The Near-Dead Working Poor

At the local supermarket, an elderly woman, easily in her mid to late 70’s is bundling groceries. An equally elderly man who obviously has great trouble walking is manning a register at a large chain home improvement center. A 75-year-old “retired” teacher with 35 years experience diagnosed with prostate cancer almost 10 years ago, is still at work in a local coffee shop making coffee and tending to the dining room, aka bussing.

A 4 year stroke survivor in her 70’s is still forced to work part time as an interpreter at a local historic museum, talking to the public for over six hours at a time. These, and thousands (?) of others, fall into a category we choose to call The Near Dead Working Poor, one of the shames of modern American society.

How has this come about? We are the “retired” teacher and museum interpreter. Irwin, a teacher for over 35 years, has a relatively small pension and Social Security. I receive Social Security also, but having been a homemaker who raised a family, that is a small amount with which I couldn’t survive if my husband predeceased me.

When we were younger, we figured our two children would be out of the house by the time we would be in our mid-40’s and life would be a snap — but we find we are still waiting for those Golden Years seen promoted in glossy AARP magazines and the like.

Although our income is fixed, the cost of living has zoomed out of sight. We do not own a home and our rent is almost half of our take home income let alone heating bills and gasoline costs that continue to rise daily. We find it necessary to work more and more just to stand still. Must we work until we die on the job?

Ironically, we often find we fall between the cracks earning too much to qualify for such things as elderly housing and other so-called benefits for the poor. Another interesting situation involves disability. Since my stroke I have extremely limited use of my right hand and leg and my speech is not what it used to be. Regardless, applying for disability I am not eligible because after the age of 65 you’re considered retired.

In short, we are probably better off than many of our age, but for many hundreds of thousand like us, those Golden Years are tarnished.

Tags: cost-of-living, disability, Golden-Years, working-poor

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 11:44 am and is filed under blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.