In 2001, only about 1 out of every 7 U.S. workers was 55 or older. By 2021, the number jumped to almost 1 out of every 4 workers (a 93% increase). That’s almost twice the proportion of older workers as before.3 Older workers are staying on the job longer for various reasons, ranging from financial needs to the joy of work. More people are working past the age when they might have retired. They might be responding to the increase in the Social Security full retirement age, needing money or health insurance, or simply enjoying their jobs and being around their friends at work.⁴ Clearing Up Myths About Older Workers While Understanding and Supporting an Aging Workforce — https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2023/09/25/older-workers/
I am impressed with the ability of some people to injure themselves in creative ways.
Analyzing data from the 2016-2021 National Inpatient Sample, UCLA researchers found that 25% of 7350 patients hospitalized for scooter-related injuries were using substances such as alcohol, opioids, marijuana and cocaine when injured. Published in The American Surgeon, the study also notes that overall scooter-related hospitalizations during the 5-year period jumped more than eight-fold, from 330 to 2705. In addition, the risk of traumatic brain injuries among the substance use group was almost double that of the non-impaired patients. University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences. “Nearly one-quarter of e-Scooter injuries involved substance impaired riders.” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250429195329.htm (accessed May 3, 2025).
AND don’t forget about these things can randomly explode.
“Our perceptions of working after age 65 have changed over time, and these data suggest that most older adults who are still able to work after the traditional retirement age derive health-related benefits from doing so,” said poll director Jeffrey Kullgren, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., a primary care physician at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and associate professor of internal medicine at U-M. “As we learn more about how loneliness, lack of social connection and isolation intertwine with physical and mental health in older adults, the role of work is important to consider.”Michigan Medicine – University of Michigan. “As more Americans work later in life, poll shows positive health impacts, especially for those over 65.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/02/250211141049.htm (accessed February 12, 2025)
National Poll on Healthy Aging Team. The Intersection of Work, Health, and Well-Being. University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging. January/February 2025. Available at https://dx.doi.org/10.7302/25186
The four phases of retirement described by Dr. Riley Moynes are psychological, not financial. When I eventually retire I know I’ll need to find meaning and purpose for whatever years are left.
If you’ve been to my blog before I apologize for repeating myself. But for new readers I’m past the “traditional” retirement age of 65. I don’t want to retire nor do I intend to retire for several years. One word describes why I continue to work. FEAR. I’m afraid of living too long and outliving my savings. I am petrified of leaving the workforce and no longer having an earned income stream. Living on a fixed income when the cost of everything keeps going higher scares the shit out of me.
Amidst my fear and anxiety the Social Security Administration approved my application for retirement benefits. When I looked at my monthly benefit I was pleasantly surprised. I then added up our future income sources and calculated that our fixed income from social security plus a small defined benefit pension plan will cover 82.5% of our current monthly expenses. Add in future annual withdrawals from savings and investments The Boss and I are financially OK until our nineties.
My fears are overblown. Check this out:
Conventional financial planning also overstates the income seniors need. That owes partly to planners assuming that seniors require the same amount of money throughout retirement. Yet as economists Michael Hurd and Susanne Rohwedder of the Rand Corp. have shown, average household spending drops by roughly 40% from age 65 to 90. Seniors aren’t running out of money—spending on gifts and donations increases with age. Retirees simply spend less on themselves than financial planners assume.
Planners likewise forget that much of adults’ pre-retirement income is spent on their children. The U.S. estimates that a couple earning roughly $83,000 with two children spends more than $26,000 annually providing food, housing, healthcare and other needs for their children. That’s money parents can’t spend on themselves. Of the income they could devote to their own needs, Social Security will replace around 60%. The upshot is that parents need less savings on top of Social Security than one might think. You Don’t Need to Be a Millionaire to Retire By Andrew G. Biggshttps://www.aei.org/op-eds/you-dont-need-to-be-a-millionaire-to-retire/
“I faced a painful reality: I didn’t know anything about anything….”
Andy Clarke – financial writer and editor, a retired CFA dispensing advice to retirees on investing and savings.
