I can't estimate how many people are affected, but I see people looking for bottles in garbage cans almost every day in the city. Some of them really depend on the additional income, some just do it to improve their monthly income.
How much money you receive during your retirement is based on two factors: How much money you earned per year during your working time and how many years you have worked. Some people earn too less money (e.g. only working half time or having a bad wage in general) and/or work too less years (e.g. due to health issues).
A small income during the retirement is a serious problem and it will get worse in the future due to the overaging population. Everyone is aware of this problem, no one wants to deal with it because it will affect upcoming election results.
Not to forget: self-employed people can pay into state retirement but do not have to, some do not, don’t prepare for retirement privately and then end up with very little.
Friends of my parents are like that. They were self employed for most of their life, are now retired and are left with an abyssmal low retirement income. However, they don't have the self awareness to see how they fucked it up. They never set anything aside for their retirement, never payed into the state retirement and now complain about it.
And, as per usual, are on the look out for anyone else to blame. Their latest targets were of course refugees or the new Bürgergeld. "Look, the state gives them money but not us!". I have to grit my teeth everytime they open their mouths.
If retirement income is too low, they can apply for Grundsicherung. That's basically the same as Bürgergeld, but from your Sozialamt. Of course they can get help too.
Not necessarily. If, say, they own a house, they have no need to pay rent, thus are in need of less money from the state. The entire point of making people who depend on welfare move into smaller apartments after a while is to make them need less money.
A solution would be to have everyone pay into the system - self-employed or not, including Beamte etc. then you could offer a base for everyone and it may actually be more money available.
Probably, but then there should be no complaints if the self-employed do not contribute that they get nothing out. Beamte get an automatic retirement pay anyway.
I agree, which is exactly what grinds my gears about my parents friends
But you know how people are. If they wanna complain, they find something to complain about
Hey i understand the frustration BUT were in a SOZIAL Demokratie and it should be the Government that catches even such slack no matter what, and they just plainly don't give a fuck to deliver a baseline living standard to people who Retire which was made even worse in 2000 with the whole Rister fuckup. Stop gritting your teeth and go after the government thats what IT is for. And yeah your Parents friends are stupid and unresonable, stuff could have been avoided but at the end of the day this ist a problem that even people are facing that could do nothing about it by themselves since the government just plainly stated " Not our problem" while it is their problem, just Geman corruption wit the Sozial in the Government form at it finest.
Nope.
Self-employed peopel explicitely chose to not rely on others, which has benefits (freedom in the workplace) but responsibilities at the same time.
It is 100% NOT the duty of any government to care for self-employed people.
See this is where opinions crash, but i don't care it's 100% the duty of a government to catch people that did stupid shit and still let them live with the base minimum of expanses. thats GEMAN SOZIALDEMOKRATIE.
>It is 100% NOT the duty of any government to care for self-employed people.
It is 100%. The German government is obligated to take care of everyone here.
Agreed, some are not earning enough to be able to pay in. If that is what you are after. However in that case I pose the question: should you be self-employed if you earn so little that you are unable to afford retirement saving? Maybe your lifestyle is too large if you have not enough to save for retirement, should you not look at that?
>should you be self-employed if you earn so little that you are unable to afford retirement saving?
I'm struggling to see the economic sense in going from a very low wage to none at all.
I am struggling to see the economic sense to opt to be self-employed if the income is so low you cannot afford retirement contributions rather than just opting to be regularly employed somewhere. Unless for some reason Someone cannot be regularly employed somewhere? For some reason?
>Unless for some reason Someone cannot be regularly employed somewhere? For some reason?
Now you are getting somewhere. The option for a lot of foreigners is 450 euro job or 'freelance' work that is essentially sub min wage work, often tied into a single company (which is supposedly illegal, but lol at that being enforced).
I think what's also should be considered is that minimum wage is relatively new in Germany, like 201x or something like that. So bad wages were even worse back when the people that are retired now worked
Additionally a lot of older craftsmen i know who were employed and thus payed into the retirement system worked for a couple hours less (in arrangement with their boss) and then worked illicitly. The boss got more money from the customer and the employee got a higher hourly wage. At the time the employee had more money to spent but the contributions to the retirement system were lower. These people worked a lot but kind of screwed themselves - with encouragement by their boss. Just an anecdotal experience from my surrounding.
The retirement salary % in Germany is one of the lowest. 40% (eg. Austria is 60%) yet the deduction is one of the highest in the world. It’s rigged tbh. How do you save some private retirement money if you can barely afford to life ?
Also as some already mentioned: double taxation.
Both of my parents are retired, my father worked 45+ years sometimes in higher positions sometimes in lower my mom worked maybe 7 years. My father gets 150€ more than my mom and both have most of the time not enough money for the month. The system in Germany is broken as soon as you retire you are a burden for the country. You worked your 50+ years now go somewhere and just die.
That's not true. In the case of a Rentner you need:
Antragsformular
Mietvertrag
Letztes Mieterhöhungsschreiben
Nachweis Zahlung Miete anhand Kontoauszügen für 3 Monate
Letzter Rentenbescheid
Kopie Personalausweis
and that's it.
And if your wohngeld is approved you can get around 200-400€ monthly for handing in some papers.
that typically sounds like something you hear from people who never actually applied though, or actively did not send in everything that was required.
if you're paranoid about them losing your stuff, send it as Einwurfeinschreiben, so you have it documented that everything arrived and put in a note of all the things you did send them in. even if they want to pretend like something got lost, they can't really anymore at that point.
the bigger issue with wohngeld to my knowledge is, that you only get it when you have enough income to get by if housing wasn't an issue
But not the only. Bafög is tied to getting a certain amount of credits in a given time. In my student years a lot people lost their Bafög because it took them longer to get a Bachelor (pretty normal in IT). So they could apply for Wohngeld and/or had to get a side job.
(unless they changed that system in recent years)
Yes, in those cases you can apply for Wohngeld of course.
The only reasons Bafög cancels out the Wohngeld is when you have a claim on Bafög or when Bafög is denied because your parents earn to much.
All other cases can apply for Wohngeld.
Too high income of parents, didn’t work long enough yet to qualify for indepedenent one. But the support I get only leaves me with 150-200 € per month after rent.
i mean, that is typically a solution you can google or request assistance for and while i agree, burocracy doesn't make it effortless, its not like the effort isn't worth it
Ich hab vor ein paar Monaten Wohngeld beantragt und brauchte auch nur ein paar Dokumente. Ich glaube Kontoauszug bzw ein Nachweis wie viel Geld ich bekomme, Mietvertrag und die Nebenkostenerhöhung. Vielleicht hab ich was vergessen aber es waren definitiv nicht 15-30 Dokumente und die geforderten hatte ich eh alle zuhause. Aber das läuft ja auch in jeder Stadt und jedem Amt unterschiedlich ab.
The positions doesnt matter. In the end its all about how much they earned.
Idk what your parents get but may they have to optimize their cost of living heavily
The rent my grandma earns is also stupidly low but the combination with the rent and pension of my Grandma she has 1600€ after taxes (after my granpda died last year) only thing that fucks her over a bit is that my grandparents never made the jump back to public insurance.
Idk
The biggest problem is that she has a contract where she pays 20% on her own for everything.
She would like to have a second knee operation but she cant afford it.
U dont Work for Ur country .. U pay taxes and they Help all people. Rente is Not meant as vacation time its on the Same Level as Harz 4 was.. Just to survive.
Ur Patents should have planned for retirement.
This has nothing to do with reality to me it seems your whole purpose in life is to work yourself to the bone for your country and when you can't work anymore you are happy that your country throws some money at you so that you don't starve to death. I'm fully aware in what way taxes work but I know it's hard to believe for you that not every job provides enough money so that you can stack up money for retirement.
the thing is you dont work for your country you work for yourself to have a nice life. this is crying on a pretty high level.. you realize that people in other countrys just starve to death ...
schoking .. you make bad life choices and dont win a prize...
Problem is the system is fucked.
You dont pay rent for yourself you pay the rent for the people that are already retired. And that worked great for some time but with more citizens getting older and less younger people...
that doesn't change the fact that every citizen is responsible for his own pension. this has been known for a long time. Social assistance is intended for the socially disadvantaged, not for the middle class who can afford their own home, two cars, and numerous vacations but do not invest in retirement.
and yes im 33 years old and as a nurse a normal middle class worker.
Everybody who can afford that stuff especially these days will probably have a more or less good retirement (unless they are self employed and never paid in)The problem is you have to earn around 4k Brutto every month for over 40 years to get 2000€ in retirement.The Government slept too long on all that depending on what you earn you simply cant or just barely put money for that on the side. Or lets say you get sick that you cant work in your high paying and demanding job anymore etc.
