The great thing about NPR is that it can get the blood flowing with
the examples it uses. This morning was a story on how Galveston and
other cities in Texas opted out of Social Security and gave its
employees personal accounts. One of the women interviewed did something
she would not be able to do without the personal control over money the
new system allowed. She took $40,000 from her account to pay for her
husband’s heart transplant. “Which, at the time, she thought was a good
thing,” the reporter said. Now that she’s retired, however, she’s done
the math and figured out that she would get $500 more a month with
Social Security and she wishes she had that money. “Without my pension,
I’d have to live on $908 a month.” (no transcript, working from memory)
We
can only conclude that she thinks that taking money out of her
retirement account should not actually diminish her retirement account
or she thinks saving her husband’s life was a bad decision.
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UPDATE: Audio now available online. Story of Evelyn Robison (phonetic) starts at 3:00, but the whole report is worth a listen.
