Originally Posted by
JamesBond
PMDL. And to be honest, I don't remember when all that occurred. Contrary to what I know your perception probably is, I don't obsess over the amount I will get. But I know a lot that do. I have saved/invested from day 1 and did not count on the DB retirement, (my wife was much more insightful than I) so this is not about me. My point is that especially on this site there is zero sympathy or impetus to help those that are about to be thrown out the door, so those sympathies flow more toward the bottom of the list. I get it. But being furloughed is nothing new. What was new is to go from warp 9 to dead stop as quickly as we did. The target group has been spoiled. They are about to be once again. Nevertheless, the job market was pretty good even thru the pandemic. One could have paid the mortgage but might have to stop buying Bitcoin. It. was. temporary. "Retirement" is permanent.
You have a point about having 20ish years to go, but I would wager you have a pretty good amount saved. So had you been furloughed, you could have probably found something todo to pay the rent (but stop buying Bitcoin). Now we can get to the real crux of the discussion: Are you living within your means? I do. Always have. Many do not and refuse to learn the hard lessons because "it won't happen to me". What I think would be interesting is to see if any behavior changes going forward.
Fire away.
I am very glad you saved, that is something I have been trying to do since I could and have put what I could towards retirement because I don’t count on the 401k to stay as good as it is now (plus TVM) I hope my comment did not come across as rude, I just like to have an informed opinion. And TBH having your retirement wiped out when you are 45 and getting nothing vs getting (let’s just make up a number) 70k/year in retirement are two completely different scenarios.
I did have savings and for the most part was living like I was still an RJ FO budget wise when I got hired by DAL. I was stuck on training pay here for 10 months so it’s a good thing I had a very low overhead. I accepted that I would probably get furloughed and I would not be able to find other work in the field if I wanted to return to DAL. I had a potential job lined up if I did get cut but nothing close to what I could have made here. Now that I am making 2nd year pay I have not changed my budget much because I realize our industry and company in particular are in a weak spot if anything else happens.
retirement may be permanent but, to my knowledge, people who had worked at DAL/NW for decades were not suddenly left with nothing, just had a benefit that was lower than expected and time to make up for that lost benefit. It does not make it easy and it’s not right. But like I said above, having a reduced, but still live able benefit, and having it drop to 0 are two different things.
anyway cheers and thanks for the reply!