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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [b]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.[/b]

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.[/quote]

This only applies to the privileged class. My boomer mom lives in the house we were born in and has a life you can't complain about, she does get social security and medicare, but none of the bolded benefitted her, a teacher in a middle class neighborhood where the housing has not doubled in value relative to inflation. The housing crisis, where so many people lost their homes -- a huge portion of them were boomers. Boomer home ownership fell by more than 10 percentage points and did not recover. And only half of home owning boomers owned their houses outright when the mortgage crisis hit; many have fallen behind on payments and are still at risk of losing their homes, leaving many without the housing wealth they were counting on for retirement. Some Millennials may not be able to afford to buy them, but some Boomers cannot afford to keep them either. And they can't make up for the losses over time with years to work and increase earnings. Don't forget that many of those who did see housing increases also had to live off of that equity because they had no pensions or savings, didn't work for companies with 401K plans, don't own stock, didn't have protected healthcare for most of their lives, etc. (see, e.g., the new thing for boomers called reverse mortgages). Some Boomers benefitted from the boom, but not everyone. Not by a long shot. Much of your post is only about the wealthier Boomers.[/quote]

Hmmm I am the PP and I was actually think explicitly of my mother in law when I wrote this. Teacher who graduated from public college with no debt and then taught for 30 years in a small town. Retired and owns her house outright which is now worth 6x what she bought it for (bought for 19k in 1981 and now worth a little over 120k). Her kids both went to college in the 90s and it wasn't free but it was manageable with a little bit of aid (Pell grants and some merit funding) and a couple small loans (my DH had to pay off 5k in loans when he graduated). Her pension plus social security more than cover her costs and she has an excess of about 4k per month that she can't spend. She take two big trips a year including one trip abroad. She couldn't travel this year because her dog is getting old and she doesn't want to leave him so instead she bought a new car for cash just because. Inflation hasn't impacted her much because she has more money than she needs and really limited expenses.

I don't begrudge her any of this. She worked hard for 30 years and is not some entitled or spendthrit person. Her pension and savings spare us having to support her too. But I also do not think her life is accessible to us or our kids. We can't do what she did and expect the same results. We make way more money than she ever did and we bought out house with a 3% interest rate. But we have to save for college -- it's not optional. And we don't have pensions coming. To achieve her lifestyle in our retirement we have to save like mad. We only had one kid because we worried about skyrocketing college costs and we don't want to force our kids to take out loans for educations that will cost (literally) 10x what our own college educations cost. Our mortgage sucks up 40% of our income and we live in a modest two bedroom home in an okay neighborhood with mediocre schools. In order to have the security of her pension we will need to save $3m in retirement accounts (I've done the math). And that's assuming we move to a much lower cost of living area after we retire (we cannot do that now because our jobs are tied to major metropolitan areas). She retired at 52. We are hoping to retire by 65.[/quote]

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