[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

We were doing that. And then, just over a year before spouse was going to retire from a mostly-obsolete skilled labor job he'd been doing for over 40 years, his company shut down the department. He was out of work, with zero income, and not old enough yet for social security. The mortgage company continued needing their payments. We put the house on the market, and it wasn't until a year later that it finally sold.

We had almost nothing left, at that point.

And, 35 years prior, neither of us was earning enough to put away $200/month. People with high-paying jobs are completely oblivious to what people with modest incomes have to go through in life.

To wit: 35 years prior to spouse's forced retirement, we hadn't even met. 35 years to spouse's retirement, it was 1984 and I was still a student in college, working two part-time jobs and busking in the subways of Boston to pay rent while I attended school full time. A year later I was working two other part time jobs, searching for full time work, and started paying back my student loans.

There was ZERO to save during these early years. I swear so many people I meet are just SO out of touch with the reality of working class America it's disheartening.

That shows the difficulty of being middle class TODAY. In the 50s through 70s my father had a UNION job and without my mother working at all, he paid off his house and bought a new car every 3 years. THAT was how a TRUE middle class was better than this so-called middle class today.