Yes, I had considered relocating but had no money, so I didn’t know quite how that was going to work. Ultimately, an extended illness with loss of income did force relocation, but family paid to fly me out and feed me until I was able to work again. So now I’m relocated…in a place that is economically just as bad as the place I left.

Before relocating, I was so depressed I had panic attacks, which limited geographically the jobs I sought. No more panic attacks, but no more car either.

Even if Terry didn’t go to law school for whatever reason there is absolutely no excuse for him to have been “stuck” in a min wage job for the last 25 years.

Terry – What in Heaven’s name have you been thinking for the last 25 years?!?!?

OK, law school didn’t pan out. Maybe you chose to wait a few years to see if things bounced back and you could continue with your plan. Well, things didn’t.

Didn’t even once in the last 25 years you wake up and say to yourself “Well this isn’t going as I had hoped. I better get a new life plan FAST!”???

You say it was in the early 80′s and now you’re in your 50′s so that would have made you around 30 at the time you got your undergrad degree. Certainly a very marketable time in your life.

Another question: If the rust belt was a no-go for your plans, did you consider moving else where? If not, why not? And if you did consider it, why didn’t you do it?

Sounds to me that you couldn’t (or wouldn’t) see the need to change your plan when the realities of life confronted you. Instead, you moaped around for 25 years at min wage and now blame the world. So what would you have done in court if the other party suddenly pulled a piece of evidence or legal manuever you hadn’t planned for? Just keep going like it never happened??

I rarely disagree with you, but I have to now. Do you think Terry would be in a worse situation than he is now, if he had gone?

My problem with Terry’s story, is the self loathing that it is riddled with. Stop! Lets make a plan. Have you applied to sales jobs? Have you applied to Starbucks, Walmart, Union jobs, town jobs? Have you tried waitering, bartending? Do you have 2 jobs right now? If not, why? Is your time too valuable?

I feel like this is a fact pattern and I don’t have all the information.

“I didn’t have any money to relocate – by graduating, my income declined as I lost my on-campus janitor job which paid greater than minimum wage – so I stayed in the area and took the minimum wage jobs.”

Lets assume that your on campus pre-graudation janitor job was better than the job options out there…why didn’t you attempt to get a similar janitorial job? Maybe at a different college, a local HS, an office building?

“I have a political science degree from a large midwestern university. Fairly useless as degrees go, unless you go to grad/law school. My plan was to go to law school, but by the time I graduated, law school had becomed prohibitively expensive and I had friends coming out of law schools and working menial jobs (because they didn’t get hired in the recession) to make their student loan payments.”

Why didn’t you become a history or social studies teacher? Did you ever try to bother and become one?

Don’t ever regret not going to law school. It’s a wasteland of unemployed and underemployed lawyers out here right now. The worst ever.

I have a political science degree from a large midwestern university. Fairly useless as degrees go, unless you go to grad/law school. My plan was to go to law school, but by the time I graduated, law school had becomed prohibitively expensive and I had friends coming out of law schools and working menial jobs (because they didn’t get hired in the recession) to make their student loan payments.

Basically, I had a fit of risk aversion which I have regretted since.

Terry,

1) I am almost positive your answer to my question is wrong. If you do your taxes early enough and your contribution is made prior to April 15 of that year it can count for the previous year.

2) “How much did you expect me to save with student loan debt and a minimum wage income?”

Why do you have student loan debt and a minimum wage income? Did you get a B.A. in art history and then work at McDonalds? Because even Starbucks pays more than minimum wage. So do most gov’t jobs – You may be too old to become a police officer or fire fighter, but what about municipal water or clean up job?

Even if your 55 and you have dead end job history, you can get into sales, or a better lower end job as pointed out above.
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1) You’re right! I’ve never had an IRA, so I have no actual experience with the tax issues, but I had neglected the possibility that someone could make an IRA contribution AFTER the tax year and BEFORE filing a tax return, i.e. January 1 – April 15. Indeed, this is probably a very common occurrence, I had simply missed it. (I believe the proper response is…D’OH!)

2) I graduated with a liberal arts degree – I had obtained my degree with law school in mind…at the bottom of the last steep recession (early 1980s)…in the Rust Belt, which was an astonishingly lousy place to look for a job at the time. (Estimates at the time suggested that two-thirds of new graduates were leaving the state to seek jobs elsewhere.) I didn’t have any money to relocate – by graduating, my income declined as I lost my on-campus janitor job which paid greater than minimum wage – so I stayed in the area and took the minimum wage jobs. I deferred student loan payments as long as possible, then made payments until the fourth of five rent incre4ases in five years (the downside of Reaganomics you don’t hear about) squeezed me to the point of defaulting on my student loans. I’ve had a student loan garnishment for years but the principal is declining slowly (when I defaulted, a bunch of deferred interest plus junk fees were bundled into principal, ballooning my balance). Now at my age, I think it’s extremely unlikely I’m going to get a ‘better’ low-end job, considering all the unemployed applicants half my age seeking similar jobs.