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Linda, a retired teacher from Ohio, must continue working to make ends meet.
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She and her husband, both civil servants, lived modestly, but she still had to work.
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Many retirees face similar problems: low incomes, declining pensions and shrinking social security.
Linda, 64, has worked hard for the past 31 years, but that doesn’t mean she’s done.
The retired Ohio high school teacher, whose last name is known to BI, said her retirement isn’t what she expected. Both she and her late husband were government employees, meaning they didn’t have high-paying careers, but she does have a pension — meaning she gets a monthly checkout with her retirement. But it’s not going to get her as far as she’d hoped.
“We were living the modest lives of two government workers just getting by,” Linda said. “We bought a house, we were struggling with debt. I’m still in debt after his death and the bills keep coming and I have to keep working.”
Before her retirement, she earned about $5,000 a month. Now, with her retirement, she will earn about $3,700 a month.
She’s looking for part-time work and other opportunities that will keep her afloat. She wants something that gives her “a minimum of autonomy” when it comes to scheduling and said she’ll sign up for Instacart and deliver groceries if needed. She wants to make sure she’s never a burden to her kids, even in her old age.
She doesn’t think she can ever stop working completely. She says she will keep working until she physically can’t anymore.
Linda isn’t alone. Many retirees or potential retirees can’t throw in the towel completely. Just over half live on less than $30,000 a year, or expect to work until the day they’re physically unable to. It’s a situation that’s become more pronounced in recent years, as retirement has increasingly been earmarked for higher earners — and it could only get worse as pensions continue to shrink and Social Security remains in jeopardy.
“I can see myself working for the next 20 years — if I have that many. No matter how many years I have left, I won’t be enjoying my retirement in Florida,” Linda said.
A looming pension crisis for many
Linda’s retirement goals are modest: she hopes to come up with a winning formula that will allow her to live on her teacher’s pension, a rollover pension plan for government employees, the sale of her house, and some part-time work.
“I hope that all those ingredients in a bowl together bake something that I can live with. I’m never going to be rich. I’m never going to be carefree, but I’d like to get to a point where I’m free to travel and supplement my income with a part-time job,” she said.
Linda is one of a shrinking number of retirees who have a pension, but that comes after a career in low-paying government service. A report from the Government Accountability Office found that older, lower-income Americans are increasingly unlikely to have a retirement account; at the same time, fewer low-income households have a pension. That means the responsibility for retirement saving and planning has shifted to employees, rather than employers who contribute monthly to a pension; for lower-income workers, who may not be able to accumulate savings, that can be an even greater challenge.
Linda said she thinks teachers in particular have gotten a bad rap in the last few decades, seen as people who just want to take money from the system, but she said that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Even though I had that position, I also had the low salary that came with it. And there are a lot of things you have to deal with financially in life,” she said. “And teaching, unfortunately, is not a career choice that guarantees financial stability.”
Still, she said it was still the most encouraging and rewarding work she’s ever done.
She also wants the country to rethink the broader conversation about social security and pension provision. Pensions have fallen into the hands of private equity, she said, potentially jeopardizing those guaranteed benefits. At the same time, politicians have focused on social security, suggesting that the retirement age might need to be raised and that measures should not be taken to fill the coffers.
“We need to get away from this mindset that suggests that the social security that people have paid into for decades is somehow a right. It is a right,” she said.
But Linda still feels lucky: she has two grown sons who will always take care of her; she even moves to be closer to one of them. They make good money and she knows she has a safety net.
“There are so many people in this country who are approaching retirement age and are throwing their hands up in the air and in total despair wondering how they’re going to make it,” she said. “And those are the people I really feel for.”
Are you struggling with your retirement or are you not experiencing the retirement you hoped for? Are you working during your retirement? Contact this reporter via jkaplan@businessinsider.com.
Read the original article on Business Insider
