LA times reporter seeking feedback from members on Retirement Savings.

I'm a reporter at the Los Angeles Times who writing about the effect of unemployment on retirement savings. (Are people using up what used to be their retirement nest eggs, etc.?) I'd like very much to hear from people about their own thoughts and experiences. Please send me an email at walter.hamilton@latimes.com.

Friends,

Unemployment and it's permanent effect on retirement savings is a very important topic that needs to be put out front.

I've talked to Walter (LA-Times) and he definitely needs our input for his article to have impact. Feel free to post your thoughts in this thread, but Walter does want to have email discussions with as many individuals as possible.

These discussions will be between you and Walter, completely separate from this forum and private.

Please help the Los Angeles Times to document our story!

Thanks Walter... Jeff

Thanks Walter and welcome to the forum!

I hope everyone takes the time to respond to this. Reporters asking to speak to the unemployed seem few and far between as of late.

We cant let the unemployed be forgotten!

Thanks again, Walter

Members.....

Please help Walter by sharing your story for the LA Times. This subject has been on my mind for a long time. For those of us that are "middle-age", retirement planning is critical. Without working for almost 4 years, I have not been paying into Social Security, any retirement savings is long gone, I have been a "99er" for two years. I am 9 years from retirement....what will I do then? I'm scared.

Please keep this crisis in the spotlight. We have been overlooked and ignored for the 2012 election news, the "war on women", etc. Don't let them forget us! Paul Ryan's budget proposal and the Supreme Court proceedings that start Monday to overturn the Affordable Healthcare Act will devastate most of the unemployed my age, it cannot happen!

Thank you, Walter! This subject is extremely important to me. I hope our members will contact you (I know I will!).

Thank you LA Times for keeping the long term unemployed in the spotlight!

Members, please help and contact Mr. Hamilton!

I just sent Walter an email, I hope everyone else will too!

I sent this to Walter:

"Hello, It is my understanding that you are interested in knowing what long term unemployment has done to my prospects for retirement. Since my employment has consisted of one contractor position over the past four years, I have demolished my retirement savings completely trying to pay bills and hold on to a home that won't sell. While I do not look my age and have kept myself trim, I'm experiencing severe age discrimination - nobody wants to hire anyone in their fifties so I can't even add to my social security account. There are millions of Americans experiencing this nightmare, but "our" representatives' solution consists of allowing yet more "highly skilled" workers into the outsourcing bloodbath, further diminishing our wages/hours, completely screwing American citizens, but lowering taxes for the wealthy and stateless transnationals. Great country if you enjoy life in an overdeveloped third world cesspool governed by royalty."

sraney wrote:I sent this to Walter:

"Hello, It is my understanding that you are interested in knowing what long term unemployment has done to my prospects for retirement. Since my employment has consisted of one contractor position over the past four years, I have demolished my retirement savings completely trying to pay bills and hold on to a home that won't sell. While I do not look my age and have kept myself trim, I'm experiencing severe age discrimination - nobody wants to hire anyone in their fifties so I can't even add to my social security account. There are millions of Americans experiencing this nightmare, but "our" representatives' solution consists of allowing yet more "highly skilled" workers into the outsourcing bloodbath, further diminishing our wages/hours, completely screwing American citizens, but lowering taxes for the wealthy and stateless transnationals. Great country if you enjoy life in an overdeveloped third world cesspool governed by royalty."

Well said!!!!

Welcome to the forum. I hope you get some good feedback. As for myself I have no retirement anymore. Used it to pay for a condo I ended up losing anyways.

I recently took advantage of the early retirement option for a pension disbursement. $527 a month with a retirement health benefit offer of *only* $499.80 a month! What a hoot. In the late '90s, and with some fancy date manipulations on the company's part, I lost the paid for retirement health benefit and full pension at 55 I had signed up for. Didn't mind back then, I never intended to retire. So I've redone my budget - yet again. Mortgage/rent is out, so is health care (government mandate or not!), since I won't be able to afford a place to live, why that frees up the whole $527 for... well I just don't know what to do with all that money.
Seriously those are the facts, and I have come to the acceptance phase of being unemployable, and forced into early retirement.

Kathleen, so well put.

What retirement savings? Other than 1K in an IRA, I do not have any retirement savings. My only hope for "retirement" is to find enough people to establish an agricultural based society on some remote piece of rural land, where how much money you have or don't have is not a concern of the society.

My only hope for "retirement" is to find enough people to establish an agricultural based society on some remote piece of rural land,

One word of caution - I stepped out to do this right before the housing crisis as did many others - there are waiting lists in community living projects that were established, but this fracking and other mining pollution issues need to be taken into consideration before purchasing land, because you cannot grow anything on land without potable water. I was looking in Virginia, because the land was affordable, but the state recently turned red and as usual, the politicians were opening it up to business. Tragic because like Pennsylvania, both are extraordinarily beautiful states. The fracking contracts were intentionally written to give corporations the upper hand, for instance, those with the most land have the power meaning that housing communities have no say in what goes on within 300 feet of their property. Farmers can take their millions and leave while homeowners' real estate loses value - Shell is legally allowed to ignore the Clean Water Act so water treatment which is extremely expensive, is their only option and one that I'm not sure entirely addresses the substances that have leached into their water. Can you imagine taking a shower in something that smells like methane - don't light a match, but this is the least of their worries. Anyway, it's important to know what's going on around you. Also, you might be interested in this blog:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/how-you-can-get-started-building-a-new-economy

and this from his "When Bankers Rule the World" article:
The devastation created by Wall Street’s failure affirms three truths that are the foundation on which millions of people are at work building a New Economy:

1. Our individual and collective well-being depends on acting with concern for the well-being of others. We all do better when we look out for one another.
2. Money is not wealth. It is just numbers. Sacrificing the health and happiness of billions of people to grow numbers on computer hard drives to improve one’s score on the Forbes Magazine list of the world’s richest people is immoral. Managing a society’s economy to facilitate this immoral competition at the expense of people and nature is an act of collective insanity.
3. The proper purpose of the economy and the enterprises that comprise it is to provide good jobs and quality goods and services beneficial to the health and happiness of people, community and nature. A modest financial profit is essential to a firm’s viability, but is not its proper purpose.

The critical distinction between making money and creating wealth is the key to seeing through Wall Street’s illusions.""

Well, there is no fracking in Oregon, so far. Besides, my ecovillage idea is still in the formation stage. I'm just doing the researching and group groundwork. Read about what one person did in Wales:
Hobbit like dwellings

The unemployed and unemployed/homeless need a place to live, urban skills are becoming useless and we need to return to a more rural/agricultural lifestyle.