Age discrimination, "new collar" workers, the perils of employment after 40

Ha. I can only wish I got laid off, or be offered a buyout. Getting laid off last year would have been better than usual.

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Retiring before 50 puts you in the 1% of people who retire before 50.

IMO “early” just means earlier than the government expects you to.

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I’m not crazy enough to believe my own experience from decades ago has any relevance today. But since I did start this thread I might as well, just for giggles, contribute my own data point.

Even “back in the day” there was concern about this stuff, nowhere near as much as today I suspect. I employed two countermeasures personally:

First in phase one, unlike some of my classmates, I went right to work following my undergraduate degree. It took me a year or two just to start grad school. This was followed by what you might call “purposeful dawdling”. :grinning:

You see, the field I was in was evolving at breakneck speed. I remember the rule of thumb saying my education had a five year half life (bet it’s even less today). Anyway, I really messed around when it came to getting my graduate degree. I quit my job after several years, took classes and taught for a while, and when that was over I had all my credits but no thesis. Took another job. More time passed, no degree, and I finally visited the Dean personally to plead for more time to finish a thesis I had not even begun. He gave me “what for” but also allowed me a little more time with a bright line, piss or get off the pot, cutoff. Realizing I had milked the situation for all I could, I quit my job again and devoted several months solid to doing my research and writing that thesis.

The bottom line after all that BS is that I ended up with a freshly minted graduate degree dated SEVEN years later than my undergrad degree! Both degrees were in the same field of course. And let me tell you the employers ate it up! I had great job offers and went back to work at a much higher salary.

That was followed some years later by phase two. I was in my thirties and could smell the vulnerability. So I gratefully accepted a couple of management offers, within my company (no more quitting), which elevated me to a situation where my incompetence was less noticeable. I don’t believe I had a lot of talent for management, but my bosses seemed to think I was OK. I was able to hire the talent I needed to keep my department up to date, rather than be in command of that knowledge personally. And I still knew enough to get by. At least I was not laid off . . . never was come to think of it . . . maybe the job quits had something to do with that.

I did do one final quit, at age 40: sweet retirement, something I had been planning for seven years. This avoided potential, and likely for me inevitable, job unpleasantness thereafter. They cannot lay you off if you’re not still working. :wink:

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IDK how 49 is FIRE, seems pretty late to me. Sure, it’s slightly before senior citizen status…

This is a really silly comment Bend3r.

Age 49 is 18 years before “full” retirement age - that is cutting off more than a third of a full-length career as a professional.

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Good points. Based on personal perspective, it felt like, assuming wise investment and good financial decisions, it’d be very doable to become FI or nearly there for most IT professionals after 25 year career.

Maybe the assumption that everybody saves 40% of their income for 20+ years and by late 40s has mid 7 fig net worth, was off the mark. But it’s certainly doable depending on life priorities, even with 3 money pits… err I mean college bound students.

Back to the topic of performance vs compensation, Bend3r’s suggestion to have a flatter progression curve may be better for some industries certainly. It just feels like sometimes the age-based ladder promotion increases just trumps the actual performance on the job. There should be little reason for a 35-yr old IT pro to be compensated much less than a 45-yr old IT pro assuming equal performance/qualification. But the reality is that they’re probably going to have a significant gap in salaries between them due to how things have always been done. Eventually, that leads to the older employees looking way more expensive than their performance warrants compared to younger employees. When cuts need to be done to the budget, it’s no surprise who gets cut first.

Works for me! Except we only had 2 money pits.

Really was a drag for several years. DH & I had our off springs very early in our marriage & 1 year apart to the very month. So college & outside living for those 2 hombres nearly broke that beautiful plan.

Unlike most of you posters here we live an entirely different life style. Rural farm living & money management can in many instances be so different & yet the same in certain ways. Luv it!!

So we trudge along with our own stories & money plans. Really interesting… :relaxed:

Maybe the assumption that everybody saves 40% of their income for 20+ years and by late 40s has mid 7 fig net worth, was off the mark.

Curious what number you specifically mean by “mid 7 figures”.

Another factor gets overlooked here–it’s easier to exploit that 20-something single worker than a 40-something with family.

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Certainly was for me after 25 years in IT, we were saving about 20-25% across 401k and monthly automatic investments. When you’re making, as a couple, over $100k in a relatively LCOL area it’s not hard to do even with a couple of kids. Thanks to stock and real estate markets our NW is almost double what it was when I ER’d in 2014. Crazy good times to ER, who knows how long it will last.

