08:09 – I turn 62 years old next month. Barbara asked me last night if I intended to apply for Social Security. I told her that would be crazy. I’ll wait at least until 66, when I’m eligible for full benefits, and probably until age 70. If I applied now, I’d get literally nothing because the government would deduct $1 from my monthly check for every $2 I had in outside income above $15,720.
Not that I ever intend to depend on Social Security. It won’t surprise me if I end up getting nothing at all. By the time I reach full retirement age of 66 four years from now, I expect they’ll be applying earnings limits even for those of us who are eligible for full benefits. If I do get something, I’ll consider it a supplement that can disappear at any time.
11:57 – I’m filling bottles and making up solutions. I just made up 4 liters of 1 molar sodium carbonate, and as always I’m struck by how very complex something apparently as simple as a solid dissolving in water can be. There are kinetic and thermodynamic issues any time you put a solid into solution. Most solids are both more soluble and faster-dissolving in warm water than cold, but there are exceptions in both cases. And, although it seems intuitive that a very soluble solid should dissolve faster than a sparingly-soluble solid, that’s far from being true. Some very soluble solids (on both a grams/liter and moles/liter basis) take a long, long time to dissolve, while some much less soluble solids dissolve much faster.
Sodium carbonate is one of those odd solids in that it exhibits retrograde solubility. Maximum solubility occurs at 35.4 C, just under body temperature. At higher and lower temperatures, solubility is lower. But speed of dissolution increases with increasing temperature, so sodium carbonate dissolves faster in hot water, even though its solubility is lower.
The Social Insecurity Trustees put out a letter every year indicating the health of the system, or more accurately, the lack thereof. The last letter I saw estimates that the year I become eligible for full benefits, they will have to reduce everyone’s benefits by 25% unless Congress acts. I don’t know personally know anyone who has read the letter.
Barbara asked me last night if I intended to apply for Social Security.
I will not apply until I am 70. At that point in my life according the SS people I should get $3300 a month. My wife will also apply and I think she will get half my amount making our income from SSI about $5000 a month.
I expect they’ll be applying earnings limits
I don’t think that is going to happen to anyone who is currently 60 or older. It would be a massive drain on the welfare system as many people who depend on SS would now have to be put on the public dole.
SSI was never meant to be the sole income for retirement. When the SSI Ponzi scheme was developed most people had retirement from other jobs. Now that is no longer the case as most companies have no retirement plans. Government jobs being one of the few exceptions.
I fear that people such as my son who is 31 will realize nothing from the money that he is being forced to put in the system.
Yes, I know the government can do what they want at any time they want. To shut down or reduce SSI would be political suicide and no congress critter wants to impede their own lust for power.
As to when to draw SSI there are valid arguments for doing so as soon as your can and waiting until the maximum amount applies at age 70. It all depends on your financial standing. I have enough socked away that I live easily for the next 10 years. When I retire June 2015 I will only need to fund my myself for 5 years to get the maximum SSI.
I think what is going to happen in the future is that SSI will be resource based. The more money and assets you have, the less you will get from SSI. The poor will get the maximum, the affluent will get nothing with middle income based on your savings and investment amounts (the more you have the less you get).
For now I think I am safe but sure wouldn’t bet you a hamburger on those thoughts.
I agree that for now you’re safe, but I sure wouldn’t count on that continuing. People your son’s age are already having a tough time, and they’re going to see their SS payment increase hugely to pay benefits to people our age. That’s just not workable. None of the assumptions the SS system was based on are true any more. People don’t die after collecting two years’ of benefits, and the ratio of people drawing benefits to productive working people has ballooned hugely. This system is not sustainable. It’s going to crash one way or another, either by explicitly reducing benefits, increasing retirement age dramatically, or by inflating the currency to reduce the actual value of nominal benefits. Or all of the above. The only question is who gets raped. For now, it’ll continue to be the young people, but eventually they’ll start raping the retirees, and we’ll all be getting raped. I just hope I’m still young enough to catch and hang a couple of politicians and bureaucrats.
but I sure wouldn’t count on that continuing
I just don’t know. It would be difficult for SS to reduce the benefits that people are currently receiving. Congress would have to pass such a law and everyone that would get reduced would be voting against anyone in congress that voted for such reduction. Congress critters are not that stupid (no bets on that either) as such action would surely cost them their jobs.
