Boomers' Billion-Dollar Bonanza: The Unseen Hoarding Behind Millennial Struggles

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not only were mortgage rates extremely low until recently, some of us boomers were at home buying age when mortgages were at 18%. I remember being ecstatic to refinance at 7%.

Was going to post the same!

I think the article has so many flaws it’s maddening.
How many homeowner Boomers actually have mortgages? Many paid off their homes in the late 90s and eat 2000s.

What about GenX? No one ever talks about us? We’re the ones who will inherit the Boomer $$$ - millennials and GenZ are the boomer’s grandchildren.

That wealth may have gone to Boomers for a few decades, but a lot of it will not be transferred to heirs. It will be consumed by healthcare and nursing homes.

Finally, Boomers may have a lot of equity in their homes, but as a generation they are more likely to have a pension than a 401k and many didn’t save much because they thought SS and Medicare would cover them.

[Anonymous]

What do you suggest op? Attesputa?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not only were mortgage rates extremely low until recently, some of us boomers were at home buying age when mortgages were at 18%. I remember being ecstatic to refinance at 7%.

Was going to post the same!

I think the article has so many flaws it’s maddening.
How many homeowner Boomers actually have mortgages? Many paid off their homes in the late 90s and eat 2000s.

What about GenX? No one ever talks about us? We’re the ones who will inherit the Boomer $$$ - millennials and GenZ are the boomer’s grandchildren.

That wealth may have gone to Boomers for a few decades, but a lot of it will not be transferred to heirs. It will be consumed by healthcare and nursing homes.

Finally, Boomers may have a lot of equity in their homes, but as a generation they are more likely to have a pension than a 401k and many didn’t save much because they thought SS and Medicare would cover them.

This whole stereotyping people by using slang like Gen X or boomer is kind of dumb. (Not you pp).

A portion of Boomers were born in the early 1960s. A portion of Gen X were born in the late 1960s. Siblings all born in the 1960s are not from different generations.

The older “boomers” grew up with turmoil. Kennedy murdered, MLK murdered, civil rights fighting, riots were common, 50,000 of them dead in Vietnam. People don’t dictate what’s going on during their time growing up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the person above: where I live, there are a lot of older boomer women who have literally never worked a day in their lives. they spend their days going to bible studies and out to eat, swimming at the y and bragging about their grandchildren. I had never read an obituary before for someone who had never worked. They are strange.

So yes, I do think it's wrong that the government provides free healthcare to women who have never worked a day in their lives, while children go without. I don't buy the argument that everything every boomer has is because they earned it, and that they have earned so much more than the rest of us.

and suggesting that since they suffered we should suffer to sounds a bit like those people that try to justify fraternity hazings. Just make the system better. don't think that because you put up with it, we should put up with it too.

How is that different from wealthy Millennial women who don't work because their husbands make a great deal of money. They do exist all across the affluent spectrum of DC.

I must say your post reeks of jealousy. I can read between the lines. Which is funny given that swimming at the Y and going to Bible studies is very middle class, not affluent. And I'm sure there's a regional factor at play, especially if in the South.

And when you say you have never read an obituary before of someone who'd never worked, I find it surprising given it was the *norm* for middle class women not to work until the 70s and even in my 80s-90s childhood, a good percentage, typically around 25% if not a bit more, of married women with children didn't work.

+1
None of the college educated moms I knew growing up worked until they got divorced.

If you look into the history of social security, when it was enacted there were a lot of destitute elderly women who basically relied on their families for support. Men used to die much earlier and women couldn't work (my grandma was fired from being an accountant in the 1950s when she got pregnant and never again could get hired once they knew she was married and had kids).

But now??? I'm angry that women who don't work are eligible for half their husband's social security. I understand that they'll get his SS when he dies, but why should they get anything that they didn't put into. Working 40 quarters isn't much. If you didn't need money to survive on when you were working age, why should you need more when you're older?

I think you don't understand what the social contract was in the near past. I grew up in a small town, and no woman I knew who had no children or grown children worked. I can think of two of these women who taught for a year because the school system found it self suddenly was caught short and hired them to fill in the gap. But that is it.

Basically, women took care of the home and men worked outside the home. In our particular small, town, this applied across all classes--no hired help from the less well off, for example. It was just not a thing.

OK but it's not a thing now. SAHMs are making the choice to stay home. It's very valid, but I don't think everyone else should fund their SS. If you don't need money to work, you don't need money to retire on.

