Why do people think Boomers had it so good?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know, my greatest generation grandfather worked for less than years of his life and retired on a full pension in his 40s. My father worked from 22 to 62 and retired on a full pension. Both played golf and lived very well. Same with his side of the family--his father retired at 50 and lived a full comfortable 40 years collecting his pension. My spouse and I have worked since we were 22 and won't ever retire even though we are better educated than both. There is no pension but the money we tried to save since we were 22.

Pensions disappeared because of corporate greed. Top executives are allowed to shelter unlimited amounts of compensation from taxes. Employees have limits of how much they can contribute annually to their 401k

Walmarts CEO Doug McMillon kept about $169m in his deferred compensation account. When he retires he will be able to generate a monthly retirement check of more than $1 million dollars.

Only about half of employees of the shameful Walmart stores save any money at all in their 401k. Their salaries are just too low to set aside anything.

This has nothing to do with people born in the 50s or people born in the 70s. This is pure greed amongst the powerful and voters not voting for their best interests.

How? Please explain this.

I’d much prefer the mobility of a 401k over a pension. I don’t want to be stuck working the same place forever for a retirement benefit. The idea of a pension seems archaic and also mathematically doesn’t make a lot of sense unless the next generation of workers is larger in number.

The executives ability to have his company hold an unlimited amount of his money, deferred compensation, he doesn’t pay taxes and he will receive it upon retirement. Corporations themselves set them up and only a choice few are allowed to join in. Look up Top Hat Plan, I can’t explain it very well.

401k on the other hand is limited in the amount you may put into the account every year. Pensions work better for lower income workers who can’t contribute as much to the 401k as needed to retire in comfort.

My father died after about 23 years at a white collar job for a large corporation. Along with a paid for home, life insurance and their savings my mother received a pension. The company arranged a pension and life time 100% paid for health insurance premiums. About 45 years later my elderly mother still receives the pension check every month and supplemental health care and Part D drug plan paid for. That pension worked out better than a 401k would have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boomers are too lazy to look at the data. They rely on anecdotes and sheer fantasy that confirm their biases and coddle their fragile psyches. History will look upon them with universal scorn.

And you will be looked as the whiniest generation to have infested this planet. A group that relies upon tik-tok and instagram to define reality.

Yeah the boomer generation wants to wreak selfish havoc, but gets offended when subsequent generations complain about it. This will never change, it's who boomers are. Younger people just need to shoulder the burden boomers left and clean up their mess. Let's make some funny videos along the way to lighten the load a little.

You don’t even make any sense. Is it because you have had a hard time succeeding so you blame a whole group of people? Were your parents unable to help out so you resent everyone? That kind of resentment will kill you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a boomer. My first apartment was 200 sf walk up apartment with no AC, no dishwasher, a pullman kitchen that consisted of a mini fridge and hot plate with bars on windows and doors.

Today kids want doormen, pools, gyms in their first apt.

Things are not really more expensive it is expectations are higher. And that costs more.

Maybe, but also you (boomer) raised your kids (millennials) to expect more.

Millennials are 40 years old. Isn’t it time to take responsibility for your life. For everyone of you there are 1,000 millennials doing just fine with their new homes, jobs, kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know, my greatest generation grandfather worked for less than years of his life and retired on a full pension in his 40s. My father worked from 22 to 62 and retired on a full pension. Both played golf and lived very well. Same with his side of the family--his father retired at 50 and lived a full comfortable 40 years collecting his pension. My spouse and I have worked since we were 22 and won't ever retire even though we are better educated than both. There is no pension but the money we tried to save since we were 22.

Pensions disappeared because of corporate greed. Top executives are allowed to shelter unlimited amounts of compensation from taxes. Employees have limits of how much they can contribute annually to their 401k

Walmarts CEO Doug McMillon kept about $169m in his deferred compensation account. When he retires he will be able to generate a monthly retirement check of more than $1 million dollars.

Only about half of employees of the shameful Walmart stores save any money at all in their 401k. Their salaries are just too low to set aside anything.

This has nothing to do with people born in the 50s or people born in the 70s. This is pure greed amongst the powerful and voters not voting for their best interests.

How? Please explain this.

I’d much prefer the mobility of a 401k over a pension. I don’t want to be stuck working the same place forever for a retirement benefit. The idea of a pension seems archaic and also mathematically doesn’t make a lot of sense unless the next generation of workers is larger in number.

The executives ability to have his company hold an unlimited amount of his money, deferred compensation, he doesn’t pay taxes and he will receive it upon retirement. Corporations themselves set them up and only a choice few are allowed to join in. Look up Top Hat Plan, I can’t explain it very well.

