When (not if) Grandma Baby Boomer can’t

pay for  retirement, do we pick up the difference or let her starve to death?

 

CURRICULUM: Responsibility to Others: Your Everyday Community

 

Summary: The New Deal followed the lead of other nations and established lifetime benefits for the aged, disabled and survivors. Nearly a century later, many Americans struggle with personal debt, profligate spending, inadequate savings and even more inadequate retirement resources. Social Security and other public programs never contemplated this promiscuous relationship with money, never contemplated the extraordinary costs of medical care, housing, transportation, purchasing power, and other costs of living in the 21st century. Who pays the bill?

 

Basic Understanding:

• Grandma’s economic picture: lifetime earnings, available funds, what happened to the money, how her annual budget works (or doesn’t work). Is grandma unique, or representative of larger trends?

• Public good: what grandma can expect from government and the rest of us

  Social security, Medicare, pensions, community assistance, welfare, more

• Grandmas tend to live about 20 years longer than their own grandmas

  Longevity adds personal, public good expense; medical expenses

• If grandma lived in another country, would her situation be different? How? Why?

  Multigenerational households, more state responsibility (higher taxes, more public investment)

 

Issues:

• Did grandma save for retirement? Why doesn’t she have enough money? (among workers 55+, 60% have less than $100K in retirement savings, and 79% have less than $25K).

  What was grandma thinking?

• Grandma should live and be well (but at whose expense?)

  Sufficient food, clothing, shelter, medical care

  Enjoy the later years of her life without stress or hardship

• What happens if grandma’s needs exceed her available resources?

  Not a new question — how have we handled seniors in the past? (Poor house, etc.)

• High cost of final year medical care - who pays for the extension of life?

 

Open Questions:

• “We now live in a 401(k) world where people are responsible for our own savings, and baby boomers have not done a very good job. It's a generation that is going to struggle in old age in the absence of reliable anchors and support systems.”

• Can we afford to take care of Grandma Baby Boomer?How about Grandma’s children? Or her grandchildren? Or great-grandchildren?

  Do we continue with the current system? (Is system being sucked dry by Baby Boomers?)

• Communal lifetime investments for lifetime security—stepping beyond Social Security.

 

Conversation Pit: Possible Topics

• Anecdotes - seniors in my family

• The system works pretty well!

• The system is a disaster, needs to be reinvented!

• Seniors in other countries

 

Notebook Contents

• Basics of retirement planning: your "number," why it matters, why other things matter more

• A simple toolkit for personal retirement planning (with additional recommended resources)

• Will Social Security run out of money? Why it will, why it will not.

• Longevity trends in U.S. and in other countries; retirement (or its equivalent) in other countries

• History and future of public support for those in need (with emphasis on seniors)

 

Examples of Web Assets

• How Elderly Are Treated Around the World[1]

• Baby Boomer Reality Check[2]

• The 401k Fallout[3] 

• Baby Boomers’ Retirement Uncertain[4] 

• Money Room: Social Security Reform— Grab Life By The Balls— Comedic Spoof suggesting seniors live more freely as they are using up social security[5] 

• Baby Boomers: Poorer in Old Age Than Their Parents[6]

 

Scholars, Books, Other Sources

• Teresa Ghilarducci, Director of Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research, expert on retirement, author of “When I’m Sixty-Four: The Plot against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them.”

• Medical scholar, Geriatric Medicine, Longevity

• Economist, author - 21st century seniors (and how they differ from 20th century seniors)

• Social scientist (psychology, sociology) - 21st century seniors (how they differ from predecessors)

• ADD MORE

 

Creative / Educational Opportunities

• ADD MORE

 

 

[1] http://theweek.com/article/index/246810/how-the-elderly-are-treated-around-the-world

[2] http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/articles/Baby-Boomer-Reality-Check

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAHgr9dY9BU

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UATOgUjGByA

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mizl_YxoAko

[6] http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-02/baby-boomers-poorer-in-old-age-than-their-parents