I'm a working parent, but find it disheartening that caretaking kids/elderly parents and a home is still so undervalued in our society. And there are many moms that choose to SAH because the costs of quality childcare are equal to or more than what they make. Maybe in your circle it's all rich families that have a SAHP but that is not the case for many.

Also, times HAVE changed- most SAHMs I know in my generation (Gen-X) worked for a few years before having kids, it's not like they went straight from HS/college to being a SAHM.

This. I am Gen X and I worked for 14 years before becoming a SAHM, did so for 2 years, and now work part time. We aren't rich and me staying home, and now staying part time, is absolutely a function of the cost of childcare -- this makes more sense for our family financially. Covid also forced our hand on this a bit, which is true for other families I know too.

One of the most stressful things about becoming a SAHM and even now working part-time is knowing I cannot save for retirement, personally, in the same way I was before. You really have to trust your spouse in this situation, and be in it for the long haul, because it is a financial risk to stop working. And when you stop working *in order to* work in the home, providing childcare and housework and other unpaid work to enable your family to function, you become very critically aware of what protections you have and what you don't have. I am fortunate that my DH has always taken the perspective that the money he earns is earned jointly, since if I wasn't doing what I do at home, he would have to hire someone in order to continue working. Someone has to take care of children.

So the idea that someone would be resentful of a SAHM for claiming her spouse's SS, as she's legally entitled to do? It's just ignorant. You think someone who raised kids and took care of a home for 30 years should just be destitute, and should have no claim to the money her spouse was able to pay into the SS system because he had a SAHM who took care of his kids and home? Sorry, you're wrong.

I don’t think most people are disputing the legality of it. I think most people who are against the concept think the law should be changed. And I think, for a lot of us, the cost of childcare doesn’t carry a lot of weight (I had my first child in my senior year of college, so trust me I sympathize with the cost). I think there can be exceptions, like significant care for a child with disabilities, not otherwise I think social security should be earned through paid labor. I do not think the historical reasons for allowing a spouse to get social security apply in today’s society. Or if it does, let the working spouse who does the majority of the household work apply both as an individual and a spouse.

FWIW I also find this argument about household labor a bit at odds with the argument I also see from SAH spouses that the role of a SAH spouse is to raise kids, not maintain the household.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the person above: where I live, there are a lot of older boomer women who have literally never worked a day in their lives. they spend their days going to bible studies and out to eat, swimming at the y and bragging about their grandchildren. I had never read an obituary before for someone who had never worked. They are strange.

So yes, I do think it's wrong that the government provides free healthcare to women who have never worked a day in their lives, while children go without. I don't buy the argument that everything every boomer has is because they earned it, and that they have earned so much more than the rest of us.

and suggesting that since they suffered we should suffer to sounds a bit like those people that try to justify fraternity hazings. Just make the system better. don't think that because you put up with it, we should put up with it too.

How is that different from wealthy Millennial women who don't work because their husbands make a great deal of money. They do exist all across the affluent spectrum of DC.

I must say your post reeks of jealousy. I can read between the lines. Which is funny given that swimming at the Y and going to Bible studies is very middle class, not affluent. And I'm sure there's a regional factor at play, especially if in the South.

And when you say you have never read an obituary before of someone who'd never worked, I find it surprising given it was the *norm* for middle class women not to work until the 70s and even in my 80s-90s childhood, a good percentage, typically around 25% if not a bit more, of married women with children didn't work.

+1
None of the college educated moms I knew growing up worked until they got divorced.

If you look into the history of social security, when it was enacted there were a lot of destitute elderly women who basically relied on their families for support. Men used to die much earlier and women couldn't work (my grandma was fired from being an accountant in the 1950s when she got pregnant and never again could get hired once they knew she was married and had kids).

But now??? I'm angry that women who don't work are eligible for half their husband's social security. I understand that they'll get his SS when he dies, but why should they get anything that they didn't put into. Working 40 quarters isn't much. If you didn't need money to survive on when you were working age, why should you need more when you're older?

I think you don't understand what the social contract was in the near past. I grew up in a small town, and no woman I knew who had no children or grown children worked. I can think of two of these women who taught for a year because the school system found it self suddenly was caught short and hired them to fill in the gap. But that is it.

Basically, women took care of the home and men worked outside the home. In our particular small, town, this applied across all classes--no hired help from the less well off, for example. It was just not a thing.

