Has retirement changed due to employment?

[Thespeckledkiwi]

I'm curious about this, I am 26 going on to 27 and I haven't had a stable job. I've had jobs were I've stayed at or worked at for a few years but either they haven't been really good paying, had benefits or they went into a different direction and I was let go. Now my dad has had his job for almost 40 years. He started when he was 20 and has worked his way up from the ground floor. He has an associate's degree but not a bachelor (what my dad does now probably requires a master's degree actually) but he was self taught and stuck with the company and took opportunities to get higher in the company.

A lot of us in my generation I've noticed have had multiple jobs and are still struggling to keep at one place. Not only is this bad for retirement but also because you can't get anywhere if the jobs you have keep letting you go or cut your wages/hours, benefits.

Even some of my friends that have stayed at one job have looked for other jobs as well.

So my question is, is retirement changing due to these job hoppers?

 

[the 4th hanson bro]

Retirement is still going to happen, whether you want it to or not, so it's not changing. What's changing is how you fund your retirement.

The days of working for one company your entire career, getting a gold watch and pension are long gone.

Social security won't be enough to maintain a lifestyle that doesn't include cat food as one of the major food groups, if it's even there. It probably will be, in some form, but I'm not counting on it. If it does, it's beer money.

It's now up to the employee to make the choice to save for their retirement early. Instead of the employer funding the retirement income, the employee now funds it through contributing to 401(k) plans at the employer, Roth IRAs, various types of annuities if appropriate.

As people change jobs or career fields through their lifetime, the danger is that these relatively small accounts don't get rolled over and just sit at the old employer, or if they're small enough just get distributed to the employee as cash.

The moral of the story: start saving now and keep up with it. If your employer offers a 401(k) or Roth 401(k), take advantage and save at least up to any amount they put in for you - it's free money. If they don't have a 401(k) or similar plan, open a personal IRA or Roth IRA and save regularly to it, using payroll deduction or direct deposit if possible.

Expecting the company to have any loyalty to you as an employee died when men stopped wearing suits and hats everywhere.

 

[RoJoHen]

I don't know much about retirement, but I hear you on the jobs. Most people our age don't really seem to have "careers" anymore, nor do they really seem close to finding one. They just have whatever hourly job they managed to find after/during college and get stuck with it.

 

[Lookingglassman]

I'm going to retire the first chance I get. I have been working for over half my life and I am getting tired of waking every morning, getting ready, driving to work and dealing with a bunch of morons daily. In my current govt job I can retire at 55 and I got 11 years and two months to go until I hit this magic number. I am going to drop my paperwork the first chance I get.

 

[Deks]

I don't know much about retirement, but I hear you on the jobs. Most people our age don't really seem to have "careers" anymore, nor do they really seem close to finding one. They just have whatever hourly job they managed to find after/during college and get stuck with it.

And why do you think that's happening?
In numerous cases I encountered, it would appear it's because people simply cannot get better jobs due to lack of said jobs and often than not insane requirements made by employers.
Situation/times have changed for the most part.
In a lot of places you need good connections to get a job of any kind.

And it's going to be very hard to find a job in the present state of things.

 

[Lindley]

I consider myself fortunate to have found a decent job through a job fair during my final undergrad year. If I change jobs at some point, I won't do so until I've got the new one firmly lined up.

 

[RoJoHen]

I don't know much about retirement, but I hear you on the jobs. Most people our age don't really seem to have "careers" anymore, nor do they really seem close to finding one. They just have whatever hourly job they managed to find after/during college and get stuck with it.

And why do you think that's happening?
In numerous cases I encountered, it would appear it's because people simply cannot get better jobs due to lack of said jobs and often than not insane requirements made by employers.
Situation/times have changed for the most part.
In a lot of places you need good connections to get a job of any kind.

And it's going to be very hard to find a job in the present state of things.

Oh, I completely agree. I'm not confused as to why it's happening; I simply like to complain about it.

Most of us who have tried to get good jobs are often turned down because of our lack of experience. The thing that sucks about that is that in this current climate it's damn near impossible to actually get the experience you need.

Employers, unfortunately, can afford to be picky right now.

What I really wonder is whether it's going to get better in time for the 20-somethings to find good careers. Or is this current generation college graduates pretty much screwed?

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

I believe the pendulum is now swinging back where experience is required more than education, which is difficult. In fact, employers now expect people not only to have an education but a lot of experience before they even consider for employment. I don't believe this is outrageous but it is sometimes difficult for people.

I have been putting money into my 401K but if I lose my job...well...who knows what happens next.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Experience is definitely the linchpin for employers right now. Working in the computer field, I'm finding employers want 7+ years of experience for simple C# programming jobs! All the insane requirements are just meant to pare down the resumes they get. Employers can pick up highly educated and experienced people for peanuts, because the market is in such bad shape.

It's very worrisome to me how many of my peers have been unable to land career-oriented positions. Despite having degrees and maybe a little experience, they can't seem to land decent jobs. I think there are going to be more and more people working until they die, because they won't have been able to save enough for a real retirement.

 

[RoJoHen]

It's very worrisome to me how many of my peers have been unable to land career-oriented positions. Despite having degrees and maybe a little experience, they can't seem to land decent jobs. I think there are going to be more and more people working until they die, because they won't have been able to save enough for a real retirement.

Exactly. My friends and I have been out of college for 3 years now, and I was making the most money out of any of us working as a bartender.

