Boomers can’t downsize

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who are these people criticizing boomers?

Seriously, who are you? Aren't boomers your parents? We surrounded you with love, we protected you, we tried to give you a good trajectory for the rest of your lives. And you return all that nurturing with poking us in the eye? WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?

Or are all these critics just AI bots trying to stir the pot?

Honey, kids have ALWAYS demonized their parents. Don’t trust anyone over 30, right? Age may bring some moderation/wisdom… or it may not.

Millennials acting like they’re the first generation to be “wronged” by their parents is hilarious, though. Younger generations resenting the ones who raised them is as old as time.

[Anonymous]

I "took my children to the park" while someone else raised them is a weird flex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a Boomer when I had a 1 and a 3 year old I left my house for work exactly 655 am every day, caught 704 am to work. Arrived at 815am and worked till 620 and took 647 train home and arrived at home 730pm.

I also volunteered was on two boards, did business trips, took kids to park, vacation, cleaned up kitchen every night, changed diapers, threw family parties, helped with everything

What was secret my life was work and family. I also stay up to 12 midnight and get up at 6am. On weekends I devote my weekend to family, did home repairs, laundry. Go to supermarket and we had a do .

With no cell phone or internet tons more time. And I moved to Suburbs so focused on family and did not ever hand out friends or do activities of my own.

Work life balance is nonsense. You need to grow up. Have your fun pre kids and post kids

Yesterday a 45 year old “child man” asked to do WFH 3 days instead of two. He lives in a condo with zero maint, just two kids, his wife is full time wfh. But he literally has one million hobbies, going out friends, on phone texting, playing video games. It is as work and his family are just annoyances.

Why is Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders still around? The next few generations are too lazy to devote time and effort into careers. The are all FIRE, WLB, WFH.

And their get rich quick schemes like crypto, meme stocks and Airbnb empires are going to collapse economy and leave US laughing stock of world.

I’m willing to bet your “secret” was a stay at home spouse who took care of everything on the home front during the week so you could do what you did. Something that’s no longer economically doable for most young families in the US today.

I still work and my wife still stays home. Very doable. Most men and women under 50 who are dual income each do a half ass job. Which is why both have to work.

At work there is not a single person under 50 who puts in full effort.

Guess Netflix, video games, Starbucks, sleeping in and making Avacado toast takes up their time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is a big part of housing problem. Boomers including me can’t move due to home prices shooting through roof in places we want to retire.

Rehoboth Beach I like, Hamptons I like, Beach place North Carolina or South Carolina I like it maybe a lot place in a good part of Florida.

But prices those places are through the roof!! Way more appreciation than my DMV house the last three years.

And taxes way up on selling and buying homes and retirement places often have HOA fees.

I was shocked at Rehoboth prices when I was there last month. One bedroom condos by beach are price of a whole nice house by beach just 5 years ago.

And Florida I visited there my friends 495k house bought in 2016 is now 825k. To be honest it is crappy and his neighbor the nice homes are now 2 million!! 2 million for Florida!!

Boomers (and anyone else) can downsize if they want to. Where is it written that in retirement you get the same size, level of affluence etc as what you had when you working, just because you are in a certain age group?

I’m gen x and find your response interesting. The poster is choosing to live in the best place they can afford. So are you. So is everyone. No one complaining about boomers is structuring their life to make sure that they don’t have a big house in retirement for the purpose of making sure it’s on the market for a younger person to buy.

You might choose to downsize, but it won’t be because you feel you have a moral obligation to give up your house to a younger buyer. And you will sell it at the highest price you can get to maximize your profit. I doubt you are making any of your housing choices based on whether other families would benefit from you buying or selling. If no one is entitled to anything then no one is entitled to pressure a person of a certain age to make their home available to the market.

If someone suggested that you decline to bid up a house you wanted because it would drive up the cost of homes in the area, you would stand on your entitlement to pay what you can afford to get the house you want, regardless of the affect on the market.

+1 And that's the way it should be. Anyone claiming they're making their own housing decisions to benefit some other random family is lying. Anyone demanding that boomers downsize so a younger family can have their home is an entitled twit.

I am not against housing policy for social good. I just think it would have to be applied across the board. People complaining because they want an older person’s house are probably not going to like claims on their own homes.

[Anonymous]

The Boomers paid like $1500 for tuition, $50k for their first home and then when their parents died at normal ages, got inheritances in their 40s. Now they’re super charged with modern medicine, loaded, and aren’t going anywhere. They’re also not maintaining their houses. Just check the market and see all the “as is” $1.2Ms that have fallen into disrepair. These folks need to start riding off into the sunset.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You're surprised that you can't retire to the Hamptons?

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Boomers paid like $1500 for tuition, $50k for their first home and then when their parents died at normal ages, got inheritances in their 40s. Now they’re super charged with modern medicine, loaded, and aren’t going anywhere. They’re also not maintaining their houses. Just check the market and see all the “as is” $1.2Ms that have fallen into disrepair. These folks need to start riding off into the sunset.

Wow. Do your parents lock their doors at night so you can't get in? You seem super eager for all the old folks to die.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone is jumping on OP but it’s probably accurate that part of the housing crisis in the areas with good school districts and commutes is because of things preventing empty nesters from moving out of those areas. Current high interest rates is one of them especially compared with the run up in values that we saw over the past decade or so in some of the retirement areas. The problem is that this is the back end of the boomer generafion—the front end retired a decade ago and drove up the demand in all those retirement areas.

This, plus Covid. My DH and I retired to a very nice, but relatively undiscovered, coastal area about six years ago. It wasn’t cheap then — we bought a great house close to the water and walkable to downtown for just a little less than we sold our somewhat smaller DC house for. Today, our house is worth at least double what we paid. We had people knocking on our door asking if we wanted to sell during covid. They are building new housing developments on the outskirts of town as fast as they can, but there are only so many houses in a great location.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Boomers paid like $1500 for tuition, $50k for their first home and then when their parents died at normal ages, got inheritances in their 40s. Now they’re super charged with modern medicine, loaded, and aren’t going anywhere. They’re also not maintaining their houses. Just check the market and see all the “as is” $1.2Ms that have fallen into disrepair. These folks need to start riding off into the sunset.

They were also making $40,000 a year with a masters degree. And their parents were primarily blue color workers- no inheritance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Boomers paid like $1500 for tuition, $50k for their first home and then when their parents died at normal ages, got inheritances in their 40s. Now they’re super charged with modern medicine, loaded, and aren’t going anywhere. They’re also not maintaining their houses. Just check the market and see all the “as is” $1.2Ms that have fallen into disrepair. These folks need to start riding off into the sunset.

They were also making $40,000 a year with a masters degree. And their parents were primarily blue color workers- no inheritance.

+1 Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Boomers paid like $1500 for tuition, $50k for their first home and then when their parents died at normal ages, got inheritances in their 40s. Now they’re super charged with modern medicine, loaded, and aren’t going anywhere. They’re also not maintaining their houses. Just check the market and see all the “as is” $1.2Ms that have fallen into disrepair. These folks need to start riding off into the sunset.

The condition of homes is a real thing. I was looking for a house 1.3-1.8 in a suburb in the south and I couldn't believe my eyes. Windows with rotting frames, old roofs, long-deferred maintenance. I finally found a place at 1.2 that was well maintained and bought it. I'm a stickler for home maintenance and I don't understand why people won't make basic investments to maintain the state of their property.

[Anonymous]

Probably property tax and medical expenses, on top of regular bills, are all the people can afford. Or it doesn’t make sense to make updates that won’t allow them to recoup the full amount of the updates, so it is in their best interest to just sell as is when the time comes. You may arrive at the same conclusions as the years go by.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Probably property tax and medical expenses, on top of regular bills, are all the people can afford. Or it doesn’t make sense to make updates that won’t allow them to recoup the full amount of the updates, so it is in their best interest to just sell as is when the time comes. You may arrive at the same conclusions as the years go by.

This. My Greatest Gen dad always said that the advantage of owning your own house is that you can let the place go if you have to. He kept the place in good shape until age and a heart condition made it too difficult.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see a lot of boomers aging in place in these 2 story 3500 square foot homes and it doesn’t seem very economical to me—Paying taxes on, cooling, heating, and cleaning all that? Some rooms even sit empty.

My mom is one of those. She is willing to downsize but only if it’s a newish, SFH with a yard large enough for a garden. No shared walls. And it can’t be too big.

Houses new enough to require less maintenance than her current house either aren’t SFH or they are bigger than her current 3000 sq ft house but crammed onto a 5000 sq ft lot with neighbors 5’ away and barely any yard. She has deemed that unacceptable, and also refuses the idea of a condo, apartment, or row house because she says she should not have to listen to neighbors after 50 years of sfh living.

People aren’t really building cute new cottages on medium-size lots these days so she’s stuck.

55+ communities that have little sfh. Lots of those communities popping up, so they are new builds.

I can't be the only Gen Xer who abhors those types of place. We are just a few years from being eligible, and there's no way. They are at the absolute bottom of the housing list.

I absolutely agree. I also feel like the developers of those neighborhoods aren't really considering the upcoming demographics. Gen X is the smallest generation in existence. Not only will a majority of us hate such communities, but there won't be enough of any of us to fill them. I keep seeing Gen X sites talking about turning old malls into housing, complete with Orange Julius and Pizza Huts. I'd be much more game for that rather than some old gray-haired place to hide us.

Also, I must comment that I love the irony of this thread. Boomers complaining while THEIR OWN CHILDREN, the Millennials, screech at them about being selfish and gobbling up housing. It's pretty entertaining from afar.

It is entertaining but it’s not OUR children screeching at us but the ones without generous parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Boomers paid like $1500 for tuition, $50k for their first home and then when their parents died at normal ages, got inheritances in their 40s. Now they’re super charged with modern medicine, loaded, and aren’t going anywhere. They’re also not maintaining their houses. Just check the market and see all the “as is” $1.2Ms that have fallen into disrepair. These folks need to start riding off into the sunset.

They were also making $40,000 a year with a masters degree. And their parents were primarily blue color workers- no inheritance.

+1 Thank you.

+2. Late boomer here. We graduated into a recession and took whatever job would pay the bills if we didn’t option of going to grad school. I paid 12% on a PLUS loan.