Supplementing Income for Senior Citizens - Intro

Though I have carefully chosen the name Planned Seniorhood for my web site, there are a number of posts that I intend to make regarding financial planning that could more appropriately be categorized under the heading Unplanned Seniorhood. It seems that almost everywhere you turn, there is plenty of advice out there for young people about where and how much to invest in order to reach retirement years financially comfortable, but so far I haven’t found much information available with solutions for the others.

When you are in your fifties or sixties, and you continually hear the financial experts whooping it up, telling you that you can be a millionaire when you retire if only you begin saving in your early twenties, it suddenly dawns on you that all of those years of youth lost are now all of those years of saving lost. When these same financial experts further divulge that with each decade of life that passes, a person’s savings must be multiplied two and threefold to achieve a similar outcome, it’s downright unsettling.

There are many reasons, good reasons, why someone might reach their retirement years unprepared; but in my opinion, the reasons are irrelevant. I am very interested, however, in coming up with ways to either increase savings for those late in planning for retirement or to supplement income for those already there. Tortoise or hare, don’t we all deserve the opportunity to enjoy our time beyond the finish line?

While I fall into the first category of still planning for retirement, I can understand some of the circumstances of those already there. And by those already there, in this case, I’m talking about those living on a fixed income who find themselves limiting the pleasurable activities they once were able to enjoy in order to fund the necessities of day-to-day living. If there isn’t enough money left after bills to enjoy the occasional niceties, perhaps life might begin to seem a little dull. Unacceptable.

We need to be thinking about the possible opportunities that might be worth pursuing in order to play catch-up with a malnourished retirement portfolio, as well as a perspective regarding some of the obstacles that aging workers face when attempting to re-enter a youthful job market, even if on a part-time basis.