Comments on: Is the American Dream Kaput?

By: Why Tim Ferriss Irks Me and How a Sabbatical is Not a "Mini-Retirement" — yourSABBATICAL Blog

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:55:11 +0000

[...] version or the whole gold-watch-and-goodbye thing, I would argue not. First, consider all of the dwindled “retirement” funds. You bet we’ll see people working longer than originally planned. And that’s okay, [...]

By: Jim H

Jim H — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:10:49 +0000

I wandered how Social Security would withstand all the boomers coming to the trough, and now we have the answer – they won’t (at least not as soon as they thought). Lots of boomers are going to have to continue working and hold off on that move to Florida

By: Swordsman

Swordsman — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:29:09 +0000

Arizona does have an income tax. Wrong. As for Gramps getting a job, obviously this is a case of compassionate conservatism on your part.

Meh.

I doubt the American dream is over. But the American dream has been that you can afford your own place and do better than your parents, not that you can do better than everyone else around you, live like a zillionaire, and he who dies with the most toys wins, although that’s what we’ve mutated it into the last few decades.

By: Buzzcut

Buzzcut — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:28:38 +0000

Move to Maricopa, Arizona. They’re selling new 4BR, 2000+ s.f. homes for $80k (as seen in a link from the WSJ that Richard had last week).

I imagine that similar deals can be had in Vegas and Florida.

Housing is a zero sum game. Someone’s loss is someone else’s gain.

30 years ago, retirement meant packing up and moving to someplace cheap, usually Florida. It has only been the last decade or so that retirees could afford not to move.

That WSJ article on Maricopa gave me a lot of hope. At least my nearing retirement parents won’t have to move in with me!

And Arizona, Florida, and Nevada don’t have income taxes, either. Get a job, gramps!

By: Wil

Wil — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:10:41 +0000

They key to home equity for us boomers, is when, and where you bought. If you bought in the eighties or earlier, and located on one of the coasts, then there is some paper loss, but essentially you will have still made substantial money….An older person from a European noble family (not that it matters) once told me that in the future, (this was probably in the early eighties), that luxury , or status, would be “quiet”, and “space”. At the time I thought she was crazy, but she may have been on to something, everyone wants a peaceful and quiet space now, and it really is a luxury.

By: Wendy

Wendy — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:55:16 +0000

Measuring one’s status by the size of one’s house is the wealth fallacy that created this trap. I know many people (baby boomers and older) who moved to ever bigger houses in suburbs and exurbs after all the kids had left. 4000 square feet or even 8,000 s.f. for an empty nester couple and their cat?!

But it was “affordable” and made them feel like “they’d made it” in life.

Hopefully something less bubble-inducing will be the new “status” measurement tool. It’s looking like the experience economy could take over — which hopefully will not create many or large irrational bubbles of its own.

By: Fred

Fred — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:55:12 +0000

Boomers with $140,000 of net worth are not going to be able to generate significant income from that level of savings / investments. Consequently, they will need to depend on Social Security and private pensions (many of which are underfunded). It appears retirement will have to be delayed by several years for many of these people. The delay has the benefit of generating larger Social Security checks when one finally retires. However, older people remaining in the labor force reduces the number of opportunities for younger people to get a job. Bit of a quandary.

By: ckstevenson

ckstevenson — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:19:26 +0000

How about if someone bought their house in 2001, or 1998?

Things change depending on the horizon of numbers used. They picked that timeline for a very specific reason, to prove a point they view as a foregone conclusion.

A lot of simple solutions for those near retirement – properly manage your portfolio moving from stocks to bonds as you approach retirement, don’t sell your house now during a down market, keep your job, work hard, spend frugally.