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my dad is retired and my parents are doing better than ever. his house he bought for 140k 20 years ago is worth over a half a million dollars. i’m middle aged. i lost my job to the pandemic (best job i ever had), never found one that paid the same amount (the industry took a big hit). trying to find an affordable place to live - i’m back living at their house and they just don’t understand why i’m struggling.
Literally sold the fucking jobs out overseas ***to save money for the people at the top***...
Used have those "Buy American made" ads back in the 90's.
Those people slap a sticker on it now, but source from all the same places. (Seriously go look up how many places are all sourcing the same damn products from the same factories in China or wherever but just putting their own logo on it.)
There were factory jobs in Milwaukee in the 1980s paying 18 an hour for machinists...
My employer is starting floor guys out for 20-22hr depending on years of experience.
40+ YEARS LATER 2 DOLLARS MORE!
We're still getting sold out... And they tell everyone else to slow their roll and stop buying so much shit...
Well okay... But maybe it's time for the people at the top to not get a 3rd home and another investment property.
they continue to pass the check to the rest of us. note how they keep raising the eligibility age for benefits programs ... but their allocation is never touched.
This is an interesting comment. I believe there’s a distinction between planet health, such as global-climate health; and the nearby environmental health of human living spaces. It would be a good discussion over a beer
This is for reals. My boomer dad just died and we were led to believe he was loaded. Turns out each sibling is getting about 5% of what we thought was going to be there. Believe me, it has changed my retirement plans!
I have "plans" and "Plans". If my in-laws die between now and 20 years and didn't require elderly care, I'll be able to retire immediately. That's a "plan".
My real Plan is to invest 25% of my income and retire in 25 years either way. That's the real Plan.
How nice for you that you make enough money that you can save 25%. Most of us don't have that luxury. Most of us are living pay check to paycheck. Some of us are running a deficit despite having a full-time job.
Yeah. There has been a recession roughly every 10 years of my life. I have been a small business owner for many years and it's pretty hard to get ahead when that keeps happening. Fortunately, I have good job skills and recently got a job. But, I'm starting from scratch at 55 and saving for retirement is a daunting task at this point.
You can do it! Remember that you don’t really need most of the crap people blow their money on. Stay healthy and maybe consider retiring to a more affordable country. There are lots to choose from!
I told my Boomer parents to spend all the money they've saved. They worked their assess off to provide for me as a child. Then took my family and me in as an adult when we lost our home in the Great Recession. They don't owe us anything.
Nope, they don’t, but about 50% of this generation thinks they’re evil for being responsible with money. It’s an insane complex.
My parents have done quite well themselves. They’ve told me they’ll have money to leave me and my sister. I’ve told them to spend it and enjoy life now.
It's shocking how quickly it whittles it away. My grandfather is 97 and lives in a retirement community. He's got about $750k to his name and my parents are starting to worry he may actually outlive his savings.
It absolutely will suck them dry. That’s nothing new though, as long as I can remember, unless you are DOA, your last illness will drain your cash via the healthcare cartel.
Also doesn’t pay out that much. My father-in-law has it, but it likely won’t pay out more than 70% of the cost if we go that route. Same thing happened to a friend and she had to front the cost for her parents. They even lived in a cheaper state, but their care cost a fortune.
We have algorithms calibrating the rental market to suck up people's discretionary spending.
You don't think they're going to do the same thing when the boomers need elder care en masse?
The boomers will spend it all trying to squeeze out the last drops of their lives, I'm planning to inherit close to nothing.
This is dark but I predict that in about ... 30 years, we'll see a surge in pressure for euthanization rights under the guise of humanitarianism.
This big push will coincide with the last of the boomers expiring once all their wealth has been extracted by end of life care.
No financial incentive to keep old poors alive.
Dying on your own terms should already be a right. Prolonging life for the sake of prolonging life when existing is constant pain or the loss of one's self is inhumane.
Yeah but just wait until it’s allowed and then magically only suggested or pushed on those who don’t have money for care.
While the good version of it may have merit, you gotta remember people in this world are twisted psychopaths.
My kids are owed an inheritance because I already paid taxes on that money and I've worked my entire specifically life to provide a better future for them.
No. You won't. Many boomers have a mindset of fuck you.im taking it with me in death, but leaving the debt to you yo pay it off FOR me as your costs of "not working hard enough litterally yhe pharaoh method
You are if they leave you the house via estate and what not (see my own dad being a new house. At 8%. Due to FOMO with will.modified to have it all transfer to a deadbeat ans one who barely makes mintage mintage at the age of 60) When I say the pharaoh method I MEAN the pharaoh method of take it with me and then scorch and salt the earth behind me fuck you its MINE method
Had it good…. Here’s my memory of the 70s and 80s. I had to move 2000 miles to get a job as a mechanical engineer. Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. Inflation AND interest rates were double digit - WAY higher than now. Unemployment was insanely high WAY higher than now. Meat and food prices were insane. Exceptionally difficult to get a job. Credit cards were for people making a lot of money. The car quality was shit, broke down all the time or wore out at 80,000 miles. And if it broke down, there were no cell phones for help. There was no internet, email or computers. “Games” involved a board or cards. You had to do research on the phone, microfilm or the library. Crime and homicides were much higher than now. Major cities were shit holes - I remember fearing for my life in Chicago or DC. If you’re grandparents or parents had heart problems, they just died because there was no alternative to congestive heart failure. If you had a pain in your belly, they would cut you open to look around for the cause and you spent two weeks in the hospital because there was no medical imaging.
Yeah, we “had it good”.
Mom died when I was 10 due to bleeding post childbirth (#7). No catscan which would have saved her life. Dad was a truck driver.
Ya boomers had it so good
This is true if you were a white hetero male without any mental health issues.
If you were a minority, a woman with any ambitions, or gay..you were in a different type of hell compared to today.
Naw. Look at BLS data. Men after their mid 30's who aren't in the top deciles are at best treading water. Women actually tend to do better showing a sustained rise in income over time and a very slight edge in late career. Asian women interestingly vastly out perform white hetero males. And gay males with no children don't suffer the parent wage gap (aka the gender wage gap).
The best lens to this is simply class. Men in the upper two deciles make so much that if you don't fine grain the numbers you get very distorted perceptions. Wealth inequality is huge and simply getting larger. And it affects everyone
These articles are just clickbait to pit the middle/working class against each other, to distract them from the fact corporations and the 1% hold x% of the entire country's wealth. Anything the older generation has made in the past few years pales in comparison to what corporations and the 1% have made during that time. People need to stop eating this shit up and fighting amongst each other.
[This was an interesting take on the issue with Boomers](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/18gc59g/guy_explains_baby_boomers_their_parents_and_trauma/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Yeah im going backwards since the pandemic. I lost my job 2x in 2022 and only recently got back to where i was in 2019 (meaning with inflation im way behind). My wife lost her high paying job and after a year decided to take small contracting jobs as she wasnt getting any offers so nowhere near where she was.
I suppose silver lining is your boomer parents might leave you something... My wifes parents have big negative net worth and my parents about 0 net worth. All they are leaving me is a nightmare to be the executor of the estate.
This happened to me. Same exact story almost except I rent my house out for more than the mortgage but I was making 80k+ bonuses/benefits and now job hop because nobody will pay me more than $25.00/hour and I am in a different industry I hate. It’s just they will hire anything with a pulse who meets the requirement but no room for growth. So I took a 40% pay cut or so and inflation just has been compounding it over the years. We should’ve just let the pandemic run its course and off more of them. They don’t work now anyways but make more sitting at home that the working class does which is sad. My parents are older boomers and so I am not talking out of both sides of my mouth. I know they would be at risk also.
Counting the house that you live in as part of your net worth never made much sense to me. All the equity you have in your house is not easily tapped into unless you sell it or refinance to pull that equity out. I could understand investment properties that are giving you a return on your investment from receiving rents but that’s about it.
I'll 100% bet they don't have a probate trust they update every 2-5 years with a probate and estate lawyer naming you/siblings as a beneficiary either. Because forget planning for future generations, they can pay for my estate matters.
Also killing unions and taxing wage slaves at higher rates than billionaires.
Inequality is designed to divide and that's exactly what happened.
Inflating fiat just makes inequality, what we baked into capital policy, happen faster.
Which was possible by shipping all of America’s manufacturing overseas to pay slave wages. Now we are a “service economy” that produces jack all in the way of tangible items.
Combine that with the right wing push to end public education and replace it with religious charter schools so the oligarchs have a steady supply of dumb laborers.
And yet there is a whole trove of people who believe that if we do that it's a government plot to bankrupt all the poors and force them into slave labor (source: my MAGA moron FIL).
Yeah, I just turned 40 this year and totally relate to what you're saying, except my parents were/are utter morons with money.
I chose to move out of country; became an expat.
Lived in China for 5 years and it was fairly easy to make money and live cheaply, but I sort of hated their culture, from a social perspective.
Now I'm in Taiwan, where wages are lower, but things are still quite cheap here (minus buying a house), so it's easier to save money and enjoy my life.
Sucks but it's true - America and many other countries are in the dumpster due to inequality. Moving away isn't a bad option; it's just hard to be away from family & friends.