I am, in fact, returning to my old bartending job because my "career" didn't work out.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

It's very worrisome to me how many of my peers have been unable to land career-oriented positions. Despite having degrees and maybe a little experience, they can't seem to land decent jobs. I think there are going to be more and more people working until they die, because they won't have been able to save enough for a real retirement.

Exactly. My friends and I have been out of college for 3 years now, and I was making the most money out of any of us working as a bartender.

I am, in fact, returning to my old bartending job because my "career" didn't work out.

Yeah, I got lucky and picked up some relatively rare computer skills which command a decent salary and are always in demand. Most of my peers tried to become Java/C# programmers, which are a dime a dozen, and they're feeling the pinch now.

So, if I had any advice to give to the under-30 crowd, it would be this: specialize, specialize, specialize! Find a niche in your industry and learn it, inside and out. Try to be a generalist and no one will want you, because generalists are cheap and interchangeable.

 

[Bears Discover Fire]

So, if I had any advice to give to the under-30 crowd, it would be this: specialize, specialize, specialize! Find a niche in your industry and learn it, inside and out. Try to be a generalist and no one will want you, because generalists are cheap and interchangeable.

The flip side of this is my dilemma: the niche you specialize in disappears.

I wanted to be a commercial automotive shooter, and the niche was still viable when I was in school. So, I concentrated my studies and experience there.

Shortly after I graduated, the industry switched from traditional photography to computer generated imagery. Most automotive shooters have had to scramble for a new skill set, or fail. Upstarts like me never had a chance. I have a big expensive education and no job, no industry to show for it.

I'm fortunately employed, but hate my job. Instead of making the 100K per shoot I would have as a first assistant, as I would have been had I graduated and entered the field 5-10 years earlier, I'm stuck behind a freaking desk, photoshopping jpegs for peanuts.

 

[Kestra]

What I really wonder is whether it's going to get better in time for the 20-somethings to find good careers. Or is this current generation college graduates pretty much screwed?

There are a few fields left with good outlooks. I know that when I was looking at psychology fields, school psychology was consistently predicted to have a good outcome. It has to do with the fact that a lot of people entered the field in the 80s and are retiring now, plus the field itself is changing.

I think one of the main issues is that having a bachelors degree just isn't enough, in a lot of cases. You go to college and then end up in a job that's barely related to what you studied during undergrad.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

So, if I had any advice to give to the under-30 crowd, it would be this: specialize, specialize, specialize! Find a niche in your industry and learn it, inside and out. Try to be a generalist and no one will want you, because generalists are cheap and interchangeable.

The flip side of this is my dilemma: the niche you specialize in disappears.

I wanted to be a commercial automotive shooter, and the niche was still viable when I was in school. So, I concentrated my studies and experience there.

Shortly after I graduated, the industry switched from traditional photography to computer generated imagery. Most automotive shooters have had to scramble for a new skill set, or fail. Upstarts like me never had a chance. I have a big expensive education and no job, no industry to show for it.

I'm fortunately employed, but hate my job. Instead of making the 100K per shoot I would have as a first assistant, as I would have been had I graduated and entered the field 5-10 years earlier, I'm stuck behind a freaking desk, photoshopping jpegs for peanuts.

That's also a very good point. You gotta be sure the niche you pick is a strong, healthy one. Sometimes that's not very easy to predict.

Back when I was a teenager, I had my hopes pinned on getting into web programming. CGI programming was still fairly new--it was the mid-'90's and interactivity hadn't really taken off on the web yet. Well, the dotcom explosion happened, then it collapsed. I had no idea what I was going to do, because I wanted nothing more than to do web programming.

Well, there isn't much money in web programming anymore. Not to say there are no jobs in that field, just that there's a glut of people with that skill set, and not enough jobs to go around.

Fortunately, I ended up working at a company that uses MUMPS, and most of the people who know MUMPS are in the process of retiring. There's a ton of legacy systems out there running MUMPS, too. That, combined with the version control expertise I picked up, should serve me well for at least another 10 years, if not longer. I'm picking up other skills along the way, but my MUMPS expertise is still the core of my resume.

Sometimes things work out, and sometimes they don't and you're forced to course-correct.

 

[Snaploud]

I graduated from a liberal arts university summa cum laude...and hit the job market with a thud. Now, I'm studying for a Masters in Accountancy.

 

[RoJoHen]

I'm just gonna stick to bartending and hope it leads to a decent management position or my own store or a corporate job one day...or something.

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

I have been thinking hard on going back to school for a law degree since I graduated in history and my experience has grown in investigations.

 

[What's his face]

I tried (and failed) at real life so I will be going back to school this September. The unemployment rate here in Canada is lower than in the United States but my area sucks. I'm hoping that the improved education will give me an edge and I'm also hoping unemployment will be lower in April 2011 than it is right now.

I'm looking at doing a postgrad certificate program in Public Relations at one of the colleges here.

 

[Canadave]

I'm graduating university this year myself. I had a job last summer with the City, so I'm hoping I can turn that into a job somehow.

My long term plan is to see where I am in a year or two and if my prospects still aren't terribly good, I may go back to school for a Masters in Urban Planning.

 

[What's his face]

Me, I'm politically active with the Liberal Party, so I'm hoping I can combine that with the PR program and get some kind of staffer job out of it. If not, there's always selling crack.