It happens to all of us. All you have to do is live long enough. No matter how well you planned for retirement, there will be a point where your cost of living will exceed what you planned. If you have reserves, you can make adjustments. If you were going to pass something on to the kids or do some more guided tours, you can say the kids have no needs and the guided tours are boring. Very few of us are philosophical about it.
And that children is why today there are a lot of angry grandmas and grandpas. Too many of us have hit the wall. If we had died five years ago, we would not be in this mess. Thanks to genetics or modern medicine, we are still here. We are just a bit crankier and there is no magic solution. And nobody understands because they can tell us that the current annual cost of living rise today is only about one per cent. If you were doing your planning in 1975 buster, would you have believed that a loaf of bread would now be $2.50 and a litre of gasoline about $1.25?
The truth is that none of us really retired voluntarily. The time was never right. That retirement at 55 advertising only works for people making over $150,000 per year. It is this vague middle class that is getting screwed. We listen to the next boomer generation and wonder what the hell they are complaining about. They seem to think that science should have stopped the aging process. Suck it up kids!
The one thing that is crystal clear to Canadians is that Prime Minister Stephen Harper could care less. Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair and his New Democrats are living in some strange world that is trying to transition out of the 1930s. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is speaking out for the so-called middle class but those of us middle class who are left will soon disappear into the pit of poverty.
And, what we really do not comprehend, is that Canadians are supposed to have survived a world-wide financial crisis and we should be proud of it. If the problems are solved, why are the Americans still busy fighting among themselves? They hardly give a damn about the rest of the world. The European nations are trying to keep the have-nots in line and the Brits want to put a monkey wrench into anything concrete. And on top of all this crap, we are told that free trade with countries with less than half our wage rates can make us richer.
This continuing mess just makes you want to stick around to see how the world turns out.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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