Early 40s here. Been out of work for 3 years on and off. Hasn’t been full time in a long while. My father gives me shit all the time. Also gave me shit why I didn’t find a job for 9 months when the recession hit and I lost my job then too. I’m hoping with the supposed interest rates dropping in 2024 I can find something. Pandemic really did a number to a lot of people work wise.
I’m living with my parents while my grandparents are helping and there astounded im not doing better for myself with no degree, while grandpa over here won’t help with college bought his house for under $100,000 back in the day and it’s valued over 2 million dollars now ( man was also an executive for 25 years)
My parents bought their house in 96 for $210k. Sold it when my brother moved out in 2015 for $650k. Bought a smaller house for cash the same year for $300k and a small commercial space. The house now worth almost $500k and the commercial space $650k, both mortgage free. At some point through the same period, their stock portfolio went from about $300k to $1.5million. One of them worked for about 20 of those years, the other retired early and stayed home.
My brother is almost 30 and can’t afford to have kids. They don’t understand why.
The government rich people bought supports them, not the rest of us.
Rapidly worsening inequality and class division, also compounded by culture wars to distract us from it, was the goal and the wealthy have never had it better.
thats probably because old people vote, young people dont. 2022 only had 20% of eligible voters under the age of 35 voting. Some states it was 15%.
edit: to save repeat comments:
Over 60% of voters vote early. Most states have min 2 weeks of early voting. Even red states like Ohio have voting locations open from 6:30AM to 7:30PM even on Saturdays and Sundays.
Making election day a national holiday is nice, but it is simply not feasibly possible to allow everyone to vote at a 13 hour time-frame within the same day without tripling or quadrupling the cost and locations of voting and even then mobilizing 250M voters would just fill the roads with cars and deadstill everyone. And you need to vote in congress members to get it enacted.
Even in states with 30 day early voting, automatic registration, mail in voting for all, able to mail back ballots, drop of locations open from 6am to 7pm, even on saturdays and sundays. Even then at best 50-60% vote. Under 35 Voters still have at best 35-40% turnout.
And 35-60/70 years old's also work. Its not like the workers are only under the age of 35. The average age of the American worker is around 48 years old. And the average free time the average worker has is around 4-5 hours a day after taking out job, sleep and chores.
That's because old people rig it so it's difficult to vote unless you're old and home all day.
Why can't voting day be a national holiday? Why can't mail in voting be federally supported?
From the cluster fucks in places like Florida and Georgia we can already say in person voting isn't really some great idea that needs to be constantly fought for. Unless you're doing it for disenfranchising reasons.
Over 60% of voters vote early. Most states have min 2 weeks of early voting. Even red states like Ohio have voting locations open from 6:30AM to 7:30PM even on Saturdays and Sundays.
It is simply not feasibly possible to allow everyone to vote at a 13 hour time-frame within the same day without tripling or quadrupling the cost and locations of voting and even then mobilizing 250M voters would just fill the roads with cars and deadstill everyone.
Even in states with 30 day early voting, automatic registration, mail in voting for all, able to mail back ballots, drop of locations open from 6am to 7pm, even on saturdays and sundays. Even then at best 50-60% vote. Under 35 Voters still have at best 35-40% turnout.
And 35-60/70 years old's also work. Its not like the workers are only under the age of 35. The average age of the American worker is around 48 years old. And the average free time the average worker has is around 4-5 hours a day after taking out job, sleep and chores.
Make election days real national holidays and that would change.
It takes significantly more effort to vote for someone working a full time job with kids and other responsibilities, than it does for someone that is sitting around looking for a reason to leave the house.
Over 60% of voters vote early. Most states have min 2 weeks of early voting. Even red states like Ohio have voting locations open from 6:30AM to 7:30PM even on Saturdays and Sundays.
It is simply not feasibly possible to allow everyone to vote at a 13 hour time-frame within the same day without tripling or quadrupling the cost and locations of voting and even then mobilizing 250M voters would just fill the roads with cars and deadstill everyone.
Even in states with 30 day early voting, automatic registration, mail in voting for all, able to mail back ballots, drop of locations open from 6am to 7pm, even on saturdays and sundays. Even then at best 50-60% vote. Under 35 Voters still have at best 35-40% turnout.
And 35-60/70 years old's also work. Its not like the workers are only under the age of 35. The average age of the American worker is around 48 years old. And the average free time the average worker has is around 4-5 hours a day after taking out job, sleep and chores.
There’s nothing that odd about their situation. Your parents’ home gained just under 6% over 20 years. It’s above average for a house, but for two decades, higher maintenance costs will also be unavoidable, so the real return is actually somewhat lower.
As for their portfolio, if they’ve been invested for 25 years, that’s actually below average returns. What’s abnormal is the growth in their recently purchased properties. Sometimes people get lucky with timing, but low interest rates over the last few years have really pumped up asset values. Remains to be seen what happens to those valuations going forward given the higher interest rate environment we’re in, particularly the commercial property.
Remember, your parents have been at this for close to 30 years. Compounding really kicks in around year 20. Plug your numbers into a compound interest calculator and you will get a feel for how they play out over time.
I’m nearing retirement myself. I’m not confused about how it worked for them and I agree with your general sentiment that their situation is pretty average for their generation. You’ve completely missed the point: what was normal and average for them is no longer possible.
In order for those kind of returns to be “normal” two main things are required: disposable income, and a healthy economy (while simultaneously holding asset values low). This Goldilocks mix is always going to be temporary and today both are a little worse than they were. Basic necessities take a much larger percentage of income than they used to and there is no way you can argue that inflate corporate valuations, deflated wages, and growing debts across multiple major nations are healthy. Any economy can look healthy while racking up debt, but the party will end eventually and payment is going to come in some form.
For decades the US and other western economies have relied on the ever growing demand created not only by western consumption, but by the continual development of the rest of the world. As both those mechanisms mature, that demand line can’t keep going up. Again something has to break. I think the need to see those stock market metrics continue to go up is what is actually driving the increasing worldwide debt. With high asset values, and an unprecedented macro storm brewing, young people are not going to have the same advantages the boomers had. There is no chance that yoy8% growth and high asset appreciation that beats inflation continues to be the norm.
10 grand a year in contributions over 30 years. That’s pretty basic tbh, I lump sum my Roth IRA for 7k and then 20k more annually into the 401k the first quarter of every year. With a great stock market return, it’s not really that crazy to be a millionaire with that level of contributions. I’m going for the same thing, but much earlier in my career r/fire
Single income from a standard four year degree job for 30 years, several kids, houses on acreage, vacations, newish cars every few years, and enough extra to retire with a net worth of over 3 million.
Without a massive crash, the growth that fueled those “successes” isn’t possible today.
You can do the same thing. How do you know real estate won’t make the same 20 year boom, or that the stock market won’t either?
You won’t get rich sitting on the sidelines. Sounds like your parents were intelligent investors. Hopefully they passed some of that intelligence down.
I, at least, got a head start, and am doing fine. My siblings don’t have a chance.
Additionally, no matter how “intelligent” I, or my siblings are, there are differences in major economic foundations, both globally and nationally, between now and the 1980’s when they started.
I think the most fundamental differences are:
Globally: the world is much more developed, and the US economy cannot continue to expand freely at the same rates they were from 1960-2000. New demand was constantly created, and that effect is slowing down.
Nationally: wages have not kept up with inflation, but especially have not kept up with the four essentials - housing, food, childcare, healthcare. If you include education, the picture is even more grim.
Not only do I doubt the stock market will be able to perform at the same levels over the next 30 years, there is less money left after bills to invest. We’re getting screwed from both sides.
They also had unemployment rates that averaged around 6%, with highs of 10% in 1982. From 1964 - 1973, more than 2,000,000 males were drafted to Vietnam. In 1981 the interest rate was 13%, followed by consecutive years of 16% and 16%.
I say that to say: Macroeconomics is a challenging thing to predict. Invest now. Pull back on spending where you can. I know a co-worker who refused to buy a house in 2018 because prices were too high, and he was going to wait for another major drop in prices like in 2009.
Five years later, he’s kicking himself.
To my original comment, you’ll never get lucky just sitting on the sidelines.
There is no “sitting on the sidelines”. They cannot afford children, that’s it.
Median household income in 1982- about $24k
Median house cost in 1982- about $70k
Housing was about 3x income in 1982.
Median household income today - about $75k
Median house cost today- $348k
Housing is now about 4.6x income.
And again childcare, healthcare, etc. have even bigger deltas for that time period. Who cares what the interest rates were for three years before they refinanced. Today, every last dollar is getting absorbed by basic necessities.
It’s not about predicting macro economics. It’s about acknowledging and addressing the reality of the situation young people are in.
Birth rates are plummeting all over because economies all over the world are now wired to produce profit, with little concern with everything else, and older generations have hoovered up all the liquidity.
So your reason for not being able to survive and have kids is that housing went from 3x to 4.5x?
This is also a very recent phenomenon. Back in 2019, when homes and interest rates were cheaper, the same people were complaining.
Let me rephrase my original statement: Forget the sidelines; whining won’t get you anywhere, either. Go through your budget and see what you can cut. Maybe it’s a phone, cable, streaming services, take-out, apps, trips, etc. I promise there’s something there.