OK but it's not a thing now. SAHMs are making the choice to stay home. It's very valid, but I don't think everyone else should fund their SS. If you don't need money to work, you don't need money to retire on.

I'm a working parent, but find it disheartening that caretaking kids/elderly parents and a home is still so undervalued in our society. And there are many moms that choose to SAH because the costs of quality childcare are equal to or more than what they make. Maybe in your circle it's all rich families that have a SAHP but that is not the case for many.

Also, times HAVE changed- most SAHMs I know in my generation (Gen-X) worked for a few years before having kids, it's not like they went straight from HS/college to being a SAHM.

This. I am Gen X and I worked for 14 years before becoming a SAHM, did so for 2 years, and now work part time. We aren't rich and me staying home, and now staying part time, is absolutely a function of the cost of childcare -- this makes more sense for our family financially. Covid also forced our hand on this a bit, which is true for other families I know too.

One of the most stressful things about becoming a SAHM and even now working part-time is knowing I cannot save for retirement, personally, in the same way I was before. You really have to trust your spouse in this situation, and be in it for the long haul, because it is a financial risk to stop working. And when you stop working *in order to* work in the home, providing childcare and housework and other unpaid work to enable your family to function, you become very critically aware of what protections you have and what you don't have. I am fortunate that my DH has always taken the perspective that the money he earns is earned jointly, since if I wasn't doing what I do at home, he would have to hire someone in order to continue working. Someone has to take care of children.

So the idea that someone would be resentful of a SAHM for claiming her spouse's SS, as she's legally entitled to do? It's just ignorant. You think someone who raised kids and took care of a home for 30 years should just be destitute, and should have no claim to the money her spouse was able to pay into the SS system because he had a SAHM who took care of his kids and home? Sorry, you're wrong.

I don’t think most people are disputing the legality of it. I think most people who are against the concept think the law should be changed. And I think, for a lot of us, the cost of childcare doesn’t carry a lot of weight (I had my first child in my senior year of college, so trust me I sympathize with the cost). I think there can be exceptions, like significant care for a child with disabilities, not otherwise I think social security should be earned through paid labor. I do not think the historical reasons for allowing a spouse to get social security apply in today’s society. Or if it does, let the working spouse who does the majority of the household work apply both as an individual and a spouse.

FWIW I also find this argument about household labor a bit at odds with the argument I also see from SAH spouses that the role of a SAH spouse is to raise kids, not maintain the household.

If you think that attitude is emblematic of SAHMs, it just means you only know wealthy SAHMs. Who don't need the SS to begin with. It sounds like you know a few entitled SAHMs and can't stand the idea of them getting this benefit, so you assume the whole program is broken.

I don't really get your objection. Spousal benefit is only available to people with so little working history that they don't qualify for SS on their own. That's honestly not that many people at this point. And it would include people who got pregnant before they could get a college (or sometimes even high school) degree and who may have been discouraged from working. It also covers people who may live in depressed areas with poor job prospects, and who may SAHM because they simply cannot find a job that pays enough to cover childcare. It also covers people who may be in abusive relationships where their spouse will not allow them to work. And so on.

The number of high net worth couples who would qualify for the program is very low because they would need to marry really young. Most SAHMs with wealthy DHs I know are college grads who worked in reasonably high paying jobs before becoming a SAHM. I'd be find saying that if your household income is above a certain amount, you don't qualify, but I'd guess that rich people would object and they are more politically powerful.

I'd rather a few rich SAHMs get the spousal benefit than remove it altogether. It protects vulnerable people, mostly women. And it acknowledges that in a family where one spouse works and the other stays home, most of the time the one staying home is also working, just not for a salary. Most SAHMs are not outsourcing all their household tasks.

[Anonymous]

The above isn’t exactly true. A spouse can take spousal social security (50% of their spouse’s amount) even if they DO qualify on their own but their amount is lower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Transferred from where to where?

Weren't mortgage rates 2% like 2 years ago?

Boomers got to enjoy 9% - 12% mortgage rates 30 year ago.

But Boomers saved nest eggs road the stock market up, and the housing market up and the government handed out tax deductions for dependents like it was water. Public schools were free, now Millenials are sad having to wait to inherit all that Boomer money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not only were mortgage rates extremely low until recently, some of us boomers were at home buying age when mortgages were at 18%. I remember being ecstatic to refinance at 7%.

Was going to post the same!

