Com/156 Week 2 Writing Assingment

For my written essay the topic of choice I have picked is, “In the United States, we do not need to plan for retirement. Social Security will cover our needs when we are retired.” My main point of view on this subject will be the need of a retirement plan versus just receiving Social Security benefits when it comes time to retire. Mainly I want to point out the argument of why people should not just depend on Social Security benefits alone when they are of retirement age. I want to be able to point out without a reason of doubt as to why the appropriate time to plan for a fulfilling retirement, would be as soon as possible. There should not be a dictated age to plan for retirement and that there is no such thing as to young of an age to plan. In fact retirement should be thought about, planned (with more than one plan), and the plan set in motion years before retirement actually approaches. This can be done by picking an option(s) out of a series of open opportunities and an explanation as to why. Other key points I would like to point out to my audience are for people to take into consideration is the percentage of the population and how much it has grown over the years. This will make the percentage of people who are of retiring age also increase. The last key point I would like to make would be about the decline in Social Security benefits over the past recent years and how it is set on a marginal scale based on the average amount of living expenses. This could vary from place to place as no one state is the same as another, all of the states very in living expenses. That means if a person is to rely solely on Social Security benefits without a back-up retirement plan, they should plan where they would like to live according to their own research of living expenses from place to place. An accomplishment I would like to succeed in fulfilling will be to have a provocative and informal discussion which will point out both sides to the argument I am intending to make, but to mostly involve my audience in my own personal point of view of not fully depending on Social Security benefits when they retire. I would like to sway my audience by using my own personal experience of collecting Social Security benefits and how it is almost impossible to survive off of that income alone. Besides this, I would like to submerse myself in planning ahead for my own retirement by looking at options that are open to me.
My academic audience is mostly my own peers and my instructor. Knowing as much about my audience as possible can help me when writing my essay because I can be able to make more of an impact upon them when I involve personal aspects of their lives such as age, gender, ethnic background, and work/education experience. The type of audience I will be involving can be beneficial to my written persuasive essay because my peers come from all different walks of life. Their job and education experience has a vast range, along with their age, beliefs, and ethnic backgrounds. I am not subjected to a certain class or type of personality. What I have to talk about will eventually effect every single person in their personal lives at one time or another.