Quiz: What if you reach retirement age with only a paycheck or two in the bank?
Answer 1: Dumbass. Why didn’t you invest?
Answer 2: Dumbass. Why didn’t you plan for retirement?
Answer 3: Dumbass. You expect the world to hand you life on platter?
Okay, I’m a dumbass. But the cruel reality is, I don’t have extended family to move in with. My kids are near starving and they live 2500 miles away. My only other relative is a sister, and she’s broke too. She had the audacity to spend her life as a wife and mother and then a schoolteacher. What a dumbass.
Me, I must take the Dumbass World Cup. I went to college and wanted to do pre-med, but I was discouraged from this because it was so hard for girls to get into medical school in those days. So I studied art (are you kidding?) because in those days everyone thought some guy would marry and provide for you. Alas, no such savior turned up. At twenty nine I went to graduate school in social work, did well and got a job in social work. (What a dumbass! Didn’t anyone tell you what salaries social workers earned?)
Well I spent most of my life doing the work of the angels (or being a sucker, as some would have it) and I just got to a salary level where I could put money aside for retirement a few years ago. I plan to work ‘til I’m seventy so I should have about 100K to provide for my old age. Let’s hope my old age is brief; 100K isn’t much nowadays.
Well, I’m polishing up my tin cup. When the 100K runs out, I plan to beg at rich peoples’ houses. Especially those radical Christians. They make such a big deal of their Christian values, of course they’ll help me out. Right?