Not everyone is going to have a viral social media video and a runaway crowdfunding campaign to pay for retirement.
An 81-year-old waitress at an Eat’n Park in Ross, known only as Betty, will be able to work and worry less thanks to both of those, brought about by a customer concerned about her health and that she doesn’t make enough on Social Security alone to make ends meet.
But Social Security was never meant to do that, says Beth Mulvaney, a clinical assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh. Mulvaney also is a board member of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Partnership for Aging and spent 14 years as a geriatric social worker helping older adults and their families.
“Social Security was only meant to be one leg of a three-legged stool of retirement,” Mulvaney said. Those other legs were pensions, supplanted for most by 401(k)s and 403(b)s, and savings.
“The reality, however, is that if you’re a person who has worked a lower-paying job, it’s very hard for you to save or to even max out the opportunities in a 401(k) or 403(b) because you need all your income to live,” she said. “This is how you end up with someone who reaches eligibility age for Social Security where that is their only form of income unless they continue to work.”
Tamie Konzier of Millvale was moved to start a crowdfunding campaign for Betty after the woman served her and her 10-year-old son, Leo, lunch on March 26. To each of their surprise, it took off and had topped $320,000 on Tuesday from more than 13,000 donations.
Konzier was concerned by Betty’s apparent mobility issues and because she heard Betty say she has to work because her Social Security payment isn’t enough to live on. Konzier later learned that Betty also works, at least in part, because she wants to.
Betty is among a small number of people her age still working and an even smaller number in her field, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to the bureau, only about 7% of the 161.3 million Americans employed are 65 and older, with the median age being about 42.
Among waiters and waitresses, the median age is about 26, with only 2.6% of the nearly 1.8 million being 65 and older.
Finances not only reason to keep working
The National Council on Aginghelps seniors who want to work and who need help when they can’t. They do see people 75 and older looking into their programs to refresh their skills and get employed, said Maura Porcelli, senior director of the agency’s senior community service employment program.
Beyond needing income, some seniors are working for access to benefits, such as health care, and for social engagement, she said.
“A person’s community gets smaller as time goes by,” Porcelli said. “We have found that employment and being able to make a contribution provides a great sense of purpose and enjoyment.”
Not much is known about Betty, including her last name or her personal circumstances, as she has expressed no interest in being interviewed.
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Konzier said she overheard Betty tell other customers that she gets $910 per month from Social Security, which is less than the average monthly benefit of $1,975 for retired workers, according to the Social Security Administration.
At $910 per month, Betty is getting only $10,920 per year. That’s well short of the cost of living for a single senior in poor health living in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, which according to The Elder Index ranges from $26,700 for a homeowner without a mortgage to $36,408 for one with a mortgage.
Social Security payments are based on a person’s work record and their highest earning years. Mulvaney said women generally have less opportunity for higher Social Security payments because they spend years caring for children and other family members, interfering with their ability to take promotions and causing periods of time when they are out of the workforce, and because of the gender pay gap.
Some retirees receiving Social Security expect to keep working to make their finances work, Mulvaney said. But that becomes difficult to do when a health problem arises.
“The issue here is that if you’re 65 and in good health, it’s a lot easier to work than if you’re in poor health, regardless of age,” she said. “It’s possible that prior to this she’s (Betty) been working and now she might be having health problems that’s making the work and the financial situation more precarious. Her plan to cope with the fact she has this $900 a month payment was to work, and now that she might be experiencing some health difficulties, it’s difficult for her to carry that plan out.”
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Since the pandemic, inflation has driven some seniors out of retirement and back into the workforce, Porcelli said.
“They thought they had done adequate preparations for retirement, but once they retired they saw they weren’t able to make it on what they had planned for,” she said. “They thought they had done their due diligence and had sufficient preparation but just couldn’t.”
Some also come out of retirement because they find it’s not what they thought it would be.
“People are living longer lives and healthier lives longer,” Porcelli said. “They enjoy that connection to the workplace.”
Mulvaney teaches her students that Social Security was part of “old age benefits” approved in 1935, during the Great Depression, as a way to create space for younger people in the workforce by having older adults leave if they accepted the payment. Over time, it has changed into a shared collective responsibility between the generations, she said.
But retirement, in general, is a fairly recent idea, Mulvaney said.
“Before Social Security, if you were fortunate enough to make a lot of money, you could do this thing called ‘retiring.’ Or if you happened to be in a job that had a pension, you could do this thing called retiring,” she said. “If you were anybody else, which was a lot of people, there was no such thing as retirement. You needed to work or you needed to have family members who were working to take care of you.
“A lot of us have only ever lived when retirement was part of our society. We kind of take for granted that it’s something that’s there. But before this, large numbers of older people in our society didn’t have any opportunity for retirement.”
Help available for older adults
For older people like Betty finding they can’t make ends meet, there may be other help available through a number of public programs, Mulvaney said. That would include medical assistance, income-supported housing or vouchers to help pay for housing, and supplemental nutrition benefits and vouchers for farmers markets. Services also are available from Area Agencies on Aging and senior centers.
“This really speaks to the need of community-based organizations that are serving older adults in their community. There are a lot of programs that are available for low-income older adults,” Porcelli said. “There are a lot of older adults who don’t know there are resources that can help with food benefits, with heating and cooling.”
But, “It’s still going to be hard on $900 a month, even if you get in some of these benefits, to make it work,” Mulvaney said.
There are concerns and a lack of clarity over how federal budget talks could impact Social Security, Medicaid and other programs, Mulvaney said.
“It looks like if it goes through as proposed, there will be deep cuts at the federal level, which will translate into cuts at the state level,” she said. “The kind of support to help someone in this situation could be in jeopardy with the conversations that are currently happening in Washington, D.C.”