Meet the Not Not-Poor Florida Seniors

As you tread carefully on an icy sidewalk on your way to work and think about how fragile your old bones have become, it is easy to look forward to retiring in Florida.  Spending your retirement years is not all sunlit walks on the beach, though.  The horrors of a retirement in Florida go beyond the hurricanes, the deadly lightning strikes, and the terrifying reptiles.  Florida has also become frighteningly unaffordable.  Even if your house does not get destroyed in a hurricane and the homeowners’ insurance company does not tell you that it has long since given up on properties in Florida, there may be more financial hardship in store for you in Florida than you realize.  With high prices, low wages, and few consumer protections, Florida is a hotbed of financial stress, and retirees feel the strain even more than people who are still in the workforce.  If your Sunshine State retirement dream has turned into a nightmare, contact a Plantation bankruptcy and retirement lawyer.

ALICE Is the New Poverty

United Way’s ALICE institute has been studying the factors that keep most of the population of the United States in a persistent state of financial stress, even if they do not meet the formal definition of poverty.  ALICE is an acronym for “asset limited, income constrained, and employed,” in other words, the working poor.  You qualify as ALICE if your income cannot cover housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, and communications such as phone and Internet and leave 10 percent of your budget for unexpected expenses.  For a single person in Florida, the minimum income to meet these needs is about $33,000, and for a family with two adults and two children young enough to require paid care, it is $84,000.  These amounts are substantially higher than the federal poverty level.  The federal government only acknowledges that a single person is poor if his or her income is less than $15,000 per year, and a family of four does not qualify as poor unless their income is less than $30,000.

Nearly Half of Florida Seniors Are Struggling Financially

Let us imagine that ALICE can also stand for “asset limited, income constrained, and elderly,” because this describes the financial situation of many retirees in Florida.  In Florida, 47 percent of seniors survive on less than the “survival budget” as calculated by the United Way, especially in Florida’s most expensive areas like Miami-Dade County.  This includes seniors who live alone or with their spouses, as well as those who are the primary caregivers for their grandchildren.  The rising cost of groceries is a major contributor to this financial hardship, as is the insufficient availability of aid programs such as rental assistance and the lack of regulations against shutting off utilities for households that cannot pay their utility bills.

Work With a Debt Lawyer About Taking Charge of Your Retirement Finances

A South Florida debt lawyer can help you file for bankruptcy and explore other debt relief options if you no longer have employment income.  Contact Nowack & Olson, PLLC in Plantation, Florida to discuss your case.

Source:

moneywise.com/life/food/47-percent-florida-families-dont-make-enough-money-to-cover-basics