Name: Life Lessons From Older Americans Who Still Work To Pay The Bills
Uploaded: 2025-12-03T13:44:55.000Z
Duration: 13 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

I'm curious to know whether there are any other 84 year old drivers.

Modal verbs - A2

I'm 82 years old and I wish I could retire now.

I always felt that I was too young to think about retirement and I was a hippie and I was all about living in the here and now.

The cost of living has gotten out of sight and there is no safety net for the elderly.

Bills are harder to pay because everything costs more.

I grew up very poor and part of what drives me right now is that I don't want to be poor again because I know what it feels like.

As soon as you start working, plan for retirement.

I've been a cocktail waitress, I've driven a catering truck.

I used to have my drums right by my bed so that I could just get out of bed in the morning and start playing, which drove my parents crazy.

Nursing I never really thought of as a career.

Then I got recruited by General Electric to become a computer programmer.

Computer science was a very new field, but

it was exciting because we were in such demand that companies would essentially bid for you.

After I left music, I went into healing work.

At the peak of my career, I was probably earning maybe 50 or 60 thousand dollars, which isn't a lot of money, but

I was vice president of a company that developed advanced communication Systems.

I made 100,000 per year being a night owl.

Night shifts weren't that hard on me at the time.

After my separation, I was working four jobs at a time, seven days a week.

I got laid off, I think two times in my career.

And it took me a while to find other employment.

So I withdraw from that 401k money to support ourselves.

In the early 90s, there was a stock market crash.

I might have a degree in mathematics, but it doesn't mean I'm financially literate.

I decided I was going to sell my house and move to Texas.

So I did sell the house, and it was right at 2008 or 9, and

the people that were buying the house lost their jobs.

That fell out of escrow, and I'm still here.

it took quite a while for it to come back up.

Getting in debt from traveling have set me back.

Currently, I'm in debt for, I think, about $16,000, which for me is a lot in terms of financial setbacks.

There is a man who still owes me $60,000.

Had I not been in a situation where I had to use my 401 money, I'd probably have maybe more than a million dollars whose interest I could then live on.

And I try not to think about it, because I'd wake up in the middle of the night screaming, what did you do?

I do all my own cooking, so I know how to be able to live frugally but still nutritiously.

I don't buy a lot of meat because I can't afford a lot of me.

And if I find out, okay, well, we have fish tonight.

I don't think any job I ever had paid me anywhere near what I needed to live on.

I might think things are expensive, which they are for me.

And at one point in time, I'd have thought, wow, that's a lot.

Compared to what so many people I know make, I ain't making diddly squat.

If I miss a paycheck, there are going to be consequences, financial consequences.

I'm going to do without something until I can catch up.

It makes me feel as though, in spite of all of my education and all of the money that I made when I was a younger person, that in the end, I'm a failure.

Professionally, I'm an advisor and I'm a life coach.

So I just work with people from anything to couples counseling to addiction counseling.

In 2010, I retired from hospital nursing.

But Social Security is not Enough for my lifestyle.

I'm working part time as a substitute teacher.

If I need something more, I'll just work another day.

Had I not decided to go back to work, we would have had to sell the house.

Uber driving is the quickest way of getting extra income to cover my bills.

I have not had a speeding ticket for three years, which I'm very proud of.

I have a Mazda 6 now, which is bigger than the biggest car I've ever had.

I just wish I had enough passive income that I could do whatever I wanted without trading hours for dollars.

It's phones, it's filing, it's data entry.

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Life Lessons From Older Americans Who Still Work To Pay The Bills

engage

career

relationship

compound