oh finance

"I just don't trust the government." Diane said, sitting at the nurses desk mid-way down the long hall. Diane is 63 (oops) and gorgeous and looks nothing like sixty three and works two jobs and looking at her you would never guess her age. She remarried a few years back and has many stories of things 'just not working out' for people who remarry. Hers is successful.

Mary is a year older than Diane and looks closer to her stated age but is spry and sharp and without the dowager's hump. She still smokes and admonishes the new nurses to save,save,save because "you don't want to end up like me." And, "oh my goodness yes!" she says, wanting to retire at sixty six, when a person can get full social security benefits but "hopefully the Obama administration will not increase the age to seventy before I reach sixty-six. I just can't work until seventy. I won't survive." She says as she moves quickly in the opposite direction, going to answer another call-light.

And there is another woman, older, with the Parkinsonian tremor who continues to work and work overtime. "Why does she work so much?"..."Her grandchildren. She spends the money on her grandchildren." Fact or heresay.

And another who works the minimum which would be the equivalent of 18 hours per week, averaged out. "Because I have to. I'd rather not work at all." She works for the benefits.

There is an on-line site that is the best calculator for compound interest, for information on Roth's (IRA's) for all things savings and retirement related.

A pastor has said that we should not plan for retirement but to work until we are old or dead. Surely he did not mean to not save and plan for the eventual decrepitude which happens to everyone (unless they die or Jesus returns). The decrepitude which prohibits the hard, active labor which one is capable of when younger. This pastor looked happy on the dust cover of his book and it was a book I enjoyed...however...

A fifty year old man lay in his hospital bed this past week. He had come in complaining of a persistent cough and shortness of breath. His heart rate was one-sixty to one-eighty. Medications were administered. Labs were drawn. He was closely monitored. He was pleasant, crawling out of his skin. Two small pills later and he had a 'good nights sleep'. His ejection fraction (the strength of the heart pump) was miniscule. He had no insurance and there was that possibility that he would not work again, or not work like he had. And he with young children.

My oldest son called, asking if I would co-sign on a rental. The rent was higher than what I pay. "But the rooms are big, it is nice."..I declined.

oh finance, oh finance.

"Know also that wisdom is sweet to your soul; if you find it, there is a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off." Proverbs 24:14