401k on the other hand is limited in the amount you may put into the account every year. Pensions work better for lower income workers who can’t contribute as much to the 401k as needed to retire in comfort.

My father died after about 23 years at a white collar job for a large corporation. Along with a paid for home, life insurance and their savings my mother received a pension. The company arranged a pension and life time 100% paid for health insurance premiums. About 45 years later my elderly mother still receives the pension check every month and supplemental health care and Part D drug plan paid for. That pension worked out better than a 401k would have.

pensions ended when companies couldn't keep funding them. Largely when people starting living beyond 67. 45 years ago most people retired and were dead in 3-5 years. Very different scenario than funding them for people to live into their 80s.

I'd still rather have the opportunity to manage my finances myself. To not be tied to a single job because that's where my retirement plan is if I just stay another X+ years.

[Anonymous]

It's interesting that the silent generation (age 80+) still have more wealth than the Millenials. There's going to be a huge wealth transfer from the Boomers and Silents to Millenials and GenX over the next two decades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's interesting that the silent generation (age 80+) still have more wealth than the Millenials. There's going to be a huge wealth transfer from the Boomers and Silents to Millenials and GenX over the next two decades.

I hope so. I worry that the elder care industry and other grifters will try to get it first. Wealth transfer between generations is a positive thing -- it generally leads to higher quality of life and can spur investment and entrepreneurship. I wouldn't tell a Boomer to avoid taking a bucket list trip or live in a hovel to ensure they can leave more to their kids but I would assume most people with real wealth want to leave at least some of it to future generations. For me that's part of the point of building up some wealth -- so that when I die I know my kid and grandkid will have it as a safety net and might actually do some good with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a hard insight issue and the tricky part is that it's impossible to know if the comparison is fair because not enough time has passed.

Yes Boomers dealt with Vietnam, stagflation, and much more restrictive banking policies that made home ownership more challenging. However that turned around and Boomers then enjoyed perhaps the single most prosperous two decades in the US during their prime earning years. The homes the bought in the early 80s with 12% interest rates and that they had to scrimp and save for to qualify at all, doubled, then ,tripled, then quadrupled in value. Their salaries also increased by multiples. The stock market exploded and they wound up on the ground floor of that rocket.

So yes, in 1982, boomers as a generation were struggling. But in 2024 they are not. They have immense wealth, plus social security is still solvent and medicare is actually functioning better than ever thanks to work on prescription drug prices and supplemental plans. They made it.

Millennials have different challenges. Yes mortgage rates are lower and the rules around mortgages are looser (though not quite as loose as they used to be and that's a good thing). Millennials have more debt starting out thanks to education costs, and unlike boomers they have zero faith their own children will be able to self-fund college. The economy is stronger but the job market is more competitive thanks to globalization and American workers must compete with more highly qualified workers.

Maybe it will all work out like it did for boomers. I hope so! One challenge millennials face is that they continue to lack political power as the political landscape remains dominated by Boomers with a continued focus on Boomer concerns. Key millennial issues (cost of college and cost of housing) still lack consensus and addressing them has been an uphill battle.

To top it off, when millennials advocate for policies that would relieve these key pressures, they are called entitled and whiny and told "hey boomers had high mortgage rates and it was hard to even qualify." But this ignores the fact that *those circumstances changed because they were bad.* Policies shifted to make it easier to buy a home and boomers profited wildly from it. The reason mortgage rules were relaxed and rates brought down over time was not dome gift to millennials. These were policies intended to help boomers. And they did.

And you have no idea what your life will look like 20 years from now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The oldest boomers were getting their first job and getting married in early to mid 60s. The 1970s were hard for working families. I am old enough to remember thinking the lines at gas stations and grocery stores were normal. I remember living in a house, but didn't think it was odd that the rooms weren't furnished for years, and "shopping" at garage sales to find a bed. My dad build my desk out of found materials. We wore clothes re-made out of material scavenged from Goodwill clothing. We made our curtains, grew and canned food, kids were sent on "adventures" into the woods to forage for berries, crab apples, and mushrooms. And we were privileged. We knew we were not poor, as my parents had good white collar jobs, and we lived in a nice middle class neighborhood, but all the money went into that home ownership, food, and gas so my parents could carpool to work. We were mostly latch key feral kids in our neighborhood (my mom was a non-contract teacher (so not pension eligible) so everyone ended up at our house after school); no one had nannies or after care or camps or club sports. No one went to restaurants. Vacation was camping (using Dad's old GI gear). No one had or needed multiple cars or electronics or giant metal mugs or fancy tennis shoes or cable TV or the myriad other things we think of today as "necessities." There was no extra money to be saving from age 22 on, and no, these boomers didn't have pensions either.

