Simple Math

Even though it'll be a good quarter century before I hit retirement age, I started worrying a long time ago about what happens when I become a doddering old jerk. And already kind of live like a doddering old jerk right now. I worry about every penny I spend. All of my clothes come from Target. I've never owned a new car. I have no credit card debt. And I've owned two houses --- both of them were purchased way under market value because they needed a ton of work, which I did my myself. I put a good chunk of my paycheck in a 401k and a little more of that in a Roth IRA. Why do I live like this? Because I know that some day, the money will run out. At some point, nobody will hire me, probably because in my advancing years, I'll become more of a jerk than a doddering old dude. So what I'll have left when the work runs out is my 401K proceeds and a social security check. I figure I'll pay for random life expenses out of the 401K, like car repairs and my trips to the doctor to get a prescription for the anti-jerk medicine that will be developed in the future. And I'll pay the light and grocery bills with my paltry social security check. That's cool --- I can adapt my lifestyle to my income level.

So last night I'm listening to Bush explain his social security plans on T.V. I actually give a crap about this because I'm such a Nellie when it comes to my impending retirement. He says to save social security, we may have to give less payouts to rich people who don't need social security. Sounds good, as I'll likely never be rich. Then he says that private investment accounts should be part of any good plan to save social security. He says I should have the freedom to invest a portion of my social security in the stock market. Sounds good. I already do that with 401k. But wait a minute. Maybe that'll increase the amount of money I've got for my random life expenses, anti-jerk pill fund. But what about the light bill fund? So I sat down and did the math. Let's say I can invest 10 percent of my social security deductions in the stock market. That means that there's 10 percent less money for the light bill. And the less people pay into that fund, the faster it burns up. Uh oh. Why am I able to figure this out so quickly? I'll tell you why. Because I'm the guy that's going to need that light bill money. When social security reform decisions are being made by wealthy people that don't really need social security, it's probably not going to help me much.

So now I'm banking on the development on the anti-jerk pill. Maybe that way, when I hit 65, I won't be as much of a jerk as I anticipate. That way, Walmart will agree to hire me as a greeter and I can pay the light bill.