A 2021 survey by Pew Research looked at the question another way: It asked people from around the world what made their lives meaningful. In countries such as Italy, Spain, and Sweden, work ranked highly as a source of meaning. In Italy, work was the No. 1 source of meaning, with 43% saying they drew meaning from work. Spaniards ranked work higher than family. But in the US, only 17% mentioned work as a source of meaning. That was a sharp decline from when Pew asked the same question four years prior — a full one-third of Americans mentioned their jobs as a source of meaning in 2017, double the 2021 rate. Increasingly, it seems that more people feel like their jobs don’t matter. Why so many Americans hate their jobs — https://www.businessinsider.com/american-employees-disengaged-work-meaningless-fake-email-jobs-2024-6
Here are some of the biggest reasons some people don’t have enough money saved for retirement:
You don’t make enough money. This is likely the biggest reason most households don’t have enough retirement savings. Some people simply don’t earn a high enough income to have any money left over.
There are personal finance people who would like you to believe it’s all bad habits that cause people to under-fund their retirement.
Many people don’t have any excess remaining after paying for necessities.
We saved as much as we could and if I work a few more years we can plump up our financial cushion. Our expenses will likely be less in the years to come (except someone’s clothing/shoe/Tiny Human budget and that someone is not me). So with a willing employer and continued good health I plan to work full time for a few more years and then ease into retirement by continuing to work part time.
The first five years of my 30 Year Plan is complete. Now I need to work on what to do for the 25 years afterwards.
A quick rundown: First, in the middle of the month, news broke that Superpedestrian was shutting down just 18 months after raising $125 million in fresh funding. A few days later, Micromobility.com, formerly known as Helbiz, was delisted from Nasdaq for failing to maintain a share price above $1. Then came the biggest shockwave of all: Bird, the largest e-scooter company in the U.S. with a one-time valuation of $2.5 billion, filed for bankruptcy.
TBH I never understood this e-scooter thing from the very beginning.
Maybe I’m too risk adverse.
UCLA-led research finds that scooter injuries nearly tripled across the U.S. from 2016 to 2020, with a concurrent increase in severe injuries requiring orthopedic and plastic surgery over the same period.
The study, which compared national trends in scooter and bicycle injuries during the period, also found that costs to treat those injuries rose five-fold, highlighting the financial strain these injuries pose to the healthcare system — a finding that “underscores a critical juncture for discerning the underlying causes of injuries and informing policies for injury prevention,” the researchers note.
University of California – Los Angeles Health Sciences. “Hospitalizations for scooter injuries nearly tripled in the US between 2016 and 2020, UCLA-led research finds.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 January 2024 — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/01/240109121215.htm
Turkey’s Koc Holding said it revoked an agreement with Ford Motor and South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution for a joint venture to produce battery cells for commercial electric vehicles…LGES said the three companies had mutually agreed to scrap the plan due to the current pace of consumer electrification adoption.
At the end of Q3 2023, Hertz told investors that significant price cutting during the year had “resulted in lower EV residual values, increasing vehicle depreciation expense and negatively impacting salvage cost.” Additionally, its rental EVs were damaged or crashed more often, and the much higher cost of repairs for Tesla vehicles—on average about 20 percent higher than other EVs—has meant that Hertz’s Teslas earn it less money per vehicle than its other rentals.
Consequently, it’s selling off 20,000 EVs over the course of this year. Currently, the company has over 700 EVs for sale, including 35 Chevrolet Bolts, four Kia EV6s, a single BMW i3 and Nissan Leaf, and then 673 Teslas—552 Model 3s and another 121 Model Ys.
There is a reason for such unusually rapid depreciation. It is precisely because the device is in need of a new battery – and the cost of that battery is (in this case) in the range of $13,000-plus. Not counting the cost of the installation.
Over the past few years, as Tesla built out its gigafactory near Berlin, it cut down around half a million trees.Kayrros, a company that analyzes satellite images using AI, made the calculation. Tesla cleared around 813 acres of forest between March 2020 and May 2023, according to the analysis. Tesla cut down 500,000 trees to build its German gigafactory
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