Cite?
That is roughly one in 6 Americans.
That figure is over 5 times higher than the 8.9 million listed by the 2009 annual report. I doubt that 2010 will take it to 50 million…
That should have read 5 million, not 50.
Thanks!
Out of curiosity, I asked a retired Army officer about military retirement. According to him, if you are a member of the regular army and you retire with twenty years in, you begin to collect your pension the month after retiring. If you are a member of the Army reserves, you have to wait until you are sixty before drawing your pension. I didn’t ask and he didn’t say but I would guess if you have thirty years in before retiring, your benefits would be higher but that’s a WAG on my part.
Yes, all of that is correct. If you’re in the reserve or national guard, you can retire at 20 years. We call it “getting your letter”, due to the “Congratulations. On behalf of the US Army and Secretary…” letter you get upon completion. In practice, most soldiers go 21 years, just to be sure. It’s easy to forget, over 20 years, that one time you were late and that weekend didn’t count, so you got a “bad year” on your record. Most sign up to prevent that. And after 20, hey, what’s one more? You can start collecting when you’re 60.
You get retirement points as you go along. It’s one point per day, I believe, and then you run it through a formula to see what percentage you get. So if you went 30 years, you’ll have many more points than someone with only 20 years.
I retired at 47 from a law enforcement career. When I got on in the early 80’s they had a “25 and out” program. My pension is based on an average of my 3 highest paid years. But if I want the health insurance I have to use unused sick days (we got 12 per year) which is why many cops either do not call in sick or take a personal or vacation day when they do.
Weird thing is, I never took the health insurance during the 25 years. I was on a group plan for another job I had, and I got a bonus from the PD for not being on their health plan. The group plan from the other employer cost me more, but I made a profit after the bonus I got with the PD every year.
My son, a Microsoft millionaire, retired 11 years ago at age 33. He wrote two books (one on his experiences at MS, self-published, and one on debugging techniques, published commercially) but after about three years, he went back to work and is still working there. But his oldest friend (from first grade, here in Montreal), also an MS millionaire, retired at 27. Since then he has acquired a wife, a daughter, a house in North Seattle, and seems to spend much of his life traveling and going to film festivals. As far as I know, he does no consulting or other useful work. It wouldn’t be my life, but he obviously enjoys it. His wife makes and sells handicrafts. She obviously enjoys it but probably doesn’t earn very much from it.
Re my post 24 above, my source, the retired Army colonel also mentioned something about the Coast Guard retirement system which is apparently pretty much off the wall, or at least I didn’t understand it and didn’t ask for clarification. I was left with the vague idea that no matter how many years a coastguard person had in on active duty, he/she was still required to wait until age 60(?) to begin receiving retirement pay. If this is so, why? It would seem rather discriminatory but what do I know.
My source spent some part of his active duty in a slot where he was required to know the ins and outs of this kind of things and if he says so, I believe him.