I suspect the makeup in the shortfall will be on the other end, people that are still contributing to SS. An increase in the contribution amount from the employee and the employer. I would also not be surprised to see the minimum age raised to 70 or 75 with maximum draw five years after the age you are first eligible. I would also not be surprised to see the elimination of early application with reduced benefits. You are eligible at 70, you cannot receive until 70.
I just don’t see SS changing for anyone over the age of 60 as of now. Too many people, myself included, have based a lot of my retirement decisions on what is known now about SSI. A mistake? I don’t know. I have to plan on what I know now rather than what I can predict in the future.
I will retire at 65 when I am on Medicare. I will apply for SSI but suspend payments until I am 70 to get the maximum amount. My wife will apply at 66 (I will be 70) so she can get half of my benefit. Currently that would get us $4950 a month. Mandatory draw down on remaining 401K money would start at 70.5. I hope to have spent most of the 401K money between the age of 65 and 70 so there is little left that is subject to mandatory draw down.
I have to have a plan and part of the plan includes what I know about SSI. If that changes my shit is in the wind and I will move in with OFD.
Something has to give somewhere. My best guess is that they’ll leave benefit amounts unchanged and simply inflate the currency to make them worth a small fraction of what they are now. That, in combination with sucking more out of employers and workers, will keep the house of cards standing for a few more years. They (which is to say we) cannot afford to keep people on middle-class incomes for 15 years from the public treasury.
You mention that you and your wife will draw $60,000/year. One way or another, probably a combination of ways, they will reduce that to maybe $18K to $24K per year in current dollars. It wouldn’t surprise me to see one of Obama’s successors issue an executive order saying that anyone who is drawing SS benefits is ineligible to vote. These bastards have lots of tricks up their sleeves.
At any rate, I seriously doubt you’re going to see $60K/year, at least for long. If I were you, I’d plan on the $18K to $24K basis.
“If that changes my shit is in the wind and I will move in with OFD.”
Hey, that was MY plan; I was gonna move in with you down in the tropics where it’s nice and warm and there’s a long growing season.
But yeah, we mostly have the same plan; we gotta prep for the worst but otherwise deal with the cards that are currently on the table; I intend to also hold off until I’m 66-70, assuming I make it that far; wife is two years younger than me and will probably end up collecting more than me; she just turned 60 last month.
70 here now, sunny with blue skies and breezy, with whitecaps on the bay. This and tomorrow’s weather are in contrast to earlier forecasts of rain showers and thunderstorms.
Mrs. OFD is staying this week on a boat in Stockton, CA; later on the next weekend, son and DIL will be joining her with baby grandson and looking for a house in the Bay area. Then she’s flying back up here and wants at least two to three weeks off, after slaving for three weeks straight all over CONUS.
Princess is back from a week farting around in Montreal with my Toyota and will allegedly be dropping it off here later today and taking the Saab convertible. Both vehicles are overdue for maintenance and repairs. Mrs. OFD’s pay checks, at least two of them now, are over a month overdue and the mindless twits who were handling this stuff before at her employer’s, are now leaving and being replaced by more mindless twits, who can’t get our mailing address straight or acknowledge the invoices she sends them.
This is after nearly six years of working for them and bringing in probably millions by now, like she did with the state, and they still haven’t restored the pay cut they gave her five years ago when they were struggling, and now they’re doing extremely well and swimming in cash. They’re doing well now primarily through the efforts of Mrs. OFD and two or three other more senior consultants, and the rash of trauma-inducing events across the country over the past few years. They’re not sharing their success with the people who brought it to them, in short.