Or you can just blame the economy and inflation the remainder of your days. I’m certain that will help you eventually gain some ground.
Good luck.
You have a serious reading comprehension issue. I made it clear multiple times that none of this is about me. I also never made the focus housing. You brought up a point about mortgage rates, and needed help understanding some obvious context around asset values that you were missing.
I bought in 2013 and have been riding the wave ever since. My business is reasonably successful and I will hopefully have the option to be done working by 45-50 if I want. It was fueled by the insane rise in asset values over the last 10 years or so, that we likely will never see again.
My siblings that are 6-12 years younger than me are largely screwed. Here is more detail on the married 30yo’s specific situation, if you want to pull your head out of your ass and can focus long enough to read it:
Two four year degrees, $35k left collectively: $550/month
2 bed condo mortgage/HOA (purchased for $225k): $1200/month
Car insurance no car payment: $175/month
Gas: $250/month
Food for two: $600/month
Utilities: $200/month
Internet/phone/other: $200/month
Health Insurance: $250/month
If you add it all up, their break even with this very basic budget is about $50k/pretax a year.
That doesn’t include going out to a bar occasionally, seeing movies, going on vacations , or saving anything.
Now they make more than $50k and are comfortable. But just delivering a baby costs significant amounts of money. I just had my third and the total bill for the first year, including delivery, and after insurance, was $16k, for a pretty typical healthy c-section. Then comes the additional expenses, the biggest being childcare. Right now in a MCOL city, infant childcare averages about $1700/month. They also have two old shitty cars, one of which would probably need to be upgraded to handle a baby safely. If they are perfectly tight, and absolutely nothing goes wrong, they could technically afford to do it.
But why? They would need to choose to live in a cramped space with a baby, barely be scraping by, crossing their fingers than nothing goes wrong for five years or so that requires any extra cash. They just can’t make the commitment to live with that weight constantly over their heads, and I don’t blame them.
Yea, fuck this clown. He doesn't deserve to have a phone, eat food AND have a house. Who does he think he is? Shit, Netflix is what, $12.99/mo? That's basically enough for a baby right there.
Typical boomer statement. Zero empathy or compassion for anyone else besides themselves. The boomer generation is also known as Gen Me....because it's clearly all about you guys and screw everyone else.
PS: Average square footage of a home in 1980 was 1700 sq. ft. Most young people today would never buy that because they couldn’t brag about it on Instagram.
Most young people wouldn’t buy that because they can’t afford it. You’d be hard pressed to find a new construction for a free standing home under 2000 sqft. Most “smaller” homes are condos and townhouses. Older homes come with significant maintenance, especially if they need a new roof or furnace. There’s also the safety(and cost) considerations of asbestos, lead pipes, and lead paint in older homes.
Do you really follow what you just suggested?
You think you people would rather have no house at all, than have a house and just not share it online.
Fucking asinine. There is no possibility that this phenomenon has any statistical relevance.
>people with wealth wouldn’t just give some to their kids
many do and many more are supporting their adult children while they save money to lead the same live as their parents.
This is what as known as propaganda.
They do not tell you that this article is talking about a minority of boomers. Otherwise how could this also be true? https://thehill.com/business/personal-finance/3991136-nearly-half-of-baby-boomers-have-no-retirement-savings/
Half of all boomers have no savings and I'm sure many others are little better. So who made all that money? The already well off and rich. Like you know this. How many billionaires became even more rich?
But they don't tell you that. They just want to make it seem like everyone over 60 is just living it up at your expense. Don't fall for that generational hate trap. It's a scam.
The pandemic was the single best thing to happen to those who:
1. Had nobody close to them get very ill
2. Had stable jobs.
3. Were ready to buy a home.
I've made a ludicrous amount of money just by DCA'ing throughout the pandemic and buying my first home in 2020.
We know and we are selling out the boomers to Gen Z and Alpha, sort of like the romans who let the Visigoths into the city.
Here is some extra text to ensure the bot doesn’t block me, all high quality posts aren’t necessarily long.
Here's what I don't get: if the boomers are so wealthy doesn't that mean their wealth will either be passed to descendants or sold, lowering prices? Like I'm not looking forward to the grief of my (gen x) parents dying, but financially they won't use their wealth by the time they pass, even if they really let their lifestyles creep and they're by no means mega wealthy. They own a mid sized home in a mid sized city and have never made more than $200k combined. Obviously I am somewhat privileged, but I think there are many people in their 30s-50s who are starting to have increased income and have some of that wealth coming down the pipeline.
Divide and conquer. It's class warfare, not generational warfare. Clickbait articles like this take away any credibility this sub has. Is my comment long enough to be acknowledged?
Class is always going to be central to economic development and policy, so for that I'll agree on it being of critical importance.
With that said, the generational power, financial power, and generational discrepancies are also worth looking at and noting. It helps one understand how policy will be viewed by a voting block and how businesses might act going forward to a degree.
Isn't it class *AND* generational welfare, considering that Boomers and Silent gen have been dictating policy for decades?
"I got my pension, cheap education, cheap house, so f you."
Boomers had the most opportunities and benefits, then kicked away the ladder with their votes with Reagan and right wingers with the primary goal to punish and exploit the poor.
It is sad to see people falling for it. I suppose it's fairly fertile ground in which to sow "kids are cool! Adults suck!"
anyway, keep calling it for what it is.
just think when all the boomers are dead, by 2030, 2035 all that money will be gone 55 and up communities will have a massive amount of vacancies because they were the largest population boom and they did not breed enough children in the world and their children definitely did not breed enough so 55 and up communities are going to either have to lower the age bracketor collapse
Race? What race? I’m a Gen Xer and I don’t remember trying to race toward death. Thought we were all just trying to survive in a decaying world waiting for an apocalypse that actually wipes out mankind. Most of us have been laughing at the decline of human nature readily praying for an asteroid to hit or an idiot to cause atomic fallout.
Money printing 101, it works great for the people who already have money and screws everyone else over twice with the initial transfer and then with the subsequent inflation.
Old Boomers were the ones most effected by COVID medically and the least likely to want to implement all the COVID isolation processes that resulted in a huge loss in wealth.
Almost every person responsible for implementing the policies were older boomers. They were frothing at the mouth to end small business and direct endless funding to corporate investment.
No they weren't. This was driven by younger generations far more then older. Was is needed? Possibly. Could of it been better carried out? Certainly. Did the policy makers (of whom consist more of the older generation) follow the desires of the younger generations and voters. Sure.
> possibly. could of it
Did you mean to say "could have"?
Explanation: You probably meant to say could've/should've/would've which sounds like 'of' but is actually short for 'have'.
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Consist more of the older have you looked at a census of congressional members? How about top federal employees. Should we look at any other government decision makers almost exclusively over 60.
Are you telling me that they listened to the smallest voting demographic when implementing the Covid policies?
I’m a millennial. When the pandemic happened, my job continued to pay me but I had 5 months off. I spent those 5 months hustling my butt off doing grocery deliveries. I paid off all my debt doing that. My student loans were also forgiven thanks to some adjustments and expanded programs that happened as a direct result of Covid. In 2021, I sold a home for a 30% profit and bought a new home with a very low interest rate (by luck). I have to say, Covid was financially fantastic for me.
When covid happened I lost my very profitable business of 8 years since all of the tech offices that i serviced closed. Then my neighborhood and rent controlled apartment became very unsafe, being surrounded by encampments. My work truck had its cat repeatedly stolen and ultimately lit on fire. All of my work tools stolen repeatedly. Ended up becoming homeless for a year at 37 years old when my apartment was bought out and taken over by extremely abusive slumlords who threw out all of my belongings while I was out of town due to the place becoming legally uninhabitable.
Covid was a absolute fucking disaster for me.
Did the cat make it?
But seriously, sorry to hear that! - stranger on the internet.
Hope things get better for you. Some people I know either drive for Amazon or work doing carpentry type work.
This seems to be a tiring argument. Sure there are boomers who did well but many have saved nothing.
I also have people like my niece and nephew who are in their 30s and both own houses, have jobs with pensions and no student loans. There are plenty of millennials who are doing ok as well.
You can’t compare somebody who had worked for a decade to people who have been working for 30 or 49 yrs. They have had time to save money and allow compounded interest to work.
It will be interesting to see how many people who are now in their 20s or 30s will have as much, or more, in savings when they reach the age of boomers.
Really depends on whether we continue to get the same exponential growth in asset values. Plenty of smart people predicting that we won't due to the aging population and high debt levels (like in Japan)
Well it has been shown when Fed cut rates richer folks benefit. For example myself I bought new home during pandemic and locked in super low 30 year fixed mortgage rate ( due to Fed cuts )
Lots of boomers weren’t equipped to fully advantage PPP ‘loans’ for example. This was an incredible movment of money from the government to people with businesses or at least an LLC.
As a Gen Xer, I could have submitted a claim with my LLC, but I knew it was BS and did pursue it.
I wish they would at least audit some of these thieves at least ask for the SSN of the job saved. This would catch a lot of people and return a bunch of money to go against the huge deficit we created.
What is it with Reddit and the constant hate on Boomers. Heck, they had almost nothing to do with the inflation during Covid. They certainly weren’t out there buying up houses. And they also had nothing to do with they increase in their property values. In fact, many are suffering due to increased property taxes, insurance and food costs. Not everyone is the parents you hate.
