by It seems that I will not participate in what is called the largest generation transfer of wealth in American history. It is estimated that younger generations are inherited more than $ 27 trillion in the next 20 years. Nothing will unfortunately come from me.
I don’t have a house. My IRA has long since disappeared. The only thing that my children will probably inherit at the moment is a fairly good object lesson in what I should not do financially.
It is not that I did not know that I had prepared myself for my retirement. I am an advertisement copywriter. For years I reminded customers that a 65-year-old who ends a working career needs more than $ 1 million to maintain a modest $ 50,000 a year lifestyle for the next 20 years. But life happens. Houses will get lost in divorces. Investments are faltering. And the workflow that you consider for 40 years for granted, suddenly falls from a cliff and takes you with you.
Sometimes I think I’m retired and nobody told me. The good old days are disappeared – was it only two years ago? – If I responded to five freelance track cable and three of them would be interviews. Is it ageism? I doubt it. Half of my customers have never seen me. The other half is as old as me. What is going on, I believe, is the “algoritization” of the recruitment process. A task is mentioned on LinkedIn or indeed and within an hour there are hundreds of applicants, many of whom use AI to sign up for dozens of jobs. Everything except some will be rejected by robots that cannot give anything about charming personalities. At least give me the chance to come in and tap dance.
Nowadays I work part -time in a deli to make up for the shortage between my rent and my social security. It is the same job that I had when I was 20 and the minimum wage was $ 2 per hour. Today I earn $ 17 for every hour that I make sandwiches, turkey and mop floors. I get snap -that sounds better to me than “food vouchers”) to help pay for groceries. But the $ 900 a month that I catch up is the pushing of macaroni salad and brooms apparently too much, and now those benefits can be cut.
What can a Boomer do? Knock Wood, I am in good health. The $ 180 per month that the government takes for Medicare A&B and the $ 293 per month United Healthcare costs for part C are a relatively good deal compared to the thousands per month that some of my less perpeted friends pay. But unless the universe has some miracles in store for me, I will soon be more likely to use the health care system than the simple physical checks that I now get twice a year. And that may mean that it is confronted with crushing medical debt on top of everything else.
I look at every cent while I walk the cord between income and bills. The sandwiches that we sell at my sandwich shop are now outside my price range. Streaming programming is a luxury. Staying within my budget often depends on the gas price. The error margin is frightening thin. It is a rough life in mortal fear of the Check Motor light.
I decided to visit a therapist to help me adapt to this disruption of the middle class professional that I thought was. Pete lets me go for a walk and gratitude cultivate for the things I have. He talks to me about ‘catastrophes’, the ‘Ralentheidsbias’ as a cognitive distortion, ‘all-or-not-thinking’ and ‘telling Fortune’. I am guilty of them all. He proposes to broaden my possibilities by ‘thinking out of the box’. The only thing I can think of is that I live in one when things don’t pick up quickly. However, I am determined to use this as a learning opportunity. I just have “not having money completely sucks” and “more people than ever in America are in the same boat.”
So forgive me if I have a hard time when I see too technical giants for interviews that wear $ 900,000 watches or billionaire Broligarchs that prices the virtues of belt -dependent sacrificing sacrifice. Read the room, guys. Millions of hard-working Americans hardly scrape and cut snaps, medicaid or social security will certainly not help.
I try to stay optimistic by telling myself more productive fairy tales about the way the universe works. Maybe I write a book about this. Maybe I win the lottery. Maybe I am selling a liter of Macaroni salad that is so wonderful that the customer immediately offers me a copywriting job in an advertising agency.
I don’t mind selling. The problem at the moment is that nobody buys.
Michael Borden is/was a copywriter of business communication and advertisement. He also has several scenarios that make the rounds that he hopes will change his life. You can reach him at mhbwriter@gmail.com.
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