by Tobias Van Buren

Created on: April 22, 2008

ROBBED OF MY LAST TEN PRODUCTIVE (55-65) YEARS!

When young men or women, out of school (high-school or college), look for jobs, they are usually the prime candidates companies are looking for, and those firms sell you the goods! They promise you a working life career to age 65 with good salary and regular increases and all the fringe benefits, as well as a decent guaranteed company pension and continued health coverage upon retirement as long as you live!

There was a time when the above was more or less true for many, but those days are over for the majority. Most people out of school today, getting their first jobs, will never keep them until age 65. Most will not even last the five years necessary to be vested on company pension plans (most often the real intention of companies anyway, despite their promises), those companies that even offer them; fewer companies now even doing it. These people will go on to have a few more jobs they'll not last five years on, or maybe one they will, early on or later on. After years of working various jobs, maybe being lucky to be vested on one company's pension plan, they'll in no time be in their 40s and 50s, and suddenly be let go, maybe never being able to find a decent job again before they're 65. They might be lucky to get another job in which they'll survive the five years, and have two pensions, yet still not as good combined as the one pension earned after forty or forty-five years on the one life-long job. Also, most will not end up with the added healthcare provision on whatever pension plans they get - probably not! Very few people have just one job they get at twenty-something years of age, lasting to age sixty-five. If one becomes a Chief Executive Officer or President (they more or less write their own ticket to corporate survival to 65), maybe the chances are better - even a few department managers, and a few devoted secretaries. I had an uncle who got a job with the W. T. Grant Company out of Hamilton College in 1931, and he managed to work for the company until age sixty-five by1975 when the company went out of business! He was very fortunate indeed, and he stayed on with the insurance company to make sure those entitled to pensions would get them, and for as much as they were entitled to, and for those far from the age of sixty-five no longer working. There was a devoted human being, doing more than he had to, yet the few more years he worked, nearly to 1978, provided him with extra income. He deserved it!

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