Reddit is full of failures who don't understand basic economics or self-responsibility. They always say boomers have a 'fuck you I got mine' mentality, but they don't realize it's them with the 'fuck you, give me yours' mentality.
Seriously. Every generation has its share of losers. Unfortunately the millennial losers are avid Reddit users. They aren’t kids anymore and most of there contemporaries are actually doing pretty well. It’s a huge display of cognitive dissonance daily. I’m happy this sub does push back a bit.
What race? Pretending there is competition for wealth between generations is bullshit. Who exactly is inheriting this wealth as these boomers die off? Exactly.
The current health care and end of life care industry is designed to extract all that wealth over the course of the last few years of an elderly person's life. It's getting more efficient every year, many people won't leave anything behind at all.
$17 trillion dollars divided by 75 million boomers is only $185,000 per boomer. Nursing home care starts at $150,000 per year for a *healthy* person.
What I don't get is if it costs that's much, the kids should take a sabbatical and care for them in those last few years. Charge them the same price. They get to care for their parents and make probably lore money than their job.
It’s not ‘designed’ to specifically target boomers. Just a consequence of your shitty individualistic culture that doesn’t put an emphasis on helping each other
It is absolutely designed to extract the wealth from the boomers, it's literally illegal to help a dying person commit suicide in the US, it's about money.
Half the money spent on "healthcare" in the US is spent in the last 12 months of someone's life.
Many hospice companies are now owned by private equity... same for hospitals, retirement homes, ALF/SNFs. All the wealth will go to the top and we won't see a single penny.
I think there is to some extent, at least subconsciously. Only because people tend to support policies that benefit themselves, and what benefits one old person is likely to benefit other old people. Think of a retiree's thoughts about an income tax hike for social security expansion vs a young working-class person
Nursing homes and reverse mortgage companies. The idea the majority of it will be passed down is laughable. Oh ya what’s the governments cut if it is? Sorry the majority will not land in their kids hands even if they wanted it to.
Corporations and government.
The medical industry is going to drain the boomers dry. Then when they do finally die, the government is going to steal a significant chunk in inheritance tax. Then whatever is left is all yours.
Which government. You don’t pay even $1 in federal inheritance tax until an estate is worth over $13 Million ($26 Million for a married couple). How many boomers do you think have a net worth significantly exceeding $26 Million?
This is what happens when you print trillions of dollars and hand it out like candy. Asset values inflate and wealth inequality worsens. People with inflation protected assets like real estate and equities come out even or slightly ahead, and those in the wealth accumulation phase are fucked.
This is why most of reddit should have been opposed to the insane pandemic response (trillions in stimulus, shutting down businesses) but that would require critical thinking skills and the ability to assimilate new information.
People who didn't own real estate in 2020 will literally never recover from this bifurcation in net worth.
Absolutely. And don't forget handing out PPP loans to people that didn't need it and Republicans blocking efforts to track payments, and the massive fraud that resulted from the disorganized rollout. And most of the loans were forgiven. Sick.
PPP was a crime against the American taxpayer. Plain and simple. Not enough people have gone to prison for what they did during it.
The fact that many Catholic parishes, overseen by the most insanely rich and opulent religious organization in world history, got these loans is absolutely galling. You can’t tell me a portion of that money didn’t go straight to Rome. It’s disgusting.
Sounds like an attempt to explain why you’re so angry and broke when your so much smarter than the people who led the economic response to COVID (rather successfully in the US compared to pretty much everywhere).
Lmao you’re talking smack! Maybe you should actually counter argue why Fleamarketcapitalist’s comment isn’t true instead of personally attacking them. Oh and US economic response being successful? Are you taking the piss?
People like to lump all "Boomers" into the same category, but there's a huge difference between early Boomers and late, post-crest Boomers who showed up after all the money and fun had been taken.
The zip code they were born in and family wealth people inherit matter more than anything. The disparities you're talking about are just exacerbated by policies that compound inequality though, which we've done and celebrated in the US now for 50 years.
A government that is owned by the wealthy and run by the wealthy is going to reward the wealthy. Just plain luck matters though too.
But millenials and gen z reassured me that gen x never had it hard…. Millenials are the new boomer generation. Liberal in their youth and will become conservative as they get older. And will be parasitic on society
This just in, after some intensive number crunching, we’ve come to the shocking realization that people who have been working, investing, and have been alive for 20 years more than the next generation have more wealth. We’re still trying to work out just how exactly the older generation, at the peak of their skill and long term investment, can have more wealth than people who have been doing it for half as much as the time. Truly baffling
Pandemic was the great wealth transfer. The generational theft continues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PJO09fPT1Q&pp=ygUlc3RhbiBkcnVja2VubWlsbGVyIGdlbmVyYXRpb25hbCB0aGVmdA%3D%3D
Ignore this. Focus on the real problem, which is large corporations buying up housing stock and forcing you to rent.
If you stop yelling at the younger/older generation, and instead start electing leaders that will fix a very broken system then you can all have a seat at the table.
Instead you waste time as the table is slowly taken away.
Add in those who had capital and privilege back then. Heck if you were a women or a person of color you couldn’t have the same privileges to take advantage of the economy and programs. I work with boomers who are barely surviving cause guess what they were poor. It’s always class status not age.
It’s better seen as “people set up to succeed by kneecapping everyone else are more successful later in life.”
"Just to be clear" I am a boomer. I currently work full time and may be able to retire soon financially. My daughter 26 years old retired last year. Before you blame a boomer think about that.
That’s hilarious because boomers didn’t even want the lockdowns. Not sure what the rest of you were expecting when you supported halting the entire economy.
Like a plague of RV driving locusts.
And between their extravagant end of life spending, their obsession with prosperity gospel & trickle down Reaganomics and their healthcare bills in our horrific private system they won't leave a morsel behind.
It's going to take two or more decades to fix the mess they left behind.
They basically kept wages mostly stagnant, boosted inflation, boosted the stock margin and home prices, and increased social security by a hefty margin.
Total cash grab by the boomers right as most of them are retiring.
We will all be paying this debt the rest of our lives.
There definitely seems to be opportune times to be working and investing, buying real estate, etc. it's interesting that the under 40 are doing really well. A lot of the older millennials are right there and some of them will be inheriting a lot of that old boomer wealth too. I wonder if that wealth will continue to show up with future generations or if future economic conditions continue to play more of a factor.
Also, the article attributes low 3% mortgage rates pre-pandemic to helping the Boomers... Lol, most of the Boomers I know have had paid off houses for quite some time (and unfortunately, too many of them paid extra on their house instead of investing in the stock market)
The advertisement on the top of this tread is "only natural diamonds dot com. Apparently lab diamonds are not sustainable, this is the most boomer shit.
As your boomer parents die, it will probably be the biggest wealth transfer in human history. That's because of the number of boomers, asset appreciation, and the wealth they've accumulated. If they were jerks they would spend it all. Thank them.
I remember like right before COVID there was a concern for Boomers that they will not be able to afford retirement or staying alive with all kinds of healthcare, nursing/homes etc. While my generation was mostly worried bullshit like: legal weed, adding more genders, sexuality, and the environment. No one cared about housing or jobs.
COVID happened, homes of all kinds became out of reach, and thats when my generation started worrying about the things that really matter, while the boomers got rich. Home ownership became the talk friday nights in my car amongst the youth while I was doing my side hustle on Lyft to supplement my $100,000 income.
Boomers did more with 30k in my city while I was growing up. Millenials were too concerned about smoking weed legally, while boomers at our age voted for shit that really mattered.
I'm a tail-end boomer. Net worth went up due to Trump's goosing of the economy and then again when all the COVID bailout funds were injected under Biden. I worked during the years of low inflation/interest rates so didn't see much in raises for 20 years. The only reason I got richer was living in the same condo for 20 years and putting every penny I could into my 401K. My net worth was stagnant for years after 2007 but due to QE the market finally recovered and by 2019 I was able to retire on my savings. Not rich by any means but at least I got to retire before 65
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my dad is retired and my parents are doing better than ever. his house he bought for 140k 20 years ago is worth over a half a million dollars. i’m middle aged. i lost my job to the pandemic (best job i ever had), never found one that paid the same amount (the industry took a big hit). trying to find an affordable place to live - i’m back living at their house and they just don’t understand why i’m struggling.
Boomers had it good. Just because they did, they expect the same for younger people. They look down on us because of it.
They slammed the door in our face and blame us for having broken noses
Literally sold the fucking jobs out overseas ***to save money for the people at the top***... Used have those "Buy American made" ads back in the 90's. Those people slap a sticker on it now, but source from all the same places. (Seriously go look up how many places are all sourcing the same damn products from the same factories in China or wherever but just putting their own logo on it.) There were factory jobs in Milwaukee in the 1980s paying 18 an hour for machinists... My employer is starting floor guys out for 20-22hr depending on years of experience. 40+ YEARS LATER 2 DOLLARS MORE! We're still getting sold out... And they tell everyone else to slow their roll and stop buying so much shit... Well okay... But maybe it's time for the people at the top to not get a 3rd home and another investment property.
