Reply to Why do people think Boomers had it so good?

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Why do people think Boomers had it so good?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Look, it's all being able to look through the rearview mirror and then make the determination that Boomers had it good.

However, if you were to magically transport back to 1981, you would never envy the Boomer generation.

The Dow was 9400 in 1965...and it was 2700 in 1982...can you imagine living through 17 years where the stock market collapsed by 71%?  It was a slow-moving trainwreck.  Inflation was also nuts...like over 10% per year.

Now, between 1982 and today the Dow went almost straight shot from 2,700 to 40,000.  All those boomers that just left their accumulated savings in the market made a fortune.

Also, the WSJ just published an article saying that housing affordability today is essentially the same as it was in 1984.  It become significantly more affordable between 1984 - 2015...then zoomed higher to unaffordable through today.

The big differences are that both college and healthcare as a %age of income were way lower back in the day.  You could go to Harvard for literally $650 in 1955...which would only be like $10k in today's dollars.[/quote]

Only the very wealthy had money in the stock market. Middle class boomers and their pensions and cheap houses and were pretty comfortable.  They had housing, [/b]affordable medical car, and cheap colleges, [b]and one spouse didn’t have to work to make this happen - so no childcare camps. Maybe they don’t travel as much or have fancy phones? But millennials recognize that giving up a phone and avacado toast is not going to close the gap on housing costs.  The income to housing ratio has been terrible for 20 years.

Link to that WSJ article about housing affordability? [/quote]

Medical care was adorable because it was more basic car and fewer technologies and treatments.

College is still affordable if you attend state schools. [/quote]

Public college is extremely cheap if you go to the local state school. In NY, tuition and fees are $0 if parents make under $125k. Considering there is a state school in NY less than a 30min drive for 99% of the population means your only expense is the commute and books!

Other states have similar programs if not quite as generous or convenient.[/quote]

You’re posting on a Washington DC based forum. Why would you think New York’s education policies are relevant to most people here?[/quote]

New Yorker here and I'll bite -
UVA is running about 32K/year tuition. I'll bet VCU, Richmond, Tech and W&M are below that.
UMD is about 12K/year tuition.
If one cannot afford private, there are many decent state flagships for DC regional famlies that are frankly superior to NY state flagships.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics