On Pensions

I got "ticked off" at a comment made by someone the other day. It basically was bemoaning their husband's fully funded and indexed pension and how they cannot possible live off of it....

If I had to come up with enough savings to pay me $45000 after taxes a year for the rest of my life, indexed, with no fear of it disappearing, I'd need an excess of 1 million dollars! Not easy to muster up, especially when she never had a career that "brought home the bacon"!

Not only that, she makes her husband go back to work on contract after he had retired in his 60's, stating, that it is only a 4 days a week, when she quits her job, retires at the age of 57 and refused to go back for a day or 2 when asked because she is enjoying retirement so much. Where is the partnership here?

Perhaps I was oversensitive. I know how much discipline it takes to stay in a career that isn't fun all the time, save money and pay off a mortgage very quickly. It isn't easy. I'd be quite happy and grateful to have a pension, to be paid in addition to getting paid...just for showing up! She has never had to live a life where a significant portion of income needed to be saved in order to plan for future.

It is easy to spend most of what you make when you know you don't need to save. And yes, it is nice to be able to chose the best choices when eating and travelling with such a high disposable income but when all of the people you are speaking to, do not have pensions and cannot spend in such a way, some sensitivity is in order. I would bet that should she have to save 50% of their household income towards retirement, their lives would have been dramatically altered.