No one would have guessed that in retirement, Judi and David Koncak would be nearly out of money and unable to leave their kids much more than a pittance.
They’re both college graduates. David, 84, had a successful business that allowed Judi to stop teaching to stay home and raise their two children. They traveled, owned cars and a home, sent their two kids to college and saved for retirement.
“I thought we’d spend our golden years sitting on a beach in Hawaii with Mai Tais, even if in wheelchairs,” Judi Koncak, 83, said.
Instead, her husband had a stroke, surgeries, and prostate cancer – all of which helped deplete their savings and more.
Now she’s back at work part time earning about $15 an hour, selling items on Marketplace “for pennies on the dollar,” and turning to the nonprofit, The Senior Source, in Dallas to find help to pay her bills.
With all their savings gone, she suspects their “house is all I’ll have left” for her kids, and she’s “not even sure until we get repairs done if they would even want it. Whatever they can get out of it, I don’t know.”
Health care or inheritance?
If the Koncaks’ struggles with health care costs as older adults sound familiar, it’s because they are. Even with insurance, Americans struggle to pay for expenses like premiums, copayments, coinsurance, and uncovered health services.
As a result, the significant wealth transfer from baby boomers to younger generations that researchers have predicted may not be so…
