Reply to NYT Opinion Piece: This Isn’t What Millennial Middle Age Was Supposed To Look Like

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a Gen Xer who graduated into the recession of the early 90s and then endured the financial crisis I find the millennial attitude/ignorance that they are apparently the first generation ever to face economic hardship laughable. This generation has been feeding at their boomer parents trough all their lives is on track to receive the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.[/quote]

No one is arguing that they are the first ones to face economic hardship. If you can't see how things in the mid-90s were different from things 10 and 20 years later, in terms of housing and college costs, I can't help you.

Also, the people complaining are not the ones with boomer parents about to transfer a bunch of wealth to them. It's the people whose boomer parents don't have wealth to pass on for whatever reason. The assumption that everyone is going to inherit a bunch of money from boomers is myopic. Some will and some won't.  Wealth has become more concentrated so there are plenty of millennial who are not benefitting from what you think "everyone" is experiencing.

Stop being so myopic.

-- Fellow Gen Xer[/quote]

Another Gen Xer here as well. Agree. While a lot of the drama from Milennials that I see online is annoying, life is different than it was "in our day". The cost of living has gone up, the costs of college have gone up, etc. I graduated college in 1994 (born in 76) and remember paying right about $1/gallon for gas for instance. My parents purchased a house when I was in HS that doubled in value by the time they retired...great for them when they sold, awful for the next person who wants to buy it. [/quote]

This. And the mistake a lot of Boomers and Gen X make is in looking at stories like the one about your parents and saying, using hindsight, "oh your're so stressed about paying for college and retirement but it all works out." They forget that a lot of the wealth they've accumulated was, essentially, an accident. Your parents probably didn't know that their house would double in value, right? At the time, they were likely stressed about college costs and may have been stressed about retirement or not even thinking about it beyond sticking money in a 401k and reassuring themselves that at least they could retire in the home they owned. That massive appreciation in value no doubt changed that equation for the better but it's not like it was their plan all along.

And millennial look at that and (1) they are the ones who are trying to buy your parents house for double what they paid back in the early 90s.  And (2) it would be insane for them to expect that house to appreciate in the same way, right? Plus they have college loans your parents didn't have.

Why is it so hard for people to get that the world changes. Do you think your life was identical in every way to your great grandparents? No, obviously not. So of course the lives of peopel born after you may be different than your life, or your parents life. They may need to do things differently. This should not come as news but a lot of Boomers and older Gen X have come to believe that the world they created will be the same forever. THAT is self-centered.[/quote]

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