The baby boomers are growing older and starting to enter the Social Security age range. Social Security doesn’t pay enough to cover all living expenses. The costs of housing are rising, as well as the costs of everything else. Unfortunately, the pay is not increasing to meet the costs of living. As you age it becomes harder to do things for yourself and to maintain a household. This requires additional help which costs additional money. Ideally by the time you reach the age of eligibility to draw Social Security, you should have your home paid off. However, that is not the case for most Americans. Many of the boomer population that I know still owe tens of thousands on their mortgages or they rent or have lot rent. Lot rent on a trailer park has gone up, and is now the price of what rent for a one-bedroom apartment used to be. The costs associated with maintaining a mobile home are also high, and typically don’t qualify for any type of repair assistance through local home maintenance programs sometimes available to older adults. For those that own their homes and still owe a mortgage it’s nearly impossible to pay the mortgage on the wage of social security. If you add a job to supplement the income, it can cause you to make too much money, and rules and case managers will subsequently decrease your benefits.
Medical costs are also obnoxious. As you grow older, more health issues come out, and you typically require more medications, more appointments, and more assistance. These are all costly, so insurance is important. There is a gap in coverage with Medicare, and the costs of Medigap coverage can be out of reach for many people. I know some people who, in lean months, must choose between paying a bill or eating or paying for their medications or paying the mortgage. It’s a tough situation without much room for any change.
Many people who receive Social Security are considered “over income” for SNAP benefits., and if they do qualify, they don’t receive nearly enough to be able to make ends meet each month. Many of our senior citizens rely on the food pantry for assistance each month. Our food pantries are a great resource, but typically only help a limited number of times per month. There also aren’t usually many choices for someone who has health conditions that require a special diet. This leaves many of the aging population in a tough place.
The government has a responsibility to provide for its citizens, especially to those who have worked most of their lives to help pay taxes, etc and are no longer physically able to. Our country needs to do something different to help fill these gaps.
The Baby Boomers are about 60 to 78 years-old. Probably most have retired by now, but no doubt a sizable minority of them still haven’t started collecting their Social Security or Medicare benefits. My generation is 44 to 59 years-old, but there aren’t very many of us.
About 37% of the population 65 or older is still paying off a mortgage.
I wonder why Congress and the White House aren’t trying to raise the payroll tax to 7% (14% including employer contributions) from the 6.2% (12.4%) people currently pay into Social Security. The trust fund is rapidly depleted each year as expenditures for benefits exceed payroll tax collections by hundreds of billions, and in less than ten years, when the Social Security Trust Fund is exhausted, we will suddenly need to choose between a much steeper increase in the withholding tax, a significant (a quarter to a third) drop in benefits paid out, or a sudden increase in the budget deficit to cover the gap that the trust fund has been covering.
You mention that Social Security benefits are not very generous. Yeah, I think average monthly benefits are about $1,800 these days. So, for most retired workers, the Social Security benefits are giving them about 37% of what they had been earning before retirement (see this report). So, consider that for about 40 to 45 years workers (and their employers) are paying about 12.4% of their incomes into Social Security, and then for 15 to 25 years in retirement they are getting about 37% of their former income back. Also,
Your essay got me thinking about the Baby Boomer generation. The Census Bureau says they were born between the summers of 1946 and 1964. Curiously, those of us in Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) do not include those born in late 1964. So, what about people born in late 1964? Are they neither Baby Boomers nor Generation X? Also, what was the best song by Generation X? Was it “Kiss Me Deadly”? Or, more likely, “Your Generation”? And, since Billy Idol, (the toxic singer frontman of Generation X) was born in 1955, and his song is clearly a response to “My Generation” by The Who, whose members were mostly born before 1946 and are thus members of “The Silent Generation” rather than Baby Boomers, then isn’t the band “Generation X” really a Boomer band and their rebellion against the rock’n’roll of the 1960s an attack on the Silent Generation rather than the Boomers? Also, which band is better, “The Millennials” or “Generation X” or “Generation Y”? Generation Y seems to play emo metal. Generation X was a punk band, or new-wave, or something close to those genres. The Millennials do lots of covers of classic rock. I guess the answer depends upon musical genre preferences.
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