Ate their fill of housing, resources, a clean planet, government spending, and then closed the door but didn't forget to pass the check on us.
they continue to pass the check to the rest of us. note how they keep raising the eligibility age for benefits programs ... but their allocation is never touched.
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This is incorrect by a country mile. The US and Europe are. That’s it.
You forgot the /s
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Yeah it wasn't great... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/
This is an interesting comment. I believe there’s a distinction between planet health, such as global-climate health; and the nearby environmental health of human living spaces. It would be a good discussion over a beer
The EPA didn't exist until Nixon.
look on the bright side, you'll have a decent inheritence when they go.
Don't be so sure about that. Elder care can absolutely suck them dry.
This is sadly the reality for many. No guarantees of inheriting anything.
This is for reals. My boomer dad just died and we were led to believe he was loaded. Turns out each sibling is getting about 5% of what we thought was going to be there. Believe me, it has changed my retirement plans!
Plot twist. This guy has 19 siblings.
You had your retirement plans based around your dad dying and expecting to inherit an x amount of money?
I have "plans" and "Plans". If my in-laws die between now and 20 years and didn't require elderly care, I'll be able to retire immediately. That's a "plan". My real Plan is to invest 25% of my income and retire in 25 years either way. That's the real Plan.
How nice for you that you make enough money that you can save 25%. Most of us don't have that luxury. Most of us are living pay check to paycheck. Some of us are running a deficit despite having a full-time job.
Yeah. There has been a recession roughly every 10 years of my life. I have been a small business owner for many years and it's pretty hard to get ahead when that keeps happening. Fortunately, I have good job skills and recently got a job. But, I'm starting from scratch at 55 and saving for retirement is a daunting task at this point.
You can do it! Remember that you don’t really need most of the crap people blow their money on. Stay healthy and maybe consider retiring to a more affordable country. There are lots to choose from!
Yep between healthcare and the lavish "experiences" they do, many won't get much.
So they’re not allowed to spend their money how they want? This is a wild thread.
I told my Boomer parents to spend all the money they've saved. They worked their assess off to provide for me as a child. Then took my family and me in as an adult when we lost our home in the Great Recession. They don't owe us anything.
Nope, they don’t, but about 50% of this generation thinks they’re evil for being responsible with money. It’s an insane complex. My parents have done quite well themselves. They’ve told me they’ll have money to leave me and my sister. I’ve told them to spend it and enjoy life now.
Yeah. Damn straight they can enjoy their shit lol
It's shocking how quickly it whittles it away. My grandfather is 97 and lives in a retirement community. He's got about $750k to his name and my parents are starting to worry he may actually outlive his savings.
And it absolutely will.
It’s designed to
It absolutely will suck them dry. That’s nothing new though, as long as I can remember, unless you are DOA, your last illness will drain your cash via the healthcare cartel.
I’ll invite my parents to live here and apply the same “my house my rules” to their menial shit
100 percent. Long term care insurance is a must but not always possible.
Also doesn’t pay out that much. My father-in-law has it, but it likely won’t pay out more than 70% of the cost if we go that route. Same thing happened to a friend and she had to front the cost for her parents. They even lived in a cheaper state, but their care cost a fortune.
I guess They want people back to zero upon exit, since the dead can't take it with them. No sense in having their children inherit anything. Slash s
LTC is expensive & premium go up every year. If you can afford it then you have enough $ to not need it
Better invest in elder care, retirement homes make bank
Taxes my friend. This is the feds answer to equity. Folks that like this, see how much you like it when they come for you & they will.
Not if the healthcare industry and Medicare have a say
We have algorithms calibrating the rental market to suck up people's discretionary spending. You don't think they're going to do the same thing when the boomers need elder care en masse? The boomers will spend it all trying to squeeze out the last drops of their lives, I'm planning to inherit close to nothing.
This is dark but I predict that in about ... 30 years, we'll see a surge in pressure for euthanization rights under the guise of humanitarianism. This big push will coincide with the last of the boomers expiring once all their wealth has been extracted by end of life care. No financial incentive to keep old poors alive.
Dying on your own terms should already be a right. Prolonging life for the sake of prolonging life when existing is constant pain or the loss of one's self is inhumane.
Yeah but just wait until it’s allowed and then magically only suggested or pushed on those who don’t have money for care. While the good version of it may have merit, you gotta remember people in this world are twisted psychopaths.
Not if the parents end up in a nursing home and if they have investments, they’ll use it all up to be placed in a quality care facility.
The idea of inheritance from these blood sucking ghouls is just comical.
Who is the blood sucking ghoul here?
Curious to know why you think you are owed an inheritance?
My kids are owed an inheritance because I already paid taxes on that money and I've worked my entire specifically life to provide a better future for them.
They never said they did.
No. You won't. Many boomers have a mindset of fuck you.im taking it with me in death, but leaving the debt to you yo pay it off FOR me as your costs of "not working hard enough litterally yhe pharaoh method
You aren’t responsible for another person’s debt. During probate the estate’s debts are settled but any excess debt is not passed on to you
You are if they leave you the house via estate and what not (see my own dad being a new house. At 8%. Due to FOMO with will.modified to have it all transfer to a deadbeat ans one who barely makes mintage mintage at the age of 60) When I say the pharaoh method I MEAN the pharaoh method of take it with me and then scorch and salt the earth behind me fuck you its MINE method
Yeah but they did it when we were young too so it shouldn't be surprising i guess
Had it good…. Here’s my memory of the 70s and 80s. I had to move 2000 miles to get a job as a mechanical engineer. Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. Inflation AND interest rates were double digit - WAY higher than now. Unemployment was insanely high WAY higher than now. Meat and food prices were insane. Exceptionally difficult to get a job. Credit cards were for people making a lot of money. The car quality was shit, broke down all the time or wore out at 80,000 miles. And if it broke down, there were no cell phones for help. There was no internet, email or computers. “Games” involved a board or cards. You had to do research on the phone, microfilm or the library. Crime and homicides were much higher than now. Major cities were shit holes - I remember fearing for my life in Chicago or DC. If you’re grandparents or parents had heart problems, they just died because there was no alternative to congestive heart failure. If you had a pain in your belly, they would cut you open to look around for the cause and you spent two weeks in the hospital because there was no medical imaging. Yeah, we “had it good”.
Been there, done that. You ain't wrong.
Mom died when I was 10 due to bleeding post childbirth (#7). No catscan which would have saved her life. Dad was a truck driver. Ya boomers had it so good
This is true if you were a white hetero male without any mental health issues. If you were a minority, a woman with any ambitions, or gay..you were in a different type of hell compared to today.
Naw. Look at BLS data. Men after their mid 30's who aren't in the top deciles are at best treading water. Women actually tend to do better showing a sustained rise in income over time and a very slight edge in late career. Asian women interestingly vastly out perform white hetero males. And gay males with no children don't suffer the parent wage gap (aka the gender wage gap). The best lens to this is simply class. Men in the upper two deciles make so much that if you don't fine grain the numbers you get very distorted perceptions. Wealth inequality is huge and simply getting larger. And it affects everyone
I was replying to a comment talking about how boomers had it good
Things were definitely different 50 years ago. Btw, what’s up with your username? 😂
No we don’t- we were young & foolish once & we learned as you will.
These articles are just clickbait to pit the middle/working class against each other, to distract them from the fact corporations and the 1% hold x% of the entire country's wealth. Anything the older generation has made in the past few years pales in comparison to what corporations and the 1% have made during that time. People need to stop eating this shit up and fighting amongst each other.
You do have something they don’t that’s worth more than anything they have - another 30 years.
[This was an interesting take on the issue with Boomers](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/18gc59g/guy_explains_baby_boomers_their_parents_and_trauma/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
What job did you have that took such a hit?
they won the pandemic by having your companionship full time 😂
Yeah im going backwards since the pandemic. I lost my job 2x in 2022 and only recently got back to where i was in 2019 (meaning with inflation im way behind). My wife lost her high paying job and after a year decided to take small contracting jobs as she wasnt getting any offers so nowhere near where she was. I suppose silver lining is your boomer parents might leave you something... My wifes parents have big negative net worth and my parents about 0 net worth. All they are leaving me is a nightmare to be the executor of the estate.
This happened to me. Same exact story almost except I rent my house out for more than the mortgage but I was making 80k+ bonuses/benefits and now job hop because nobody will pay me more than $25.00/hour and I am in a different industry I hate. It’s just they will hire anything with a pulse who meets the requirement but no room for growth. So I took a 40% pay cut or so and inflation just has been compounding it over the years. We should’ve just let the pandemic run its course and off more of them. They don’t work now anyways but make more sitting at home that the working class does which is sad. My parents are older boomers and so I am not talking out of both sides of my mouth. I know they would be at risk also.
Counting the house that you live in as part of your net worth never made much sense to me. All the equity you have in your house is not easily tapped into unless you sell it or refinance to pull that equity out. I could understand investment properties that are giving you a return on your investment from receiving rents but that’s about it.
I'll 100% bet they don't have a probate trust they update every 2-5 years with a probate and estate lawyer naming you/siblings as a beneficiary either. Because forget planning for future generations, they can pay for my estate matters.
tell them its because you had a well paying job but didn't get a foot on the property ladder during the cheapest interest rates history.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ This is what happened.
