On Saturday, Floyd Norris of the New York Times looked under the hood of unemployment data. And the world’s craftiest economist hit another home run.
Norris found that joblessness in this recession discriminates by age, with younger people suffering worst. Maybe no surprise there. But what he uncovered at the high (read: old) end of the spectrum was - there are more and more older people working (as opposed to UNemployed) each month.
This confirms something I referenced when I nominated Northwestern Mutual for co-winner of worst print ad of the year. Its god-awful creative of old people fly-fishing, golfing, floating in inner tubes…ALL IN ONE PICTURE. And could there be a worse time in history, other than the Great Depression, to be running around with the tagline “Let Your Worries Go” ???
As I said then, and the data show now, people are postponing retirement because they need to get to 65, never mind live beyond it.
Here’s the simple equation, in reverse:
- Retirement
- Nest egg
- Years of saving
- Income
If you don’t have income and savings, you can’t get nest egg and retirement. Simple.
I feel sorry for all the financial managers, planners and advisors who keep pounding the table on retirement. Witness Fidelity’s promotion of a “retirement” charge card, where you can earn 2% on current purchases, and apparently have enough to retire on, years from now. Which means just to get by on year-one of retirement, I must make around $3 million worth of charges to my card, every year, starting right now.
One more interesting data point: every two minutes in this country, another 15 people turn 60-years-old.
Two minutes. Roughly the amount of time in a whole year an older person spends thinking about retirement.
