The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    MrSmith1's picture

    My sister's rant about men with pensions and Soc. Sec.

    By MrSmith1 on Fri, 03/20/2009 - 4:41pm |
    My older sister was born in January of 1947. (I was born in December of 1950.) She got married right out of high school. Her first marriage in 1966, lasted 25 years, (although, truth to tell, the last nine and half years were a prolonged divorce battle.) Her second marriage began in 2000, and is happily ongoing. 
     
    About twenty years ago, my sister started ranting about how the problem with the world was men with pensions.  I believe that her divorce battle led her to that belief. Her first husband was a police officer, who, after working on the force for twenty years, retired at the age of 44 with a full pension. He is now 64 and has been receiving a full pension of $72,000. for twenty years. His father and grandfather both lived into their late 80's, so by the time her ex- dies, he could possibly have received a full pension for twice as long as he actually worked at his job.  (Is there any wonder why we're in such a screwed up economic state? But I digress.)  I give all that information as background.
     
    Last weekend, my sister let loose with a new variation on her rant, which I thought I'd run by the brainy people here and see what they think about it.  Her new rant is that the Social Security ages of people with pensions needs to be raised to become more closely aligned to life expectancy, and that people with pensions should not be eligible for early SS benefits.
     
    According to her, people nowadays are retiring too young and living too long on retirement benefits, and people with pensions which kick in after, say, 20 years, are retiring early and milking the Soc. Sec. system simply because they can. (yes, I know. insert here, the dog licking his balls joke)  In other words, our golden years have become our golden decades and decades. (Golden Generations?)
     
    Her example goes like this:  "Let's say you retire at age 58 with full pension benefits and full medical benefits. Your pension is, let's say, approx. $85,000/yr.  If you were born in 1946, according to Social Security, you are able to begin collecting a reduced Social Security amount begininng at age 62 or full benefits at age 65." 
     
    My sister suggests that the individual collecting a full pension from retiring at age 58  (DOB 1946) should no longer be able to start collecting partial SS at 62.  We should raise their age of eligibility for SS to 72.
     
    Being completely un-informed on this subject, I throw it out to the masses for feedback.  What are your thoughts on this? ... And remember, it's not my idea, it's my sister's. I'm just posting this so I have something to say to her in response the next time we have dinner together.