To the editor:

The recent Opinion column from Veronique De Rugy is problematic with the conclusions guiding younger generation in its assumptions that the Baby Boomers are taking excessive payouts from Social Security. Payments are not excessive by my calculations based on what I’ve actually put into the system during my 58 years of contributions. I will not give specific data amounts but rather will estimate how long I must live after starting withdrawing monthly to exhaust the exact amount that was paid into an SSA account on my behalf.

It would take 86 years to exhaust the fund at my current payment monthly if the value of the fund increased 4% yearly on monies deposited over 58 years working if investments were made identical to the amounts paid into SSA during my work life.

If I hid the fund under my bed it with no interest increase it would take 9.6 years. (Dumb idea, but it does coincide with my life expectancy of 10 years and also what the government did.)

So the problem is two fold and not from excessive payments to older generations. The government used the money to pay for excessive spending to cover ever increasing deficits. They didn’t invest the money like a typical rational person would do.

Spending an hour adding up input and and outflow on an actual account was helpful to me to understand where the problem is and is not. I suggest others do the same. America’s multi-trillion dollar deficit is due to congressional mismanagement and not due to excessive expenditures by any specific generation.

Terry Riordan,

Lawrence