Getting older, and watching my parents and grandparents age, is incredibly hard.
I’ve always been very aware of my age and the passing of time.
These days it feels like time is flying by so much faster than I want it to; I want it to slow down. I want to be able to appreciate and savor more of the good things before having to move on to the next.
Day after day, most things stay the same.
Wake up, work, dinner, whatever, sleep. Repeat four times until Saturday. Rest.
I worry every day about getting bills paid and not having any money in savings if there were an unexpected emergency, just like the rest of the 47% of Americans who can’t afford a $400 emergency.
I know unless I get my shit together and change my life dramatically, or perhaps start playing the lottery, I am never going to be able to retire.
I will struggle to take care of myself until I physically can’t, and, if I’m alone and old (which I don’t plan to be), I will probably become a ward of the state and be put in the lowest quality nursing home for the rest of my life.
Social Security?
Yeah right.
I am not sure whether my parents know how lucky they are.
A year and a half ago they sold our family home, retired, began to collect Social Security, and are now renting an apartment that feels more like a swank efficiency.
My mom is 67, my dad is 66, and I have never seen them happier in their lives.
It was even better for my grandparents.
My grandfather retired from the Navy after twenty years, and then worked another twenty years at General Dynamics Electric Boat, the world’s first builder of submarines, including the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus.
If you visit the Nautilus Museum, if you look to your right as you drive in, you will see the sail of the USS George Washington – the first ballistic missile submarine, and the last one that brought my Pop-Pop back to shore.
They had an even better life.
Once married, my grandmother never had a job.
After 40 years of good work, my grandfather retired with two pensions and TRICARE for Life.
They promptly left the house to my parents and became Floridian snowbirds. They would come back and forth in spring and fall for years before finally buying a house in a retirement community near St. Petersburg, Florida.
They traveled. They went to church. My grandfather golfed three times a week. My grandmother swam in the community pool and loved her bingo games.
They loved their lives.
They had the privilege of being able to afford to love their lives, and never, ever worry about being able to afford something that they needed.
I don’t think I will have any of that.
We can’t count on the cushion of Social Security when we are older, and even now it’s woefully inadequate.
If you are a single adult collecting only Social Security right now, you are absolutely living in poverty, going to food pantries to not go hungry, and taking every bit of assistance available.
I think more people are starting to realize that if you aren’t wealthy or surely a part of the middle class, your future will be rather grim.
What were my parents doing at my age?
Well, they were probably daydreaming and looking forward to what they were doing at my age now.
I don’t think they’ll be taking any big vacations or have any sort of extravagances in their lives going forward, but they will be comfortable.
They won’t have to worry anymore about their future, because they grew up in a time that still offered them a good future.
In their early forties, they both worked great jobs.
My dad was a retail general manager and my mom was a registered nurse.
They took me and my sister to Disneyworld almost every year, among other vacations, like our yearly beach weeks on Block Island.
If my sister and I needed or wanted something, we were very rarely told no, because we never made any asks that big.
I grew up in a comfortable middle-class household.
Now, my rent costs 73% of my monthly net income, and if I didn’t have child support and Bobby to help pay the bills, I wouldn’t be able to afford to live here anymore.
What my parents were doing at my age was living the dream life I always wanted and know I’ll never have unless there is an incredible twist in my fate.
It doesn’t seem like I have much to look forward to as I step into the future.
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