Too Poor To Retire.

Reprinted from Los Angeles Times:
JAN. 29, 2016 | REPORTING FROM DARIEN, N.Y.
http://graphics.latimes.com/retirement-nomads/ 

Sad but true stories of many older Americans who can not afford to retire.

I usually have a short attention span, this is a compelling article that I can understand and identified with. I read it all the way though to the end. As a real estate agent & started this endeavor in 2007, I have seen my fair share of homes being taken over by the banks. I have had to work on short sale & sell homes for clients who lost their jobs and no longer can afford to keep their homes. I have had my fair share of sadness seeing all the belongings left behind in the garages; family albums, children's shoes, books, clothes, boxes and boxes of stuff they no longer can take with them etc. I have so many friends who have been in these positions described in this article. This is one of the most heart breaking, real life stories & who knows how many more are out there? This is what's going on in our country, shrinking middleclass, aging poor and homelessness. 

A

t the wise age of 79, Dolores Westfall knows food shopping on an empty stomach is a fool’s errand. On her way to the grocery store last May, she pulled into the Town & Country Family Restaurant to take the edge off her appetite.

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After much consideration, she ordered the prime rib special and an iced tea — expensive at $21.36, but the leftovers, wrapped carefully to go, would provide two more lunches.

The problem, she later realized, was that a big insurance bill was coming due. How was she going to pay it? Was she going to tip into insolvency over a plate of prime rib?

“I thought I could handle eating and shopping,” she said, “but lunch put me over the top.”

Westfall — 5 feet 1 tall, with a graceful dancer’s body she honed as a tap-dancing teenager — is as stubborn as she is high-spirited. But she finds herself these days in a precarious place: Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next....

Continued on LA TIMES with more story & pictures..