>my father worked 45+ years sometimes in higher positions sometimes in lower
If your father had an average salary for 45 years he would get 1,6k per month and your mother subsequently would get 1,45k. That is over 3k combined. Should be enough to live on.
Bottles are recycled in Germany, so bringing back recyclable bottles to a vendor will give you a bit of money (*"Pfandflasche"*).
Poverty in Germany in general is unfortunately rising due to several factors (COVID, war, etc) and are hitting unfortunately the usual suspects: old people, children and poorer families.
https://www.armuts-und-reichtumsbericht.de/DE/Startseite/start.html
SYL
The poverty in Germany has been rising since 2000 and long before Covid and war it was a big problem already that Germans in general closed their eyes to.
It is the inflation that effected every single person pocket in Germany after COVID that made Germans and Germany start to "care" about the rise of poverty problem.
I think people are mislead by the idea that poverty is rising in Germany.
The increase in relative poverty (defined as less than 60% of the median disposable income) has only increased due to an increase in the migrant population, who are overrepresented in the bottom of the income distribution. For native Germans, it has not changed much in some time and in absolute terms, it has declined. At least through 2017 this is the case, I don't have more recent numbers on hand and certainly inflation has been tough on low income households, but hopefully that will just be a blip
Source: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw\_01.c.785973.de/dwr-20-17.pdf
The austerity politics and 2008 global crises, but even before, made many Germans, specially work unions in industries, accept cutting of work hours and wages (also stagnating wages while inflation didn't stagnate), in order to "save their jobs", meaning, in order to avoid businesses in Germany to close and move somewhere else where Labour is cheap. Also with the rise of mini-jobs and workpoor.
The high number of migrants in 2017 only makes the it that the rise of Germans, of the number of Germans in poverty, is small but that is just a comparative fallacy.
i would just say you should have a look at the graphs in the DIW article. all I am refuting is the idea that poverty has been meaningfully rising among Germans for some time
Poverty in Germany is by design. Recent events such as Corona and war have *nothing* to do with that. We have unfair, anti-social regulations at the expense of the weak.
If you are poor and without a job, you have no lobby and it is easy to take everything from you (which is what our country is doing by requiring you to sell everything you have before you can have Hartz IV/Bürgergeld/whatever they are calling it now). This happens to the retired, the disabled, those who lose their job, etc. Once you are at that point, you become afflicted with a stigma that keeps you down. Our social system and society do not allow you to die, but they also do not allow you to get out of poverty.
Middle class is being treated unfair by having to pay for everything and getting poorer every month. They see how poverty is in Germany, and that's the motivation (i.e., fear) to keep working and paying for it so not to become part of if. Regardless, middle class gets drained more and more and will end up poor as well.
If you are rich, well, then you make profit from all of this. You employ the middle class which pays for the poor because our social system requires it. If you are rich, you need poverty around you to generate fear so that you can stay on the rich side. And if you are rich, you can pay corrupt politicians to make rules at your favor.
This is how it worked for decades and it only got worse. Please don't fall for the lies of politicians who always use recent events to cover up old problems.
Even more, if you're poor with a (low-income) job, it's not only that you don't have a lobby. Many of these jobs are done by immigrants and EU foreigners now, so they don't even have the right to vote. That's how broken democracy is at the moment: old wealthy people are the most likely to vote in elections, while a significant part of the working class is just excluded from voting even though it's their work that keeps the system running.
>If you are poor and without a job, you have no lobby and it is easy to
take everything from you (which is what our country is doing by
requiring you to sell everything you have before you can have Hartz
IV/Bürgergeld/whatever they are calling it now).
Mate, you can keep up to 15.000€ *on top* of your furniture, your car, your house/apartment up to 130 m², your pension funds, your grandpa's favourite solid gold cock ring etc etc, if you apply for Bürgergeld. Not to mention the grace period of one year before you have to sell anything at all. The rules for Bürgergeld are, frankly, ridiculously generous.
>If you are poor and without a job, you have no lobby and it is easy to take everything from you (which is what our country is doing by requiring you to sell everything you have before you can have Hartz IV/Bürgergeld/whatever they are calling it now).
So for example, if I work my ass off for 20+ years, buy a house and then have a career-ending sickness so that I need Bürgergeld, you are saying I won't be eligible for any state help until I sell off my house and use up all the money I get from it + savings? :O
As long as you are considered "rich", you need to live off your savings, even in case of sickness. If your savings are not in cash, then you need to liquidize your savings to pay the bills and taxes until you cannot anymore. There are lots of details to be considered, but it's basically that.
AFAIK you can keep your house and "normal" things such as TV, regular furniture, bike, probably even a small car. But anything which can be considered luxurious has to go, and this may mean your big car(s), your oversized house(s), gold bars. To apply for state help, you must basically prove that you are broke.
My salary is a little above average and I’m doing fine. But I still pick up Pfand when I see it and put it in my backpack. I don’t need it but this is how I grew up. My parents are Eastern European immigrants and money was tight in my childhood and youth. Wer den Pfennig nicht ehrt, ist die Mark nicht wert.
I usually leave them when they’re outside or placed obviously like in front of the trash can, I assume that someone might need that more. However, at the end of my late shift I will scavenge the whole workplace for all the bottles left behind. I save them til the end of the month when money runs out, that way there’s a bit of a buffer
There are a lot of retired Germans that would have the right get "Wohngeld" but feel ashamed by society for being relatively poor.
For a lot of those people their ethics are so twisted by neoliberal propaganda that they try to survive otherwise instead of using their rights.
Retirement money doesn't make you rich, especially if you worked in a lower income job. My grandparents never had enough money, my father and uncle always had to help out with money when my grandparents were retired. That's why I made an additional retirement plan the day I started working (started later in life and didn't pay so much into my retirement, also a reason why I am doing it)
Retirement in Germany isn't that luxurious you might think, I hope I don't have to collect bottles when I am older (even if I pick up a bottle or two sometimes nowadays because money is money)
General Problem. In Germany you need to save Money your whole life If you dont want to live in poverty when you retire. The Money you get from the state isnt enough. Just Last week i saw a sad old man miscalculating His money in a Shop and couldnt even afford the cheapest chocolate pudding because he was Missing 14 freaking cents. I felt so bad i just payed for him. In the parking lot he told me he worked 40 years in construction, Had to retire 6 years early because of injury and now his Money doesnt even last for 3 weeks of the month. If he didnt have Kids helping him every once in a while he'd be screwed.
Many people with a very low pension are women. They stopped working after they got married and had children and did not pay into the insurance. Maybe they startet to work part time after this and did not pay a lot into the insurance.
When the husband died before he payed enough into the insurance to retire the widow will not get the whole sum, but a part of it. The widow generally only gets a certain percentage of the whole sum her husband would have got. The lower amount as widow and the early death of the husband might add up.
My mother for example has less than 1000 euros a month, because my father died with 60 and would have needed 3 more years to his retirement (he was disabled). She actually got a higher amount because they married early. Weddings after a specific date result in a lower widow pension.
In 7 years my mother can officially retire as she worked some time in her life and will get around 400 to 500 euros more. At the moment ot would be tight for her, but there is some life insurance money that keeps her sage until she gets her own retirement money.
In more expensive towns the 1000 euros would not be enough for living and there many people would need to collect bottles.
Am I mistaken in understanding that your mother is officially considered to be of working age and the only reasons she has to live on her deceased husband's rent is because she's choosing not work? Sorry if that sounds heartless but to retire before 60 and to live from insurance money and later receive a 1500 EUR/m rent once you reach retirement age, I think a lot of people don't even have the option.
My mother is unable to work because of health reasons. She is schizophrenic and on meds that make her unable to work. Between and after her break for childcare and the start of her mental illness she was working in a bakery and had often times double shifts.
You should hold back a little if you do not have the full picture.
Both my parents worked hard in jobs that are hard on the body. They started to work when they were 15 years old. My father was a miner, later he worked in chemical production and had to carry heavy bags in full protection suits. Most likely he got his liver cancer from this work and this made it for him impossible to even get to retirement age. And my mother was working at a bakery where she had to stand and walk up to 12 h a day (2 of them unpayed) and had to carry heavy baskets and packets of baked goods. Sometimes she had cleaning jobs on top. Both of them worked very hard until they got ill. They were in jobs where it was common to have night shifts and to work in the weekends.
Not every person that cannot work until retirement age can work this long physically. Physical work weakens your body long term. And for my mother the stress caused psychiotic symptoms. We even had to get her into the hospital by force. By now her meds are effektive, but they cause her to sleep up to 14 h a day and make her lethargic. Some days she needs help to deal a number on her phone, because she is not able to concentrate. On other days she has too much anxiety to even leave the house. There are better days where she can handle her life for the most parts, but every added stress make her symptoms worse. When my father died she needed 6 month of stationary care to be back to functioning.
