Yes I did start as a PT handler. Making roughly $4 hr and barely getting 15 hrs or so. I stayed with it and it took a long time before I started making decent money. If you want to do the math, many of you could have a bigger Traditional monthly payout than me. My best 5 ended 13 or 14 years ago. Other people stayed in the Traditional and their best 5 continued for 5 or more years. During that time you built up a higher best 5 while mine were already set.
Like I said tex, if you hated it so bad, were so mistreated and the pay and benefits sucked, why did you stick around? I hated my '73 Pinto. It sucked and always broke down. I got rid of it and bought another car. That Yugo I bought was something else. Only an idiot would work a job that he hates because he feels mistreated and underpaid. Kinda like tex and a few on here. There are plenty of job opportunities out there for drivers. I looked on Indeed.com and saw plenty of adds. Go somewhere that you feel appreciated and paid fairly because you don't feel that where you are now.
As far as saving for retirement. Small sacrifices will make large differences when you spread them out over many years. 1 or 2% into the 401k sure beats doing nothing. How many people that have saved nothing have done anything to better their quality of life. Selling a week of vacation, not calling in sick to get that fat check every July. If you sold 1 week of vacation and got the full sick pay check each year and invested it and got a 5% return, you could easily build up 60k or more in 25 years. Just a small thing like that can pay off in a big way. Uber and Lyft provide decent opportunities. Selling on Ebay and Craigslist. It is much easier to bitch and whine about being broke than it is to actually do something about it. Lazy people bitch and whine and stay broke. People with money do the things necessary to build a nice nest egg.
I read a book on finance 1 time and saw something that stuck with me. The writer said there is no reason for a man that works 45 or 50 hrs a week should be broke. Because he still has 15 or so more hours he could be doing something to make money. That's what I did many times and it paid off. Tex bitched and did nothing to better his life and he only has 22k to live on and that is a BUMMER.
