Old Folks Thread

[Green light]

What's a pension

I have 2 of them. Got lucky, fell into a government job after 33 years in private industry.

 

[Warp daddy]

They gave me 6 weeks vacation (not counting holidays/personal days) after 20 years.
Took most of it as 1/2 days golfing and skiing. EZ-peasy.
Once the internet got good enough ya could control instruments and process data from anywhere with a secure connection.
Twas fun.

I don't have a pension but I knew that going into this business. Insurance is one expense that I didn't consider, but early on in my working life it wasn't as big of an expense as it is now. This is one thing that could keep me working for longer than I may want to. Insurance costs are out of control, as we all are aware of.

Indeed,health insurance ramps up at a rate exceeding inflation..... very difficult issue for many .

Several organizations offered enriched increases in salary rather than health insurance....


as you age this insurance is a disproportionate annual cost for many . yet many are AGAINST socialized medicine .

Things have to change there is a crisis in this country finding doctors and we have an increasing percentage of geriatric patients as a result of the boomer generation now. reaching retirement age.

The crisis is only going to worsen unless priorities change at the national and state levels .

Hospitals are in crisis and running in the red due to the pandemic and ask anyone who works in the business there are staff shortages that are only.
increasing as we speak.

Many smaller community hospitals have closed and unless significant change occurs soon others will follow .

Large metropolitan systems Will survive because they can spread the overhead. But smaller community hospitals because of distance find it often difficult to merge and or affiliate because of distance.

A very thorny issue that needs a lot of work and incentives

 

[MarzNC]

I am truly happy for you @Warp daddy. Just one question: What's a pension?

Something your parents have if you are lucky?

My father had a pension as a professor with CUNY. He taught at Brooklyn College for 20+ years. He was a retiree for about 25 years because he lived so long. Not a surprise given that his siblings (he was #7 of 9) mostly lived to over 90. The payments were tied to his lifetime.

My husband was among the last group of IBM employees to qualify for a pension at retirement for those who could stay long enough. He managed to hang on and get the max as a 30 year retiree.

My husband started at IBM right out of grad school and never thought to changing companies. The pension was one of the reasons he didn't leave when IBM was actively pushing out older employees starting in the 1990s. His job as a chemist in the Material Science lab was more relevant when IBM was a hardware company and did material science research. He had to find something else to do within IBM for the last few years.

My company's co-founder and CEO thought pensions were what brought down "traditional" companies. One of the airlines (Pan Am?) was the example he would bring up. There wasn't even healthcare insurance for retirees until the company had been around for 20 years. Only reason I had a nice retirement fund when I left was that the company had a successful IPO in the mid-1990s and the shares I'd received annually for about ten years became pretty valuable. I diversified my portfolio in a sensible fashion over a few years. Then it didn't matter when the stock price dropped and the company eventually went private for a while.

 

[Peter Minde]

I have 2 of them. Got lucky, fell into a government job after 33 years in private industry.

Yah, pensions have gone the way of dinosaurs as corporations look to maximize "shareholder value."

 

[Harvey]

I was in my 20s, I had been working maybe six years or so... I cleaned office buildings at night, pumped gas, worked in a ceramics studio, and taught high school art for a year. I was sick and tired of being broke, and had a cool girlfriend dump me because we never went anywhere. I kept the f'ing thermostat at 62.

I found this company I liked, my mom had done business with the owners. I decided I wanted to work there and they interviewed me. The president liked my mom and wanted to help me, but they had just laid off eight people (1/3 of the company) after losing their biggest account. He told me I could deliver packages. This was before FedEx was really a thing.

I took the job and 38 years later I'm an owner. It's not like a gold mine or anything, but here I am. In that process I never considered working for the govt for the pension. I found a place I fit in and went for it. I did start saving for retirement when I started here.

