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MY LIFE ON PAPER

One of those depressing little things you get in the mail arrived the other week with little fanfare.  It was my annual report from the Social Security Office detailing my life's earnings and idealized hopes for future reimbursement.

The results, put into the nice chart on the right, were only slightly depressing and more laughable than anything. 


Taxed Social Security Earnings, 1991-2008

When I discussed this with a friend, we both agreed that if there was some future historian looking back at our lives, and only found our existences on paper, they would be dumbfounded as to how we were actually able to live our lives.

The peaks and valleys are pretty self explanatory - from the middle of 1998 to the middle of 2002 was my life sitting in a cube at a Fortune 500 company making similar charts and graphs detailing the reliability and failure rates of the computer hardware they sold.  My charts and graphs, with data handled and scrubbed by yours truly, were handed throughout all the departments of the company - Quality, Engineering, Manufacturing, Sales, etc., and more times than I would ever deem imaginable - ended up on the desk of the CEO to be presented to external customers and other higher ups in the company.

The saddest part of the chart is the average taxed earnings from 1991-1997, which trended noticeably higher than the average income from 2003-2008, when I officially retired from the workforce and became a self employed artist.  To think my teenage years spent flipping burgers and bagging groceries were a slightly more lucrative affair for the government than my courageous fight to produce some sort of art still cracks me up.  Apparently, being self employed is a detriment to future retirement funding.

So, if all goes well, and I stay healthy and happy, I'll be able to retire like a fat cat on my $689 a month benefits.  If I continue onward and hold out on 'retiring' until 70, then I'll be eligible for an earth-shattering $855 a month. 

 

 

 

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