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Managing on a low income certainly is managing on Social Security. But one must wait till a certain age to collect, and one day that age will go up. So, if you're depending on Social Security, or will, take a look at where you now stand, if you're now collecting or not, whether you will - when and how much. When it started out, it was not what it now is, and it will not likely be in the future what it even now is.

November 27, 2005

By 1935 STANDARDS, SS AGE 2005 WOULD BE 85, EARLY RETIREMENT AT 82?

George Bush is partially right about Social Security, and partially wrong about its solution!

Not too long ago, I was looking through those birth year birthday cards, the ones that tell you what happened the year you were born, what things cost? I looked through a few around the year I was born, which was 1939, two weeks before 1940! In the 1938 one, I saw a 'Cocomalt' ad, the product I well remember - a great malted milk powder! I'd enjoyed many a great malted, which my dad introduced to me at some point, when I was old enough to understand. There's no more Cocomalt now, only Carnation that does not exactly match it! I looked at 1938, and that was when I noticed the average life expectancy was 59 years old. If I go back three more years, when Social Security was introduced, it must have been around 57 or 58, twenty years younger than today's, which I'm told is 77 or 78, the age my dad died eighteen years ago (he beat the odds!).

In 1935, when Social Security came into being, the age for retirement was set at 65, and it still is for us today, born 1937 and earlier. For me, born in 1939? A couple of months beyond age 65, but I never got to work till that age, when I might today be enjoying a much better retirement income - pension-wise, Social Security-wise, and otherwise! The ideal didn't happen to me! I retired at age 62, officially anyway, as I'd been forced into retirement around age 54, when I lost my last full-time job - 2 World Trade Center (was I lucky? Maybe as far as being alive goes!)

As the President has pointed out, we are living longer, an average of twenty years longer. That's quite a lot in a lifetime (1935 to 2005, Psalm 90 - three-score and ten). In 1935, the Social Security age set at 65 meant that many people would never live that long, since 65 is about seven to eight years beyond the average life expectancy in 1935. Today it is about twelve to thirteen years short of the average life expectancy. So, most people are living

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