Money

 Nothing worried me more about retiring than money. I went to the workshops, I met with the representatives. I called Social Security. No one could give me the answer I wanted. Would it be enough?

As I walked out the door it seemed like my money worries had reached a crescendo. Could I afford to live on what was going to come in? The week I left there was enough in my accounts to live for the month.  Then the State’s parting paycheck was an unexpected 3 months of salary with vacation and back overtime.  We weren’t going to be on the streets for at least three or four months. It certainly gave us a cushion for the beginning. In December my Social Security deposit and the one for Paloma arrived in the checking account. And then the CalPers deposit was more than I expected. Four months later they caught their own mistake, they hadn’t deducted medical insurance and I had to pay it back over the next year. But that initial oversized deposit was nice to have for a few months.

Is it enough? 10 years after retirement the answer is definitely yes. Social Security, CalPers State Pension and savings, I’m not rich but I have enough.

Before retirement I heard the hardship stories about old people barely living on Social Security and often it involved cat food.  I knew Social Security payments were reduced according to how much I got from CalPers.  Just before I retired I learned from Social Security that since I had 30 years of paying the tax there was no reduction.  I was surprised when my checks (automatic deposit) started arriving. They weren’t that small. In fact they seemed pretty large to me.

The check I got looked good enough for one person to live on frugally. If it was my sole income I’d reduce my expenses considerably and move out of Oakland to somewhere with lower rents. For me Plan C was to move to Mexico where my Social Security would be a comfortable income.

Of course, I have Paloma and one person living frugally wasn’t the real plan. My financial advisor Karimah Karah told me before I retired to make sure I apply for Social Security for Paloma as my underage dependent. Who knew? I was surprised to receive a monthly check that was half of my own Social Security and increased our income to nearly comfortable.

Add CalPers Pension and I was there. After I paid back the overpayment it settled into enough to pay my Kaiser MedCare and Dental Insurance for Paloma and me and still net $1,000 a month.  I told Kaiser I wanted a plan that was equivalent to the care I had been getting before I retired and that’s what I have. The only difference is the minimal copays are less. Through CalPers I’m paying a rate negotiated to its minimum, $325 a month.  Paloma and Suzette’s medical insurance is part of her benefits package at her employer.

Suzette has a full time job with a reasonable salary and benefits. My mindset has always been to pay my own way and that seems to be Suzette’s attitude, so we split the household expenses, mortgage and utilities in half and then the substantial private school tuition.

Without the tuition I’d be OK, so I take that out of my savings. And Bob’s your uncle, that’s how we live.

Housing expenses in the Bay Area are among the highest in the country and what we pay in mortgage and taxes would choke people outside of New York or Los Angeles. And private tuition at a very good school is only slightly less than college tuition at the best schools in California.

And there it is, most of my life I’ve never made the big bucks, but I’ve always been comfortable. I never admitted to anyone but it always seemed more than I expected.  And now in retirement the same is true. We’re not rich, but we’re comfortable and it’s a lot more than I ever expected.

Half my savings was from my mother’s estate. My father didn’t have anything to do with money. He just earned it, like me his whole life, he wasn’t rich but he earned enough. My mother saved. It’s given me a comfortable cushion and let me make a substantial down payment on an Oakland house. The rest is money I paid into, Social Secuirty, IRA contributions, savings, retirement from the State that was part of the pay package.  

After all is said and done I have an income that covers expenses and I don’t work.  It feels like free money to me.

Covid 19 Journal

I am 73 years old and a white male. Over 10 years ago I had a minor heart attack and had 6 stints put in. My medical records say coronary artery disease and hypertension.  Nonetheless I feel healthy in general. I collect social security, a small State pension, and I have a 401k that I can draw on.  My 401k is the usual senior paradox, if I live a long time it may not last and if I don't it's a lot.  I am married and Suzette works full time from home as a personnel manager for a charter school regional office. We have a comfortable income. We own our home in a good neighborhood. I have Medicare and private medical insurance.  Suzette and our daughter are also insured. Our daughter is 10 years old, healthy and growing, and is enrolled in a private school. They did very good online instruction until June. Since then she’s taken a writers’ workshop online and next week will start an online summer camp.

