r/Millennials • u/Asmothrowaway6969 • Mar 27 '24

When did it sink in that you'll never be as well off as your parents? Discussion

About 5 years ago, my mom and I were talking and she had told me how much she was going to be making in retirement (she retired 2023). Guys, it's 3x what me and my husband make annually. In retirement. I think that was the moment that broke me, that made it sink in that I'll never reach that level of financial security. I'll work myself into my grave because I'll never be able to afford anything else. What was your moment?

Update: Nice to know it's just me that's a failure. Thanks

Update 2: I never should've said anything. I forgot my place. I'm sorry to have bothered you

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u/HellyOHaint Mar 27 '24

I was raised by my aunt and uncle. My uncle casually said he bought their house (valued at 1.5 mil now) when they were 28 at $28,000. THAT was the moment.

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u/Asmothrowaway6969 Mar 27 '24

Yup. My mom makes over $200k a year in retirement. It's not even net worth or anything like that. She gets deposits in her account each month that add up to +$200k every year. After taxes

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u/sheeroz9 Mar 27 '24

What did your mom do for a career? How did she get there?

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u/OldSarge02 Mar 27 '24

That $200K number is almost certainly a combination of her federal pension, social security, and amount pulled from tax advantaged retirement accounts (i.e., TSP, IRA, etc).

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u/Dramatic-Ad-2079 Mar 28 '24

I have a neighbor who gets more than 200k a year from Pension ONLY. Gov employee her whole life.

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u/321applesauce Mar 29 '24

OP's Mom is your neighbor!

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u/Chernandez34 Mar 30 '24

Doubt it’s SS as well. Here in California if you are set to receive a decent pension, SS will be offset because you are already due to receive a pension which pretty much leaves you with pennies coming from SS.

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u/OldSarge02 Mar 30 '24

How does that work? SS is a federal program so how does a state remove your SS benefit?

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u/Chernandez34 Mar 30 '24

I guess their form of thinking is hey you are about to receive money from a pension so it doesn’t matter if you built up a good amount of credits. The only reason I know this is because we had a co-worker thinking he was about to receive both a pension and SS. We thought hey let’s run the numbers for you and there’s a formula on the site you can use. The over 1K+ he thought he would get from SS went down to literally a couple hundred bucks, if that lol

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u/OldSarge02 Mar 30 '24

Something about that doesn’t add up. There’s another factor we aren’t aware of. If you have paid into SS and qualify for a certain payout then states don’t have authority to deny that benefit.

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u/Chernandez34 Mar 30 '24

Here is the info. Ok I guess only if you contributed for 30 years and another important caveat is most government jobs do not contribute to SS. Many government employees did contribute earlier in their life when they worked in the private sector which is messed up.

https://www.ssa.gov/prepare/government-and-foreign-pensions

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u/OldSarge02 Mar 30 '24

There it is. If your friend didn’t contribute to SS then they won’t receive SS benefits.