BEN STEM'S DIARY: Off Golden Pond
Stein, Benjamin J.
N STEIN D ARY Off Golden Pond by Benjamin J. Stein SATURDAY A STUNNING AND UPSETTING AFTERNOON. I am in my native Washington, D.C., and I have just returned from lunch with a friend of some 30...
...I really kept it all from her until the last minute...
...Social Security is not a large amount for most people...
...He has that and a little bit of Social Security, and a condo in Annapolis that he was lucky enough to buy about 20 years ago and has made payments on regularly so he now owns most of it...
...IDON'T THINK I'LL BORE YOU with all of the rest of this conversation...
...I WENT BACK to my small but cheery apartment at the Watergate and thought really hard about what I should do so I can help Goldie, and also what I can do so I save my own self and my family...
...I asked him as we ate steaks with lemon butter sauce and bits of cooked onions...
...I did it to myself with my total refusal to plan and to bring reality into my life...
...You'll have to," he said...
...Now, I have about twenty thousand...
...The government cannot just write a check and make it all right...
...The main thing I am going to do is go for those variable annuities...
...The average financial savings of the baby boomers are far less than $50,000 per family, not counting equity in houses...
...The sums that were enough at 65 won't be at 80...
...BENJAM N STEIN She does not want to move...
...I just can't believe I was so careless...
...They all were friendly, all polite...
...What happened...
...And then I have to think about how to help Goldie...
...If he had started in his 30s or 40s with variable annuities, he would be totally set...
...Being in fear, in want, in desperation, at age 76, it's beyond belief...
...Think about it: if you have enough to live on when prices were x, how is it going to be when prices are 2X or 1.5X...
...I (sadly) lack their discipline, but I have a lot more imagination...
...In the middle, there is a terrifying drought...
...Along with Aram Bakshian and John Coyne and Bob Bartley, he was one of the main influences on me in the 1970s and has been ever since...
...I'm sure you are...
...We met at the fabulous dining room at the Watergate Hotel and I cheerily said to him that since he had just celebrated his 76th birthday, I would treat him to lunch...
...The government cannot just write a check and make it all right...
...But again, shop around...
...He is about as fine a guy as I know, and his plight—which will be the theme played out tens of millions of times in the next few decades—is the megatrend that we all have to work to avoid...
...I called every PR firm, every lobbyist, every trade association...
...But get on it, and get on it now...
...I was stunned...
...I always had, and so I assumed I always would...
...Americans just have to save more...
...Well, I'll probably need to sell my condo," he said, "and move to somewhere really inexpensive, maybe near Hagerstown...
...She thought we were rich...
...I have some that pay a guaranteed minimum amount each year no matter how much the stock market goes up or down that year...
...We, as families, cannot track down OBL in his cave, wherever he is...
...I just never had a 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2004 real retirement plan, and never put away money in any kind of systematic way...
...But we all control our own financial destiny...
...I love the fact that financial journalists raise doubts about them...
...No, you can't," he answered...
...And they can't save haphazardly...
...Maybe you'd like to buy my condo...
...Let's just say, I'll be helping him out, but I will consider it money well spent because he had contributed so powerfully to my life when I really needed it in the post-Nixon days...
...I just assumed I would always be able to make a good living...
...But there is a legion of financial planners out there, and they can be even more help than I can...
...This is a man of supremely high intellect, a great disposition, over 50 years experience as a writer and publicist, and a major league amateur psychologist...
...Unlike Goldie, I do not have a Ben Stein I can turn to for major league help...
...The nation is tapped out, deficit-wise...
...She's been crying for a month...
...Goldie's wife is a paragon of restraint and patience, but I can hardly imagine how she must have felt with the rug of financial security pulled out from under her...
...The worst part is that I have no one but myself to blame...
...50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2004...
...Did you have some secret vice...
...They had disciplined their saving and they had disciplined their spending...
...The result was that they could do anything their health allowed in their latter years...
...LL IN ALL, THE FUTURE OF THE BABY BOOMERS is difficult...
...And when I told my wife, she was speechless...
...How can I help...
...That means if you had enough to retire on at 65, when you reach 80, prices might have come close to doubling...
...But this is inevitably going to be the portion of not just millions, but tens of millions of Americans...
...I will also try to learn from his sad example...
...There is no other way out...
...Plus, its future is dicey...
...If Goldie had planned and then put his money into an annuity, he would be secure...
...I am not kidding...
...And pretty soon, I sort of disappeared from sight, and then people stopped taking my calls, and so I stopped making them for a few more weeks and then months...
