Social Security Only Pays $1,800 a Month
Ever wonder how well a typical American can live on Social Security payments?
Wonder how well a typical American can live on Social Security payments? They are only $1,830.66 or $21,967.92 a year, on average. And that sum is taxed. (This is what it costs to retire comfortably in each state.)
The average means tens of millions of people are paid less. Without any other financial help, many of those people live below the poverty line. That poverty line currently sits at $19,720 for a family. With any luck, recipients are married, which means two payments.
Taxes and Medicare payments probably take $1,830.66 to $1,400. It is a wonder the government thinks taxation of these amounts makes sense, given how many people it drives to the edge of being able to afford food, clothing, housing and transportation.
What do people on Social Security do if they have no other income? Walk into a McDonald’s, Starbucks or Walmart. Aside from a modest number of young and middle-aged people are those over 65. Some are much older. People can work indefinitely at some of these retailers. Starbucks, for example, has no age requirement. McDonald’s partnered with AARP at one point to find older Americans jobs.
The challenge for older Americans is that, at some point, many will not be able to work at retail establishments. That means their employment options may disappear.
Working at McDonald’s, Starbucks and Walmart usually offers extremely low compensation. The base salary at Starbucks is $17 an hour.
This means that many Americans will work into their 70s or 80s. That really isn’t retirement.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
