Chris Keith

I do!  I think about retirement.  In a lot of the medical professions, you don’t get a guaranteed pension once you retire.  So it’s definitely… it’s an issue for me and a lot of individuals in the health profession.  The recent changes in the economy were…it definitely impacts some elderly individuals.  I know some people who lost a lot of their retirement savings, and it’s definitely something that we need to consider when we move towards retirement. 

I am planning on becoming a doctor of some kind, after I go to medical school and do all that. A lot of private practices and even doctors who are located out of hospitals, don’t receive any sort of pension or very limited retirement benefits, so unfortunately the profession is set up so where whatever you make during your active time, you know, in employment is really kind of what you have to live off of during retirement.  And it can be difficult, because some doctors can get accustomed to a pretty…not lavish necessarily -- but an upscale lifestyle and will have to scale back during retirement.  I know for some people it’s an issue to have to move back and sort of become more monetarily aware of their spending during retirement. 

My dad’s a doctor as well, and he, I mean, pretty much he doesn’t have a retirement plan, to speak of.   He has to work for a few more years than he normally would have, just so that they can save for retirement.  And my mom works some with investments, and she’s definitely…I noticed that she is doing more low-risk investing recently, because my parents are, you know, trying actively to save for retirement.  So it’s definitely impacted the way they continue in their plans for the future.

After a person’s working for 40 or 50 years, I definitely think that they deserve to be able to live with a decent standard of living.  And when you consider elderly, and their ability to kind of take care of themselves, a lot of people, even if they wanted to be able to work, wouldn’t be able to.  They wouldn’t be able to find employers, who would be willing to hire them.  So I think we do need to make sure that we have some retirement options available, so that the elderly can live comfortably, during the days they’re unable to work.