I think the article has so many flaws it’s maddening.
How many homeowner Boomers actually have mortgages? Many paid off their homes in the late 90s and eat 2000s.

What about GenX? No one ever talks about us? We’re the ones who will inherit the Boomer $$$ - millennials and GenZ are the boomer’s grandchildren.

That wealth may have gone to Boomers for a few decades, but a lot of it will not be transferred to heirs. It will be consumed by healthcare and nursing homes.

Finally, Boomers may have a lot of equity in their homes, but as a generation they are more likely to have a pension than a 401k and many didn’t save much because they thought SS and Medicare would cover them.

Boomers didn't get much from the generation before them. People had big families so paying for college, weddings or inheritance was slim pickens when splitting it between 6-8 kids. Also Boomers work, save, invest, work, save, invest. Millenials work, borrow, spend, whine, work, borrow, spend, whine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not only were mortgage rates extremely low until recently, some of us boomers were at home buying age when mortgages were at 18%. I remember being ecstatic to refinance at 7%.

Was going to post the same!

I think the article has so many flaws it’s maddening.
How many homeowner Boomers actually have mortgages? Many paid off their homes in the late 90s and eat 2000s.

What about GenX? No one ever talks about us? We’re the ones who will inherit the Boomer $$$ - millennials and GenZ are the boomer’s grandchildren.

That wealth may have gone to Boomers for a few decades, but a lot of it will not be transferred to heirs. It will be consumed by healthcare and nursing homes.

Finally, Boomers may have a lot of equity in their homes, but as a generation they are more likely to have a pension than a 401k and many didn’t save much because they thought SS and Medicare would cover them.

You are talking about a small segment of older boomers. I’m a young boomer. My children are millennials. The youngest is borderline Gen Z. No pension. Didn’t buy my current house until the late 90s, at 7-8% interest. Paid off my mortgage a couple of years ago. Have saved like crazy, put my kids through college and grad school debt free. And inherited nothing because my silent generation parents are still alive. That’s true for many boomers between 60-70.

Hard to paint everyone with a broad brush.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the person above: where I live, there are a lot of older boomer women who have literally never worked a day in their lives. they spend their days going to bible studies and out to eat, swimming at the y and bragging about their grandchildren. I had never read an obituary before for someone who had never worked. They are strange.

So yes, I do think it's wrong that the government provides free healthcare to women who have never worked a day in their lives, while children go without. I don't buy the argument that everything every boomer has is because they earned it, and that they have earned so much more than the rest of us.

and suggesting that since they suffered we should suffer to sounds a bit like those people that try to justify fraternity hazings. Just make the system better. don't think that because you put up with it, we should put up with it too.

How is that different from wealthy Millennial women who don't work because their husbands make a great deal of money. They do exist all across the affluent spectrum of DC.

I must say your post reeks of jealousy. I can read between the lines. Which is funny given that swimming at the Y and going to Bible studies is very middle class, not affluent. And I'm sure there's a regional factor at play, especially if in the South.

And when you say you have never read an obituary before of someone who'd never worked, I find it surprising given it was the *norm* for middle class women not to work until the 70s and even in my 80s-90s childhood, a good percentage, typically around 25% if not a bit more, of married women with children didn't work.

+1
None of the college educated moms I knew growing up worked until they got divorced.

If you look into the history of social security, when it was enacted there were a lot of destitute elderly women who basically relied on their families for support. Men used to die much earlier and women couldn't work (my grandma was fired from being an accountant in the 1950s when she got pregnant and never again could get hired once they knew she was married and had kids).

But now??? I'm angry that women who don't work are eligible for half their husband's social security. I understand that they'll get his SS when he dies, but why should they get anything that they didn't put into. Working 40 quarters isn't much. If you didn't need money to survive on when you were working age, why should you need more when you're older?

I think you don't understand what the social contract was in the near past. I grew up in a small town, and no woman I knew who had no children or grown children worked. I can think of two of these women who taught for a year because the school system found it self suddenly was caught short and hired them to fill in the gap. But that is it.

Basically, women took care of the home and men worked outside the home. In our particular small, town, this applied across all classes--no hired help from the less well off, for example. It was just not a thing.

OK but it's not a thing now. SAHMs are making the choice to stay home. It's very valid, but I don't think everyone else should fund their SS. If you don't need money to work, you don't need money to retire on.

I'm a working parent, but find it disheartening that caretaking kids/elderly parents and a home is still so undervalued in our society. And there are many moms that choose to SAH because the costs of quality childcare are equal to or more than what they make. Maybe in your circle it's all rich families that have a SAHP but that is not the case for many.

