Would-Be Retirees Putting It Off a Few More Years
It’s no secret that with the economic and financial markets meltdown, a lot of people lost a lot of money from their retirement and other sheltered savings and investment accounts, and some of those people were unfortunately thinking they were right on the threshold of retiring, and boom, fifty percent or more of their savings that was hard earned and hard invested, is gone. This has left a lot of would-be retirees wondering if they can ever retire now with the knowledge that the money they have to live on for their retirement will actually get them through the thick of it, and will last.
A lot of retirees who were planning on retiring this year have been sorely disappointed that a lot of their savings was wiped out essentially within a matter of a month or so, October and November being two of the worst consecutive months the stock market has seen in many, many years.
People who were going to be retiring and living off dividends or interest and extra growth and withdrawing with the presumed knowledge that they would be able to continue to withdraw with their savings still growing every day, have found that this simple truth that was taken for granted for so long is no longer the case, and a lot of people have had to come up with contingent plans for retiring, or have had to put off retirement as much as five to ten years in order to regain what they lost through staying in the workforce longer than they had anticipated – or wanted.
I was just reading a sad article the other day which had quotes from several would be retirees who said that they have had to unfortunately stall their “golden years” so that they could keep working and set off or mitigate some of their losses suffered in the stock market. Many of these losses will not be recouped for up to five years even when the stock market does go back up – which it will, it just takes time, and considering that many stocks shaved off more than fifty percent of their value and cut dividends, that’s not something that is soon recovered from.
