APPARENTLY, AFRICAN-AMERICANS retire earlier than european-americans, the average age of african american retirement being fifty-six. Seems rather young. Almost seems like they all must work for the government, or as corporate CEO's. Almost makes you jealous.
strangely , though, the retirement savings for the early retirees tends to be less than for later retirees. This begs the question: how can this be? How do they pull it off? the earliest you can receive social security is sixty-two, correct?
How then do these people, with limited savings and a six year wait for social security benefits, bridge the gap? By living with extreme frugality? No TV, no dessert, no non essential spending of any kind? By relying on working family members for support, or even moving in with adult children?
And what if they live thrity years beyond retirement? Somehow, it just seems that the numbers do not add up, and the numbers appear accurate, being the result of U.S. census records.
WE live in a world of greatly enhanced technology, and thus, greatly reduced work requirements for humans, at least, in terms of physical labor. Factory work is not nearly as demanding as it once was, with machines doing much if not most of the work.
The once interminable work week has been reduced to around forty in america, and even less in europe. The work week has actually lengthened a bit in america, but this is almost esclusively among white collar professions. Lawyers working long days and weeks, keeping up with demand in our legalistic jungle of a culture. Accountants shuffling ever more paperwork, made necessary by computers, strangely enough.
But overall the trend is for longer lives, with some people working longer - I have an uncle who works at the ripe old age of eighty nine, quite by choice - and some working shorter careers. Perhaps the issue is really not how much or how little we work, but creating a work culture in which we have some degree of choice in the matter.
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