Available Financial Streams

An interesting comment stream broke out over the weekend. Someone left a link to an article about Adrian Dantley working as a school crossing guard to get health insurance. He is not broke like so many retired professional athletes, he just doesn't want to pay for health insurance.

I commented that it was an odd story and questioned whether or not he was taking a job from someone else who could better use the $15,000 income and benefits. A reader (maybe the same one who left the link, I am not sure) then left a comment paralleling the Dantley story to firefighter and police pensions. He recalled my "clearly defending this tactic vis-a-vis firefighters a few months ago." He was referred to this post where I described what a retired firefighter now hazmat instructor manages his pension along with a couple of part time jobs. If you read the post you'll see no defense of anything. I pointed that out and the reader then pointed out how the pensions are bankrupting some states. Ok, but that is a different subject.

While I know little to nothing about police work and the life that police live I know a little about fire  department work and that lifestyle. Firefighters today use something called a self contained breathing apparatus or SCBA for short when fighting structure fires, car fires and responding to other types of incidents. They protect the firefighters from breathing in all the methyl-ethyl-gonna-kill-ya products that we all have in our houses and cars. They are only harmful when they burn or melt.

SCBAs didn't exist in the fire service until the 1970s but weren't widely used until much later (take a look at the movie Back Draft). From back in those days the life expectancy of a retired was 10-15 years after they retired at what the reader said was an obscenely early age.

Again without speaking to what any police officers do, these days it is rare that I meet a firefighter who wants out or gets out after 20 years unless they are close to more a regular retirement age, one friend on Prescott FD is my age and started when he was around 39 or 40 so he could take retirement at 59 or 60 but I don't know what his intention is.

I have no argument against modernizing this but my point about the hazmat instructor was the extent to which he was doing part time work with something he loves and making use of what is financially available to him as I think everyone should.

I have been very consistent over the years saying I do not expect to get social security when my time comes, I expect by then there will be some form of means testing that will come very far down into the middle class and shut me out. I am saving and planning accordingly. If I do get full social security then our full benefit in today's dollars will be about $3000 a month. That amount more than covers all of our current monthly expenses, we would only need our savings to pay for one-offs and any trips we wanted to take.

The system may need to change (it probably does) but I don't know if it will. My plan assumes nothing from social security but if it is there then we will take it just like anyone eligible for a pension. If the pension/social security rules change then we may not be able to take it. Again, I am not defending the pension system but I won't take a shot at someone who legally benefits from it.