Is that how your white collar life is right now? Would you be willing to live that way to get the house of your dreams? Because that's what a lot of Boomers did.

I think the people who complain about Boomers must come from truly wealthy and privileged families. Further to a PP's pension story, my uncles retired with healthy pensions too, until the companies let the pension funds go bankrupt and left them with literally nothing to live on (pre-1974 PBGC). They and their wives did not go golfing, they went job hunting in their late 60s-early 70s. Not everyone had it as easy as your family. And not a lot of jobs had pensions in the first place.

I see you fellow mid-Gen Xer. I’m of the belief that the whiniest millennials are those raised by the younger Boomers, who actually did get to accumulate some wealth through the 80s and had their childhood scripted out through sit-coms on the Disney channel in the mid-90s. Anyone who was alive and mindful, willing to see what the 70s was, knows that these folks “dreaming” of their SFHs but lamenting high interest rates is nothing new.

[Anonymous]

Life has never been easier and people have never consumed so much. People are so lazy and are less happy or civilized than when there was a depression.

This fat, unresilient and lazy age is consumed with jealousy of anyone who has more. It’s pitiful.

[Anonymous]

Not much different than losers who blame their problems on: immigrants, minorities, the rich, the white man, or "them."

[Anonymous]

You think life won’t come for you, but it will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Life has never been easier and people have never consumed so much. People are so lazy and are less happy or civilized than when there was a depression.

This fat, unresilient and lazy age is consumed with jealousy of anyone who has more. It’s pitiful.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know, my greatest generation grandfather worked for less than years of his life and retired on a full pension in his 40s. My father worked from 22 to 62 and retired on a full pension. Both played golf and lived very well. Same with his side of the family--his father retired at 50 and lived a full comfortable 40 years collecting his pension. My spouse and I have worked since we were 22 and won't ever retire even though we are better educated than both. There is no pension but the money we tried to save since we were 22.

Pensions disappeared because of corporate greed. Top executives are allowed to shelter unlimited amounts of compensation from taxes. Employees have limits of how much they can contribute annually to their 401k

Walmarts CEO Doug McMillon kept about $169m in his deferred compensation account. When he retires he will be able to generate a monthly retirement check of more than $1 million dollars.

Only about half of employees of the shameful Walmart stores save any money at all in their 401k. Their salaries are just too low to set aside anything.

This has nothing to do with people born in the 50s or people born in the 70s. This is pure greed amongst the powerful and voters not voting for their best interests.

How? Please explain this.

I’d much prefer the mobility of a 401k over a pension. I don’t want to be stuck working the same place forever for a retirement benefit. The idea of a pension seems archaic and also mathematically doesn’t make a lot of sense unless the next generation of workers is larger in number.

The executives ability to have his company hold an unlimited amount of his money, deferred compensation, he doesn’t pay taxes and he will receive it upon retirement. Corporations themselves set them up and only a choice few are allowed to join in. Look up Top Hat Plan, I can’t explain it very well.

401k on the other hand is limited in the amount you may put into the account every year. Pensions work better for lower income workers who can’t contribute as much to the 401k as needed to retire in comfort.

My father died after about 23 years at a white collar job for a large corporation. Along with a paid for home, life insurance and their savings my mother received a pension. The company arranged a pension and life time 100% paid for health insurance premiums. About 45 years later my elderly mother still receives the pension check every month and supplemental health care and Part D drug plan paid for. That pension worked out better than a 401k would have.

This. 100%. Greedy corporate boomers realized they could save money by eliminating pensions. They all benefitted from it and left every generation after them to work their whole lives without the kind of security they gave themselves. And while they paid higher mortgages, those rates were on much much smaller amounts, even adjusted for today. Housing prices have absolutely soared since then. Again, when boomers lowered interest rates reasons that are very hard to understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's interesting that the silent generation (age 80+) still have more wealth than the Millenials. There's going to be a huge wealth transfer from the Boomers and Silents to Millenials and GenX over the next two decades.

Unfortunately, GenXers will be well into their 70s before those younger silent generation transfer that wealth. People are living way too long and making life for us GenXers very difficult.

[Anonymous]

I think the difference between me and my peers and our boomer parents is that they are just far more frugal than we are. My parents saved and scrimped and said "no" a lot. I will fully admit that I spend so much more, and my kids have so much more than I did at their ages. A lot of this is about spending vs saving. We could all do better.