Johhny Electriglide wrote:
That's a good one! Then I went to answer my email and my uncle sent me this news:
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The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a “Federal Benefit Payment.”
This isn’t a benefit – its earned income!
Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too.
That is a legal classification for anything from farm subsidies to medicare and was applied to this from the start. It is not earned income, unless you only receive what you contributed and interest, which is not the case. It is more like an insurance policy than earned income.
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It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.
If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.
No, it is only 12.4% now (half from the employer and half deducted from the employee) and was less in the past.
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/taxRates.htmlQuote:
If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both
your and your employer’s contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of
working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved! This is your personal investment.
Way faulty math here. There is no way incrimental payments with 1% interest on the previous month will add up to that much above the amount paid into it in just 40 years. It looks more like they took the total added in over time and added the 1% interest for 40 years, which would be 80 years after you started working.
No, using this calculator $180,000 @ 1% per year is only $267995.47 after 40 years. The compounding monthly would increase the amount but not by a million dollars.
http://www.csgnetwork.com/compoundsavingsintcalc.htmlNo, using $30,000 per year at the quoted 15% rate and dividing that by 12 to get the month deposit, starting with a 0 balance, depositing each month and compounding interest each month for a total of 40 years we get: $ 41,393.64 interest for the whole time and a final total in the account of $ 221,393.64.
http://www.thecalculatorsite.com/financ ... hp#resultsQuote:
Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.
That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the
Social Security Administration (Google it - it’s a fact).
This is correct, proably because they did not calculate it themselves.
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And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)!
I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had
just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.
By advancing them what they would have paid throughout their life?
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Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did.
They took our money and used it elsewhere. They “forgot” that it was OUR money they were taking.
They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them.
And they didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed.
And recently, they’ve told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer.
But is it our fault they misused our investments?
They seemed to have wasted it on math education for some ..... or maybe they did.
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And now, to add insult to injury, they’re calling it a “benefit,” as if we never worked to earn every penny of it.
Just because they “borrowed” the money, doesn't mean that our investments were acharity!
Let’s take a stand.
A stand for ignorance is always interesting. They did not waste the money on histroy or civics education for some either .... or maybe they did.
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We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare.
Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government –
Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going, for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.
Then call it what it is:
Our Earned Retirement Income. "
I think we have yoyos in DC........
Or one writing flawed internet chain letters.