And in my group I know that at least half of us (5-6 out of 11 or so) folks were in that same good boat due to same good financial decisions. All of us are ER now.

Sure. But life expectancy has been going down while “full retirement age” has gone up. Successes of the trickle down economics?

It’s definitely still retiring early. But the FI stands for financial independence. IMO, FIRE doesn’t mean you must retire but that you can do without most or all of the w2 wages, so it would not directly show in that stat. IDK, guess I want a shorter goal as when I’m 50 I’ll be in worse shape to do the things I want to do.
40 is creeping up on me though, and I don’t have half the funds yet I’d need to be able to (though maybe not choose to) just quit W2. Seems like I’d want around $2M in 2021 dollars.

But I think I am more comfortable and seriously inching towards reducing hours in the near term, maybe by 20%. I just need to make this jump. My non-W2 income has exceeded my gross W2 income for 3 years (not in a row, and it’s been negative some other years…), but it’s really not a fair comparison as the W2 has a very high marginal rate relative to LTCG, not to mention compared to ROTH. So a 20% W2 reduction would be less than a 10% overall income reduction.

I switched to much more conservative investments last year at the market trough (have too much still in cash, over $200k), but even so am up more than gross W2 YTD. Holding the cash seems expensive in opportunity cost but also I think it’s helping me feel better about potentially risky employment moves.

What ?

True in the past 1-2 years life expectancy is “down” but less than 1 year I think.

Full retirement hasn’t changed for decades. Life expectancy is still up 5+ years in our lifetimes

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Absolutely it is “doable”. But people don’t mostly as far as I’ve seen at least.

I’m assuming that was more tongue in cheek comment? “everybody” absolutely does NOT save 40% of their income for 20+ years. A handful do but the vast majority don’t come close. I only know a small % that even have their finances in decent shape. Lots of engineeers are financial disasters.

Of course this is just my personal experience seeing my direct coworkers and friends. But its a pretty good sample size. Personally I’d have though engineers would be more frugal and sensible about finances but thats just not what I’ve seen.

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The last scheduled change in full retirement age won’t hit until 2027 when 1960 are 67 years old.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fool.com/amp/retirement/social-security/full-retirement-age/

What are the odds they increase it further for later birth years as we approach 2027 to reduce the deficit (from all the stolen SS funds used to fund wars and “tax cuts” for 0.1% like the TCJA)? I think: likely.

I think it would make sense for wages to ramp up but then maybe allow for peoples duties & pay to ramp down some later if it makes sense.

Those have been set by law for decades. I knew my full retirement age the day I started working. So its not “going up” for me.

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I’m very familiar with the concept of FIRE (both the FI and RE) – I was just pointing out that 49 is still quite early in the greater scheme of things, if you’re talking about “true” FI where you could RE if you wanted to without a lifestyle hit.

Agreed. Now let me make my point by comparison with poetry. My favorite poet is Dorothy Parker. That woman, who passed in the 1960’s, had an incomparable way with words. Her poems were clever and highly innovative. But most important of all, to me, all of her poems rhymed. What some people today call “poems”, if they do not rhyme, I call prose. Period! If you cannot rhyme, do not claim to be a poet. Spare everyone your BS. That’s what I say!

And it’s the same with retirement. I’ll state this simply as I’m able:

If you’re still working, do not claim to be retired. Period. Because you’re not! Retired people do not work and live partly off their salary and partly off income from their savings.

Now if you’re volunteering or have incidental income you really do not need, that is fine and you’re still retired. But if you’re working to obtain money you need to add to your nest egg because you’re uncertain you will have enough going forward, then you are semi-retired only. You are not retired.

It is tiresome hearing stories about people who still are working and earning money, while claiming they are “retired”. They are NOT retired. Just like real poems rhyme, while jumbles of high sounding words that do not rhyme are not poems.

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FISRE doesn’t sound appealing.
But I agree with how you’re feeling.

If you are working – don’t claim FIRE!
Liar, liar, pants on fire!

Orange – splorange – I’m a poet!
Pillow – zillow – we all know it.

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You definitely have poet potential there, scripta! :rofl:

The rules to which my words conform
Don’t have to follow any norm.
“Potential,” he says. How dare you, sir?
I made thoughts rhyme, just like you wanted.
As long as readers find some joy,
And share the contents of their wallets – I AM A POET!

I meant $4-6M net worth. Has to be some variation based on investment returns. But saving ~$60-75k/yr (maxxing out 403b (2 x $19k+ Roth IRAs (2x $6k) + HSA ($7k) + 529 Plans + RE investment or taxable accounts) is basically how we ended up in that range.