And OFD hisself just applied for the second time for the same job back at IBM that I was encouraged to apply for two or three months ago, and now it’s posted again. Another one is “on hold,” and a couple more have disappeared into thin air. Meanwhile I continue with web dev study and the firearms, and, of course, the five-page to-do list here at the house.
Hey, that was MY plan; I was gonna move in with you down in the tropics
Whichever comes first I guess. I may restrict your pool privileges.
Just out of curiosity, what treatments do you add to your pool. I know about calcium hypochlorite (HTH or Pool Shock) for chlorination, and about using hydrochloric (muriatic) acid to lower pH or sodium hydroxide (lye or caustic soda) to raise pH, but I’m wondering if you also add organics to stop growth of algae or fungi. What I’m wondering is whether in an emergency swimming pool water could be made potable.
“I may restrict your pool privileges.”
Wow. That’s cold, man. I was gonna give you full lake privs.
As long a you don’t use a biocide or fungicide, pool water is just fine. Run it thru a filter for taste. The water in many cities has as much or more chlorine than a well maintained pool.
Many people run bromine instead of chlorine, but a charcoal filter should get that too.
Nick
Wow. That’s cold, man. I was gonna give you full lake privs.
Your lake is cold. Not so sure I would care to use your lake so privs is a moot point.
what treatments do you add to your pool.
Standard chlorine tablets in the skimmer, shock when needed with unstabilized chlorine. We have the PH balanced using the chemicals you indicated although we buy the commercial products rather than the actual chemicals. We also balance the hardness of the water.
Algecide to stop algae growth although that has not been a problem once we found the cause. Seems that when we went swimming in the lake and then used the pool without washing our suits algae was a problem. Black algae is hard to eliminate. After we figured out the cause algae is not a real problem. We do add some algecide in small quantities just to be certain.
What I’m wondering is whether in an emergency swimming pool water could be made potable.
In my opinion the water is potable all the time. The chlorine level is generally lower than city water, the PH is balanced better than city water, the calcium hardness is better than city water, and the water is constantly filtered.
I would have no problem drinking the water. The amount of chemicals in the water is so small that most of them are in a few parts per million. I could probably drink that water exclusively with no issues. But I may be more tolerant than most as I drank water from a creek for a good part of my life.
“Your lake is cold.”
You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie, bro. It warn’t that long ago that the ice left us, and still more recent that someone told me they saw ice packed up against the shore at the north end of one of the islands. Right now it looks like surf’s up on the shore here; very ocean-like today. I would not care to be in anything but a big-ass boat, certainly not a canoe or kayak. Even the big boat would be rockin’.
Once I get one of my web sites up I’ll be posting pics and vids accordingly.
@DaveB: I just received my annual letter from Social Security, and I actually did read it. It’s actually pretty shocking to me that they are able to send a letter to an international address, correctly addressed. This is *not* normal for US governmental agencies. Of course, the letter also encourages me to go to their web site and register for my online account. Which – much more normal – you cannot do with an international address.
Registering your account is apparently actually quite important. Not because of the US government, but because of hackers. There is apparently little verification of who you are, so it is easy for someone else to register your account. Which is one step in the direction of identity theft. It would be really annoying to apply for Social Security, only to find that someone else had been receiving it in your name for years already.
As for the long-term solution, I expect our host is right. It’s also the only solution to the enormous level of government debt: massive currency inflation. Not all at once, of course, but just what you’ve had the past few years. Official inflation figures are quite low, but real numbers are different. And once the current little oil boom is past (and it will be, soon enough), the numbers will ratchet up even faster.
@OFD: Looking forward to seeing pics.
I have been amazed that the high limit on the social security tax has not been removed. I have not paid social security in Dec in a long time due to that limit. I have read that removing that limit would go a long ways to healing social security.
Well, of course it would. Any way they can steal more money would help.
I just received my annual letter from Social Security
I remember posting about this last year that I didn’t get a letter. Someone posted that the SSA announced they wouldn’t be mailing letters anymore. You had to go online, which is what I do.
