<\/p>\n
Jerry Hatrick had converted the back booth of the Marina\u2019s Pilot House Lounge into a personal office, judging by the papers strewn around his empty pint glasses. \u201cWhazzup?\u201d Flathead Fred asked amiably as three of us yahoos slid in with our own beers at risk of foaming onto Jerry\u2019s table top filing cabinet. \u201cYou doing your taxes early this year??\u201d<\/p>\n
Jerry pushed a pile of papers into a heap, leaned back with a groan and said, \u201cJust trying to decide whether to take Social Security now \u2026 or wait.\u201d The boyz are all over this one since we\u2019re of that age. Fred took his at 64 even though the benefits were way less than if he\u2019d waited til 70. \u201cI\u2019m grabbing what I can before they go broke,\u201d he told Jerry. Phil laughed. \u201cFred, if the government goes broke, you got worse troubles than no monthly check.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLaugh all you want, Phil, I\u2019m hedging my bets. There\u2019s less people putting in and more of us taking out. You do the math.\u201d Jerry said that\u2019s exactly what he was trying to do before we interrupted. And that was assuming he lived until, oh, 90 and then how much would the difference be if he took early retirement and what would it be if he took it at 66? The last thing he needed was Fred\u2019s monkeywrench logic, which included inflation, health insurance, nursing home care and anything else he could throw in to muddy Jerry\u2019s mathematics. \u201cWhadda you think, Skeeter?\u201d Phil asked about \u00be\u2019s of a pint into the discussion.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m 64 and eligible for an early pay-out myself. Recently I got my earnings statement for the past 47 years. Four years I made zip. Nada. Zilch. Nine I didn\u2019t break into 4 figures. The boyz consider me semi-retired and so do I \u2026 since about 1975. Truth is, I tell em, I\u2019ll be working as long as I can. Which, of course, cracks the table up.<\/p>\n
\u201cNext you\u2019ll be wanting us to buy your beers out of sympathy,\u201d Fred crows, shaking his head. Fred worked for 45 well paid years as a construction foreman. His reduced benefits would look pretty good to this grasshopper who fiddled away his working years. Jerry\u2019s going to have a hard time too, I know. But his working days are over with his arthritis problems and pretty soon he\u2019s going to have to roll the dice like the rest of us. If I know Jerry, he\u2019ll have a few more pints, divide by an even number, weigh the empty glass and then flip a coin. Just like the rest of us high rolling gamblers\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jerry Hatrick had converted the back booth of the Marina\u2019s Pilot House Lounge into a personal office, judging by the papers strewn around his empty pint glasses. \u201cWhazzup?\u201d Flathead Fred asked amiably as three of us yahoos slid in with our own beers at risk of foaming onto Jerry\u2019s table top filing cabinet. \u201cYou […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5584,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5583\/revisions\/5584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}