I wish I had invested in gold w/ all the money I have spend over the years here in the classified section!
Some say we grow wiser as we grow older but plenty of older people with debt and no good plan for retirement. Some folks here Ihave pretty old student loans but they’ll never admit it. Almost all of us have regrets on how we have handled money in some situations. Most of us know what we should do but don’t always make the right choice. Of course some people on here make all the right choices, have never paid a cent of interest, and their farts smell like roses. Or so they say….Well some of that (no debt) might be because we are SO OLD ...
Retirement? Never really crossed my mind. I save all I can by getting rid of extraneous things. Yeah, I buy firearms and reloading stuff, tools and new parts for the rigs, but I don't watch tv, so no cable or satellite bill there. I literally have a house payment (only for a few more years), city trash, OEC fiber, and an electric bill to pay every month. I tend to shop for stuff when I need something for dinner or cleaning supplies around the house. According to the labels on the stuff I buy, it's a great value to boot. I keep most of my money invested in slow gainers, so my only issue is that IF an emergency came up that I needed a ton of cash for, I'd have to wait until the terms were up on the investments before I could touch it. But I also work for a hospital that waives employees bills. I just have to pay the Dr. My recent hernia operation ran me right around 800 bucks. I consider that saving money too.
Oh yeah! For sure!! For someone who worked for lawyers and accountants my entire adult life (even had a stint in the legal department at the Oklahoma Tax Commission) I learned nearly all my financial lessons the hard way. If I had a nickel for every dime I didn't use wisely I'd still be wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. Lol
Not quite. Mine's enough that I could have bought a new made-to-order Monarch 10EE real freaking lathe. Or a much nicer house than I did. Covid killed my job, and my loans were not government financed, not that I had a choice in that. So I wasn't eligible for a lot of the stuff they did for folks with actual government loans. Except for income based repayment. For which my payments weren't even covering the interest. I paid somewhere around $130 a month for a bit over 7 years, and my student loans grew from just over $100K to nearly $120K. COVID killed the job, and forced me to retire just before I turned 65. Which essentially halved my income. Once the COVID "protectiions" for student loans timed out, they recapitalized and added to my loans almost $20K more interest. So now I owe nearly $140K. In a bit over a month, I'll be 69. Working on the credit card debt & consumer debt now. If/when I manage that I'll start working on the student loans. If I live to 90 I may manage to pay them off.
Getting a job would help, but my wife is chronically ill, and I'm spending my time as a full-time caretaker for her. So no new (or new to me) guns for me.
And Uncle Sam is trying to make it harder for me to realize the investment value of the guns I do have.
I’m sorry you’re in that situation.
So am I. OTH, I have a plan to deal with it, and if I manage it, all is well. And if I don't, from all I know, those student loans die with me. I've not refinanced them, so they shouldn't be a problem for my disabled spouse.
