Huffington blog
DARE TO BE 100
October 24, 2017
I CAN’T AFFORD TO GET OLD
One of the central tenets of my life philosophy is that most of us should live to be a hundred if we don’t mess it up. It is a noble aspiration, and should serve as an optimistic goal. As I labor to imprint this prospect on a listener occasionally I am met by the response “Sure, I would love to live this long, but I fear that I’ll go broke before I have the chance.” “Old and broke” has a dreadful ring to it.
One of my all-time favorite retorts is Jack Benny’s come back to the robber’s challenge, “Your money or your life?”, of “I’m thinking it over”. Such an ambiguous retort to this threat serves to emphasize our general discomfort with financial matters.
A recent Internet filing is entitled “the new reality of old age in America” and captures an essay from the Washington Post about month ago. It reports that polls show that most older people are more worried about running out of money than dying. Government Accountability Office records that nearly 30% of households headed by someone 55 or older have no pension or retirement savings. One in five have no savings at all. Millions retire with nothing in the bank. “I’m going to have to work until I die because I need money.” People are living longer more expensive
lives often without much of a safety net, resulting in record numbers of Americans older than 65 who are still working; now 1 in 5, and the proportion is going up steadily more than any other age group. 9 million older folks are still at work compared with only 4 million in 2000.
10,000 baby- boomers turn 65 every day. Even the lucky few who have savings are only a serious family sickness away from bankruptcy. Social Security support is often inadequate to meet the debts. Long Term Care is frighteningly expensive.
Many large corporations recognize the problem. Amazon’s Camperforce program hires thousands of older temp workers annually to service on-line orders. Walmart hires hordes of elderly workers as store greeters and cashiers. Websites such as Workamper News advertises jobs as varied as ushering at sporting events, to picking sugar beets, to security guards.
The philanthropic goals of “giving while living” and “dying broke” require immense good luck. We all recognize that you can’t take it with you, but somehow hope that some exception might be made in our case.
My own personal strategy involves the ongoing effort to “Being Necessary.” I figure that somehow Life’s currents will continue to nourish my needs so long as I am still necessary to somebody or something of value. If or when I am no longer needed, then “to hell with it.”