...Have you been gambling...
...That's it...
...If you start in your 40s, or better yet in your 30s, it makes an enormous difference...
...I mean, no one...
...He's a guy I have looked up to for decades...
...In the free society, we make our own destiny, and we can choose if it's a sad or happy destiny...
...About 25 percent have pension plans that might help them in a significant way...
...She loves that condo...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Malibu and Beverly Hills...
...I laughed, because my pal, whom I will call Goldie, which is a sort of nickname between us, had arrived in a sumptuous Jaguar convertible...
...Did you have a mistress who took you to the cleaners...
...And so I rested for a few months, and when I got back into it, I found that nobody wanted me anymore...
...But nobody wanted my op-eds either...
...BEN STEIN'S DIARY surization: put on your mask first then help those around you...
...Plus, we almost certainly will face far larger inflation in the future as the dollar drifts and lurches ever lower...
...No, none of those things...
...Who would...
...Even if you count equity in houses, even with the real estate boom, average savings are less than $200,000 per family and a very large percentage, roughly 40 percent, have zero savings...
...Who in his right mind wants to wind up old and terrified about money and sleepless from fear...
...Right," I said...
...The nation is tapped out, deficit-wise...
...Then there is the little matter of medical costs, which show no sign of falling...
...I am in my native Washington, D.C., and I have just returned from lunch with a friend of some 30 years duration...
...Let's just say, this man, a living, breathing angel among us, needs longterm home healthcare and by an incredibly stroke of planning, he'll be able to afford it...
...My parents bought into them when they first came out and it made them well-todo—my sister and I still get income from them...
...Then retirees have to plan how they will marshal their savings and retirement income as circumstances change when they retire...
...Pre-retirees have to plan for long-term care in the home...
...He is 76, and he has gone through all of his savings and he has left only a tiny federal pension from a brief tour of duty in the civil service in the 1950s...
...Few of them have made any meaningful plans for retirement...
...My Mama told me, `You'd better shop around,'" as the song goes...
...In a way, it is even surer than terrorism and more deadly...
...I do not want to wind up in his shoes...
...But they had full-time people on their staffs or they had regular freelancers, and I thought that if I just sent in a few op-eds that people would see them and want me to write for them...
...If the market goes up more, I get that larger amount...
...Then some of the money they have to save has to go into fixed annuities that pay them guaranteed income for life...
...But among the good points is one that is totally different from the story on terrorism: you and I as individuals cannot do a lot about Osama bin Laden...
...They have to save in stocks, short-term bonds, mutual funds, indexes, real estate, and—very importantly—in variable annuities, which allow savings to compound tax-free for the life of the annuity...
...Then about three years ago, I just felt so tired I couldn't get out there and hustle the way I used to do...
...I'm broke...
...Retirement lanning and execution...
...I wish I were dead...
...The Rage of the Left, the Truth, and What to Do About It (New Beginnings...
...I don't gamble...
...What's the solution...
...A few percent are millionaires...
...That check would have to come from an ever smaller pool of workers relative to retirees...
...This is the supreme material task that we will all face in the first half of this century...
...That takes ongoing work with financial professionals...
...It's like it is when the airplane loses presOCTOBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 49 Social Security is not a large amount for most people...
...I cannot imagine how you must feel," I said...
...I never in my life met a financial journalist as well-off as my economist father and mother, and they did it with variable annuities...
...It just takes following the plan, and I will do it or face the consequences...
...They have to make a plan with a well-trained financial professional with high integrity...
...Meanwhile, I had to keep up appearances, so I leased the Jag, and bought new clothes...
...That is a vital, horrifying concern for another family member right this second...
...A train wreck is coming: we have 77 million baby boomers rushing towards retirement...
...I had about four hundred thousand in my savings a year and a half ago...
...So I can get it done...
...I am about ready to smoke that Jaguar's exhaust pipe...
...Good God, you must feel terrible," I said...
...But we can make a plan, follow it, and have the kind of retirement my parents had, where they had far more retirement income than they knew what to do with...
...I'll write about it in another article very soon...
...There are all kinds of variations and it pays to shop around...
...But in fact, as he unfolded to me in one of the most somber lunches I have ever suffered through, Goldie really is broke...
...Not a pretty thought...
...If it goes up less, I get that minimum amount...
...His most recent book, co-authored with Phil DeMuth, is Can America Survive...
...I have been totally devoted to my wife...
...A lot of Americans can expect to be retired for 20 or 30 years...
Vol. 37 • October 2004 • No. 8