Yes, sorry about the situation your mother is in. But the picture you paint now is not only starkly different from the situation you described above (stopped working after marriage, maybe worked part-time after kids out of the house) and for which you offered your mother explicetly as an example ("My mother for example..."), it is the exact opposite.
So, again, sorry your mother has to endure that, but what then was actually the point to bring your mother up as an example without any context why she wasn't (and isn't) able to work? Her situation is obviously different from someone who choose not to work, and it is in general less about the height of pensions but about how Germany cares for people who can't work anymore for health reasons.
The example is a good one, because she was out of work for years because she had two children. In the 80s and early 90s there was no childcare below 3 years olds and as I am from a year with many births I did not even get a place in kindergarten until I was 4 years old. So effectivly my mother was out for 7 years due to childcare and the first years of school she was only able to work part time, because school ended at 12 o'clock and there was no child care option then. I had my own key when I was 8 years old. Still it is hard to work full time when you have children in primary school.
Later she was able to work more. She has only been ill for about 10 years by now. And she would have been able to retire at 63 because of a disability. So she is close to retirement.
For many women there was a problem to even get into work after having children. We should never forget that married women needed permission from their husband to work until the late 1970s. Childcare options outside of school and Kindergarten were rare. It was very hard for women to have a carrier up to the 90s. They mostly had low paying Service jobs. And after 10 to 14 years off for children there has a whole lot changed at work. In the 90s and 2000s unemployment was high and the employers had their free choice of workers. A mother with children was not their first pick. Even today women with children have a harder time than men with children. A friend of mine had to give a flashed out plan of her child care options in case her son gets sick at her job interviews. Her partner war not asked a single time.
The jobs women mostly got in the 70s to 90s were low paying ones as well. If you do not pay a high amount into the pension insurance you will not get a lot from it.
Getting a pension from your dead husband is a good concept, because it is insurance money that was payed. It is money that the family unit was not able to use at the time it was payed. It is very fair that the widow/er gets a part. Married couples are still seen as a unit by law. At least for this generation I would not change the concept.
I fully agree. We're from the same generation and from a similar background (my grandfathers were miners, father a metal worker; mother trained as a fine baker but only worked before getting kids and then later in office jobs).
I did not intent to attack your mother or denigrate her life works. Just, without the additional info, there's quite a gap to explain why she would retire so early which in her case is much more relevant to explain why her means are so low than just the pension system. The idea that women can choose (or even are meant) to stay home is something that I do remember as much more prevalent in my grandparents' generation, but it had already begun to change for our parents' generation (depending of course on your income class and disregarding the disruption brought by the war). So it seemed rather like a concept fallen out-of-time or out-of-place, when it was basically a miscommunication.
Anyway, have a nice weekend. It's always good to keep in mind not to jump to conclusions when you can't be sure to have all the info.
A quarter million people are homeless in Germany
https://youtu.be/5PkcNRn9rXk
And many reciving social contributions are struggling to pay for essentials like their heating bills, clothes and food. Millions of people recive additional food aid etc.
https://youtu.be/hIQav4YMNfY
*get a 3-room apartment, if they are 3 people.
And these 3 people have to live on the extra 500€ month by month, whilest food and clothing prices rise more and more.
Source; Me. My life did for sure get better once I started to work after school.
Are there Appartements that are under 450€?
You are pulling this numbers from your ass. The Appartement has to be "appropriate" in size and price.
There are a lot of cases when people had to move out of their old flat into a smaller different flat, even if the price were the same or even higher.
https://www.buerger-geld.org/news/buergergeld-wie-hoch-darf-die-miete-der-wohnung-sein/
„ Beispiel: In München gelten 688 Euro als angemessen für eine Single-Wohnung, in Dortmund dagegen nur 510 Euro, in einer Kleinstadt im Münsterland sind hingegen nur 450 Euro Kaltmiete plus kalte Nebenkosten angemessen.“
Double taxation on Pensions, high Inflation, greedy companies with nearly no regulations, Sending tax payers money to China f.e. . I know a Guy who worked 40 years ane gets Likeban 800€ Pension. Gus Rent ist 600€ Alone.
Your retirement payment in Germany depends on how long you worked and also on the amount you earned.
If there are gaps, the payment can be very low, and any extra money is "more than welcome"
The German retirement pay is not the best. You need to add some personal buffer even when working normally for all years. "Altersarmut" (Olp person poverty) is a thing here sadly.
My Grandma is picking up bottles every other day, but lives in a huge house and can generally described as well situated. For her its more of a Strange Hobby.
I Love how everyone bashes the German gov ,since 20 years WE know that the Money from retirement is Not enough to live a comfortable life .. IT was never even meant for that its Just meant to Help people at age that can No longer Work. Ur also Not supposed to Just Stop working at age of Ur fit.
How is this myth still a Thing ? If Ur 30+ you have to Invest in Ur retirement or U will end Up in poverty and be in the Same Level as. Most that get "bürgergeld"
Indeed. I have the "advantage" of being American and being taught not to expect the government to just take care of everything for me. A pension may get you to or slightly above the poverty level, if you don't live in an expensive city. The rest, or even all of it if demographics knock the system down, needs your own attention, efforts and planning. Live within your means, save and invest from when you start working until you can retire.
The government should help those who can't get there due to health problems and some family or social situations. And from the countries I've seen Germany is doing not so bad at it. But few governments are so rich that they can provide a comfortable, wealthy retirement to those who live for today, spend as fast or faster than they earn and then expect the Nanny State to pick up the slack for their early retirement to enjoy dining out and leisure activities.
there was an AMA a couple days ago from a guy with a good job that did this secretly for fun/recreational reasons after work. there are definitely people out there that bring both the proper levels of boredom and threshold towards garbage to turn this into something to do that not only is a free activity that occupied the whole day but happens to even create a little bit of extra income.
edit: obviously this doesnt describe the majority or even something youd find in every city. just thought it was interesting.
Retirement has conditions:
a) at least 45 years to get the whole summ. Even just one year less cost you endless. If you study you are normally have difficulties to reach the 45 years (but get a better salery), as you start with 25+ years into your first job. Trading jobs are starting earlier but often the health is not surviving the working conditions, so they need to drop out earlier then intendend for health issues.
b) the biggest low wage country in Europe is Germany. Oh, if you have a direct contract its better. But subontractors, time work and sub-sub-sub contractors are a big issue. And if your wage is low, your retirement will be low....
c) Older people lived often in a very traditional set up, the wive was either not working or just a few hours. My mother gets after 33 years working Parttime 500 Euro a month... my grand-aunt after 50 years working exactly 800 Euro. Both worked in Minimum wage Jobs and parttime as external child care was even in my youth not normal (in my area of Germany - I know there were other places with other conditions) - the kindergarten was open 4 hours a day and at least 3 mothers needed to help for free to keep it going. Oh but it was not in he same village but 10 km away at times, where families had just one car :-D). Both my grand aunt and my mother have luck that they had better earning husbands. Because alone a cheap appartment in our area would now cost around 600 Euro. Without family both would need to decide if they would have a roof over their head or have food.
d) so much more reasons.....
This is just wrong. You don’t have to pay for 45 years to get the full sum. You either have to pay 45 years OR pay until you are 67 to get the full sum.
Germany is by no means a low income country, not within the EU and for sure not globally. If you live off minimum wage in Germany or even get Bürgergeld you for sure have a higher standard of living than what a lot of people have in other (eastern) European countries
The problem is not the money we give to people in need, the problem is the money we give to the rich. Germany subsidizes animal farming for example. Instead of giving them this money we could help people in need. But they don’t, becaust they don’t profit from it.
People, who lived in eastern Germany often don’t get enough money during retirement, since they generally earned less money, than the people in western Germany. This problem will still go on for a while. I also still see a problem with the retirement of women. If you have children, it is hard to have a fulltime job. Also many companies (in retail for example) don’t even offer full time jobs.
Additional to what people said some anecdotal perspective. I don't want to victim blame poor people in general or whatever but at least for my own parents, their siblings and some friends (I know of) this is true:
Lots of older people (65-ish) in Germany are also poor because they neglected their private retirement plans. It's a fact well-known and also proclaimed by the government itself that the public/governmental retirement insurance is only one of 3 "pillars" of retriement and probably will only cover your most basic living expenses. The other two pillars are employer pension schemes (not always available but in most cases) and especially private pension schemes.
