My wife and I are retired teachers, living on a fixed income. We work two days a week so that we can pay our property tax (which doubled), subsidize oil companies while paying for heat and gasoline, health insurance, home insurance, car insurance, plus the basic necessities.

We just had our taxes done and because the tax tables are set up for our part-time job as our only source of income, we ended up paying close to $6,000 to the state and federal governments.

We were told that, as retirees, we could earn as much money as we wanted. What wasn’t said is that a huge portion of that money is taxed highly by both governments.

In essence, the message for retired people is don’t be a productive member of society. Scrape by on retirement funds and hope you can survive for a year or two before you freeze or die of depression due to lack of hope.

Having to pay $6,000 to governments that waste our money was not a pleasant experience.

I would caution young working people to do some research before deciding on a retirement plan. And I hope other retirees don’t have to learn the lesson the hard way, as we did.

Ben Franklin was right, the only thing you can be sure of is more taxes and dying. Maybe the process is expedited, with the former ensuring the latter.

George A. Ferguson, Sabattus