Anybody else still getting “the letter?”
The current oil boom will have a huge tail. 60 percent of the new wells drilled in the last year have not been completed (fracked, etc). As soon as the crude prices go up, those wells will be worked and produced.
Yes, I got my letter last month. I wonder where your letter now goes?
We had the privilege of sitting in our plane this morning for an hour while Delta mechanics fixed the front strut plackard. So, we missed our connection to Helena in Salt Lake city by 3 minutes. So now we are waiting for the 815pm plane, since noon. Of course, we landed at gate a4 and we’re connecting at gate e74. Only about a mile away.
I am a big fan of social security. I just do not want to see it means tested. And, I am an even bigger fan of Medicare and would like to see the entire population moved on it. Single payer time is here.
SS and Medicare ain’t gonna last much longer; the bastards will end up confiscating everyone’s retirements, 401k’s, health insurance plans, etc., and squashing them all together in one huge superfund they can loot at will until it’s gone. Because fuck you.
In other nooz:
“Last Saturday, a massive Victory Parade was held in Moscow commemorating the 70-year anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Red Army and the erection of the Soviet flag atop the Reichstag in Berlin.”
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/05/americas-achilles-heel.html#more
My pool water tastes like chlorine. I have an automatic injector that is supposed to maintain 3.5 ppm but I wonder how well it works. I am thinking about converting the pool to salt water. The cost is about $1,000 but the solution is easier on my skin. The tds of a salt water pool is around 3,000 ppm and not tastable by me.
Of course, we landed at gate a4 and we’re connecting at gate e74. Only about a mile away.
Ooow, you got a close gate. Unlike Atlanta where you walk from one of the terminal to the shuttles, take the shuttle, then walk from the shuttle to the other end of the terminal to find your gate has been changed to the other end of the terminal.
My dad’s been saying for 30 years that I’ll get out every dollar I put into Socialist Security … but that the dollars would be heavily inflated. I’ve been saying for at least 20 years that he’s an optimist. I’m expecting to get nothing; any dollar I do get will be a bonus.
Beyond that I expect my retirement savings to be confiscated. That’s why I’ve been putting the money into my house rather than worrying about IRAs. I also expect to be forced into Medicare and forced to pay a hefty monthly premium in exchange for almost no benefit.
We’re tentatively preparing to have at least some SS and medical coverage, but also to not have any at all, and thus investing in hard goods, like the house, which of course the finance company owns and which the State taxes, and prep stuff. Like the awesome Mr. SteveF sez, any $ from the State will be gravy.
Just noticed: in all the talk of Lake Champlain, above, there was no mention of the very real possibility of being eaten by a sea monster. Er, lake monster. OFD, you have gotten pictures of Champ, right? If not, why not? And, if the real one was not in sight, you did make a pseudo sea serpent, right? If not, why not?
(I still think it would be funny to make the fake and set it to drifting on a foggy morning. See how many britches are soiled within 12 hours.)
“OFD, you have gotten pictures of Champ, right? If not, why not? And, if the real one was not in sight, you did make a pseudo sea serpent, right? If not, why not?”
I have my cell with me all the time and will soon also be toting the Kindle Fire all the time, but Monsieur Champ has not seen fit to make an appearance within my line of sight just yet. The last decent photo, however, was taken from a point about a hundred yards from our back yard and looking out into this very bay:
http://0.tqn.com/d/paranormal/1/S/y/Q/1/champ.jpg
And a woman executive type who runs some organization around here was sitting with a friend on her back deck lakeside south of here not that long ago and evidently they both had a good, long, close-up look at the bugger right smack in front of them but neither one had a camera handy and they were too afraid of running back into the house to get one. It made kind of a racket, too.
“I still think it would be funny to make the fake and set it to drifting on a foggy morning. See how many britches are soiled within 12 hours.”
