Personal Finance and Investing

My younger brother died when he was 44 years old. Never had a chance to "retire".

I also had a fine set of cousins, all men, and they were born one after the next 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952.

All four of my cousins are also dead. I know that three of them died of cancer (same thing which took my baby brother). As for the other two, I'm not sure why they died but none of them lived to collect a cent of the money they paid into various systems throughout their lives best I know.

If you have situations like this in your immediate family (close cousins, siblings, etc.) dying way before their time, then yes, by all means take what you can get when you can get it!

It could well be some form of genetic cancer that runs in my family, I don't know. It is very difficult to know when you have one parent with a closeted family history and another one which was adopted in 1925 (or was in really 1928?). Both of my parents have been gone for well over 10 years now. They both lived to be about 75 years of age and yes, I miss them terribly still.