I know several people who put in 25 years with the govt, got the pension, and are now working a different job, making some 2x bank. Our financial mgr does that, I'm sure she makes more than me, in total. I don't think I'd have been happy in the govt but who knows. One thing I like about this place, if you don't like something, the owners have always listened to employees.

 

[Andy_ROC]

I was in my 20s, I had been working maybe six years or so... I cleaned office buildings at night, pumped gas, worked in a ceramics studio, and taught high school art for a year. I was sick and tired of being broke, and had a cool girlfriend dump me because we never went anywhere. I kept the f'ing thermostat at 62.

I found this company I liked, my mom had done business with the owners. I decided I wanted to work there and they interviewed me. The president liked my mom and wanted to help me, but they had just laid off eight people (1/3 of the company) after losing their biggest account. He told me I could deliver packages. This was before FedEx was really a thing.

I took the job and 38 years later I'm an owner. It's not like a gold mine or anything, but here I am. In that process I never considered working for the govt for the pension. I found a place I fit in and went for it. I did start saving for retirement when I started here.

I know several people who put in 25 years, with the govt.. got the pension, and are now working a different job, making some 2x bank. Our financial mgr does that, I'm sure she makes more than me, in total. I don't think I'd have been happy in the govt but who knows. One thing I like about this place, if you don't like something, the owners have always listened to employees.

Cool story. I probably wasn't made for a government job either. Problem with a government job is your basically tied there til pension time.

I have a friend that was an engineer for the state and he got out as soon as possible with his pension. He said the bureaucracy and politics was unbearable but had to stay due to the pension.

I give my wife a lot of credit for sticking it out in a tough urban school district. I would have never survived or been incredibly miserable till the end. She's a lot tougher than I am

 

[Campgottagopee]

I have a very good friend of mine who works for the government. He's miserable! And I mean miserable!! I couldn't imagine working that way.

 

[Campgottagopee]

Things have to change there is a crisis in this country finding doctors

Finding and keeping doctors. My doc just retired at 65. She's been my doc for 20+ years, and a darn good one. What drove her to retire was what she called the corporate side of medicine. She couldn't take it anymore. She was being asked to do more and more that had zero to do with taking care of her patients.

 

[Warp daddy]

Finding and keeping doctors. My doc just retired at 65. She's been my doc for 20+ years, and a darn good one. What drove her to retire was what she called the corporate side of medicine. She couldn't take it anymore. She was being asked to do more and more that had zero to do with taking care of her patients.

This is a VERY real situation. Over the last decade more and more doctors are hospital employees and no longer in private practice because they do NOT want the overhead

The so-called New generation workforce is no longer the Marcus Welby stay in the job forever type of physician.

They will not put the time in and want to have a life away from the job.

So like in any business venture or have to be trade-offs

if you want to be an employed physician you going to have to do things ( like meet financial benchmarks by generating revenue to not only cover their cost BUT also the allocated pro rata share of the Hospital overhead that supports them )

the employer has to stay financially viable and requires the FULL and pro rata share of overhead be met


You see the tradeoffs :if you're a private practice physician you can call your own shot but YOU also have All the Overhead and aUPFRONT costs and full not prorata share of overhead too.

If you want to be an EMPLOYED doc well ya GOTTA meet benchmarks

So therein lies the rub.

In addition : dealing with insurance company and third party payers is getting increasingly complex in its paperwork demands and it's affecting physician burnout

 

[MarzNC]

I have a very good friend of mine who works for the government. He's miserable! And I mean miserable!! I couldn't imagine working that way.

Depends on the situation.

My older brother was a scientist at Goddard Space Center, part of NASA, for his entire career. He didn't retire until he was close to 70. Have a ski buddy who works for U.S. Census. While he could retire in 2023, he's going to stay another year or two. Had a chat recently with a soil specialist who came to inspect our septic system who has worked 20+ years for the local county. He may retire in a few years before he turns 60. He'll get a pension. He'll probably get another job in his field or be a consultant, partially because he's an older parent and will still have kids in school.