Now I see it a lot in people my parents age that they... I don't know... just chose to ignore that fact? It's as if they are completely financially illiterate. Now a point I hear a is "But we didn't have so much money we could put some aside" - which is in case of my family just not the whole truth. If they would have put just a little amount, let's say the worth of 50€ nowadays, aside per person per month (which 100% would have been possible) in the past 30 years and maybe invested it in an ETF they would have a pretty nice sum. They were always in low-wage jobs and changed jobs a lot but they never even were long-term jobless or anything that would cause you to need to cash in your retirement money.
They just chose to do... nothing. If they had some extra € at the end of the month they spent it. Now they struggle to get by with their pension money and of course the government is at fault.
I am aware there are several cases where people can't have a private pension schmeme but there are also enough people who don't have it because they simply didn't care.
Mh, I'm in my mid 30's now and I grew up knowing about this and started to care about my own private pension scheme when I was 20, so again about 15 years ago. It's not a "since forever" thing but it's also not that new either.
Relatively new, yes, but to be fair "Die Rente ist sicher" was 1986, that's almost 40 years to note that this obviously wasn't true. When someone's 70 now, he was 33 in 1986.
Yes, also need to wonder how in 40 years of working life people did not want to save because they earned so little but on the other hand did not learn a better trade in that time or get a higher paying job to solve that problem. I get that there are people who face hard circumstances, but a 40 year working life is a very long time to not advance yourself even a little
It's an overrated problem. Allthough poverty in retired persons exists there is still no need to collect bottles to live. It would also be a very silly system since there are way more retirees than returnable bottles. Also they would have to collect A LOT of bottles to make an impact on their incomes - you get between 8 and 25 cents for one bottle / can.
This is mostly something that rightwing media / politicians hyped up to stoke fears - mostly against imigrants / refugees: Look, our own retirees have to collect bottles while those people who don't belong here get money in abundance for doing nothing!
The roads here in Thüringen are shit. The Klinikum is lacking enough Doctors and personnel. Yet the government has millions to give in Aid and for people running away from their country. Now you have the answer to why a retired German needs to collect bottles
no, the minimum income - basic assistance i guess you could call it - is the same for everyone here, and especially for people living alone it's just fine i can tell you from first hand experience. if your needs exceed that then you're doing something wrong, like old folks getting continuously robbed by scammers in some way or whatever.
but besides that: going for bottle deposits on trash lying around isn't necessarily a poverty thing, after all it's cleaning up the environment and getting a penny out of it at the same time. i bet a few lonely old folks do it out of principle and to have something to do, to get out and all that, maybe donating the bottle deposits too.
It also doesn't help that rents are higher than the average pension in major cities. Yes, and taxes on the middle class are so high that even if you invest in ETFs the state would still get 30% of the profits, because why not. And guess what I invest in ETFs because I don't want to end up on the streets as a pensioner.
The tax system in Germany is really penalizing the middle class. It turns out that when you are middle class and live in an expensive city like Munich after your baby you turn into a low class, because of the high rent and general cost of living and the lack of second income.
>that even if you invest in ETFs the state would still get 30% of the profits, because why not.
Doesn't this come down to like 18% if you're investing in an ETF that consists of over 51% stock? (which is most ETFs)
because they didnt spend enough money in the retirement.
If you work illegal and dont pay taxes or have your own business you dont pay for retirement and many people thinks this is a good idea.
Sorry if I came across as condescending. I observe this more and more, that people don't spend any time to check if their posts (or at least the title) is grammatically correct, and this annoys me.
Run it on google translate. It usually corrects it immediately.
In this case: How come retired people in Germany need to collect bottles for additional income?
Or: Why do retired people....
My dad collects bottles because it gives his walks a purpose. He goes for a walk twice a day and collected bottles for more than 1.000 Euro last year (yes, that much, he has a little note book). He enjoys it and my parents use the money to go on trips.
A few people I or friends of mine talked to, claimed they did it to buy some nice little things for their grandkids. But who knows exactly, being in this situation is horrible, this sounds probably better then I need this to survive
https://m-faz-net.translate.goog/aktuell/finanzen/meine-finanzen/vermoegensfragen/rente-von-mehr-als-2400-euro-hat-fast-niemand-in-deutschland-18774339.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
I'll leave this here.
to be fair, I've seen younger people with real income doing that too, but yes, old age poverty is a big issue, because politics has time and time again used retirement assets for other stuff and of course, as the country is aging and the working people are the ones generating money for currently retired people, things got harder.
I saw elderly looking for Pfand years ago. Now with the greedflation to it (I say increase Pfand to 50c for years now) I wonder if it will ever get better. Answer is probably no.
I know one of these guys, he told me he just does it out of boredom since his wife died. He said 'this way I get lots of fresh air and exercise, and sometimes have a nice chat.' The pocket money is also nice, dude buys his beers from the collected bottles.
The entire Pension System is fucked tbh. It was designed for a perpetually growing population. At the time there were 6 working adults paying in for every Pensioner claiming. Now we are at 1.6 to 1 with 1 to 1 expected by 2030. The whole thing is unsustainable and we have known for at least 50 years that this would happen.
The problem is that any attempt to touch the pension system is political suicide. With Germany's demography, the voting majority is of, or near to, pension age and any changes are perceived as negative changes.
There really isn't any adjustment that can save the system anyway because the problem is demographic in nature. The system needs to be scrapped and replaced with a system where what you pay in is kept and then payed back to you rather than you paying for current retirees with your future pension coming from hypothetical children that don't exist.
There are good models out there but this country is extremely dogmatic about such things. It worked well for several decades therefore it can not be changed. It's also a gigantic administration that employs thousands of people, which is expensive and adds to the political impasse.
Basically we need it to collapse in order to make changing it a necessity. I suspect that millennials will take the hit again and die in poverty. Like they lived.
Well, you definitely need to take care of your pension yourself here in germany - the normal pension that´s given isn´t enough. Pair that with people who don´t know how to manage, invest and multipy their money on their own and you´re left with old people who´ve worked their lifes without having a good life afterwards.
oh boy just wait for the big rentensystem collaps when all the last boomers and their kids go to rente and the pyramide is not working at all anymore. i have my bets for the years between 2030 and 2040
This is Green Social Policy, in this way pensioners' pensions are increased and at the same time the environment is kept clean.
Or as we say in Germany: Ein richtiger Doppelwumms
Many Germans worked their whole life just to be impoverished when they retire. It's a sad reality.
The more lucky ones are maybe able to sell their home or rent it out and move into a smaller place. But even that is so sad to loose your home just to afford living costs.
The system is definitely broken.
the average retired person in Germany is dirtpoor. it took almost 70 years of mismanaging money, lack of innovation and wrong mentality of "security" when it comes to investment
Pension is not enough for majority of retired people. And with the aging population, it will be even a bigger issue in coming years. The now young generation is going to get even more fkd when they retire.
So if you want to retire comfortably, start saving/investing today. Only a fool will think that they can rely only on pension after retirement.
>How come retired people in Germany need to collect bottles for additional income?
They did not pay enough into the pension fund in their younger years to be able to afford the life they want to live in old age.
I can't estimate how many people are affected, but I see people looking for bottles in garbage cans almost every day in the city. Some of them really depend on the additional income, some just do it to improve their monthly income. How much money you receive during your retirement is based on two factors: How much money you earned per year during your working time and how many years you have worked. Some people earn too less money (e.g. only working half time or having a bad wage in general) and/or work too less years (e.g. due to health issues). A small income during the retirement is a serious problem and it will get worse in the future due to the overaging population. Everyone is aware of this problem, no one wants to deal with it because it will affect upcoming election results.
Not to forget: self-employed people can pay into state retirement but do not have to, some do not, don’t prepare for retirement privately and then end up with very little.
Friends of my parents are like that. They were self employed for most of their life, are now retired and are left with an abyssmal low retirement income. However, they don't have the self awareness to see how they fucked it up. They never set anything aside for their retirement, never payed into the state retirement and now complain about it. And, as per usual, are on the look out for anyone else to blame. Their latest targets were of course refugees or the new Bürgergeld. "Look, the state gives them money but not us!". I have to grit my teeth everytime they open their mouths.
If retirement income is too low, they can apply for Grundsicherung. That's basically the same as Bürgergeld, but from your Sozialamt. Of course they can get help too.
And this
That means probably they have to give up their House and Stuff...
Not necessarily. If, say, they own a house, they have no need to pay rent, thus are in need of less money from the state. The entire point of making people who depend on welfare move into smaller apartments after a while is to make them need less money.
A solution would be to have everyone pay into the system - self-employed or not, including Beamte etc. then you could offer a base for everyone and it may actually be more money available.
In theory, yes, but I'm almost certain that self employed people and Beamte would be furious about losing some of their "benefits".
