So, I had four points to my retirement plans:
1. Social Security
2. IRA via workplace
3. Personal savings
4. Home equity
I'll say right up front, that my personal savings is pretty much a joke. But it has provided me with a nice cushion for emergencies so I don't have much debt, and my credit card debt is low ($400).
My IRA via the workplace was nice until I was forced several years ago to choose a stock plan instead of the straight savings account I wanted it to be. Then you know what happened with that. Even though I chose the safest, most stable stock package offered, almost half my money was -poof!- gone.
I had planned when I turned 50 (last year), I would sell my house, use the equity to buy a small condo on a 15 year mortgage, have it paid off by 65 and be sitting on the entire value as equity. Poof! That's all on hold indefinately.
That left me with Social Security, my rock, my anchor that I could count on against the storms of economic forces that batter we middle class wage earners.
Poof! If the GOP gets to put through its plan, that will be gone five years before I can retire.
So now, I'm scrambling, trying to look at numbers, increasing what I can increase, decreasing what I can decrease, but the plain fact is that I don't make enough money to make up what I've lost before I retire. Not unless I go live under a bridge now instead of when I'm 67.
If there is no social security or Medicare, I will not be able to maintain any sort of life style. What little I do scrounge up won't last me through one hospital stay.
Well, I suppose I could just kill myself when I turn 67, save society the burden.
The boyz say: Don't worry, we'll hunt food for us to eat!