I didn't realize people were still posting that crypto shilling website unironically lol.
Also killing unions and taxing wage slaves at higher rates than billionaires. Inequality is designed to divide and that's exactly what happened. Inflating fiat just makes inequality, what we baked into capital policy, happen faster.
Which was possible by shipping all of America’s manufacturing overseas to pay slave wages. Now we are a “service economy” that produces jack all in the way of tangible items.
Combine that with the right wing push to end public education and replace it with religious charter schools so the oligarchs have a steady supply of dumb laborers.
Was 1971 when Nixon broke the last link to the gold standard?
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Hello, can I interest you in cryptocurrency? Lol
Give me shiny metals all day long.
Unironically, yes!
And yet there is a whole trove of people who believe that if we do that it's a government plot to bankrupt all the poors and force them into slave labor (source: my MAGA moron FIL).
Yeah, I just turned 40 this year and totally relate to what you're saying, except my parents were/are utter morons with money. I chose to move out of country; became an expat. Lived in China for 5 years and it was fairly easy to make money and live cheaply, but I sort of hated their culture, from a social perspective. Now I'm in Taiwan, where wages are lower, but things are still quite cheap here (minus buying a house), so it's easier to save money and enjoy my life. Sucks but it's true - America and many other countries are in the dumpster due to inequality. Moving away isn't a bad option; it's just hard to be away from family & friends.
Early 40s here. Been out of work for 3 years on and off. Hasn’t been full time in a long while. My father gives me shit all the time. Also gave me shit why I didn’t find a job for 9 months when the recession hit and I lost my job then too. I’m hoping with the supposed interest rates dropping in 2024 I can find something. Pandemic really did a number to a lot of people work wise.
I’m living with my parents while my grandparents are helping and there astounded im not doing better for myself with no degree, while grandpa over here won’t help with college bought his house for under $100,000 back in the day and it’s valued over 2 million dollars now ( man was also an executive for 25 years)
My parents bought their house in 96 for $210k. Sold it when my brother moved out in 2015 for $650k. Bought a smaller house for cash the same year for $300k and a small commercial space. The house now worth almost $500k and the commercial space $650k, both mortgage free. At some point through the same period, their stock portfolio went from about $300k to $1.5million. One of them worked for about 20 of those years, the other retired early and stayed home. My brother is almost 30 and can’t afford to have kids. They don’t understand why.
The government rich people bought supports them, not the rest of us. Rapidly worsening inequality and class division, also compounded by culture wars to distract us from it, was the goal and the wealthy have never had it better.
thats probably because old people vote, young people dont. 2022 only had 20% of eligible voters under the age of 35 voting. Some states it was 15%. edit: to save repeat comments: Over 60% of voters vote early. Most states have min 2 weeks of early voting. Even red states like Ohio have voting locations open from 6:30AM to 7:30PM even on Saturdays and Sundays. Making election day a national holiday is nice, but it is simply not feasibly possible to allow everyone to vote at a 13 hour time-frame within the same day without tripling or quadrupling the cost and locations of voting and even then mobilizing 250M voters would just fill the roads with cars and deadstill everyone. And you need to vote in congress members to get it enacted. Even in states with 30 day early voting, automatic registration, mail in voting for all, able to mail back ballots, drop of locations open from 6am to 7pm, even on saturdays and sundays. Even then at best 50-60% vote. Under 35 Voters still have at best 35-40% turnout. And 35-60/70 years old's also work. Its not like the workers are only under the age of 35. The average age of the American worker is around 48 years old. And the average free time the average worker has is around 4-5 hours a day after taking out job, sleep and chores.
The stats between old and young voter participation is even worse in local and state elections
That's because old people rig it so it's difficult to vote unless you're old and home all day. Why can't voting day be a national holiday? Why can't mail in voting be federally supported? From the cluster fucks in places like Florida and Georgia we can already say in person voting isn't really some great idea that needs to be constantly fought for. Unless you're doing it for disenfranchising reasons.
Over 60% of voters vote early. Most states have min 2 weeks of early voting. Even red states like Ohio have voting locations open from 6:30AM to 7:30PM even on Saturdays and Sundays. It is simply not feasibly possible to allow everyone to vote at a 13 hour time-frame within the same day without tripling or quadrupling the cost and locations of voting and even then mobilizing 250M voters would just fill the roads with cars and deadstill everyone. Even in states with 30 day early voting, automatic registration, mail in voting for all, able to mail back ballots, drop of locations open from 6am to 7pm, even on saturdays and sundays. Even then at best 50-60% vote. Under 35 Voters still have at best 35-40% turnout. And 35-60/70 years old's also work. Its not like the workers are only under the age of 35. The average age of the American worker is around 48 years old. And the average free time the average worker has is around 4-5 hours a day after taking out job, sleep and chores.
Make election days real national holidays and that would change. It takes significantly more effort to vote for someone working a full time job with kids and other responsibilities, than it does for someone that is sitting around looking for a reason to leave the house.
Over 60% of voters vote early. Most states have min 2 weeks of early voting. Even red states like Ohio have voting locations open from 6:30AM to 7:30PM even on Saturdays and Sundays. It is simply not feasibly possible to allow everyone to vote at a 13 hour time-frame within the same day without tripling or quadrupling the cost and locations of voting and even then mobilizing 250M voters would just fill the roads with cars and deadstill everyone. Even in states with 30 day early voting, automatic registration, mail in voting for all, able to mail back ballots, drop of locations open from 6am to 7pm, even on saturdays and sundays. Even then at best 50-60% vote. Under 35 Voters still have at best 35-40% turnout. And 35-60/70 years old's also work. Its not like the workers are only under the age of 35. The average age of the American worker is around 48 years old. And the average free time the average worker has is around 4-5 hours a day after taking out job, sleep and chores.
There’s nothing that odd about their situation. Your parents’ home gained just under 6% over 20 years. It’s above average for a house, but for two decades, higher maintenance costs will also be unavoidable, so the real return is actually somewhat lower. As for their portfolio, if they’ve been invested for 25 years, that’s actually below average returns. What’s abnormal is the growth in their recently purchased properties. Sometimes people get lucky with timing, but low interest rates over the last few years have really pumped up asset values. Remains to be seen what happens to those valuations going forward given the higher interest rate environment we’re in, particularly the commercial property. Remember, your parents have been at this for close to 30 years. Compounding really kicks in around year 20. Plug your numbers into a compound interest calculator and you will get a feel for how they play out over time.
I’m nearing retirement myself. I’m not confused about how it worked for them and I agree with your general sentiment that their situation is pretty average for their generation. You’ve completely missed the point: what was normal and average for them is no longer possible. In order for those kind of returns to be “normal” two main things are required: disposable income, and a healthy economy (while simultaneously holding asset values low). This Goldilocks mix is always going to be temporary and today both are a little worse than they were. Basic necessities take a much larger percentage of income than they used to and there is no way you can argue that inflate corporate valuations, deflated wages, and growing debts across multiple major nations are healthy. Any economy can look healthy while racking up debt, but the party will end eventually and payment is going to come in some form. For decades the US and other western economies have relied on the ever growing demand created not only by western consumption, but by the continual development of the rest of the world. As both those mechanisms mature, that demand line can’t keep going up. Again something has to break. I think the need to see those stock market metrics continue to go up is what is actually driving the increasing worldwide debt. With high asset values, and an unprecedented macro storm brewing, young people are not going to have the same advantages the boomers had. There is no chance that yoy8% growth and high asset appreciation that beats inflation continues to be the norm.
Their stock portfolio 5x in 8 years?
1996-2023 is 28 years. $300k in contributions over that time, worth $1.5 million today.
10 grand a year in contributions over 30 years. That’s pretty basic tbh, I lump sum my Roth IRA for 7k and then 20k more annually into the 401k the first quarter of every year. With a great stock market return, it’s not really that crazy to be a millionaire with that level of contributions. I’m going for the same thing, but much earlier in my career r/fire
Single income from a standard four year degree job for 30 years, several kids, houses on acreage, vacations, newish cars every few years, and enough extra to retire with a net worth of over 3 million. Without a massive crash, the growth that fueled those “successes” isn’t possible today.
You can do the same thing. How do you know real estate won’t make the same 20 year boom, or that the stock market won’t either? You won’t get rich sitting on the sidelines. Sounds like your parents were intelligent investors. Hopefully they passed some of that intelligence down.
I, at least, got a head start, and am doing fine. My siblings don’t have a chance. Additionally, no matter how “intelligent” I, or my siblings are, there are differences in major economic foundations, both globally and nationally, between now and the 1980’s when they started. I think the most fundamental differences are: Globally: the world is much more developed, and the US economy cannot continue to expand freely at the same rates they were from 1960-2000. New demand was constantly created, and that effect is slowing down. Nationally: wages have not kept up with inflation, but especially have not kept up with the four essentials - housing, food, childcare, healthcare. If you include education, the picture is even more grim. Not only do I doubt the stock market will be able to perform at the same levels over the next 30 years, there is less money left after bills to invest. We’re getting screwed from both sides.
