A Retirement Guide for those who have Lost Everything

There are lots of people today who are counting the days until they turn old and poor. It's not much of a fate to look forward to, of course. But to lots of boomers over the age of 50 (one out of four of them, actually), that's exactly the kind of future that they are able to look forward to. They have no savings and have no retirement account. These are people for whom Social Security benefits are the only way to survive. The value of the average Social Security check that people get is about $1100 a month. That's about $20 a month over the official US poverty level. Usually, any retirement guide you look at essentially busies itself in telling you how to save for your retirement, how to invest it and so on. What do you do when you're so close to retirement that saving isn't an option anymore? What do you do when it's too late?

This retirement guide it is about what you do when you don't have any money, you're too old or ill to keep working, and you basically have nowhere to go. For people in these unhappy straits there are numerous government programs that step in and pull up the slack. The first place you need to go to for help with these programs is the BenefitsCheckUp.org website that's run by the National Council on Aging. You need to go there, and use the wizard there that helps you understand what services you can look to for some help.

You basically put in information about you and your spouse and information about the kind of money situation you're facing, and you'll get a list of all the programs that you're eligible for -- there are thousands of them in all the states put together. This happens to be a great retirement guide for those who have poverty to deal with. What kind of programs do they have, you ask?

You'd be surprised how wonderful the government's programs are. Do you need housing assistance? The US Department of Health and Urban Development will give you the money to pay your rent with if your income is so low, a third of your income goes towards your rent. Once you have a house and you're being helped paying for it, how about your phone bill? LifelineSupport.org gives you a few dollars every month to help you pay your phone bill.

How about food aid to stay alive? The Food Stamp Program, or SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program as they call it these days, is there to help. How exactly the program works for you depends on what state you live in. But the BenefitsCheckUp website will tell you what exactly you can get for your state. Usually, it's about $350 a month in food assistance. And then, if you or your spouse happen to be a war veteran, you have benefits there too.

Whatever you do, you have to make sure you do your tax form every year -- even if you make only $5000 a year. File your tax return, and you'll qualify for hundreds of dollars worth of tax credits

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