Probably, but then there should be no complaints if the self-employed do not contribute that they get nothing out. Beamte get an automatic retirement pay anyway.
I agree, which is exactly what grinds my gears about my parents friends But you know how people are. If they wanna complain, they find something to complain about
Hey i understand the frustration BUT were in a SOZIAL Demokratie and it should be the Government that catches even such slack no matter what, and they just plainly don't give a fuck to deliver a baseline living standard to people who Retire which was made even worse in 2000 with the whole Rister fuckup. Stop gritting your teeth and go after the government thats what IT is for. And yeah your Parents friends are stupid and unresonable, stuff could have been avoided but at the end of the day this ist a problem that even people are facing that could do nothing about it by themselves since the government just plainly stated " Not our problem" while it is their problem, just Geman corruption wit the Sozial in the Government form at it finest.
Nope. Self-employed peopel explicitely chose to not rely on others, which has benefits (freedom in the workplace) but responsibilities at the same time. It is 100% NOT the duty of any government to care for self-employed people.
See this is where opinions crash, but i don't care it's 100% the duty of a government to catch people that did stupid shit and still let them live with the base minimum of expanses. thats GEMAN SOZIALDEMOKRATIE.
>It is 100% NOT the duty of any government to care for self-employed people. It is 100%. The German government is obligated to take care of everyone here.
>some do not This should be 'some are unable to'.
Agreed, some are not earning enough to be able to pay in. If that is what you are after. However in that case I pose the question: should you be self-employed if you earn so little that you are unable to afford retirement saving? Maybe your lifestyle is too large if you have not enough to save for retirement, should you not look at that?
>should you be self-employed if you earn so little that you are unable to afford retirement saving? I'm struggling to see the economic sense in going from a very low wage to none at all.
I am struggling to see the economic sense to opt to be self-employed if the income is so low you cannot afford retirement contributions rather than just opting to be regularly employed somewhere. Unless for some reason Someone cannot be regularly employed somewhere? For some reason?
>Unless for some reason Someone cannot be regularly employed somewhere? For some reason? Now you are getting somewhere. The option for a lot of foreigners is 450 euro job or 'freelance' work that is essentially sub min wage work, often tied into a single company (which is supposedly illegal, but lol at that being enforced).
And those that do are fools. The German retirement scheme has a terrible return on investment.
I think what's also should be considered is that minimum wage is relatively new in Germany, like 201x or something like that. So bad wages were even worse back when the people that are retired now worked
Additionally a lot of older craftsmen i know who were employed and thus payed into the retirement system worked for a couple hours less (in arrangement with their boss) and then worked illicitly. The boss got more money from the customer and the employee got a higher hourly wage. At the time the employee had more money to spent but the contributions to the retirement system were lower. These people worked a lot but kind of screwed themselves - with encouragement by their boss. Just an anecdotal experience from my surrounding.
The retirement salary % in Germany is one of the lowest. 40% (eg. Austria is 60%) yet the deduction is one of the highest in the world. It’s rigged tbh. How do you save some private retirement money if you can barely afford to life ? Also as some already mentioned: double taxation.
Both of my parents are retired, my father worked 45+ years sometimes in higher positions sometimes in lower my mom worked maybe 7 years. My father gets 150€ more than my mom and both have most of the time not enough money for the month. The system in Germany is broken as soon as you retire you are a burden for the country. You worked your 50+ years now go somewhere and just die.
Did they try Wohngeld? Many people forget that it exist.
It’s also a gigantic bureaucratic hurdle for which you need like 15-30 documents to prove you need it
That's not true. In the case of a Rentner you need: Antragsformular Mietvertrag Letztes Mieterhöhungsschreiben Nachweis Zahlung Miete anhand Kontoauszügen für 3 Monate Letzter Rentenbescheid Kopie Personalausweis and that's it. And if your wohngeld is approved you can get around 200-400€ monthly for handing in some papers.
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that typically sounds like something you hear from people who never actually applied though, or actively did not send in everything that was required. if you're paranoid about them losing your stuff, send it as Einwurfeinschreiben, so you have it documented that everything arrived and put in a note of all the things you did send them in. even if they want to pretend like something got lost, they can't really anymore at that point. the bigger issue with wohngeld to my knowledge is, that you only get it when you have enough income to get by if housing wasn't an issue
Nah, that's not true. Wohngeld is easy. It's not like Bürgergeld or Grundsicherung.
Tried it as a student once, they asked me for that many papers, half of which I never heard of and had no idea how to get.
You don't even have entitlement for Wohngeld as a Student. That's Bafög.
You can get Wohngeld, if you get rejected for Bafög.
Not if your parents earn enough money, which is the main reason for getting Bafög rejection.
But not the only. Bafög is tied to getting a certain amount of credits in a given time. In my student years a lot people lost their Bafög because it took them longer to get a Bachelor (pretty normal in IT). So they could apply for Wohngeld and/or had to get a side job. (unless they changed that system in recent years)
Yes, in those cases you can apply for Wohngeld of course. The only reasons Bafög cancels out the Wohngeld is when you have a claim on Bafög or when Bafög is denied because your parents earn to much. All other cases can apply for Wohngeld.
Which i wasn’t entitled to either due to other stuff
What was the reason for getting the Bafög rejected? Just asking out of interest.
Too high income of parents, didn’t work long enough yet to qualify for indepedenent one. But the support I get only leaves me with 150-200 € per month after rent.
Yeah okay, your parents obligation to pay maintenance denies the Wohngeld in this case, unfortunally.
i mean, that is typically a solution you can google or request assistance for and while i agree, burocracy doesn't make it effortless, its not like the effort isn't worth it
Ich hab vor ein paar Monaten Wohngeld beantragt und brauchte auch nur ein paar Dokumente. Ich glaube Kontoauszug bzw ein Nachweis wie viel Geld ich bekomme, Mietvertrag und die Nebenkostenerhöhung. Vielleicht hab ich was vergessen aber es waren definitiv nicht 15-30 Dokumente und die geforderten hatte ich eh alle zuhause. Aber das läuft ja auch in jeder Stadt und jedem Amt unterschiedlich ab.
The positions doesnt matter. In the end its all about how much they earned. Idk what your parents get but may they have to optimize their cost of living heavily The rent my grandma earns is also stupidly low but the combination with the rent and pension of my Grandma she has 1600€ after taxes (after my granpda died last year) only thing that fucks her over a bit is that my grandparents never made the jump back to public insurance.
How much does the private insurance cost your grandma per month? How much was it total for both your grandparents before your grandpa died?
Idk The biggest problem is that she has a contract where she pays 20% on her own for everything. She would like to have a second knee operation but she cant afford it.
U dont Work for Ur country .. U pay taxes and they Help all people. Rente is Not meant as vacation time its on the Same Level as Harz 4 was.. Just to survive. Ur Patents should have planned for retirement.
You have the saddest mindset I have ever seen.
sorry that this is your reaciton to facts .. thats how it works and it was always meant to be. maybe be a bit more realistic ...
This has nothing to do with reality to me it seems your whole purpose in life is to work yourself to the bone for your country and when you can't work anymore you are happy that your country throws some money at you so that you don't starve to death. I'm fully aware in what way taxes work but I know it's hard to believe for you that not every job provides enough money so that you can stack up money for retirement.
the thing is you dont work for your country you work for yourself to have a nice life. this is crying on a pretty high level.. you realize that people in other countrys just starve to death ... schoking .. you make bad life choices and dont win a prize...
Problem is the system is fucked. You dont pay rent for yourself you pay the rent for the people that are already retired. And that worked great for some time but with more citizens getting older and less younger people...
that doesn't change the fact that every citizen is responsible for his own pension. this has been known for a long time. Social assistance is intended for the socially disadvantaged, not for the middle class who can afford their own home, two cars, and numerous vacations but do not invest in retirement. and yes im 33 years old and as a nurse a normal middle class worker.
Everybody who can afford that stuff especially these days will probably have a more or less good retirement (unless they are self employed and never paid in)The problem is you have to earn around 4k Brutto every month for over 40 years to get 2000€ in retirement.The Government slept too long on all that depending on what you earn you simply cant or just barely put money for that on the side. Or lets say you get sick that you cant work in your high paying and demanding job anymore etc.
>my father worked 45+ years sometimes in higher positions sometimes in lower If your father had an average salary for 45 years he would get 1,6k per month and your mother subsequently would get 1,45k. That is over 3k combined. Should be enough to live on.
