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

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

I’m older GenX and this is my experience too. I think many of the complaints about Boomers really are from people with privileged backgrounds. I grew up solidly middle class and most neighbors were blue collar. The white collar jobs were squarely middle level. When people went on vacation it was literally once a year to visit their grandparents. Maybe one Disney level trip their entire childhood. As adults, they bought smaller, non updated homes and lived without updating them for years, if at all.

The younger people I see now buying their first homes are buying things our parents would have bought closer to retirement. Then they renovate immediately and have parental help either with their home purchase or private school or both. They also take grand vacations every year, as evidenced by many posts on this board.

Times are different and it’s really not an apples to apples comparison. [/quote]

Agree with this.  I am Gen X but have 5 much older Boomer siblings (I was oops baby in the 70s).  2 are doing very well financially and retired; 2 are doing not well at all and I'm actually super concerned that they will not have enough money to carry them through retirement.  (The last one is doing okay, but not that great except married a Gen Xer who is doing well.)  Only 2 of the 5 has a defined benefit pension; 3 are still working in their 60s.  Two of them had significant losses in the 2008 Great Recession -- one lost their business and one lost their home and filed for bankruptcy.  All of them had educational debt with interest rates of like 12-15% on those loans that they were paying off through the 1980s and I think into the early 1990s.     [/quote]

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