One of the sad stories in America is the number of elderly that have to work well past retirement age just to make ends meet and put food on their table. Some older people love it because it keeps them active, but others work because they have no other choice.
Nola Carpenter, 81, works out of necessity.
She has been working at Walmart for 20 years just so she can afford to pay her mortgage.
Devan Bonagura, 19, saw Nola looking tired in the break room of the store. He posted a video to his TikTok of Carpenter with this message, “Life shouldn’t be this hard…” And he added a sad face emoji.
In the video, Carpenter is sitting at a small table looking down and she appears to be exhausted. A lot of people felt the way that Bonagura did and he was encouraged to start a GoFundMe account.
The retirement age in the United States is 66 or 66. That is when you can collect Social Security benefits if you were born in or after 1960. Early retirement can start at 62 for reduced benefits. The amount you may get is decided by how many years you worked, the average amount expected is under $2,000 a month.
That amount is not enough to live off of alone, and many people fall way below that amount. When you factor in Medicare premiums and tax withholdings, you have little left for basic needs.
Many over 67 have to keep working because they don’t have adequate savings and the cost of living continues to rise.
Bonagura’s GoFundMe account raised $110,000 for Nola in just 24 hours. When Bonagura went to give the money to Carpenter, she was grateful for the help but explained she would still need to work until the other $60,000 of her mortgage was paid off.
The public immediately raised that amount for a total of just under $190,000.
It did not turn out so well for Bonagura, he’s currently suspended with pay due to his filming at the store and posting it to TikTok. He wasn’t a Walmart employee but works for a cellphone carrier that operated sales inside the store.