Also, times HAVE changed- most SAHMs I know in my generation (Gen-X) worked for a few years before having kids, it's not like they went straight from HS/college to being a SAHM.

This. I am Gen X and I worked for 14 years before becoming a SAHM, did so for 2 years, and now work part time. We aren't rich and me staying home, and now staying part time, is absolutely a function of the cost of childcare -- this makes more sense for our family financially. Covid also forced our hand on this a bit, which is true for other families I know too.

One of the most stressful things about becoming a SAHM and even now working part-time is knowing I cannot save for retirement, personally, in the same way I was before. You really have to trust your spouse in this situation, and be in it for the long haul, because it is a financial risk to stop working. And when you stop working *in order to* work in the home, providing childcare and housework and other unpaid work to enable your family to function, you become very critically aware of what protections you have and what you don't have. I am fortunate that my DH has always taken the perspective that the money he earns is earned jointly, since if I wasn't doing what I do at home, he would have to hire someone in order to continue working. Someone has to take care of children.

So the idea that someone would be resentful of a SAHM for claiming her spouse's SS, as she's legally entitled to do? It's just ignorant. You think someone who raised kids and took care of a home for 30 years should just be destitute, and should have no claim to the money her spouse was able to pay into the SS system because he had a SAHM who took care of his kids and home? Sorry, you're wrong.

I don’t think most people are disputing the legality of it. I think most people who are against the concept think the law should be changed. And I think, for a lot of us, the cost of childcare doesn’t carry a lot of weight (I had my first child in my senior year of college, so trust me I sympathize with the cost). I think there can be exceptions, like significant care for a child with disabilities, not otherwise I think social security should be earned through paid labor. I do not think the historical reasons for allowing a spouse to get social security apply in today’s society. Or if it does, let the working spouse who does the majority of the household work apply both as an individual and a spouse.

FWIW I also find this argument about household labor a bit at odds with the argument I also see from SAH spouses that the role of a SAH spouse is to raise kids, not maintain the household.

If you think that attitude is emblematic of SAHMs, it just means you only know wealthy SAHMs. Who don't need the SS to begin with. It sounds like you know a few entitled SAHMs and can't stand the idea of them getting this benefit, so you assume the whole program is broken.

I don't really get your objection. Spousal benefit is only available to people with so little working history that they don't qualify for SS on their own. That's honestly not that many people at this point. And it would include people who got pregnant before they could get a college (or sometimes even high school) degree and who may have been discouraged from working. It also covers people who may live in depressed areas with poor job prospects, and who may SAHM because they simply cannot find a job that pays enough to cover childcare. It also covers people who may be in abusive relationships where their spouse will not allow them to work. And so on.

The number of high net worth couples who would qualify for the program is very low because they would need to marry really young. Most SAHMs with wealthy DHs I know are college grads who worked in reasonably high paying jobs before becoming a SAHM. I'd be find saying that if your household income is above a certain amount, you don't qualify, but I'd guess that rich people would object and they are more politically powerful.

I'd rather a few rich SAHMs get the spousal benefit than remove it altogether. It protects vulnerable people, mostly women. And it acknowledges that in a family where one spouse works and the other stays home, most of the time the one staying home is also working, just not for a salary. Most SAHMs are not outsourcing all their household tasks.

I don’t think you understand how auxiliary benefits work.

Also you misinterpreted my final comment. It wasn’t about outsourcing tasks; it was about the statement, which you repeated about, that a SAH parents value for completing household chores is worthy of monetary acknowledgment. That is a privileged view; most dual income households with kids under 18 aren’t outsourcing household tasks - they are doing all of them in addition to working FT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think your generation math is off. I’m Gen X and we’re the ones with 2-3% mortgages in our late 40s - 50s. My parents are boomers and they paid the 8-14% mortgage rates of the late 70s and early 80s - they don’t have mortgages now because their houses are long paid off.

This. 49 year old Gen-Xer here who has a 2.5% rate. My boomer parents paid off their house years ago but guess who also has a 2% rate on their mortgage? All my millennial neighbors who bought their homes for $650K and up over the last 5 years. My millennial friend and her husband 2 yrs ago upgraded from a townhouse to a SFH, locked in a similar rate, while now making rental income on their townhouse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This boomer once had a 17.25% mortgage and never had one in the 3% area. My husband also got drafted and had to fight and get wounded in Vietnam. He didn’t want to go but he didn’t have an option and he did his duty. We have set up very well funded 529 plans for all of our grandchildren. We gift our kids a lot of money every year at Christmas and they will inherit a great amount of money. I inherited very little from my parents and my husband deferred his inheritance and it went to our children. Yes, our children and grandchildren are very lucky and unlike OPs crowd they are very grateful.

