And you also live in a hugely expensive place. Simply move, maybe as little as ten miles, and see an immediate impact on your bottom line. That could be $10K/year.

When the Social Security retirement age was established at 65, the average American died at 62; one had to live three years beyond the average age of death to retire. Now the average age at death is approximately 78, so for it to be proportionate the new retirement age would need to be 80. Yes, that's a bummer, but nothing - not even a longer life - is all good.

Another difference from when SS was established to now is the the blue collar jobs were the majority. Now you can get a "blue collar" work that your hands never get callouses, burns, or otherwise damaged. About the worst you have to worry about is carpal tunnel or a workplace shooting.

Also there is nothing so permanent as a temporary program

And yet the neighbor who's a teacher complains about having to wait till 56 to retire.
Public sector unions, are a major cause of this prolem.

Feel free to seek a middle-class livelihood and decent retirement. Seek it as much as you want. I'm focused on turning greater profits for my private-sector employer, collecting my salary and bonus and shares, and defending the value of my dividends.
We've advanced -- in no small measure -- by getting rid of those things you seek. We call it "more efficiency at lower costs to taxpayers."

I can, or I will, assuming I stay healthy. Probably much before 70, too.

Unlike Joe J's neighbour, I don't assume that anyone owes me anything or that work is something to be avoided. Work is just part of life, and staying useful to others is great for one's self-esteem and bottom line. We all have to serve someone, and it makes us better when we do. Maybe that's because I'm an ant and not a grasshopper. My mother was quite happy to retire and doesn't give serving others a second thought. Her retirement is all about fun.

I am fortunate to have one of the few remaining private sector defined benefit pension plans, I save my bonus cheques and company stock grants, splitting the funds between sensible investments in my retirement account, and more speculative invesmentments elsewhere. I used to save even more, but I eventually gave myself permission to spend all my base pay and have a little fun.

I am skeptical of taking on liabilities like a mortgage, wife, or children. A house is not an investment: It's a place to live and a potential money pit. A wife could be the best or worst decision I could ever makes, but I won't know if I chose well until after the fact. Children are not an investment, they're an expense. They could be the best expense ever, or not. Either way, each one is about $250k, more if you pay for college. That's a big hit to any propect of an early retirement.

(God, I loved that man.)

I'm 64. I'd been looking forward for a long time to putting down the flowcharting template (yes; I've been doing this that long) and only messing with computers for fun. But now my plan is to store nuts, for as long as I can.

It's amazing how impending doom concentrates the mind. In this economy I've been able to up my gross by 60% in three years. By prioritizing storing nuts. It's not a lot of fun, but Winter Is Coming.

Finding a weatherproof place to store the nuts is an interesting problem, given current trends. It's OK. I like interesting problems.

Tyler, a structural reason you don't see children as an investment is that Bismarck nationalized filial piety -- Social Security was his invention.

Incentives, in the long run, drive behavior. If there's a moral hazard, eventually exploiting it becomes the norm, because hey, you'd have to be an idiot not to, no?

You tell us with a straight face that you expect our kids to produce what you will consume in your dotage, but don't see kids of your own as an investment. It's the straight face that gets me. You should smirk a little at the suckers.

phunctor, I fully expect to put more into the system than take out of it, because I'll be indirectly paying for people like my parents who have (and will continue to) take more out than they ever put in.

SOMEONE will produce the goods I will consume in old age, as the world is not lacking in young people. That or robots. The Japanese are already developing helper-bots for their elderly, given another forty years, they might perfect the technology. Also, robot hookers.

"And it isn't "hugely expensive," either."

Is this a sunk-cost fallacy?

If there is another venue from which you can maintain your access to the intellectual market you enjoy, you should move if it's cheaper.

Do you insist that you cannot find thinkers in Atlanta, Oakland, Charlotte, Nashville, or thereabouts, or is this simply about not driving? All of those have a Starbucks with rude people in them.

Santa Monica's not cheap. You have pointed out the ridiculous house prices right here. I bet your rent is more than twice my mortgage payment.

If you are an LAUSD teacher and molest children, you will not be fired, but can retire.

If you are a state bridge inspector and lie about bridge safety, you will not be fired, but can retire.

And the list goes on.

Amy, many of us picked th wrong profession to retire from, but we have clean consciences.

>> (God, I loved that man.)

Can't find a link, but the first thought in my mind was Gilda Radner singing:

"I'll Love him, love him,
And where he goes I'll swallow, swallow,
I will swallow him.

What? Oh. That's very different.

Never Mind."

RIP Hitch.

It was never very realistic to think we could start work in our early 20s, retire at 65 (or earlier if you're a public employee), and in that 40-some years save enough that we could live comfortably for the next 20 years without working. Like how much could you have saved in your 20s? But it's been a part of the culture for long enough that we think it's the natural way of things - grow up, get a job and work, then retire to a couple of decades of genteel relaxation.

All those defined benefit pension plans were built on expectations of rising populations to pay in and good returns on investments, neither of which is turning out to be a good assumption, and now they're all underfunded. It's a pretty good bet that they won't be paying out what they don't have, no matter how we cry.

I think the notion of "retirement" that we've been under for about the last two generations is soon to revert to what is was prior to that: work as long as you can, and depend on your savings and family after that. That's the way I'm doing my retirement planning...

