Maybe you are the ‘other half’ to the other half?
Along with the news items and welcome sporting pieces that arrive on my smartphone, there is a lot of stuff that I never requested including various items; some funny, occasionally of interest; but often totally infuriating rubbish. It is one of the latter categories that is on my mind at the moment.
‘Is 350K enough to retire on?’ Followed by; ‘Do you need 500K for your retirement?’
What planet are the people who write this stuff holed up on? How difficult must it be for couples with a young family and struggling to pay a mortgage to read this far-fetched drivel? How depressing are these headlines for the middle-aged couple, thinking they are doing well, to be able to have a few euro in the bank and afford an annual holiday.
That is progress for most people, who should not be made to feel inadequate because there isn’t half a million in their hand on reaching retirement age. The truth is that a small section of our population has a figure with a lot of zeros on reaching retirement age. Read on please, and you will probably find that you are an awful lot better off than you think.
First of all, let me give you a stark comparison with regard to the ambitions of retirees a couple of generations back. ‘I want to have enough money to bury me,’ was the extent of ambition of people nearing pensionable age. That was all that really mattered with ageing people. My Grandmother paid a couple of shillings a week into an insurance fund collected by Paddy Molloy, to satisfy herself that the undertaker would be paid! It was difficult to have savings in those days… same as it is now. It isn’t easy to live on the state pension, but it does give security and most people do not need an additional €500,000 to retire on.
Outrageously inflated figures of the nest-egg you need to retire on can depress ordinary people, who are made to feel they haven’t measured up. Here we will show you that you yourself are more likely in what is commonly known as ‘the other half’.
I remember reading somewhere that close to half of Irish adults are afraid they could not cover an unexpected, but essential, bill of €1,000. Twenty five per cent of people say they struggle to make ends meet and 53 per cent have savings of less than €3,000. And then the ‘experts’ wonder if €350k is enough to retire on… or if you really need 500k! Remember this is at a time when your children are reared and the mortgage probably cleared.
More than a third of British households are just one paycheck away from financial ruin. One in five would find it ‘somewhat difficult’ to pay an unexpected bill of just £20. I don’t have figures for the US, but from what I know of Americans, they live even more ‘hand to mouth’ than any of the rest of us. Their paycheck is accounted for before it arrives; so much for house payment, utilities, car payment, groceries, education, and vacation. A majority of Yanks live like that – irrespective of salary.
If you have digested all that, dear reader, my advice is not to worry about any of it. Your health is your wealth and we will all be grand. In an anxious world, to some extent now at the mercy of Trump’s tantrums, we will still all get by nicely. With talk of solar energy, wind energy, hydro energy, nuclear energy, fossil energy and so on, the greatest energy of all is food… and Ireland produces 20 times more than we can eat – and so that’s a good place to start.
Everything turns out ok in the end. When I was 15 and in my first job, one day I was filling petrol into Harry Barry’s Mercedes, when Donal Davis told me the car cost £2,000! I was earning 10 shillings a week and I got the most awful sinking feeling… I would never be able to buy a car. But I was a car-owner four years later. I remember when I straightened out a bit (belatedly!) and was in Canada and saving up to get married and being down in myself looking at the cost of a living room suite in a furniture shop window – couple of years later I had the living room – and we all had a place to sit down! Remember, life works out and we all get there in the end.
I am old and it is easy for me to pontificate, you might say, I neither look up to the guy who has the €500k, nor do I look down on the lad who can’t pay the small bill. What I do know is that we will all be grand in the finish. Enough is enough – with or without that big golden handshake!
Don’t Forget
Abraham Lincoln was great, not because he once lived in a cabin, but because he got out of it.