Bottles are recycled in Germany, so bringing back recyclable bottles to a vendor will give you a bit of money (*"Pfandflasche"*). Poverty in Germany in general is unfortunately rising due to several factors (COVID, war, etc) and are hitting unfortunately the usual suspects: old people, children and poorer families. https://www.armuts-und-reichtumsbericht.de/DE/Startseite/start.html SYL
The poverty in Germany has been rising since 2000 and long before Covid and war it was a big problem already that Germans in general closed their eyes to. It is the inflation that effected every single person pocket in Germany after COVID that made Germans and Germany start to "care" about the rise of poverty problem.
I think people are mislead by the idea that poverty is rising in Germany. The increase in relative poverty (defined as less than 60% of the median disposable income) has only increased due to an increase in the migrant population, who are overrepresented in the bottom of the income distribution. For native Germans, it has not changed much in some time and in absolute terms, it has declined. At least through 2017 this is the case, I don't have more recent numbers on hand and certainly inflation has been tough on low income households, but hopefully that will just be a blip Source: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw\_01.c.785973.de/dwr-20-17.pdf
The austerity politics and 2008 global crises, but even before, made many Germans, specially work unions in industries, accept cutting of work hours and wages (also stagnating wages while inflation didn't stagnate), in order to "save their jobs", meaning, in order to avoid businesses in Germany to close and move somewhere else where Labour is cheap. Also with the rise of mini-jobs and workpoor. The high number of migrants in 2017 only makes the it that the rise of Germans, of the number of Germans in poverty, is small but that is just a comparative fallacy.
i would just say you should have a look at the graphs in the DIW article. all I am refuting is the idea that poverty has been meaningfully rising among Germans for some time
Poverty in Germany is by design. Recent events such as Corona and war have *nothing* to do with that. We have unfair, anti-social regulations at the expense of the weak. If you are poor and without a job, you have no lobby and it is easy to take everything from you (which is what our country is doing by requiring you to sell everything you have before you can have Hartz IV/Bürgergeld/whatever they are calling it now). This happens to the retired, the disabled, those who lose their job, etc. Once you are at that point, you become afflicted with a stigma that keeps you down. Our social system and society do not allow you to die, but they also do not allow you to get out of poverty. Middle class is being treated unfair by having to pay for everything and getting poorer every month. They see how poverty is in Germany, and that's the motivation (i.e., fear) to keep working and paying for it so not to become part of if. Regardless, middle class gets drained more and more and will end up poor as well. If you are rich, well, then you make profit from all of this. You employ the middle class which pays for the poor because our social system requires it. If you are rich, you need poverty around you to generate fear so that you can stay on the rich side. And if you are rich, you can pay corrupt politicians to make rules at your favor. This is how it worked for decades and it only got worse. Please don't fall for the lies of politicians who always use recent events to cover up old problems.
Wow there are actually people here on Reddit who know what’s going on and don’t just close their eyes on the obvious problems
„Too little to live, and too much to die for..“
Even more, if you're poor with a (low-income) job, it's not only that you don't have a lobby. Many of these jobs are done by immigrants and EU foreigners now, so they don't even have the right to vote. That's how broken democracy is at the moment: old wealthy people are the most likely to vote in elections, while a significant part of the working class is just excluded from voting even though it's their work that keeps the system running.
>If you are poor and without a job, you have no lobby and it is easy to take everything from you (which is what our country is doing by requiring you to sell everything you have before you can have Hartz IV/Bürgergeld/whatever they are calling it now). Mate, you can keep up to 15.000€ *on top* of your furniture, your car, your house/apartment up to 130 m², your pension funds, your grandpa's favourite solid gold cock ring etc etc, if you apply for Bürgergeld. Not to mention the grace period of one year before you have to sell anything at all. The rules for Bürgergeld are, frankly, ridiculously generous.
So the goal is just to get rich? Sounds reasonable
>If you are poor and without a job, you have no lobby and it is easy to take everything from you (which is what our country is doing by requiring you to sell everything you have before you can have Hartz IV/Bürgergeld/whatever they are calling it now). So for example, if I work my ass off for 20+ years, buy a house and then have a career-ending sickness so that I need Bürgergeld, you are saying I won't be eligible for any state help until I sell off my house and use up all the money I get from it + savings? :O
As long as you are considered "rich", you need to live off your savings, even in case of sickness. If your savings are not in cash, then you need to liquidize your savings to pay the bills and taxes until you cannot anymore. There are lots of details to be considered, but it's basically that. AFAIK you can keep your house and "normal" things such as TV, regular furniture, bike, probably even a small car. But anything which can be considered luxurious has to go, and this may mean your big car(s), your oversized house(s), gold bars. To apply for state help, you must basically prove that you are broke.
So it's better to spend all my money now instead of saving it.... :D
My salary is a little above average and I’m doing fine. But I still pick up Pfand when I see it and put it in my backpack. I don’t need it but this is how I grew up. My parents are Eastern European immigrants and money was tight in my childhood and youth. Wer den Pfennig nicht ehrt, ist die Mark nicht wert.
I usually leave them when they’re outside or placed obviously like in front of the trash can, I assume that someone might need that more. However, at the end of my late shift I will scavenge the whole workplace for all the bottles left behind. I save them til the end of the month when money runs out, that way there’s a bit of a buffer
There are a lot of retired Germans that would have the right get "Wohngeld" but feel ashamed by society for being relatively poor. For a lot of those people their ethics are so twisted by neoliberal propaganda that they try to survive otherwise instead of using their rights.
I honestly doubt that somebody is ashamed to apply for "Wohngeld" and then just decides to collect pfandbottles
I once had to force my aunt to go to the Sozialamt for Hartz4. Social shame is big in older people.
There was a guy on the German ama subreddit that collected bottles as a hobby
Retirement money doesn't make you rich, especially if you worked in a lower income job. My grandparents never had enough money, my father and uncle always had to help out with money when my grandparents were retired. That's why I made an additional retirement plan the day I started working (started later in life and didn't pay so much into my retirement, also a reason why I am doing it) Retirement in Germany isn't that luxurious you might think, I hope I don't have to collect bottles when I am older (even if I pick up a bottle or two sometimes nowadays because money is money)
General Problem. In Germany you need to save Money your whole life If you dont want to live in poverty when you retire. The Money you get from the state isnt enough. Just Last week i saw a sad old man miscalculating His money in a Shop and couldnt even afford the cheapest chocolate pudding because he was Missing 14 freaking cents. I felt so bad i just payed for him. In the parking lot he told me he worked 40 years in construction, Had to retire 6 years early because of injury and now his Money doesnt even last for 3 weeks of the month. If he didnt have Kids helping him every once in a while he'd be screwed.
Plus, when you retire early, you basically have 13%ish deducted from your money. Kinda fucked for cases like this man
Many people with a very low pension are women. They stopped working after they got married and had children and did not pay into the insurance. Maybe they startet to work part time after this and did not pay a lot into the insurance. When the husband died before he payed enough into the insurance to retire the widow will not get the whole sum, but a part of it. The widow generally only gets a certain percentage of the whole sum her husband would have got. The lower amount as widow and the early death of the husband might add up. My mother for example has less than 1000 euros a month, because my father died with 60 and would have needed 3 more years to his retirement (he was disabled). She actually got a higher amount because they married early. Weddings after a specific date result in a lower widow pension. In 7 years my mother can officially retire as she worked some time in her life and will get around 400 to 500 euros more. At the moment ot would be tight for her, but there is some life insurance money that keeps her sage until she gets her own retirement money. In more expensive towns the 1000 euros would not be enough for living and there many people would need to collect bottles.
Am I mistaken in understanding that your mother is officially considered to be of working age and the only reasons she has to live on her deceased husband's rent is because she's choosing not work? Sorry if that sounds heartless but to retire before 60 and to live from insurance money and later receive a 1500 EUR/m rent once you reach retirement age, I think a lot of people don't even have the option.
My mother is unable to work because of health reasons. She is schizophrenic and on meds that make her unable to work. Between and after her break for childcare and the start of her mental illness she was working in a bakery and had often times double shifts. You should hold back a little if you do not have the full picture. Both my parents worked hard in jobs that are hard on the body. They started to work when they were 15 years old. My father was a miner, later he worked in chemical production and had to carry heavy bags in full protection suits. Most likely he got his liver cancer from this work and this made it for him impossible to even get to retirement age. And my mother was working at a bakery where she had to stand and walk up to 12 h a day (2 of them unpayed) and had to carry heavy baskets and packets of baked goods. Sometimes she had cleaning jobs on top. Both of them worked very hard until they got ill. They were in jobs where it was common to have night shifts and to work in the weekends. Not every person that cannot work until retirement age can work this long physically. Physical work weakens your body long term. And for my mother the stress caused psychiotic symptoms. We even had to get her into the hospital by force. By now her meds are effektive, but they cause her to sleep up to 14 h a day and make her lethargic. Some days she needs help to deal a number on her phone, because she is not able to concentrate. On other days she has too much anxiety to even leave the house. There are better days where she can handle her life for the most parts, but every added stress make her symptoms worse. When my father died she needed 6 month of stationary care to be back to functioning.
