Tag: YouTube

navigating unemployment insurance . . . and contemplating retirement

I applied for unemployment insurance (UI) about a week after losing my job. My position (there were three of us) was taken “in-house,” I was told, so I am eligible for UI since I was let go through no fault of my own.

Let me say that navigating the ins and outs of UI is not so easy, but I was able to apply, include all the pertinent information (including adding up all earned income over the past 18 months), and, today, uploaded a resume to the linked job board. (When filling out government forms, I always feel for the people for whom English may not be their first language or those with a limited education.) I will diligently look for work, but nothing looks promising so far. I constantly checked the job boards even when I was working, but couldn’t find anything in recent months that even came close to a job like the one I had had.

I have been watching YouTube videos of people who have recently lost their jobs, and those are not encouraging either. This is especially true for the people posting and commenting who are in their 50s and 60s. Of the couple jobs I’ve applied for, one firm has not responded, and the other rejected me in one day. These jobs were not perfect matches, so it’s understandable.

I know of people my age being out of work for over a year. No matter what anyone says, age discrimination is real in the job market. Of course, we are not asked for our age or date of birth, but subtracting a college graduation in the mid-1980s from the year 2025, for example, is pretty simple math.

If no job comes through in a reasonable amount of time, I will contemplate retiring. But with a meager SS payment coming my way and not a whole lot stashed away in retirement savings, my retirement income will not be what I am hoping for. Still, we need to pull the plug at some point.

The husband of a friend of mine has come down with a form of dementia. He’s 74 and was a medical professional. He was active and physically fit. He had retired back when he turned 60, and although that seemed young at the time, what an advantage that proved to be for him. Had he waited to retire until 66, 67, or 70, he would have had only a few symptom-free years instead of the 10 or so “good” years he’s had.

My best friend, who is exactly my age, has been retired for 3.5 years. She was a public employee who, fortunately, has a pension and will also be eligible for SS benefits. For her, the stress her work brought her and the fact that she had a decent pension made the choice easy.

So, it’s food for thought. No one knows what the future will hold; when to retire is a gamble: Do we hold out for a few more years of income until retirement and then more accumulated retirement benefits, or do we start Social Security early, taking in less per month but having more free time and getting our benefits sooner? It depends on what we think our lifespan will be and our other sources of income.

It’s a crap shoot for sure.

rosie the riveter

There was a big, gaping hole in our wall (holes, actually) after a plumbing leak. The pipe was replaced so there was just one thing left to do. Call the drywall guy, you say? Hire a contractor? No, of course not. I just tackled this one myself. A couple weeks later, the patchwork of holes has been filled with a couple 2 foot-by-2 foot sheets of drywall cut to size, some joint compound, and a little ingenuity (and a lot of YouTube videos, I might add).

I guess you’d call me a handymom. And I learned it from my dad. I grew up in a family who never once saw a contractor, a plumber, an electrician, or any other skilled tradesman enter our house. With five kids and a blue-collar lifestyle, money was always an issue. My dad’s do-it-yourself attitude stemmed from that and the fact that he was quite handy–or he became that way because he always gave it a shot. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t attempt. He could build a home addition and change a carburetor on our station wagon, to boot.

My dad was born during World War I and was a teen during the Depression, a time when there was no such thing as credit cards. You either had the money to hire someone or you did it yourself. No putting it on the Visa card and paying it off down the road. The only time I saw anyone other than my dad doing any kind of work in our house or yard was when our town had everyone hook up to the new sewer system, and even then the worker stayed in the yard.

Working with one’s hands was a necessity in generations past. It’s a lost art today. But it’s not always people’s fault. With cars becoming evermore computerized, for instance, no one can work on their own cars for fear of messing with the brain of the vehicle. That lack of effort or fear of trying may have flowed into home-repair projects as well, despite what you see on HGTV. Although Home Depot and Lowe’s are doing a bang-up business, it seems that most people (the ones I know anyway) hire out for jobs. Those must be the contractors and the handymen loading up on supplies at the home-improvement stores. Or they’re homeowners who buy there and hire out the work. Rarely does the fiftysomething female buying the sheets of drywall, screws, and mud hang it herself.

Not only did I get the desire to do the work (and save the money) from my dad but I also got his slapdash way of working and a less-than-amazing finished product. I have to admit, my completed projects are more Walmart than West Elm, but I can at least say I did the work myself, saved the money, and have a sense of accomplishment from doing it.

Some of my friends will say, “Oh, but you’re good at doing stuff like that. We aren’t handy.” To that I say, “You just have never tried.” I’m no handier than anyone else. I just put in the effort and give it a go.

The next time you’re thinking of calling the plumber or the drywall guy or the electrician, if it’s not too difficult a task (and it’s often not if you watch online videos and have the proper tools), you may surprise yourself that you’re handier than you had thought. We can do it! 0828151150