus offshoring is going to compete for their opportunities as well).
 
I certainly agree about apprenticeships. There are so many trades–my brother is a welder and makes more than I do!

I am somewhat concerned about families where no one has held a job for several generations. I’ve read articles about families like this–the family members have no concept of getting up at a certain time, being on time, dressing up, and most of all, sticking with it for 30+ years.

A large part of the reason for this is that when people are poor, they live from meal to meal rather than from year to year, or from life stage to life stage. They are only concerned about their next meal, or rent check, and don’t have a concept of planning for a whole week, month, or year. They talk about want to work and get a job, but they can’t, because they have to concentrate on where that next meal is coming from (a church? the pantry? food stamps,

I think that some kind of major social intervention would be necessary to help these people learn to handle the reality of working at a permanent (not just a few hours or one day) job.
 
To prevent a lawsuit. A lawyer would be all over that one–“The hospital stopped life-saving procedures which inevitably led to his death.”
 
I want to retire because even though I’m in my 60s now, my job takes up most of my waking hours, including at least 2 weekends a month, and at least three of the six holidays (Christmas this year), and because of increasing old age physical debilitation, it’s harder and harder every day for me to find the energy to do ANYTHING in my off-hours other than eat and fall asleep in front of the TV.

For many of us, the body and mind just can’t take going to bed early, getting up early (around 4:30 a.m.), working 8-12 hours a day (due to constant short-staffing), coming home in the dark during the winter, and eating something that probably isn’t that good for me, but it’s easy to fix or easy to order in a fast-food restaurant.

When I was younger, I would stop at the gym and exercise, and often after dinner, I would take a walk. Now my poor knees hurt so badly after a day of work that I will often use a crutch to get around my house just to take some of the strain off the knees.

And I don’t sleep soundly anymore like I did when I was younger. I wake up with painful knees (I’m allergic to the NSAIDs, by the way and also to opioids, so there aren’t a lot of pain-relief options). Or I have to to to the bathroom. Or I can’t sleep because I’m running through the day over and over in my head. Or I’m sad because…because I’m getting older and it really isn’t that much fun. Death approaches.

I usually get up before the alarm goes off (very early, before 4 a.m. sometimes) because I just can’t sleep anymore. And then I’m exhausted all day at work, and the whole cycle repeats itself.

So yes, I would love to retire just so I can have the freedom of hours and some time to maybe live a little more pain-free life.

BTW, I work in a hospital. And we’re all doing the very best we can considering how chronically short-staffed we are. Just last week, I put in a 12 hour day and I was so tired…I really wish some of you would think about that next time you say that health care in the U.S. stinks. It’s certainly not because of the workers, believe me. We’re working our lives away trying to help all of you get better, and there aren’t enough of us, and not that many people are stepping up to take our places.
 
Oh, sure. Housing is a big issue. You don’t have 5,000 units of apartment complexes to choose from. When we were looking for a home, our choices in a 30-mile radius were a bank building, a church complex, a $120k 3/2, and a $40k 3/2. We had saved up a $20k down payment; we had to get a loan for the remaining $20k, because the banks wouldn’t issue a mortgage for such a small amount. I want to say the payments were like, under $200/month. We paid it down pretty aggressively and had the whole thing paid off in about two? three? years.

But we didn’t choose it because we said, “Oh, this city is too expensive,” but rather, we had something that drew us to the area-- I got a job in City A, and he got a job in City B, 60 miles away, and we found an affordable place to live in between, in a little town in the middle of nowhere, where we could get a better house for a third of the price by my traveling an extra 20 minutes. (70 mph, two stop signs, otherwise all highway. A traffic jam is when I had to travel 5 mph under the speed limit, and there are three cars backed up behind a cow trailer, unable to pass.)

But there was about five years’ worth of work that went into it before we had the opportunity to jump. Whether it was me working on my degree, or him working on his degree, or us saving for a down payment, or just cultivating good credit— we didn’t wake up and throw a dart on a map and say, “This is where we’ll move. Let’s find a job and work out the rest of the details when we get there.” It was a process-- and the pieces fell together in God’s time, but we had positioned ourselves so that when opportunity arrived, we were able to act swiftly and decisively. But it was still a five-year process before those pieces fell together just right. And if I had a crystal ball back then that let me look 15 years in the future— I’d swear it was broken. 😛

Keep it up with the online program! Good luck with your path. 🙂
 
No, I get you. I’m just saying that doesn’t always work so well at the very bottom end. I’m barely a step up from the cashier at the grocery store. As far as housing goes, lots of my coworkers talk about leaks that aren’t addressed, or undrinkable water, or a/c that’s always broken, or other things. It’s just kind of accepted. I’d say after paying bills I have about $200 a month to go to the emergency fund. Saving up $20k would be almost unthinkable.

In my case I think school is probably my best way up. With the internet there are a lot more options now that are tailored to working adults. Where I am has an overlapping class schedule with no summer break, because a working adult would MUCH rather have their finals spread out than the summer off. But I’m also in a better position because I’m single and don’t have anyone depending on me. Lots of my coworkers are single mothers, or supporting ill parents, or married parents of children with special needs.
 
RCIAGraduate said:
No offense and I understand you’re describing your experience to highlight a point but don’t you want to just travel the world or something or focus your endeavors on hobbies or spending time and making memories with your family and friends if you could? Also, I understand some people kick the bucket after leaving work but doesn’t retirement especially when leaving stressful jobs actually lengthen the lifespans of others?

