<p>Let me note that Pennsylvania, at least so far, does not tax pensions or other retirement income. Depending on where you live here, property taxes can be high or low; there are plenty of nice places in low-tax towns.</p>
<p>I heard on public radio this morning, either NC or SC eliminated cursive writing as a required educational requirement in 2008, and now they say it will cost $27 million to put it back in! Outrageous to think that teachers have to be trained to teach cursive writing! I have a place-mat sized cursive writing skills ‘tracer’ that students practice with. Gosh, maybe $50 supplies cost for a class of 30. I believe 2nd or 3rd grade level work.</p>
<p>^ It would not be fatfetched to think that a couple of millions would be needed for experts to write the “training” manuals, that the training for teachers should be held in Hawaii or Aspen, that the classes will require extra cleaning from 50 dollars per hour janitors, and that half the expenses will go to additional administrative staff to monitor the progress of crossing Ts and dotting Is with flair. </p>
<p>It’s hard to avoid being cynical about almost everything related to public education. How did we ever get where we are today? How did that happen? </p>
<p>I’m in NJ and at times do wish that leaving was an option. However, my parents, in-laws and adult children are all here. How could we leave? But it kills me when I look at my 5 figure property tax bill and my children never attended public school. </p>
<p>$27 million to teach cursive?! It only cost me a few workbooks to teach my kids. These workbooks already exist, so I fail to see why any additional money needs to be spent. After all if little 'ol untrained me could figure it out, I’m sure that trained teachers could figure it out too! </p>
<p>I’ll tell ya how, Xiggi; reliance on expert national consultants and “professional” senior educators, i.e. superintendents, who move from job to job and city to city like the circuit judges of the old west. But these guys and gals are more like the hired guns brought in by the local majordomo rancher. Their services cost bags of the public’s cash, but typically what you’re really paying through the nose for is their ‘reputation,’ as odds are they will soon be moving on to the next big bonus and housing expense account across the country.</p>
<p>NJ pays it’s teachers better than most States. The average teacher in NJ makes $64,000, pays in a range of 20-30% of their health care premium and pays 7% of their salary to the pension plan plus 7.5% in ss and medicare.</p>
<p>In NJ that is not an excessive compensation package.</p>
<p>No, it’s not. But it’s not so much about the on-the-ground teachers. There are buildings full of other people at the local, state, and federal level who teach no-one. That’s where the money goes.</p>
<p>^^ Exactly.</p>
<p>As mentioned earlier, for this district in NJ the budget that has a student/teacher ratio of 15:1 is approximately:</p>
<p>50% teachers salaries and benefits
22% support personnel who are paid 58% more than teachers
9% is administration and they make 74% more than teachers
16% is for operations (maintenance, etc)</p>
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<p>I’m not saying that there aren’t any retirees that can afford this, but I don’t think many non-affluents ones can…especially if their homes aren’t yet paid off. </p>
<p>(I wonder what % of americans over 65 have paid off homes? and what is the average income of a retired couple…or retired single person - since many older persons are widows)</p>
<p>@garland I don’t know what income you consider to be middle-class retirees. My own parents’ retirement income was less than $50k per year. There was no way that they could afford to pay $10k per year in property taxes and also buy their Rx’s and everything else.</p>
<p>46% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement. (Employment Benefit Research Institute)
40% of baby boomers now plan to work until they die. (AARP)
36% of Americans say they don’t contribute anything at all to their savings. [CNBC]
87% of adults say they are not confident about having money for a comfortable retirement. (Lifehappens.org)
Expected retirement age is up to 67 from age 63. (Zero Hedge)</p>
<p>so, yes, it would be very difficult for most retirees to pay $10k per year in property taxes I suspect that those who are doing so, either have high retirement incomes (maybe the combination of two good retirement pensions) or have unusually high income from investments.</p>
<p>Since many working baby-boomers do not have pensions, when they do retire they wont likely be able to afford living in places with 5 figure property taxes.</p>
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^And yet the place I bought a home to retire in, in NJ, is surrounded by homes owned by…retirees. Middleclass ones. So I disagree with that “rarely.”
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<p>@garland </p>
<p>how much are these homes, how much are their property taxes, and how much are these folks’ retirement incomes?</p>
<p>you said several thousand. that is not ten. our retirement home has taxes of about 3K. the homes in the neighborhood go for around 100-200K. many have lower taxes than ours. The people tend to be blue collar; I don’t ask anyone their incomes. A lot are living mostly on Soc Security.</p>
<p>ok…when i said several thousand, I didn’t mean 3k. To me, that would be a few thousand, not several thousand.</p>
<p>that said, if they are living only on SS, even paying 3k per year would be tough. For many or most, that would be more than 10% of their income.</p>
<p>but, since several thousand (to me) is more like 6k+, most retirees couldn’t afford that. High property tax states are going to lose retirees, which could be a problem if they are relying on households who dont have K-12 children to help fund those schools.</p>
<p>from US News:
““Most retirees have very modest incomes. The median income for people age 65 and older was $27,707 for males and $15,362 for females in 2011. The typical household headed by someone age 65 or older had a median income of $48,538. The median income increased by 2 percent between 2010 and 2011 after adjusting for inflation. Almost 3.6 million elderly people (8.7 percent) lived below the poverty level in 2011.””</p>
<p>I’m just describing where I am. and that’s a place where property taxes are mostly in the lower thousands. and the people here are real middle class. I’m sorry if that doesn’t fit your preconceptions.</p>
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<p>It’s not just retirees fleeing NY for the South to escape the taxes. I’m starting to see discussions on FB amongst the recent college grads. They can’t afford to live here either.</p>
<p>NJ caps property taxes for seniors with an income below a certain amount. There are some cases where the property taxes on a seniors home may be $20k but the senior is only paying the base tax from the year they qualified the State picks up the balance.</p>
<p>The income limit for the Senior Freeze is around $84,000.</p>
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NJ caps property taxes for seniors with an income below a certain amount. There are some cases where the property taxes on a seniors home may be $20k but the senior is only paying the base tax from the year they qualified the State picks up the balance.
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<p>ahh…that helps a lot. </p>
<p>how old do you have to be? </p>
<p>on a $10k per year prop tax home, how much would the base tax be?</p>
<p>this sounds like sort of Prop 13 in Calif which had to pass in the 70s otherwise too many folks would lose their homes due to unaffordable prop taxes.</p>
<p>You have to be 65 or over or disabled. The base year is the year you qualified based on age, income and ownership date of the home. For example my parents would have qualified but sold their home and moved to a new home. If they had stayed in their home and they were paying $5000 the year they qualified they would pay $5000 now and the State picks up the balance whether the taxes are now $10,15 or 20,000.</p>
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<p>The crazy thing about Prop 13 is that it creates a big disincentive to move. Once our DD goes to college we would naturally think of downsizing, but since we have lived in the same house for 21 years, if we sold and moved to a smaller house, we would pay far more for the property taxes on the smaller house.</p>
<p>Our retired neighbor who has lived in their house for 35 years which is far too big for them with far too big of a lawn for “retirement” upkeep, stays there due to the very low property taxes.</p>
<p>Well aren’t you just a Debbie Downer?</p>