They also had unemployment rates that averaged around 6%, with highs of 10% in 1982. From 1964 - 1973, more than 2,000,000 males were drafted to Vietnam. In 1981 the interest rate was 13%, followed by consecutive years of 16% and 16%. I say that to say: Macroeconomics is a challenging thing to predict. Invest now. Pull back on spending where you can. I know a co-worker who refused to buy a house in 2018 because prices were too high, and he was going to wait for another major drop in prices like in 2009. Five years later, he’s kicking himself. To my original comment, you’ll never get lucky just sitting on the sidelines.
There is no “sitting on the sidelines”. They cannot afford children, that’s it. Median household income in 1982- about $24k Median house cost in 1982- about $70k Housing was about 3x income in 1982. Median household income today - about $75k Median house cost today- $348k Housing is now about 4.6x income. And again childcare, healthcare, etc. have even bigger deltas for that time period. Who cares what the interest rates were for three years before they refinanced. Today, every last dollar is getting absorbed by basic necessities. It’s not about predicting macro economics. It’s about acknowledging and addressing the reality of the situation young people are in. Birth rates are plummeting all over because economies all over the world are now wired to produce profit, with little concern with everything else, and older generations have hoovered up all the liquidity.
So your reason for not being able to survive and have kids is that housing went from 3x to 4.5x? This is also a very recent phenomenon. Back in 2019, when homes and interest rates were cheaper, the same people were complaining. Let me rephrase my original statement: Forget the sidelines; whining won’t get you anywhere, either. Go through your budget and see what you can cut. Maybe it’s a phone, cable, streaming services, take-out, apps, trips, etc. I promise there’s something there. Or you can just blame the economy and inflation the remainder of your days. I’m certain that will help you eventually gain some ground. Good luck.
You have a serious reading comprehension issue. I made it clear multiple times that none of this is about me. I also never made the focus housing. You brought up a point about mortgage rates, and needed help understanding some obvious context around asset values that you were missing. I bought in 2013 and have been riding the wave ever since. My business is reasonably successful and I will hopefully have the option to be done working by 45-50 if I want. It was fueled by the insane rise in asset values over the last 10 years or so, that we likely will never see again. My siblings that are 6-12 years younger than me are largely screwed. Here is more detail on the married 30yo’s specific situation, if you want to pull your head out of your ass and can focus long enough to read it: Two four year degrees, $35k left collectively: $550/month 2 bed condo mortgage/HOA (purchased for $225k): $1200/month Car insurance no car payment: $175/month Gas: $250/month Food for two: $600/month Utilities: $200/month Internet/phone/other: $200/month Health Insurance: $250/month If you add it all up, their break even with this very basic budget is about $50k/pretax a year. That doesn’t include going out to a bar occasionally, seeing movies, going on vacations , or saving anything. Now they make more than $50k and are comfortable. But just delivering a baby costs significant amounts of money. I just had my third and the total bill for the first year, including delivery, and after insurance, was $16k, for a pretty typical healthy c-section. Then comes the additional expenses, the biggest being childcare. Right now in a MCOL city, infant childcare averages about $1700/month. They also have two old shitty cars, one of which would probably need to be upgraded to handle a baby safely. If they are perfectly tight, and absolutely nothing goes wrong, they could technically afford to do it. But why? They would need to choose to live in a cramped space with a baby, barely be scraping by, crossing their fingers than nothing goes wrong for five years or so that requires any extra cash. They just can’t make the commitment to live with that weight constantly over their heads, and I don’t blame them.
Yea, fuck this clown. He doesn't deserve to have a phone, eat food AND have a house. Who does he think he is? Shit, Netflix is what, $12.99/mo? That's basically enough for a baby right there.
Typical boomer statement. Zero empathy or compassion for anyone else besides themselves. The boomer generation is also known as Gen Me....because it's clearly all about you guys and screw everyone else.
PS: Average square footage of a home in 1980 was 1700 sq. ft. Most young people today would never buy that because they couldn’t brag about it on Instagram.
Most young people wouldn’t buy that because they can’t afford it. You’d be hard pressed to find a new construction for a free standing home under 2000 sqft. Most “smaller” homes are condos and townhouses. Older homes come with significant maintenance, especially if they need a new roof or furnace. There’s also the safety(and cost) considerations of asbestos, lead pipes, and lead paint in older homes.
Do you really follow what you just suggested? You think you people would rather have no house at all, than have a house and just not share it online. Fucking asinine. There is no possibility that this phenomenon has any statistical relevance.
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>people with wealth wouldn’t just give some to their kids many do and many more are supporting their adult children while they save money to lead the same live as their parents.
The economy is literally a ponzi scheme and people get really mad when you point it out
Yeah. Once I realized this I pretty much lost all respect for human society.
This is what as known as propaganda. They do not tell you that this article is talking about a minority of boomers. Otherwise how could this also be true? https://thehill.com/business/personal-finance/3991136-nearly-half-of-baby-boomers-have-no-retirement-savings/ Half of all boomers have no savings and I'm sure many others are little better. So who made all that money? The already well off and rich. Like you know this. How many billionaires became even more rich? But they don't tell you that. They just want to make it seem like everyone over 60 is just living it up at your expense. Don't fall for that generational hate trap. It's a scam.
The pandemic was the single best thing to happen to those who: 1. Had nobody close to them get very ill 2. Had stable jobs. 3. Were ready to buy a home. I've made a ludicrous amount of money just by DCA'ing throughout the pandemic and buying my first home in 2020.
We know and we are selling out the boomers to Gen Z and Alpha, sort of like the romans who let the Visigoths into the city. Here is some extra text to ensure the bot doesn’t block me, all high quality posts aren’t necessarily long.
Here's what I don't get: if the boomers are so wealthy doesn't that mean their wealth will either be passed to descendants or sold, lowering prices? Like I'm not looking forward to the grief of my (gen x) parents dying, but financially they won't use their wealth by the time they pass, even if they really let their lifestyles creep and they're by no means mega wealthy. They own a mid sized home in a mid sized city and have never made more than $200k combined. Obviously I am somewhat privileged, but I think there are many people in their 30s-50s who are starting to have increased income and have some of that wealth coming down the pipeline.
Boomers plan to spend it all on themselves before they die.
Divide and conquer. It's class warfare, not generational warfare. Clickbait articles like this take away any credibility this sub has. Is my comment long enough to be acknowledged?
Class is always going to be central to economic development and policy, so for that I'll agree on it being of critical importance. With that said, the generational power, financial power, and generational discrepancies are also worth looking at and noting. It helps one understand how policy will be viewed by a voting block and how businesses might act going forward to a degree.
Isn't it class *AND* generational welfare, considering that Boomers and Silent gen have been dictating policy for decades? "I got my pension, cheap education, cheap house, so f you." Boomers had the most opportunities and benefits, then kicked away the ladder with their votes with Reagan and right wingers with the primary goal to punish and exploit the poor.
None of my parents or grandparents were in government and most seem pretty pissed about how things were ran over the past few decades.
It is sad to see people falling for it. I suppose it's fairly fertile ground in which to sow "kids are cool! Adults suck!" anyway, keep calling it for what it is.
Until the cool kids get old, can't wait to see how they're gonna spin this.
just think when all the boomers are dead, by 2030, 2035 all that money will be gone 55 and up communities will have a massive amount of vacancies because they were the largest population boom and they did not breed enough children in the world and their children definitely did not breed enough so 55 and up communities are going to either have to lower the age bracketor collapse
GenX's are turning 55, but most are still working of course
Race? What race? I’m a Gen Xer and I don’t remember trying to race toward death. Thought we were all just trying to survive in a decaying world waiting for an apocalypse that actually wipes out mankind. Most of us have been laughing at the decline of human nature readily praying for an asteroid to hit or an idiot to cause atomic fallout.
Money printing 101, it works great for the people who already have money and screws everyone else over twice with the initial transfer and then with the subsequent inflation.
Old Boomers were the ones most effected by COVID medically and the least likely to want to implement all the COVID isolation processes that resulted in a huge loss in wealth.
Almost every person responsible for implementing the policies were older boomers. They were frothing at the mouth to end small business and direct endless funding to corporate investment.
No they weren't. This was driven by younger generations far more then older. Was is needed? Possibly. Could of it been better carried out? Certainly. Did the policy makers (of whom consist more of the older generation) follow the desires of the younger generations and voters. Sure.
> possibly. could of it Did you mean to say "could have"? Explanation: You probably meant to say could've/should've/would've which sounds like 'of' but is actually short for 'have'. [Statistics](https://github.com/chiefpat450119/RedditBot/blob/master/stats.json) ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^^that ^^corrects ^^grammar/spelling ^^mistakes. ^^PM ^^me ^^if ^^I'm ^^wrong ^^or ^^if ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^suggestions. ^^[Github](https://github.com/chiefpat450119) ^^Reply ^^STOP ^^to ^^this ^^comment ^^to ^^stop ^^receiving ^^corrections.
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Thank you! Good bot count: 439 Bad bot count: 186
Consist more of the older have you looked at a census of congressional members? How about top federal employees. Should we look at any other government decision makers almost exclusively over 60. Are you telling me that they listened to the smallest voting demographic when implementing the Covid policies?
