i have been unemployed for about 28 weeks and my unemployment coverage in california ran out recently. now i have no income but all the same bills, for which the maximum unemployment benefit i was receiving was not cutting the mustard to begin with. what am i to do?
i am doing the only thing i can do now. i am liquidating my retirement account. in doing so i will suffer maximum penalty taxes for early withdrawal.
how is it that when the world's banking industry was on the brink of collapse because of rampant gambling on wall street in the form of credit default swaps and bad mortgages clustered together into unrecognizable forms and sold helter skelter all over the globe, my retirement account was responsible and bore the burden of saving it? how is that in the last five and one-half years my retirement account has not made one cent but rather has suffered a net loss? should i have stuffed the money under my mattress?
so as i signed the papers yesterday to liquidate the account in order to sustain me and my five and seven-year-old children for who knows how much longer, (until i find a job,) i had to set aside the tax penalties up front so i do not have the irs on my case at the end of the year. that is when the irony struck me.
i saved that money over the last 15 years in the workforce and without having any choice in the matter it was essentially raided in 2007 and on an ongoing basis since then. the banks, by the way, have not paid any penalties. rather they have paid small fractions of what they should owe not to me but back to the federal government.
i am okay with that small amount of money going to the government but i am not okay with my being penalized now that i need the money. it is beyond regrettable that i need the money to begin with. taxing me extra on it is adding insult to injury.
in the age of "too big to fail," i feel like i should be "too small to pinch." doesn't that seem reasonable? we'll see if i can find a sponsor for this idea in the coming weeks.
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