Ditto, but I’d be nervous about creating a navigation hazard; there is a fair amount of small craft out there on any given decent day. All I need is for some kid to run into it with his damn speedboat or some other kid to smack into it with one of them surfboard kite contraptions.
You people, with your ethics and your morals … you just make me sick. Letting concern for others get in the way of something funny… I just don’t have words to express my disgust. My disappointment in humanity. My despair at the national loss of a sense of humor.
“Mr. Overton also apparently loves his guns.
Another damn bitter-ender, clinging to his guns and religion and cigars…
http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/05/richard-overton-americas-oldest-living-world-war-ii-veteran-turns-109-im-the-only-one-that-can-tell-the-tale-now/
“…You people, with your ethics and your morals …”
It ain’t so much that as fear of lawsuits.
Not to mention jail time.
I have my cell with me all the time and will soon also be toting the Kindle Fire all the time
Oooo! Are you going to carry them in a “murse” like I do? I have a nice one from PacSafe.
When I was in high school, I briefly considered being a doctor. Thankfully I chose to get into a field where all my patients are inanimate objects instead. If I had decided a doctor, I would have already made the decision to turn away Medicaid patients because it costs too much to treat them. The only questions now would be do I turn away all Medicare patients or just new Medicare patients.
Here is how Medicare works. If I go to a doctor for an appointment where my commercial insurance pays $60, Medicare arbitrarily sets the price for such a visit at $48. However, they don’t pay $48, they pay $38.40 and expect either the patient or their secondary insurance to pay $9.60. The only reason Medicare “works” is that commercial insurance patients and cash patients are subsidizing them. If Medicare became universal, a lot of doctors would decide to retire or do something else overnight.
Yeah, I remember talking to a doctor friend 35 years ago. He had a lot of medicare patients, and in January his income plummeted because of the new deductible for the year. He’d send them one bill and if they didn’t pay it he just wrote it off. Drove his wife nuts.
“Are you going to carry them in a “murse” like I do?”
The cell is usually in one of my pockets. When I tote the Kindle I’ll either be pretty close by here, or in one of the vehicles anyway. Them murses look too much like pockebooks to me; no can do, G.I.
Mrs. OFD ran the Medicare/Medicaid program for the state here for ten years; it’s a frigging nightmare, as is public health care. And the politicians still can’t fix anything and talk about the same “studies” and conferences and meetings every year; they’re talking about stuff now that they talked about twenty years ago, nothing changes. Meanwhile the bureaucracy stays entrenched and stacks time toward retirements and moving to wunnerful Florida. Your Nanny, the Almighty State, in action. It’s much, much worse at the Fed level, as she has had ample cause to observe and know over decades.
Now she’s a consumer of the product and discovering just how bad it is down at this end of the stick. I am fortunate, if that is the word, to have the VA taking care of my shit, and doubly so that I don’t have to do the two-hour drive down and back to the med facilities at White River Junction anymore, thanks to that radical socialist maniac, Bernie Sanders. Who, quite frankly, has much more in common with Patrick Buchanan than he does with any of the Dem or Repub ass-hat cretins, thieves, liars and criminal scumbags.
Not to mention jail time.
But out of the reach of the IRS there?
they’re talking about stuff now that they talked about twenty years ago, nothing changes
They don’t talk about it, they hire consultants. Usually their friends. Pay them thousands of dollars per day to come up with the same old shit that never gets acted upon.
I see Moochelle is making the college graduation speech circuit. Apparently she grew up a poor Black child and suffers discrimination to this day. Discrimination from WHITEY! of course. She’s the new Rev Sharpless.
@Mr. Alan: the IRS can probably reach us in jail, too, and make us work at some measly cents per hour rate to pay off our alleged debt to them, which would take centuries at that rate. So they’d start putting our kids, grandkids, and so on in there in our place to do it.
