Baby Boomers Are Leaving The Workforce To Live Their Best Lives In A Silver Tsunami ‘Great Retiremen

Can you link to the specifics? If it is a promotion and they did not raise the price of the vehicle and gave the money to the charities out of corporate resources I have no issues with that. Businesses do this all the time. Supermarkets will have promotions where they give a percentage or fix dollar amount for every purchase to charity. Fast Food may give a dollar for every burger sold to a charity. These are events and often business will do them to benefit the charity and as a form of goodwill and advertisement to gain more clients. Do you boycott buying those items too?

If your link shows this as a standard business practice and not a promotion then you will have to judge the cars on the merits of the price. Is the car worth the extra $350? In theory if a competitor can offer the exact same item for $350 less this company would go out of business. How does this company can still exist. Is it possible they are offering the consumer something worth the extra $350?

 

Its Subaru and I was wrong... its $250. I've seen the TV ad for a long time so its not just a temporary promotion. I have no problem with a buck. Comparing that to $250 simply doesn't wash. I can't feed my family for two weeks with a buck but I can with $250. If they want goodwill, they will certainly get it from me if they give ME the $250. https://www.subaru.com/share-the-love.html

 

What you mention was discussed by a high school sociology teacher of mine. He explained that as more and more jobs were eliminated by automation, society would compensate by creating fake jobs that gave people the illusion that they were actually working. I did not fully appreciate what he was saying until I started working for the Federal government where I interacted with large numbers of individuals who thought they were hard working, yet produced pretty much nothing of value.

 

One of my tours in the military was in an office at the Army Training Support Center. The office was half uniforms and half DAC's (Department of the Army Civilians). The senior DAC came to me and told me to slow down my people. They were getting too much done in too little time and made the civilians look bad. He said, "You will all move on in three years but we stay. Getting things done quickly makes you look good. But if we do things quickly the powers that be will say we're overstaffed and there will be job cuts."
I lost a lot of respect for DAC's that day.
Automation sure will change things. I'm an optimist and hope that folks will stop dropping out of school or studying worthless things so that they can take on the neverending new engineering, medical, etc problems which will always need new solutions.

 

The reason I left my last job was because of stuff like this. A for-profit business, too. Sickening. I was specifically told to stop doing my job as fast as I was, because nobody could keep up with me.

Blech. I will never intentionally slow down.

 

That link you provided states right at the top "Now through January 3, 2022". Also this statement should tell you it is a recurring promotion:

You do realize that companies are able to do both. I am sure Subaru also has sales during the year where the saving go directly to the consumer. We now like in a multi-threaded world where companies can run more then one type of promotion.

 

I'm still employed, but I feel as if I'm retired ever since this pandemic hit. My salary and benefits are just TOO Damn! good for me to officially retire, when I feel as if I'm almost getting paid for nothing to work from home, plus my job was easy as hell anyways. I almost feel guilty collecting a paycheck, but I'm so good at what I do, I'm not easily replaced, so I just count the paychecks coming in and my accounts growing bigger and bigger.

 

Well... THIS event is a total DIS-INCENTIVE. I'm not going to philosophie, bloviate, hem and haw... I would tell the salesman straight up... "If you give ME the $250... you've got a deal. If not... I'm gone".... simple

There's no excuse for laziness in one's early years when lifetime foundations are established and there is no excuse for a lack of proper planning for retirement. It sounds like you broke the code and got it right. I did too, and am doing great. Funny... most of the whiners I see in this forum are youngins who have all the time and opportunity to get it right... but they choose to be victims

 

There is a flip side to this. After I retired as a GS-15, I went to work as a highly paid government contractor. One day I went to the overall government manager in charge of the organization I worked for. I told him I wanted to be given more work to do as I didn't feel I had sufficient work to be fully engaged for a fully 8 hour work day. He was a little shocked and told me I was the first contractor in his experience to ever ask for more work. The sad fact is many government managers hire way more contractors than they actually need. My guess is because at the very top of Government management there is always an element of corruption. In your world this would manifest itself as O-6 and above going to work for defense contractors.

 

