A retired baby boomer who still has to work to get by thinks Social Security should be seen as a right in the US

• Linda, a retired teacher from Ohio, has to keep working even though she would like to retire.

• She and her husband, both civil servants, lived modestly, but still had to work.

• Many retirees face similar struggles with low incomes, dwindling pensions and withering Social Security.

Linda, 64, has been working for the past 31 years, but that doesn’t mean she’s done.

The retired high school teacher from Ohio, whose last name is known to Business Insider but was not withheld due to privacy and professional concerns, said her retirement is not looking like she anticipated. Both she and her late husband were civil servants, meaning they didn’t have high-paying careers, but she has a pension – meaning she will receive a monthly payment in retirement. But it doesn’t take her as far as she had hoped.

“We lived the humble life of two public servants just to get our money out,” said Linda. “We bought a house, we struggled with debt. I’m still in debt after his death and the bills keep coming and I have to keep working.”

Before retirement, she earned about $5,000 a month. Now, with her pension, she will receive about $3,700 a month, according to the BI review filing.

She is looking for part-time work and other opportunities that could keep her afloat. She wants something that gives her “a modicum of autonomy” when it comes to scheduling, and said she’ll apply for Instacart and deliver groceries if needed. She wants to make sure that she will never be a burden to her children, even in her old age.

She never sees herself as able to stop working completely; she said she would work until she could no longer physically do so.

Linda is not alone. Many retirees or potential retirees are unable to completely throw in the towel. The current Census Bureau survey found that just over half of respondents over 65 were living on an income of less than $30,000 in 2022, and many older Americans expect to work until the day they don’t. they are still physically capable. It’s a situation that has become more pronounced in the past few years as retirement becomes increasingly reserved for higher earners — and it may get worse as pensions continue to wither and Social Security remains in danger.

“I can see myself fully working for the next 20 years – if I have that many left. Whatever years I have left, I will not be enjoying retirement life in Florida,” said Linda.

A looming retirement crisis for many

Linda’s retirement goals are modest: She hopes to come up with a winning recipe with her teacher’s pension, a revamped retirement plan for government workers, the sale of her house and some part-time work.

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“Hopefully all those ingredients piled into a bowl will bake something I can live with. I will never be rich. I will never be carefree and carefree, but I would like to at some point. I’m getting to the point where I’m free to travel and supplement my income with a part-time job,” she said.

Linda is one of the dwindling number of retirees who have a pension, but that comes after a career spent in low-paid public service. A Government Accountability Office report last year found that older Americans with lower incomes have become less likely to have retirement account balances; simultaneously, fewer low-income households had a pension. This means that the burden of saving and planning for retirement has shifted to workers rather than employers paying a monthly pension; for lower-income workers who may not be able to save, this can be an even more acute challenge.

Linda said she thought teachers in particular had gotten a bad rap in recent decades. The idea that they just want to siphon off the system couldn’t be further from the truth, she said.

“Even though I had that position, I also had the low salary that went with it. And there are a lot of things you have to deal with financially in life,” she said. “And teaching, unfortunately, is not a career choice that guarantees financial stability.”

Even so, she said it was still the most uplifting and rewarding work she’s ever done.

He would also like the country to rethink conversations about social security and retirement benefits more broadly. She said pensions had fallen into the hands of private equity, putting those guaranteed benefits at risk. At the same time, politicians have targeted social security, suggesting raising the retirement age and not moving to fund their coffers.

“We need to get out of this frame of mind that suggests that the Social Security that people have been paying into for decades is somehow a right. It’s a right,” she said.

But even so, Linda still feels lucky: she has two adult sons who will always take care of her; she even moves to be closer to one. They make good money and she knows she has a safety net.

“There are so many in this country looking at retirement age and throwing their hands up and in utter despair, wondering how they’re going to make it,” she said. “And those are the people I feel terrible for.”

Struggling to retire or not experiencing the retirement you hoped for? Are you working during retirement? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

Read the original article on Business Insider