50 Is The New Retirement Age

[TheMastersNemesis]

The trends are that your career is over at 50. The 50 somethings are finding out what most athletes find out by 35. In the view of the business community with its NEW business model for the 21st century you are "washed up" and are no longer competitive in the job market. You are too expensive and costly to hire. Experience and education are no long relevant.

We allow business to set the agenda with their globalization philosophy.

[n2doc]

1. It wouldn't be if we would stop offshoring our jobs

If we had a genuine unemployment rate under 5% this crap would stop, because employers would not be able to discriminate and still hire enough people to do their work. It used to be that way, pre-NAFTA and pre-Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush. This is a function of a very poor economy with a much higher real unemployment rate than the official number.

[LuvNewcastle]

5. Correct.

[livetohike]

2. That was true in my case.....I haven't worked since 2000 (when I was 48). Looked for a job for four

years and gave up. I am lucky that my husband was working. Can't even tell you all the different places/jobs I applied for (MBA and years of management experience). I couldn't even find a position teaching at a junior college (education background/experience as well).

[intheflow]

3. I am not so pessimistic.

Today is my 50th birthday, as it happens. I work two jobs, it's true, but one I just got six months ago at a university and today I am celebrating by meeting with the head of a Masters program I plan to enroll in. Working two jobs and going to school, I may not graduate until I'm 55 but I believe I can find a full-time job after that, or at least one part-time job that will pay the same as my two jobs now.

I will say that I live in a pretty good job market and this will be my second Masters, so I've got some advantages going over other people in other parts of the country.

But fuck that attitude, "I'm 50 and my life is over." I'm 50 and I'm going to live another 40 years at least. I'm not going to give up now.

[Le Taz Hot]

4. Happy Birthday!

[PasadenaTrudy]

6. Happy Birthday!

I turned 50 ten days ago. Here's to good health and happiness

[LordGlenconner]

13. Great perspective

It's so much easier to sit back and just be a victim of advancing age. Kudos to you for actually taking it by the horns, rather than whining about it.

[Egalitarian Thug]

16. Forced (ageist) retirement is not synonymous with "my life is over".

But everyone our age that doesn't have close to a million in a liquid account had better get busy putting what they do have to real use, because They are going to take it if they can.

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. That means we have roughly 30 years to acquire as much wealth as possible.

If you need 20x your annual income as a retirement fund, that means you must save/invest about 20% of your income at a 4% rate of return during your entire working life... 10% interest if you spend 8 of those in (or paying for) college.

[Fumesucker]

8. While simultaneously learning enough about the market to wisely invest

In order to ensure you get at least four percent.

[PowerToThePeople]

9. That is going to happen...

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. All problems are math problems.

What's the probability of effecting enough change in the overall society to change the other variables?

With a 54% employment to population ratio, social change is certainly justified, but one must take personal action to deal with the world as it is.

The demand for labor is fundamentally constrained. No amount of wishing or hoping changes the fundamental reality that every job has 1.4 people who could/would do it.

Age, ability and education are the fitness metrics that the workforce uses to vote people off the island. The workforce is going to force retirement on all of us, probably before age 65, so arrange your finances to maximize your happiness. And if a college education confers useful skills with a finite shelf life, do the ROI math.

[PowerToThePeople]

14. True. Capitalism is an unstable equation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_stability#Stability_in_numerical_differential_equations

Comparing the linear error growth of a stable algorithm and the exponential error growth of an unstable algorithm used to solve the same problem, with the same initial data.

[Johonny]

10. I would say 55 but based on post 2008 mentality of businesses

it is hard to argue against this. The new business model is lots of 30 somethings, a few 55+ managing them.

[mstinamotorcity2]

12. Damn I am past due.

I got my AARP card. But that retirement thing is not in my viewfinder.

[CFLDem]

15. That's because there's waaay too many people around

for the jobs available. This problem will only get worse until every country has been industrialized and population growth levels off.