I left the Army and ended up working on training devices for Apache helicopters because that was my special expertise. It was a fun time. I was always a "Business Developer" because of my contacts throughout the Army from tactical units to "Combat Developers" (who bought the go to war stuff) to Training Developers (that bought multimillion dollar training systems from MILES to flight simulators). I ended up traveling the world talking to US and Allied Soldiers from PFC's to Generals finding out what they wanted, then returning to my engineers to see if they could build the stuff. What a great time it was! I remember being wined and dined, treated like royalty, by the Commanding General of the Greek Artillery School in a gorgeous region in the hills north of Athens... getting the same treatment in Israel as they executed a subcontract for us... I lived in Tel Aviv and worked in Holon.. had a tremendous weekend in Jerusalem where I visited the Holy Sepulchre and saw where Jesus was laid after the Crucixion.. briefing the General Staff of Turkey in their gorgeous white Alabaster smaller, but accurate copy of our Pentagon (where I puked on the beautiful steps from using the Ankara Hilton tap water to brush my teeth that morning.) I found time to serve in Iraq for a couple of years in Iraq as a civilian with a promise of getting my aerospace job back... my company thought that being on the ground with the troops would give me great insights. And it did. I remember being in Islamabad to close on a contract for TOW night sights the day they admitted having nukes when all contracts were cancelled as the elevator doors opened and there stood LTG Jim Ellis, the military LNO to Pakistan, who had been my first Battalion Commander as LTC Ellis. I remember being on a night fire exercise for L3's XM106 night sight at Benning when a young Lieutenant came up from a Ranger Company firing Karl Gustav's at the next firing point, coming to me that he heard I was there and his dad, a West Point classmate always talked about me. He invited me tome and fire a round. Here I was, with a bunch of young studly Rangers having a blast putting two or three sets of Battle Rattle on this big old guy (required for firing) and having as much fun as I had.
I remember being at the Star Wars complex at the National Training Center, a place which was a second home, although I was stationed in VA at the time, at 5 AM when the new Commanding General walked in unannounced. BG Wes Clark commandeered me for the day to show him around. In later years I would learn all sorts of things about him from his Sergeant Major when we served as contractors together in Iraq.
So many adventures and great memories... from Panama where our MILES exercise was interrupted and all our stuff was set off near the Miramar Locks as we sat in the jungle and the Battleship Missouri with its crew all in whites stood out in full ragalia as it passed by. (Its radars were active and messed up all our electronics).
Weeks at Salisbury Plain in the UK integrating Apaches into the Brit Army training center there... a stone's throw from Stonehenge. Interesting aside: Britain wanted a license from Boeing to build their own Apaches but it turned out that there were manufacturing processes they could not duplicate, so they ended up buying the helos from Boeing directly.)
And this was all AFTER I left the Army. The adventures while in uniform ... from Commanding a Basic Training Company (best job I ever had) to Commanding an Artillery Battery in Germany to a tour with the MILES office in TRADOC to Desert Storm and so much more.
Along the way I married a SUPERWIFE, had a great son who is a Cornell grad and a Fordham Law grad, currently a 41 year old full partner in a New York City law firm.
Now happily married, retired in Texas after escaping 20 years in California.
Sorry... but I've been listening to all the whiners and complainers here and just had to vent about how good life CAN be.... please forgive me.

 

You saucy devil!

 

They didn't do any of that stuff, because they didn't have to. They weren't expected to fix a sick society.

 

I'm your age and just now going back to almost full time work, to boost the coffers before both of us retire. We have three kids at home who are all financially independent (via jobs and scrupulous saving) and studying lucrative degrees, so we don't really have to work at this point - but punching out another couple of years on the clock allows us to buy more land for extended family, and to put in full off-grid power and water on any new purchases.

 

Sounds like a fun career. And certainly more interesting than a pure desk job. One of my sons is career military, i.e., E-8 with 5 combat infantry deployments. He did two of these deployments with the 2nd Cav and I believe trained at the NTC for 6 months prior to each deployment. I know in many ways the Army has been good to him, but hard on his wife and kids.

 

Government is not forcing companies to do those things beyond setting laws against discrimination etc... The majority of the changes made by companies since the 1950s and 1960s are because of people like you and me. They are trying to stay competitive and in a capitalistic society that is how things work. Companies want to establish goodwill and positive name recognition with their customers so they contribute to the community through sponsoring local events and charities. They offer a greater range of benefits, better work conditions and more work/life balance because they are trying to attract the best employees. I am not trying to say that companies are doing these things for selfless reasons. I am simply stating corporations are doing much more beyond just turning a profit and paying a wage to employees like they used to do in the old days. Society has made them progress and do more. Whether it is because customers can choose the brands they are loyal too or through the recruitment and retaining process of valuable employees, companies are doing more.

 

I had to quit because the company that I loved was purchase by idiots. They were destroying my pride and joy; I had to get out because I couldn’t watch it anymore. In all likelihood, I will return to work in some capacity for a few years, but my husband and I agreed I should take at least a year off to do things I’ve never had a chance to explore. We’ll see. As it stands, we’ll be able to live a comfortable end of life. The goal would be to leave the kids the house and car, but no debt and no money, either!

 

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Hooah! Great for him! Yes... it can be tough on the family, but it can also be wonderful. My roommate in school was an Army brat. Spoke three languages and loved seeing the world. Separation is tough though.

But as a secretary at Fort Rucker once said to me" "Being in the world and only living in one place is like living in a library and only reading one book."

 

I retired from active service in 2009. Retired from second career contracting/consulting in 2017 and relocated away from the Washington area. Fully retired since then, and enjoying life.

 

we are moving towards Rangely Maine, looking for land windmill and solar for power

 

I could retire already, and would do so if I lost this job for whatever reason, but I will work few more years and save as much as I can.

 

To each his own. You'll know when it's time.

 

You may very well get the $250 discount. You need to understand you are dealing with the salesman and the dealership. The promotion is from corporate. Regardless of what deal you negotiate with the salesman corporate will just count your vehicle and assign the $250 to charity regardless. But if it makes you feel better all the more power to you.

 

Agree. Kids don't need to inherit money, they need to inherit property (and the wisdom to either keep it, or trade it for a different property). That's going to be even more important going forward.

Enjoy your year off, meantime! I've had quite a few years doing the family keeping stuff - food production, cooking, renovations, etc etc, so I'm happy to pitch in money wise for a spell. I doubt I could tolerate full time though, so I'm not entirely selfless

 

Funny you should mention wind power. I've just started looking into that for one of our places. It's high up on a mountain, and has a high rating. Wind will actually be cheaper and produce more, than solar. I'll be interested to know how your research goes. Have you looked at the wind maps and records for the area you want?

 

Read this:
https://www.amazon.com/Die-Broke-Radical-Four-Part-Financial/dp/0887309429