The real nightmare senior citizens face
We have been reading both sides of the teacher/school administrator raise and salary issues ad nauseum.
I'd like to point out the financial nightmare we senior citizens are going through.
I am on Social Security to which I paid into the system for 50 years.
This, by the way is not tax-free income. I pay regular income tax on 85 percent of the gross amount I receive.
The tax on this income plus expenses for Medicare Part B, Medicare Supplement, Medicare Rx insurance and the amount we have to save each month just to be able to pay our property taxes, accounts for 75 percent of the total spendable income.
With the remaining 25 percent, we have to pay for the car, car insurance, gasoline, maintenance; food, clothes, gas, electric, phone, non-covered medical expenses, home insurance and maintenance, etc.
Social Security will increase 2.3 percent for 2009. However, the additional costs for property taxes and medical insurance will wipe that out and leave us to deal with higher costs for all other necessary expenses to maintain some decent standard of life.
I can't strike. I can send a letter of protest to my state representatives that I'm sure they will consider after they vote themselves another raise and make sure their "pork" expenditures are passed.
No matter what they say, it is hard for me to believe some big change has occurred and our plight has suddenly become as important as their personal agendas.
Unfortunately, by the time they actually do something about it (if they ever do) increasing property taxes will force many of us to sell our homes; and the antiquated and unrealistic method used by the government to calculate real cost-of-living increases that directly affect seniors will eventually create a much larger group of poor seniors.
A group of which I may become a part.
We seniors are in a giant financial trap. A nightmare in which a basic quality of life for which we have worked all these years is dependent upon a bunch of politicians on the one hand and a bunch of people with insatiable appetites for the monies we are paying in taxes.
Len Brauer
Palatine
A challenge for Rob Sherman
If Rob Sherman is bent to remove crosses from government properties, let him try all the National cemeteries and then answer to servicemen's mothers and wives.
Ben Nejdl
Rolling Meadows