Retirement Age in the Honorverse

cthia wrote:Retirement from several careers seems a must in this neck of the woods.

saber964 wrote:It's done today, especially by members of the military. It's called double or triple dipping. Join up at 18 yrs retire after 20 years at age 38 then go to work for the government doing essentially the same jobs for more pay then retire a second time after another 20-25 years at age 58-63 and then draw two retirement checks.

Since the 80's there have been federal anti-double dipping laws, specifically about this practice. There may be ways around, but it is complicated. The laws are specifically about working as a DOD civilian or other federal agency after military retirement.
My father went to work for Virginia social services in the 70's after his Army retirement. My brother is currently a high school math teacher after his Army career and is due to retire from that next summer.

Vince wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Assuming that interest rates are positive, a person would have to work a limited time to build a retirement fund for life.

Assume $100,000 per year wage.

Save 25% via eetirement fund and/or purchasing a home.

After 100 years you have saved
100 years x $25,000 / year = $2.5 million.

If rate of return on investment is 4%, you earn $100,000 per year for life.

Note I didnt compound interest on your savings.

It's not just interest rates that have to be positive. It's real interest rates* that have to be positive.

* Real interest rate = Actual interest rate - inflation rate.

Not just that. You have to assume that there will be a LOT of savings chasing investment returns, with significant downward pressure on returns as a result. It may take decades, even centuries for all of society to adapt to the new realities of prolong, but eventually 4% is going to be on the insane side of optimistic. Plan for more along the lines of 0.4% or less, unless the investment is really risky.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Retirement from several careers seems a must in this neck of the woods.

saber964 wrote:It's done today, especially by members of the military. It's called double or triple dipping. Join up at 18 yrs retire after 20 years at age 38 then go to work for the government doing essentially the same jobs for more pay then retire a second time after another 20-25 years at age 58-63 and then draw two retirement checks.

Since the 80's there have been federal anti-double dipping laws, specifically about this practice. There may be ways around, but it is complicated. The laws are specifically about working as a DOD civilian or other federal agency after military retirement.
My father went to work for Virginia social services in the 70's after his Army retirement. My brother is currently a high school math teacher after his Army career and is due to retire from that next summer.

When people live far longer, double dip laws will go out the window. Someone who can be an active earner for eighty plus years will, unless he/she is doing something extraordinary, likely want to switch to something else somewhere down the line.

cthia wrote:Retirement from several careers seems a must in this neck of the woods.

saber964 wrote:It's done today, especially by members of the military. It's called double or triple dipping. Join up at 18 yrs retire after 20 years at age 38 then go to work for the government doing essentially the same jobs for more pay then retire a second time after another 20-25 years at age 58-63 and then draw two retirement checks.

tlb wrote:Since the 80's there have been federal anti-double dipping laws, specifically about this practice. There may be ways around, but it is complicated. The laws are specifically about working as a DOD civilian or other federal agency after military retirement.
My father went to work for Virginia social services in the 70's after his Army retirement. My brother is currently a high school math teacher after his Army career and is due to retire from that next summer.

ldwechsler wrote:When people live far longer, double dip laws will go out the window. Someone who can be an active earner for eighty plus years will, unless he/she is doing something extraordinary, likely want to switch to something else somewhere down the line.

I expect instead that they will be needed even more. The problem was that someone would leave the military and begin drawing their pension, then hire on as a DOD civilian to do the that same job and start drawing the pay of that position at a level close to their rank (so the government was paying twice) and accruing for an extra civil service pension on top of the military.
My understanding of the law was that the combined civil service pay and military pension would be limited to the greater of the two and the same would happen when the person retired the second time to the combined military and civil service pensions (but I might not be correct about this).

There simply won’t be any lifetime pensions. You can’t be paying people in retirement for 250 years after 30 years of work.

kzt wrote:There simply won’t be any lifetime pensions. You can’t be paying people in retirement for 250 years after 30 years of work.

It will probaly be the other way round. You work for 250 years (one or several careers) and is then in retirement for 30 years. As I understand prolong the active period of your life is prolonged. and old age is two or three decades at the end of your life.

It is probably a good idea to like your job if you have to do it for 250 years.

Hornblower wrote:

kzt wrote:There simply won’t be any lifetime pensions. You can’t be paying people in retirement for 250 years after 30 years of work.

It will probaly be the other way round. You work for 250 years (one or several careers) and is then in retirement for 30 years. As I understand prolong the active period of your life is prolonged. and old age is two or three decades at the end of your life.

It is probably a good idea to like your job if you have to do it for 250 years.

Or pensions themselves will be replaced with the Honorverse equivalent of the 401k. It's your responsibility to save and invest for yourself; your employer doesn't have much or anything to do with it.

[

Hornblower wrote:

kzt wrote:There simply won’t be any lifetime pensions. You can’t be paying people in retirement for 250 years after 30 years of work.

It will probaly be the other way round. You work for 250 years (one or several careers) and is then in retirement for 30 years. As I understand prolong the active period of your life is prolonged. and old age is two or three decades at the end of your life.

It is probably a good idea to like your job if you have to do it for 250 years.

Or pensions themselves will be replaced with the Honorverse equivalent of the 401k. It's your responsibility to save and invest for yourself; your employer doesn't have much or anything to do with it.[/quote]

Doesn't work like that. I have a pension from the service...served 20 years and I started collecting it immediately. But the time served counted as teaching service when I became a teacher and started pay as a veteran teacher. Also, I used the service pension to "buy" time as a teacher and retired 20 years later as a teacher/administrator of 40 years. By that time, the service pension no longer had to pay out for the service and I collect both.

It is not all that uncommon or at least wasn't back about thirty or more years ago.

And it is likely that people WILL be working most of their lives and there will be some sort of investment system but there will be more likely a more rational way of doing things than the US has now. More likely, the SYSTEM will do private investments...particularly for needed goods and services and provide good money.

Also, remember that if you put the equivalent of 5000 dollars a year away for a century that would already be a lot but it will also be growing. Compound interest alone would make you a multimillionaire after a century and at two centuries you could really live it up.

OMG!

Can you imagine the effects of prolong on your favorite authors? The Honorverse would wage on for over 250 years? Yes!

On an average of 5 years per book would equate to ~ 50 books!
Or 25 books per 66 years => ~ 100 books!

At the publication rate of some authors, 500 - 1000 books is doable.

OMG!

Galactic Sapper wrote:

Vince wrote:It's not just interest rates that have to be positive. It's real interest rates* that have to be positive.

* Real interest rate = Actual interest rate - inflation rate.

Not just that. You have to assume that there will be a LOT of savings chasing investment returns, with significant downward pressure on returns as a result. It may take decades, even centuries for all of society to adapt to the new realities of prolong, but eventually 4% is going to be on the insane side of optimistic. Plan for more along the lines of 0.4% or less, unless the investment is really risky.

A logical argument. Japan offers a real world example. Manticore's economy would be in deep shit if it could not be mitigated. This might explain why Queen Elizebeth could sell war bonds to pay for the military buildup.