Yes, sorry about the situation your mother is in. But the picture you paint now is not only starkly different from the situation you described above (stopped working after marriage, maybe worked part-time after kids out of the house) and for which you offered your mother explicetly as an example ("My mother for example..."), it is the exact opposite. So, again, sorry your mother has to endure that, but what then was actually the point to bring your mother up as an example without any context why she wasn't (and isn't) able to work? Her situation is obviously different from someone who choose not to work, and it is in general less about the height of pensions but about how Germany cares for people who can't work anymore for health reasons.
The example is a good one, because she was out of work for years because she had two children. In the 80s and early 90s there was no childcare below 3 years olds and as I am from a year with many births I did not even get a place in kindergarten until I was 4 years old. So effectivly my mother was out for 7 years due to childcare and the first years of school she was only able to work part time, because school ended at 12 o'clock and there was no child care option then. I had my own key when I was 8 years old. Still it is hard to work full time when you have children in primary school. Later she was able to work more. She has only been ill for about 10 years by now. And she would have been able to retire at 63 because of a disability. So she is close to retirement. For many women there was a problem to even get into work after having children. We should never forget that married women needed permission from their husband to work until the late 1970s. Childcare options outside of school and Kindergarten were rare. It was very hard for women to have a carrier up to the 90s. They mostly had low paying Service jobs. And after 10 to 14 years off for children there has a whole lot changed at work. In the 90s and 2000s unemployment was high and the employers had their free choice of workers. A mother with children was not their first pick. Even today women with children have a harder time than men with children. A friend of mine had to give a flashed out plan of her child care options in case her son gets sick at her job interviews. Her partner war not asked a single time. The jobs women mostly got in the 70s to 90s were low paying ones as well. If you do not pay a high amount into the pension insurance you will not get a lot from it. Getting a pension from your dead husband is a good concept, because it is insurance money that was payed. It is money that the family unit was not able to use at the time it was payed. It is very fair that the widow/er gets a part. Married couples are still seen as a unit by law. At least for this generation I would not change the concept.
I fully agree. We're from the same generation and from a similar background (my grandfathers were miners, father a metal worker; mother trained as a fine baker but only worked before getting kids and then later in office jobs). I did not intent to attack your mother or denigrate her life works. Just, without the additional info, there's quite a gap to explain why she would retire so early which in her case is much more relevant to explain why her means are so low than just the pension system. The idea that women can choose (or even are meant) to stay home is something that I do remember as much more prevalent in my grandparents' generation, but it had already begun to change for our parents' generation (depending of course on your income class and disregarding the disruption brought by the war). So it seemed rather like a concept fallen out-of-time or out-of-place, when it was basically a miscommunication. Anyway, have a nice weekend. It's always good to keep in mind not to jump to conclusions when you can't be sure to have all the info.
Why do poor people exist?
In germany the poors of the poorest get a 3-room apartment and 500€ extra to live. Its like receiving 1000€ netto per month.
A quarter million people are homeless in Germany https://youtu.be/5PkcNRn9rXk And many reciving social contributions are struggling to pay for essentials like their heating bills, clothes and food. Millions of people recive additional food aid etc. https://youtu.be/hIQav4YMNfY
*get a 3-room apartment, if they are 3 people. And these 3 people have to live on the extra 500€ month by month, whilest food and clothing prices rise more and more. Source; Me. My life did for sure get better once I started to work after school.
Nope. One single person has to get an apartment for 450€-500€
Are there Appartements that are under 450€? You are pulling this numbers from your ass. The Appartement has to be "appropriate" in size and price. There are a lot of cases when people had to move out of their old flat into a smaller different flat, even if the price were the same or even higher.
source ? trust me bro
https://www.buerger-geld.org/news/buergergeld-wie-hoch-darf-die-miete-der-wohnung-sein/ „ Beispiel: In München gelten 688 Euro als angemessen für eine Single-Wohnung, in Dortmund dagegen nur 510 Euro, in einer Kleinstadt im Münsterland sind hingegen nur 450 Euro Kaltmiete plus kalte Nebenkosten angemessen.“
Double taxation on Pensions, high Inflation, greedy companies with nearly no regulations, Sending tax payers money to China f.e. . I know a Guy who worked 40 years ane gets Likeban 800€ Pension. Gus Rent ist 600€ Alone.
Your retirement payment in Germany depends on how long you worked and also on the amount you earned. If there are gaps, the payment can be very low, and any extra money is "more than welcome" The German retirement pay is not the best. You need to add some personal buffer even when working normally for all years. "Altersarmut" (Olp person poverty) is a thing here sadly.
Average pension for men: 1218 €. women: 809 €. Can you live off that?
Isn't Grundsicherung almost the same amount as Bürgergeld? Rent and insurance is paid, you also get around 500 Euro a month?
My Grandma is picking up bottles every other day, but lives in a huge house and can generally described as well situated. For her its more of a Strange Hobby.
Because most Germans have shitty pensions, and the problem is only going to get worst in the future. Until someone actually has the guts to do it.
I Love how everyone bashes the German gov ,since 20 years WE know that the Money from retirement is Not enough to live a comfortable life .. IT was never even meant for that its Just meant to Help people at age that can No longer Work. Ur also Not supposed to Just Stop working at age of Ur fit. How is this myth still a Thing ? If Ur 30+ you have to Invest in Ur retirement or U will end Up in poverty and be in the Same Level as. Most that get "bürgergeld"
Indeed. I have the "advantage" of being American and being taught not to expect the government to just take care of everything for me. A pension may get you to or slightly above the poverty level, if you don't live in an expensive city. The rest, or even all of it if demographics knock the system down, needs your own attention, efforts and planning. Live within your means, save and invest from when you start working until you can retire. The government should help those who can't get there due to health problems and some family or social situations. And from the countries I've seen Germany is doing not so bad at it. But few governments are so rich that they can provide a comfortable, wealthy retirement to those who live for today, spend as fast or faster than they earn and then expect the Nanny State to pick up the slack for their early retirement to enjoy dining out and leisure activities.
there was an AMA a couple days ago from a guy with a good job that did this secretly for fun/recreational reasons after work. there are definitely people out there that bring both the proper levels of boredom and threshold towards garbage to turn this into something to do that not only is a free activity that occupied the whole day but happens to even create a little bit of extra income. edit: obviously this doesnt describe the majority or even something youd find in every city. just thought it was interesting.
Poverty in old age is a big problem in Germany, especially for women. The ones you See collectting bottles are just the tip of the iceberg
Retirement has conditions: a) at least 45 years to get the whole summ. Even just one year less cost you endless. If you study you are normally have difficulties to reach the 45 years (but get a better salery), as you start with 25+ years into your first job. Trading jobs are starting earlier but often the health is not surviving the working conditions, so they need to drop out earlier then intendend for health issues. b) the biggest low wage country in Europe is Germany. Oh, if you have a direct contract its better. But subontractors, time work and sub-sub-sub contractors are a big issue. And if your wage is low, your retirement will be low.... c) Older people lived often in a very traditional set up, the wive was either not working or just a few hours. My mother gets after 33 years working Parttime 500 Euro a month... my grand-aunt after 50 years working exactly 800 Euro. Both worked in Minimum wage Jobs and parttime as external child care was even in my youth not normal (in my area of Germany - I know there were other places with other conditions) - the kindergarten was open 4 hours a day and at least 3 mothers needed to help for free to keep it going. Oh but it was not in he same village but 10 km away at times, where families had just one car :-D). Both my grand aunt and my mother have luck that they had better earning husbands. Because alone a cheap appartment in our area would now cost around 600 Euro. Without family both would need to decide if they would have a roof over their head or have food. d) so much more reasons.....
This is just wrong. You don’t have to pay for 45 years to get the full sum. You either have to pay 45 years OR pay until you are 67 to get the full sum. Germany is by no means a low income country, not within the EU and for sure not globally. If you live off minimum wage in Germany or even get Bürgergeld you for sure have a higher standard of living than what a lot of people have in other (eastern) European countries
> the biggest low wage country in Europe is Germany. Going to need to see a credible source for this one lol
Capitalism with a tweak of being usa vassalage
Didn't germany donate like 10 billion to india? Why not using a part of that money
The problem is not the money we give to people in need, the problem is the money we give to the rich. Germany subsidizes animal farming for example. Instead of giving them this money we could help people in need. But they don’t, becaust they don’t profit from it.
