Helping retirement people

[vickysue]

This is a hard cold cruel world for the eldery. My aunt by marriage will be 99 in a few weeks, she was a nurse until she was 70. All she got on her pension was not very much. But she was very well off. Then she fell and broke her hip and had to go into a nursing home. Recieved no help from the state until the nursing home took all she had. It doesn't take long at $6000.00 a month to take everything from them. We had to put her on macaide. ( have never told her) . So now the nursing home takes all of her ss and pension, then the state covers the rest. We had to sell all the stock that had her and my husbands name on it.
Guess what it is going to get even worse if we have the same Prez for the next 4 years.

[handllucas]

You hear about things like this all the time. I do not think there is really any way to be 100% sure that money in retirement and investment accounts are safe for everyone.
The only way to guarentee (sp) your money is safe is to put it under your matress or bury it in the backyard.
You cannot even rely on banks completely because they also fold at times.
I feel bad for all those in this type of situation and hope I will not have to face it myself

[debidoo]

  Gosh that is horrible.  My mom passed away at 74 yrs of age May was one year ago and she definetly didn't want to be in a nursing home, I took care of her until she died here in her home.  It is awful (I mean I know that there is a lot involved but why should it cost $6k a month to be in a nursing home) and from what I hear they don't take all that good of care of you either.  I hope I never have to be in one.  I have two sons and I know they would do the best they could but sometimes it is required that you be in one because of the level of medical care you need.  Well, bless her heart! Sorry to hear stories like this. 

[terwill4]

What is really bad is a lot of these retired people did everything right.  They saved, they bought their homes.  They contributed every pay period to retirement accounts, now the economy goes south and companies can just not pay because they lost money.  Retirement accounts are suppose to be set up separate from other company funds, so that it cannot be lost. It should be put into something where even if the stock market is bad you don't lose everything.  Diversify.........and just because you put your money and faith into a company that is going down (who would have thought KODAK could go bankrupt?) you don't have to go with it.
      

I agree with you that the retirement accounts should be set up separate from other company funds because I work for a company years ago and I have a 401K plan with them and when I receive my statement the stock is down I am losing money and by the time I reach of age to retire, it may not be any money left in my 401K plan.  Also, when I was working for them they took money from my pay check for the 401K plan and now the company close and they sold the 401K plan to another company and the stock is going down.