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Daddy worked hard all his life and saved so Mom can stay at home and afford her medications and insurance. Mom's insurance is being changed and I have had to decide what type of policy she needs. There is an exchange that is helping us but I still have to decide which works best for her. She takes 12 different medications a day and some of them are expensive (Nexium for one!).

It makes me worry that while my husband and I have good jobs, we will never have the retirement or savings that Mom has. We had a great childhood, and I never wanted for anything, but the way the economy and world is right now it is more and more difficult to just get by, never mind saving for the future.

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What you wrote is so true. We often hear our parents called "Depression Era." What we don't read is that they also lived through the Period of Prosperity and in a time when employers took care of their employees with generous pensions and benefits. Life is no longer that way for most working class people, so we may never know the comfort our parents had.
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My parents were just poor farmers, always saving and budgeting to make ends meet. When they finally got to pension age they had a little extra cash, but still lived frugally because that was all they knew. Who would have thought that the very thing that made us feel second rate to all the "town kids" would one day be a source of wealth for my mother, and by extension to us... I sold the farm for more $$ per acre than my dad paid for all of it.
It is the kids just starting out now that I really feel sorry for, most of them have grown accustomed to and expect a lifestyle that they will find hard to achieve on their own. They put off working and go into debt getting an education that no longer guarantees high paying jobs, or any job for that matter, and those who don't have higher education are increasingly limited to low paying jobs with no hope of advancement. No wonder there are so many boomerang kids.
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boomerang kids arent a bad idea . many nations have extended family under one roof . as far as costs of multiple meds , im working for a doc right now and he claims that docs have quotas of different meds to push . if that crap would change elders probably wouldnt be on a dozen different meds . by god the va dont push meds . if i tell them my back hurts they'll say " of course it does , your 57 yrs old " . told a doc once that i wear out in about 6 hrs of working . his reply ; " yea , a marathon is only 4 hrs " . its not that they dont care , they just know that many meds are counterproductive or an outright farce .
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I also fear for the young people.. everything is so expensive now, and they are pushed by TV, etc to "Need" more, a better phone, car.. you name it! My daughter had it easy.. but luckily she listened to some of what we tried to teach her.. she has a job she likes and plans to stay there for the long haul (great benefits and a retirement plan).. we talked her into buying an affordable condo instead of keeping renting a smart townhouse with a bunch of her friends ( she rents to a room mate to keep her costs down) that she can rent out later if she marries/ gets a bigger home. Trying to get them to see the future like our folks did is a hard challenge when they want instant gratification. I just wish Hubs and I had been more frugal when we were younger, but I hope for the best. My parents managed to save and invest , so I am hoping Mom will be OK.
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