I work in technology. My concern is that I might be forced to retire (or find a new career) at age 55.

Any writes: I live here because this is a place where the place and the people and even the weather feed me.

A writing career is fundamentally portable. A subsistence income in California would be a comfortable, middle-class income in Nowheresville.

To Amy it's worth the price. To me, and to others, it wouldn't be. Of course, California has always left me unimpressed: nonexistent weather, far too much traffic, and a population completely out of touch with reality. What's to like?

"Amy, many of us picked th wrong profession to retire from, but we have clean consciences."

The problem with that being: at what point do we transition from being fine, upstanding citizens to just plain chumps? And did that point already pass while we weren't looking?

What Chuck said.

Also, semi-retirement or part-time work is something to consider. If you can get your cash outflows down, you could pick up a part-time job that paid, say, half of your living expenses, and then your drain on savings would be much less.

At 42, I was newly separated and had taken all the debt from the marriage and none of the assets in a deal to avoid child support for her two kids. She got a 4 bedroom house and the better car.

Then I lost my job.

I went back to school for a year and got an entry level job as a computer technician. This was 1995. I took night classes to get a network certification and was promoted. I'm now making a good income, but I'm almost 60. My wife works part time as a self employed cleaner and will not have a pension.

I have about $2500 deducted for the Canada pension Plan and over $6000 (over 8% of my basic salary) for my work pension each year. We put $10000 into our TFSA's (similar to a Roth IRA) and $6000 into an RRSP (similar to a 401(k)) plus any extra we can invest in a taxable brokerage account. That is over $25,000 a year to fund our retirement. If I retire at 65, our income will be modest, but should be enough to pay for the basic needs. I'll probably work at least part time after 65.

Did Obi really write books?? Will Obi give this income to his brother and aunt who live in huts in Kenya?

The Greatest Generation once said to me:

"Why don't you get a job and then work at the same company until you retire? My brother had a job with (GM, ATT, et al) and worked 30 years and now lives off his company pension and Social Security. They borrowed $25,000 for a three bedroom ranch house and paid it off years ago. His wife didn't work, she took care of the three kids! Why don't you just do that?".

And yes, these people still vote, right next to you.

Oh Gog. (facepalm) The Greatest Gen is now 90+ years old. So maybe that comment came from advanced dementia, or eyesight and hearing so poor that there was a good excuse for not watching a TV or reading a newspaper in the last thirty years.

Elsewhere online, I was browsing a discussion about how the little scenario you just described is no longer possible. There was a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth about the fact that the cushy lifestyle and retirement options that people have come to expect are no longer available.

So I posted something like: "Meanwhile, 5 billion people in the world think you have First World problems." Because in big-picture terms, it's like listening to someone whine because the $70 steaks are all gone and there's no meat except hamburger left, when most of the people at the table can only afford rice.

But this guy got all upset with me, saying, "The death of a dream is a terrible thing, Pirate Jo!"

But is it? What if the dream was nothing more than a delusional, unworkable fantasy from the very beginning? Then isn't the terrible thing that we ever allowed our expectations to so utterly and completely lose touch with reality? It seems like dreams should go through a rational vetting process and be deemed feasible before they become goals or plans. Otherwise, they SHOULD die.

Again, I think Chuck explained it very well. The vast majority of people in the world's richest country can't accumulate enough wealth to quit their jobs at 65 (let alone 62) and live for another thirty years on their own dime, and there isn't enough of other people's money to make it happen for everyone. Only a pyramid scheme of borrowing ever made it possible for anyone at all.

Yes, we're going to see a lot of depressed people as reality sinks in. That light at the end of the tunnel? It's a train. But in some ways I just wish everyone would hurry up and get out of the denial phase and start planning accordingly.

A recent quote from Howard James Kunstler sums it up quite well:

"The two major parties pretend that so-called “entitlement” programs can be simultaneously reformed, improved, and abolished – that is, you can have your cake and eat it (with ice cream) at the same time you throw it in the garbage. Reality rejects this incoherent juggling act and proposes that Americans better just make other arrangements for old age, routine medical care, and daily bread. This implies cultural as much as economic transformation and it will occur emergently no matter what empty promises anyone makes. People who want to get food at regular intervals will have to find some way to make themselves useful to others. Medicine will return to the local clinic model and doctors will have to find another motivation for practice besides the acquisition of German automobiles. Old people will have to prevail upon their offspring for care and protection, and they will be expected to play a useful role in the household or community in return if they are able-bodied."

Thanks, Pirate Jo, for a minute there I thought I was talking about people I know who are in their early 80's.

I now realize that I need to accept the ongoing shittification of America as an inevitability that I can't avoid -- and that my blind, senile relatives are lying about their ages!

It's all so depressing.

Gog, HA! If this person is currently in his early 80s, he's a member of the Silent Generation, which is aged roughly between 70-90 years of age.

Funny how we see these attitudes among our own acquaintances and family members. The good news is, hopefully they won't have their drivers licenses long enough to keep voting. They'll be too blind to drive and too senile to remember when election day is!

PJ, my dad is Silent Generation. That was the last generation to believe that accepting charity was shameful. Although they don't regard Social Security as charity -- they've bought the lie that it was an investment program. Nonetheless, they will not be the burden on America that the Boomer generation will be. My dad turned 80 last year and he still works part time.