Imagine a 5’ tall, grayish-haired woman with a snazzy turquoise cane (you know, the kind with the little foot on the bottom) and she’s leaning heavily on that cane for support. That would be me. I’m 75 years and 339 days old. For some reason I feel so much older than that, especially lately. I have arthritic knees and spine and hands and I can promise you this isn’t how I envisioned my final years.
My parents were born (father-1908, mother-1915) at a time in our history when things like one’s wealth weren’t discussed. It was considered
vulgar. Don’t get the wrong idea, my parents were not high society, just civilized human beings. They married in 1938. Social security was brand new to these newlyweds. They went on to have three daughters. My father served in WWII, lost one of his three brothers to the war, was a sports broadcaster on a local radio station for many years and then sold life insurance until he retired at 65. My mother kept our home humming, raised my sisters and me, nursed my father through broken bones from skiing, multiple ulcer surgeries, prostate cancer and shared a devoted love with my Dad that was the envy of all who knew them. They were good people. They didn’t, however, teach my sisters or me about money. In those days, the men made the money and paid all the bills and their wives raised the children, organized and ran the household.
When I turned eighteen and went away to college, my father handed me a checkbook with a balance of $50 and told me that was my “allowance” for the month. He gave me no instructions on how a checkbook worked, how to balance a checkbook and if you didn’t balance it, you could be overdrawn at month’s end. (I didn’t even know what overdrawn meant.) The bank let my parents know when I was overdrawn then I would get that angry long distance call, you know the one. Not only was I overdrawn but they had to pay for that call, too. Oops!
My first job (at a bank no less), I was paid $1.85/hour. WOW! So, let’s see, $1.85 x 40 hours = $74/week; $74.00 x 4 weeks = $296.00 a month. ($148/every two weeks if you got paid bi-monthly.) I was rich! Imagine my surprise when my first paycheck was only $114.00! I was planning on $148.00. Where was my $34.00? (No one told me about federal income taxes or social security. I didn’t know what they even were or what they were for.) Then I got my second paycheck and it was the same as the first one, $34.00 short—again. If you are keeping score (and I was) that was $68.00. So I figured out I worked (@$1.85/hour) eighteen and a half hours a month for money I wasn’t getting but was going to get when I retired in, um, 45 years. That seemed like a very long time. I didn’t give it a second thought because naively I thought it would be there for me. I believed I needn’t worry because my government was keeping it safe for me. And so for the rest of my working life, each and every month, I paid into social security, faithfully.
I trusted my social security would be there for me and for awhile it was. When I wasn’t as dependent on it in my 60s, it was there. Now, when I do depend on it, when my husband and I both depend on it, it is in jeopardy. Now when we have some weighty medical concerns, Medicare is apparently in jeopardy, too. Initially when I was eligible to get Medicare, I couldn’t find a doctor to take me. Ten years ago, many doctors/medical practices wouldn’t accept you as a patient if you were only covered by Medicare. Allegedly it didn’t completely compensate for the full medical services rendered. But, thankfully, we found medical care and doctors we both trust who accepted Medicare patients. I don’t know what we will do if we have to give it up. We can’t pay for medical insurance, we don’t have the money. We won’t be able to pay for food or medications or gasoline but then again, we won’t have a car. We won’t be able to pay for electricity or water or basic home maintenance. Or anything at all, really.
Social Security and Medicare are misnamed. Security is defined as, “something that secures or makes safe; protection”. Makes safe, something I feel far from being right now. And at seventy five, almost seventy six, the last thing I want to feel is unsafe. Care is defined as, “the provision of what is needed for the well-being or protection of a person”. Again at my age, at my husband’s age, we have to depend on others to help care for us, as much as we wish it weren’t so. I think we all wish we could care for ourselves but our bodies have a different plan.
If I could go back in time and change my world to accept that I had aspirations to become an architect or an engineer, then I wouldn’t have been summarily denied the opportunity. I could have dreamed bigger than becoming a nurse or a teacher. While there is nothing wrong with those careers, it wasn’t me. Instead I spent my life doing clerical work that paid my bills but was unfulfilling. My husband has been self-employed for most his life. Neither of us had retirement plans. We were happy to just live day to day and pay our own way in life. Was that not very smart? Sure, but at my 76 and my husband’s almost 71, what can we do to change that now? We paid in for over fifty years, faithfully. They are going to take all this money for waste, abuse, et al. But where is the money going to come from to house and care for the millions of seniors this will irreparably harm?
So picture that little old woman (and her little old husband) standing in front of you asking “What do we do now? What can we do to stop this from happening?” Please help us, please.
Soosey’s Ruminations 