@Mr. Ray; You are correct, sir. Consultants get hired by this state at exorbitant rates, end up either not doing anything at all or fucking things up even worse. Case in point: our web-based “health connector” caper here, which soaked up millions of our tax money and got us zilch. People still either can’t sign up at all or the process is fraught with hassles and errors. Billing is a complete joke. We’ve seen the same shit with other projects over the past twenty years.
@MrAtoz: Yeah, the Mooch has had a terribly painful life and she has trouble sleeping at night due to the continued virulent rayciss stuff from Mr. and Mrs. Whitey, etc., etc. Check out her student record at terrible ol’ Princeton. And then the plush gigs out in Chicago after that. Just so much suffering for that woman, dunno how she makes through each day…oh wait—yeah….countless millions spent on vacations and air travel and consumer goodies for her and the kidz. Courtesy of U.S. Taxpayer, long-suffering wretch and serf, destined for the rubbish bin.
My question to her, Oprah and Chris Rock: What do y’all think is gonna happen when all the white cops quit, and when white folks have finally surrendered and given up everything they own and do and walked away? And never mind the TRILLIONS spent on y’all since the 1950s. With zero results.
My answer for them is to check out Liberia, Rwanda, Burundi, the Congo, Nigeria and Zimbabwe for starters.
“My pool water tastes like chlorine. I have an automatic injector that is supposed to maintain 3.5 ppm but I wonder how well it works. I am thinking about converting the pool to salt water. The cost is about $1,000 but the solution is easier on my skin. The tds of a salt water pool is around 3,000 ppm and not tastable by me.”
When I was househunting in 2013 I wanted a place with a pool. A number of family members were very enthusiastic, as they could come around and use it. My sister, whose bathing suit days are well and truly over, told me not to be daft – they ooze money, she says.
Anyway, I got the house I liked and it’s on a smallish block (550 m2) and no pool. With the insano water charges here in Adelaide I’m sure I made the right decision.
I wanted a place with a pool … they ooze money
As do most things in life. I spend about a dollar a day for six months for electricity to run the pump, I spend about $500 in a year for chemicals, perhaps another $100 in water.
I spend over $2,000 a year on my boat which includes maintenance, insurance, registration and fuel (the biggest cost). This fall I had to spend $1,000 to get the steering cable replaced, the brakes on the trailer bled, and the trailer bunks replaced. (BOAT = Break Out Another Thousand). I tried bleeding the brakes myself but all I did was make a mess. A simple system that requires a power bleeder as one master cylinder feeds four wheel cylinders (disc brakes on each axle hub) and there is no brake pedal to pump.
Better to spend money on something like that than cigarettes which literally go up in smoke. I know people who spend that much, or more, on golf. People that spend that much a year going to shows and plays. People that spend that much going out to eat and drink. It is all about choices and options. You spend money on what you enjoy and your choices will not be other people’s choices.
I take a ‘portfolio’ approach to entertainment/leisure the same as I do to work and investing.
That is, I have some activities that cost a lot per hour but are LOTS of fun. I have some that are very cheap per hour. I have some that might be in the middle.
I try to do a little of each over time, which helps to level out the costs.
For example, a tactical shooting class= $50 for 2 hour class plus $75 in ammo.
Or reading novels= $2- $15 per book at 6-12 hours per book. Good value / hr but nothing on a video game!
“open world” style adventure video game=$65 for game, ignore cost of player and tv, wife 800 + hours of playing, me 600+ hours of play. I’m not done playing yet either. That is some impressive value for money!
Of course, the amount of time spent on each activity varies. I read most nights, shoot at least once a month (normal range time+ammo of $36/hr) and haven’t played a video game in the last year.
I think a pool is very good value for money. Like anything, it depends on how much you use it.
Until our pecan tree dies, and our kids are older, or we move, we won’t have our own pool, but will continue to use the community pool for our neighborhood. I’d have one if we had room.
A boat, unless you live in it, or have it tied up outside your home, probably not good value for money. Most boat owners would be better off renting for the occasional day on the water. On the other hand, if you don’t have to pay for storage, it’s possible to own a boat and not spend a ton of money.
nick