Ofc they’re grateful for all the gifts you’re giving them. The point is - OP and her generation don’t have the same parameters to make all that money on their own, which you did have when you were younger. That’s the whole point. Unless you inherit, you’re screwed.

This is such a deeply stupid point of view.

My dad is a boomer. He worked full time all through college because his parents were poor and he was the first in his family to go to college. Then he went to Viet Nam. The.n he worked for 49 years without a significant break, usually 60 or more hours per week. Weekends when he wasn’t working, he fixed his house and his cars, did enhancements that increased his property value, and taught his kids to fix houses and cars. He’s rich, but he and my mom paid someone to clean their house. They cooked at home. They didn’t buy Starbucks. They never owned an expensive car until my dad bought a vintage Jag in his sixties, fixed it up and sold it for more than he paid for it.

This wealth came from work OP. You should try it.

Did your mom work full time? Doing what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not only were mortgage rates extremely low until recently, some of us boomers were at home buying age when mortgages were at 18%. I remember being ecstatic to refinance at 7%.

Was going to post the same!

I think the article has so many flaws it’s maddening.
How many homeowner Boomers actually have mortgages? Many paid off their homes in the late 90s and eat 2000s.

What about GenX? No one ever talks about us? We’re the ones who will inherit the Boomer $$$ - millennials and GenZ are the boomer’s grandchildren.

That wealth may have gone to Boomers for a few decades, but a lot of it will not be transferred to heirs. It will be consumed by healthcare and nursing homes.

Finally, Boomers may have a lot of equity in their homes, but as a generation they are more likely to have a pension than a 401k and many didn’t save much because they thought SS and Medicare would cover them.

Boomers didn't get much from the generation before them. People had big families so paying for college, weddings or inheritance was slim pickens when splitting it between 6-8 kids. Also Boomers work, save, invest, work, save, invest. Millenials work, borrow, spend, whine, work, borrow, spend, whine.

Way to overgeneralize- my parents didn't remotely save enough to fund their retirement, so we'll probably end up supporting them eventually. They didn't save anything for college either so we all had loans- it was fine, we paid them off, but we (on the Gen-X-millennial cusp) to save for our retirement and children's education rather than repeat their mistakes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not only were mortgage rates extremely low until recently, some of us boomers were at home buying age when mortgages were at 18%. I remember being ecstatic to refinance at 7%.

Was going to post the same!

I think the article has so many flaws it’s maddening.
How many homeowner Boomers actually have mortgages? Many paid off their homes in the late 90s and eat 2000s.

What about GenX? No one ever talks about us? We’re the ones who will inherit the Boomer $$$ - millennials and GenZ are the boomer’s grandchildren.

That wealth may have gone to Boomers for a few decades, but a lot of it will not be transferred to heirs. It will be consumed by healthcare and nursing homes.

Finally, Boomers may have a lot of equity in their homes, but as a generation they are more likely to have a pension than a 401k and many didn’t save much because they thought SS and Medicare would cover them.

The bolded isn't true in most cases. Some older Boomers have Gen X kids but mostly Gen X's parents are Silent Generation and millennials parents are mostly Boomers. "Echo Boomer" was an early name for the generation before we settled on millennial. I'm a millennial and my parents were 1949 and 1951 birthdates definitely Boomers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Transferred from where to where?

Weren't mortgage rates 2% like 2 years ago?

Boomers got to enjoy 9% - 12% mortgage rates 30 year ago.

But Boomers saved nest eggs road the stock market up, and the housing market up and the government handed out tax deductions for dependents like it was water. Public schools were free, now Millenials are sad having to wait to inherit all that Boomer money.

boomer road the stock market for 30+ years. Millennials have another 20 years to ride that stock market. Give it time. You are comparing 30/40 yr olds to 60/70 olds in terms of wealth. That's silly.

It's like when some 30 something yr old woman who came to my house (kids were friends) and compared their lives to ours. We are like 10+ yrs older than they are. Of course we have more wealth. We had more time to accumulate that wealth.