Older Americans who live in RVs and drive from one low-wage job to another

Re:Older Americans who live in RVs and drive from one low-wa... by mooreds on Saturday November 11, 2017 @09:27PM (#15679353)

Absolutely! Social security was designed to help the elderly avoid being desperately poor. And has succeeded at that to a large extent. But a full fledged retirement program it is not.

The average monthly payment as of Jan 2017 is ~$1400/month: https://faq.ssa.gov/link/portal/34011/34019/Article/3736/Wha...

Depending on your cost of living that may help (maybe a little, maybe a lot) but it's not typically going to be a replacement for your own savings.

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Re:Older Americans who live in RVs and drive from one low-wa... by hiram112 on Sunday November 12, 2017 @05:12AM (#15680376)

$1400 a month is the average.

I can start collecting that amount at 67, and will statistically die at 78.

So 11 years of benefits is $185k.

Meanwhile, if I make an average of $100k for just 12 years, then I will have paid that much into the system (15% contribution). And that's not even counting the massive amount of compounding that will have occurred as I've been contributing since I was 14 years old.

I know it's quite popular for the HN crowd to talk about raising taxes for things like universal health care, social programs, etc.

But when I actually do the numbers and look at how I'm already paying about 1/3 of my income to taxes, I'm beginning to see why many conservatives don't trust the government to be fair stewards of our money.

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Re:Older Americans who live in RVs and drive from one low-wa... by icebraining on Sunday November 12, 2017 @07:41AM (#15680670)

But if you pay more, you also get out more. Not as much, since SS is redistributive, but certainly more than average.

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