It’s difficult to prepare for retirement with all the foreign ownership of our companies downsizing constantly while they move all the profit offshore and loot the pension account before killing it in favor of a 401K they expect you to manage like an expert while you are working 60 hours weeks trying to keep up and constantly looking over your shoulder at the new kid willing to work cheaper (since he assumes he won’t live to retirement anyhow with his party-boy lifestyle). In other words, only the CxO (eg, CEO, CFO, CIO, etc. ad nauseum) folks expect to retire to anything more than a color TV and another Bud. Even Congress doesn’t expect the private sector to do more, so they created their own golden parachute retirement system (at the working fella’s expense, of course). As usual, not all the crumbs are in the graham cracker box.

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Retirement, what all strive for. Well no matter how prepared you may think you are, it doesn’t always workout like you planned.

I’m forced into early retirement because of an injury (at work) and the Workers Comp in Wisconsin has a $100,000 cap! I planned to work for 17 more years and have great retirement, all was gone in a moment. Insurance, ha!…nothing but a big joke. Everyone pointing fingers at each other when it comes to paying me or my bills (meds $900 a month). Had to go on SS and what a fight that was. Now all I can do is consulting work at a rate that doesn’t pay (If I make any money they “kick” me off SS and I can’t earn enough without it to keep a family of 6), just helps pass the time.

The government’s help is nothing but making a bigger mess out of the one they already had. I’m not old and unable to think, but I can’t figure out which is the best “drug” program to be in. Mostly because they keep changing the plans! What was covered this month gets cancelled the next month and my doctor spends more time trying to figure out what pill to prescribe and have it covered by insurance, than what pill really works for my problems!

Retirement has become living off my wife and kids. Nobody ever figures on not being able to do for himself when he retires. But it is a reality, and it is something everyone must consider. I hadn’t and now I’m paying a very large price for it.

So now instead of looking for the best retirement community to live in, we are looking for the cheapest place to live. The only advantage of not having a job is that you can live anywhere. Not all of them are bad places to live, it’s just I hadn’t ever planned living in some of them.

My advice is to open you eyes to all possibilities. It might not be the plant closing that brings on an early retirement, could be a slip in the tub. So make plans that include the possibility of being “handicapped” and retired.

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