I describe my days staying at home as good. I get up, I enjoy my coffee, read history, read a couple of newspapers online, take the dog for a walk, take care of Paloma, do dishes, cook meals, go bicycling and watch TV including taped football (FIFA) games that were played a long time ago and some recent SuperLiga Danish games, talk to friends and family on the phone and do a once a week porch visit with a friend. My days are like a lazy Saturdays where I don’t do much but relax and enjoy, day after day after day after day. It feels like being under house arrest. I am aware that we are very fortunate and unlike many people around us have everything we need.

I have been keeping a journal for the Covid-19 Pandemic. I write it for history, a digital file to be stored in a digital library, maybe useful one day or not.

June 27, 2020 Day 103

LA Times 6/27/20 4 Suburban California Counties fuel dangerous rise in COVID-19 hospital-izations

“It’s like we’re cheating on our diet, and angry or baffled that we can’t lose weight,” Dr. Robert Levin, the Ventura County health officer, said Tuesday. “There’s all those times that we’re not cheating. But [in] the few times we do, all that effort is for naught. So what is the price we pay? Where are we headed? More cases of COVID-19. More people hospitalized. More people in our ICUs. More people dead.” 

“Like cheating on our diets” – and then – “More people dead.”

It feels like things are spinning out of control. San Francisco is stopping it’s scheduled reopening moves and talking about backing up. It seems small things. We’re talking about how we will go out today. We’ve decided to go to a beer garden in Uptown Oakland. Last week at Jack London Square we felt safe. My friend Gordon said they went to Capitola and it didn’t feel safe. It’s hit and miss. Yesterday I came back from my bike ride and there next door was Angela a couple of feet away from Rita sitting on her front steps, she was leaning in to talk to her. Neither one was wearing a mask.

Angela is my best example of someone well meaning who for her own quirks needs to push the limits of distancing, neighborhood events, getting together, visits and so on. But Rita is as old as I am and seems older. Angela is past 60 and not in the best of health. I don’t blame her at all. In fact, it’s not what anyone of us does but our behavior overall. If 300 kids attend school at EBI in September we will probably be lucky, none of them will get very sick, but if 10,000 start school in OUSD two or three are going to die and one or two may be debilitated for life.

I think the powers that be, the Wall Street money managers, the Washington powerbrokers, not a conspiracy but a consensus know that reopening means people will die, but the economic gains are worth the price and besides it’s people of color and the elderly and immigrants who are replaceable, marginalized people and people who are past contributing. Social Darwinism. Like Jane Austen characters over 200 years ago, the gentile people live comfortable sophisticated lives while living on the income from people like coal miners who die in the mines leaving destitute families.  

I don’t think the push to reopen is wrong headed so much as it it hard headed, practical and pragmatic. It’s like how much do we spend on auto safety until road deaths go down to an acceptable level? It isn’t just at the top it goes from the Board rooms of Citibank, Bank of America and Chase down to the local nail salon owner. Just like auto safety that went from board rooms and engineers and legislators to the willingness of auto buyers to pay for it. How many deaths are acceptable?

So my family will wear masks, are careful of the environment we are in, like General Milley says, "maintain situational awareness" and we try to model good behavior, doing what we can. And yet instead of controlling the virus, the virus is in charge.  It's better in California than Florida but not by much.

Postscript

We went to Drake’s Dealership a beer garden in Uptown, the old auto row, and again felt quite safe. They were taking the pandemic quite seriously and carefully explained the rules and then followed them. The tables outside were spread apart, we ordered our food on our phone and paid by phone. The servers were all masked, polite and careful. We enjoyed ourselves again. On the way out I had a coffee at a coffee stand behind a plastic shield, no cash.