“At age 58 and less than a decade away from retirement, Nancie Eichengreen, found herself having to start over from scratch.
It was 2012 and she had been laid off for the second time in 10 years from her job as a legal secretary. She spent a few years collecting unemployment benefits and dipping into her meager 401(k) savings to fill in the gaps.
“It’s kind of scary because I don’t envision a retirement for myself,” Eichengreen told Yahoo Finance. “I’m just going to have to keep working.”
Two years ago, she decided to start over completely, going back to school for a Masters degree in social work at Yeshiva University in New York. Today, Eichengreen now 60, is living off of student loans and says it’s unlikely that she’ll be able to pay off her $200,000 student debt, which includes what she borrowed for her first Masters studies in broadcast management.
“I don’t think social workers make much money so I’ll probably be dead before I pay that off,” she said.
Her situation is unfortunate but not unique. Thirty-four percent of workers have nothing set aside for retirement, according to the U.S. Social Security Administration. A study by the National Institute on Retirement Security found 40 percent of workers 55-65 years old do not own assets in a retirement account. ” -Yahoo! Finance