Also, by the way isn’t retirement like the working world’s way of passing the torch to the younger generations thus granting them opportunities and helping them be part of the greater entitlement. I understand economics isn’t a zero-sum game and this can come across as off-putting due to the entitlement sentiment but didn’t a lot of millennials and young adults struggle to find good opportunities if any work due to the fact that many boomers and older folks held off retirement (and now automation plus offshoring is going to compete for their opportunities as well).
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I know people who will never retire, they just seem to be wired that way. I have a friend who just turned 65 who probably won’t retire for 10 years, unless his business blows up first. The latter is a real possibility. That of course doesn’t mean it is or should be normative for most people. I don’t believe in leaving large bequests so there will be a point in which it will make zero sense to continue working for money, or at least much money.
 
Oh, sure. You understand that we were married, so we had the benefit of two incomes— living off one, while squirreling away every dime we could of the other. 🙂 That made a big difference. When we first got married, he had a job offer— and it fell through. He finally got a job in a medical file room about a week before I got laid off during the dot-com bust. We were probably a week away from homelessness at one point, but I got some temp work, and eventually got a solid job as a secretary, and he eventually got a solid job working at a University. I think I was making about $25k, and he was making about $35k at that point— and we hammered out my old student loan debt ($16k), then started putting away everything we could into savings. He went to law school at night while juggling a day job; I used my workplace’s tuition reimbursement program to pay for half of my Master’s (you paid it upfront at registration; they reimbursed you half your tuition upon submission of completed grades; you had to pay back all or some of the assistance if you left within 2 years of accepting money). It took 2 years for me (online), and 2.5 years for him (night school), to do our degrees— but we were both able to get them without accumulating any debt because we both worked full-time. And while I tried to get hired on with my workplace in my field for two years (hiring freeze) (then it was lifted for Katrina victims) (then it was frozen again), I did volunteer work to be visible and look good on paper. They finally told me in September, “You do such great work. Why would we pay you?” My 2 years expired in December; I interviewed in January; we had bought a house and moved by Valentine’s Day; and I started my new job that week. 🙂

But if it wasn’t for those five years of saving and studying that went into things ahead of time, there’s no way we could have moved so decisively when the time came. 🙂 But we always worked as a team; he’s a real treasure.

A degree is a key that unlocks doors. It turns a 10" pile of resumes into a 2" pile of resumes. As long as you know what door you want opened, then a degree is a tremendously valuable resource. Just getting a degree for the sake of a degree— that’s a gamble, that the key you happen to have will help you with the door you want opened. But when you know exactly where you want to go, and what you need to get there-- then your drive and focus on getting your education, and sacrificing your summer, will definitely increase your chances of success. Not just because of the degree, but because of the drive and focus you’re displaying in pursuit of it speak well for your goal-orientedness. 🙂 When I did my Master’s, about half the people in my field did it online, because they had day jobs and worked, and that was almost 15 years ago. I’m sure the numbers are way up these days. 🙂

Good luck!
 
In my business I have two younger partners. The nature of the business is such that you really don’t know what the year’s net income will be until the end of it. Therefore, the owners take substantial “draws” at the end of the year. I take what amounts to a staff member’s salary during the year and divide my “draw” between the two young partners. I am well aware of the financial needs of younger people. I don’t even actually need the staff-level salary. But my wife works for wages, which she contributes to our economy, and I have thought it’s only fair to her to take a wage as well. Regardless, both she and I end up giving a lot of our income to our grandchildren or for their benefit.

It’s not always hard on younger people for older ones to remain in the work force.
 
Peeps said:
because of increasing old age physical debilitation, it’s harder and harder every day for me to find the energy to do ANYTHING in my off-hours other than eat and fall asleep in front of the TV.
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I’m aware that some people can’t physical work any longer, particularly among those whose learned occupation is physically demanding.

Interesting about the hospital work. My wife is an RN and for a time in her life she worked in home health. Weirdly, from time to time she would get called to work in a hospital because they were chronically short of staff. I have a daughter who is an NP. She did a little home health while she was working on her NP. She was once called to simultaneously be the ICU nurse and the charge nurse. You really can’t do that because both are supposed to be available at all times. But they did. Luckily there were not simultaneous crises that night.
 
I am, as well, on social security “retirement.” However, I am ALSO working, in fact MORE than I was pre-retirement, to make ends meet. Due to the extra work, my social security benefits have been adjusted UPWARD. Nonetheless, many people CANNOT work due to health problems, and many of these same people have already worked all of their lives and are exhausted. So if we, mistakenly in my opinion, put the blame on lack of planning for retirement (which, although partly true, is counterbalanced by unforeseen circumstances in life and in the economy), why don’t we also blame people for lack of physical fitness (exercise, diet, etc.), which prevents them, when they reach retirement age, from being prepared to continue to work until they die? The latter is just as ridiculous.
 
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Unfortunately, I have had conversations with younger lads who do blame people for lack of physical fitness and illness.

They believe such people brought it on themselves.

Of course, they in top shape, in their 40’s and many of us were.

However, as my doctor, who was a sports medicine specialists and cyclists himself told me, he’s seen many physically fit individuals suffer a heart attack and one he knew well, dropped dead after cycling up a mountain as he was training for a road race there.

My daughter’s SO, is such a person. So much so,l he doesn’t bother carrying health insurance.

I pray nothing happens to him

Jim
 
I once had a conversation with an occupational medicine physician. He told me most people in physically demanding jobs are real athletes, but in a limited way. Work movements cause a person to become athletec in those movements, but only in those. The rest, he said, is genetics. We have a certain amount of redundancy for most body parts, and when that’s expended, that body part is done.
 
Payroll is one of the reasons companies borrow money, even profitable ones.
 
ProVobis said:
Payroll is one of the reasons companies borrow money, even profitable ones.
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Years ago I resolved that I would not borrow for my business in order to pay salaries, and I never have. I have, however, loaned it money myself years ago.
 
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