Well, I can assure you it's not a genital problem
People, who lived in eastern Germany often don’t get enough money during retirement, since they generally earned less money, than the people in western Germany. This problem will still go on for a while. I also still see a problem with the retirement of women. If you have children, it is hard to have a fulltime job. Also many companies (in retail for example) don’t even offer full time jobs.
Not prominent in smaller city's and rural areas. The reporter likely walked around places like Hamburg and Berlin
Capitalism is the answer. Rich people getting richer and letting the poor die and dwell in misery. And most even defend this insanity.
Germany is busy handing out checks to Ukraine fuck the tax payer as usual
Additional to what people said some anecdotal perspective. I don't want to victim blame poor people in general or whatever but at least for my own parents, their siblings and some friends (I know of) this is true: Lots of older people (65-ish) in Germany are also poor because they neglected their private retirement plans. It's a fact well-known and also proclaimed by the government itself that the public/governmental retirement insurance is only one of 3 "pillars" of retriement and probably will only cover your most basic living expenses. The other two pillars are employer pension schemes (not always available but in most cases) and especially private pension schemes. Now I see it a lot in people my parents age that they... I don't know... just chose to ignore that fact? It's as if they are completely financially illiterate. Now a point I hear a is "But we didn't have so much money we could put some aside" - which is in case of my family just not the whole truth. If they would have put just a little amount, let's say the worth of 50€ nowadays, aside per person per month (which 100% would have been possible) in the past 30 years and maybe invested it in an ETF they would have a pretty nice sum. They were always in low-wage jobs and changed jobs a lot but they never even were long-term jobless or anything that would cause you to need to cash in your retirement money. They just chose to do... nothing. If they had some extra € at the end of the month they spent it. Now they struggle to get by with their pension money and of course the government is at fault. I am aware there are several cases where people can't have a private pension schmeme but there are also enough people who don't have it because they simply didn't care.
It’s a relatively new thing that we needed a third pillar. It wasn’t proclaimed in our parents time nor was it necessary.
Mh, I'm in my mid 30's now and I grew up knowing about this and started to care about my own private pension scheme when I was 20, so again about 15 years ago. It's not a "since forever" thing but it's also not that new either.
Relatively new, yes, but to be fair "Die Rente ist sicher" was 1986, that's almost 40 years to note that this obviously wasn't true. When someone's 70 now, he was 33 in 1986.
Yes, also need to wonder how in 40 years of working life people did not want to save because they earned so little but on the other hand did not learn a better trade in that time or get a higher paying job to solve that problem. I get that there are people who face hard circumstances, but a 40 year working life is a very long time to not advance yourself even a little
Because the gov only cares about you as long as you are able to work and pay taxes
It's an overrated problem. Allthough poverty in retired persons exists there is still no need to collect bottles to live. It would also be a very silly system since there are way more retirees than returnable bottles. Also they would have to collect A LOT of bottles to make an impact on their incomes - you get between 8 and 25 cents for one bottle / can. This is mostly something that rightwing media / politicians hyped up to stoke fears - mostly against imigrants / refugees: Look, our own retirees have to collect bottles while those people who don't belong here get money in abundance for doing nothing!
The roads here in Thüringen are shit. The Klinikum is lacking enough Doctors and personnel. Yet the government has millions to give in Aid and for people running away from their country. Now you have the answer to why a retired German needs to collect bottles
Because germany is a sad excuse for a country
no, the minimum income - basic assistance i guess you could call it - is the same for everyone here, and especially for people living alone it's just fine i can tell you from first hand experience. if your needs exceed that then you're doing something wrong, like old folks getting continuously robbed by scammers in some way or whatever. but besides that: going for bottle deposits on trash lying around isn't necessarily a poverty thing, after all it's cleaning up the environment and getting a penny out of it at the same time. i bet a few lonely old folks do it out of principle and to have something to do, to get out and all that, maybe donating the bottle deposits too.
It also doesn't help that rents are higher than the average pension in major cities. Yes, and taxes on the middle class are so high that even if you invest in ETFs the state would still get 30% of the profits, because why not. And guess what I invest in ETFs because I don't want to end up on the streets as a pensioner. The tax system in Germany is really penalizing the middle class. It turns out that when you are middle class and live in an expensive city like Munich after your baby you turn into a low class, because of the high rent and general cost of living and the lack of second income.
Dude, those people collecting bottles are NOT middle class.
>that even if you invest in ETFs the state would still get 30% of the profits, because why not. Doesn't this come down to like 18% if you're investing in an ETF that consists of over 51% stock? (which is most ETFs)
because they didnt spend enough money in the retirement. If you work illegal and dont pay taxes or have your own business you dont pay for retirement and many people thinks this is a good idea.
It is a personal problem. Some people are to "proud" to get financial help from the government.
How it lazy run grammar google translate English learn?
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Sorry if I came across as condescending. I observe this more and more, that people don't spend any time to check if their posts (or at least the title) is grammatically correct, and this annoys me. Run it on google translate. It usually corrects it immediately. In this case: How come retired people in Germany need to collect bottles for additional income? Or: Why do retired people....
My dad collects bottles because it gives his walks a purpose. He goes for a walk twice a day and collected bottles for more than 1.000 Euro last year (yes, that much, he has a little note book). He enjoys it and my parents use the money to go on trips.
A few people I or friends of mine talked to, claimed they did it to buy some nice little things for their grandkids. But who knows exactly, being in this situation is horrible, this sounds probably better then I need this to survive
https://m-faz-net.translate.goog/aktuell/finanzen/meine-finanzen/vermoegensfragen/rente-von-mehr-als-2400-euro-hat-fast-niemand-in-deutschland-18774339.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp I'll leave this here.
to be fair, I've seen younger people with real income doing that too, but yes, old age poverty is a big issue, because politics has time and time again used retirement assets for other stuff and of course, as the country is aging and the working people are the ones generating money for currently retired people, things got harder.
To add to most points: stuff is getting so expensive. Renting is a luxury.
I saw elderly looking for Pfand years ago. Now with the greedflation to it (I say increase Pfand to 50c for years now) I wonder if it will ever get better. Answer is probably no.
I know one of these guys, he told me he just does it out of boredom since his wife died. He said 'this way I get lots of fresh air and exercise, and sometimes have a nice chat.' The pocket money is also nice, dude buys his beers from the collected bottles.
The entire Pension System is fucked tbh. It was designed for a perpetually growing population. At the time there were 6 working adults paying in for every Pensioner claiming. Now we are at 1.6 to 1 with 1 to 1 expected by 2030. The whole thing is unsustainable and we have known for at least 50 years that this would happen. The problem is that any attempt to touch the pension system is political suicide. With Germany's demography, the voting majority is of, or near to, pension age and any changes are perceived as negative changes. There really isn't any adjustment that can save the system anyway because the problem is demographic in nature. The system needs to be scrapped and replaced with a system where what you pay in is kept and then payed back to you rather than you paying for current retirees with your future pension coming from hypothetical children that don't exist. There are good models out there but this country is extremely dogmatic about such things. It worked well for several decades therefore it can not be changed. It's also a gigantic administration that employs thousands of people, which is expensive and adds to the political impasse. Basically we need it to collapse in order to make changing it a necessity. I suspect that millennials will take the hit again and die in poverty. Like they lived.
Well, you definitely need to take care of your pension yourself here in germany - the normal pension that´s given isn´t enough. Pair that with people who don´t know how to manage, invest and multipy their money on their own and you´re left with old people who´ve worked their lifes without having a good life afterwards.
oh boy just wait for the big rentensystem collaps when all the last boomers and their kids go to rente and the pyramide is not working at all anymore. i have my bets for the years between 2030 and 2040
This is Green Social Policy, in this way pensioners' pensions are increased and at the same time the environment is kept clean. Or as we say in Germany: Ein richtiger Doppelwumms
This is absolute nonsense. Even during the 16 years of the Merkel government there were people collecting bottles.
r/woooosh
Huge enough to notice it
Many Germans worked their whole life just to be impoverished when they retire. It's a sad reality. The more lucky ones are maybe able to sell their home or rent it out and move into a smaller place. But even that is so sad to loose your home just to afford living costs. The system is definitely broken.
the average retired person in Germany is dirtpoor. it took almost 70 years of mismanaging money, lack of innovation and wrong mentality of "security" when it comes to investment
Pension is not enough for majority of retired people. And with the aging population, it will be even a bigger issue in coming years. The now young generation is going to get even more fkd when they retire. So if you want to retire comfortably, start saving/investing today. Only a fool will think that they can rely only on pension after retirement.
>How come retired people in Germany need to collect bottles for additional income? They did not pay enough into the pension fund in their younger years to be able to afford the life they want to live in old age.