Retirement: Dream on

Home Brooklyn Life Retirement: Dream on

Andre Holmberg wants to retire. He just can’t afford it.

Holmberg, 62, is a city government physician reviewer. A physician who got his degree from the University of the West Indies, Holmberg supervises doctors who make house calls to the elderly and disabled. He has been working for the city for 20 years but as a consultant does not have a pension.

“I really can’t see anyway I could retire and not have to work,” he says, smoking a cigarette on a lunch break. “I’ll probably have to work forever.”

Holmberg, who commutes from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania to Brooklyn each work day, was saving for retirement. But an unexpected event depleted his small savings. His stepson died in a car accident on Canal Street in lower Manhattan. Holmberg and his wife, Stella, a retired nurse, scrambled for money to pay for the funeral.

“I was less prepared for it,” he says of the recession. “It’s taking much longer for me to get out of this.”

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