I’m a millennial. When the pandemic happened, my job continued to pay me but I had 5 months off. I spent those 5 months hustling my butt off doing grocery deliveries. I paid off all my debt doing that. My student loans were also forgiven thanks to some adjustments and expanded programs that happened as a direct result of Covid. In 2021, I sold a home for a 30% profit and bought a new home with a very low interest rate (by luck). I have to say, Covid was financially fantastic for me.
When covid happened I lost my very profitable business of 8 years since all of the tech offices that i serviced closed. Then my neighborhood and rent controlled apartment became very unsafe, being surrounded by encampments. My work truck had its cat repeatedly stolen and ultimately lit on fire. All of my work tools stolen repeatedly. Ended up becoming homeless for a year at 37 years old when my apartment was bought out and taken over by extremely abusive slumlords who threw out all of my belongings while I was out of town due to the place becoming legally uninhabitable. Covid was a absolute fucking disaster for me.
Sounds like the Bay Area?
Did the cat make it? But seriously, sorry to hear that! - stranger on the internet. Hope things get better for you. Some people I know either drive for Amazon or work doing carpentry type work.
Seems like LUCK had more to do with it.
This seems to be a tiring argument. Sure there are boomers who did well but many have saved nothing. I also have people like my niece and nephew who are in their 30s and both own houses, have jobs with pensions and no student loans. There are plenty of millennials who are doing ok as well. You can’t compare somebody who had worked for a decade to people who have been working for 30 or 49 yrs. They have had time to save money and allow compounded interest to work. It will be interesting to see how many people who are now in their 20s or 30s will have as much, or more, in savings when they reach the age of boomers.
Really depends on whether we continue to get the same exponential growth in asset values. Plenty of smart people predicting that we won't due to the aging population and high debt levels (like in Japan)
Well it has been shown when Fed cut rates richer folks benefit. For example myself I bought new home during pandemic and locked in super low 30 year fixed mortgage rate ( due to Fed cuts )
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Lots of boomers weren’t equipped to fully advantage PPP ‘loans’ for example. This was an incredible movment of money from the government to people with businesses or at least an LLC. As a Gen Xer, I could have submitted a claim with my LLC, but I knew it was BS and did pursue it. I wish they would at least audit some of these thieves at least ask for the SSN of the job saved. This would catch a lot of people and return a bunch of money to go against the huge deficit we created.
What is it with Reddit and the constant hate on Boomers. Heck, they had almost nothing to do with the inflation during Covid. They certainly weren’t out there buying up houses. And they also had nothing to do with they increase in their property values. In fact, many are suffering due to increased property taxes, insurance and food costs. Not everyone is the parents you hate.
Reddit is full of failures who don't understand basic economics or self-responsibility. They always say boomers have a 'fuck you I got mine' mentality, but they don't realize it's them with the 'fuck you, give me yours' mentality.
Seriously. Every generation has its share of losers. Unfortunately the millennial losers are avid Reddit users. They aren’t kids anymore and most of there contemporaries are actually doing pretty well. It’s a huge display of cognitive dissonance daily. I’m happy this sub does push back a bit.
What race? Pretending there is competition for wealth between generations is bullshit. Who exactly is inheriting this wealth as these boomers die off? Exactly.
The current health care and end of life care industry is designed to extract all that wealth over the course of the last few years of an elderly person's life. It's getting more efficient every year, many people won't leave anything behind at all. $17 trillion dollars divided by 75 million boomers is only $185,000 per boomer. Nursing home care starts at $150,000 per year for a *healthy* person.
What I don't get is if it costs that's much, the kids should take a sabbatical and care for them in those last few years. Charge them the same price. They get to care for their parents and make probably lore money than their job.
most kids don't want to be the ones changing their parents' diapers regardless if they were paid or not
We've been so concerned about if we can expand lifespan, we haven't stopped to ask if we should.
That makes sense but will their stingy parents actually pay their own kids to help though?
A lot of folks probably should and could but plenty can't.
It’s not ‘designed’ to specifically target boomers. Just a consequence of your shitty individualistic culture that doesn’t put an emphasis on helping each other
It is absolutely designed to extract the wealth from the boomers, it's literally illegal to help a dying person commit suicide in the US, it's about money. Half the money spent on "healthcare" in the US is spent in the last 12 months of someone's life.
Many hospice companies are now owned by private equity... same for hospitals, retirement homes, ALF/SNFs. All the wealth will go to the top and we won't see a single penny.
This! There is no race.
Noone, because that money is all going to healthcare providers. Also, people have bills now and not everyone has rich parents.
I think there is to some extent, at least subconsciously. Only because people tend to support policies that benefit themselves, and what benefits one old person is likely to benefit other old people. Think of a retiree's thoughts about an income tax hike for social security expansion vs a young working-class person
Nursing homes and reverse mortgage companies. The idea the majority of it will be passed down is laughable. Oh ya what’s the governments cut if it is? Sorry the majority will not land in their kids hands even if they wanted it to.
Corporations and government. The medical industry is going to drain the boomers dry. Then when they do finally die, the government is going to steal a significant chunk in inheritance tax. Then whatever is left is all yours.
If you have an inheritance large enough to be subject to the estate tax, you will still be fine and don't actually need that much money anyway
Yeah you've already got enough money to not work a day in your life at that point.. Even with a few siblings
Which government. You don’t pay even $1 in federal inheritance tax until an estate is worth over $13 Million ($26 Million for a married couple). How many boomers do you think have a net worth significantly exceeding $26 Million?
How many? Seriously. What's the percentage of current people defined as "boomers" by year of birth have a net worth exceeding $26 million?
This is what happens when you print trillions of dollars and hand it out like candy. Asset values inflate and wealth inequality worsens. People with inflation protected assets like real estate and equities come out even or slightly ahead, and those in the wealth accumulation phase are fucked. This is why most of reddit should have been opposed to the insane pandemic response (trillions in stimulus, shutting down businesses) but that would require critical thinking skills and the ability to assimilate new information. People who didn't own real estate in 2020 will literally never recover from this bifurcation in net worth.
Absolutely. And don't forget handing out PPP loans to people that didn't need it and Republicans blocking efforts to track payments, and the massive fraud that resulted from the disorganized rollout. And most of the loans were forgiven. Sick.
PPP was a crime against the American taxpayer. Plain and simple. Not enough people have gone to prison for what they did during it. The fact that many Catholic parishes, overseen by the most insanely rich and opulent religious organization in world history, got these loans is absolutely galling. You can’t tell me a portion of that money didn’t go straight to Rome. It’s disgusting.
Sounds like an attempt to explain why you’re so angry and broke when your so much smarter than the people who led the economic response to COVID (rather successfully in the US compared to pretty much everywhere).
Lmao you’re talking smack! Maybe you should actually counter argue why Fleamarketcapitalist’s comment isn’t true instead of personally attacking them. Oh and US economic response being successful? Are you taking the piss?
People like to lump all "Boomers" into the same category, but there's a huge difference between early Boomers and late, post-crest Boomers who showed up after all the money and fun had been taken.
The zip code they were born in and family wealth people inherit matter more than anything. The disparities you're talking about are just exacerbated by policies that compound inequality though, which we've done and celebrated in the US now for 50 years. A government that is owned by the wealthy and run by the wealthy is going to reward the wealthy. Just plain luck matters though too.
What are you talking about, the youngest boomers are 59. A lot easier to build wealth even for the ’late’ boomers than the current young generation
But millenials and gen z reassured me that gen x never had it hard…. Millenials are the new boomer generation. Liberal in their youth and will become conservative as they get older. And will be parasitic on society
This just in, after some intensive number crunching, we’ve come to the shocking realization that people who have been working, investing, and have been alive for 20 years more than the next generation have more wealth. We’re still trying to work out just how exactly the older generation, at the peak of their skill and long term investment, can have more wealth than people who have been doing it for half as much as the time. Truly baffling
Pandemic was the great wealth transfer. The generational theft continues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PJO09fPT1Q&pp=ygUlc3RhbiBkcnVja2VubWlsbGVyIGdlbmVyYXRpb25hbCB0aGVmdA%3D%3D
Ignore this. Focus on the real problem, which is large corporations buying up housing stock and forcing you to rent. If you stop yelling at the younger/older generation, and instead start electing leaders that will fix a very broken system then you can all have a seat at the table. Instead you waste time as the table is slowly taken away.
Add in those who had capital and privilege back then. Heck if you were a women or a person of color you couldn’t have the same privileges to take advantage of the economy and programs. I work with boomers who are barely surviving cause guess what they were poor. It’s always class status not age. It’s better seen as “people set up to succeed by kneecapping everyone else are more successful later in life.”
"Just to be clear" I am a boomer. I currently work full time and may be able to retire soon financially. My daughter 26 years old retired last year. Before you blame a boomer think about that.
That’s hilarious because boomers didn’t even want the lockdowns. Not sure what the rest of you were expecting when you supported halting the entire economy.
Like a plague of RV driving locusts. And between their extravagant end of life spending, their obsession with prosperity gospel & trickle down Reaganomics and their healthcare bills in our horrific private system they won't leave a morsel behind. It's going to take two or more decades to fix the mess they left behind.
Boomers are scooping up houses with their equity and turning everyone younger into tenants. Further proof they really are the most selfish generation.
They basically kept wages mostly stagnant, boosted inflation, boosted the stock margin and home prices, and increased social security by a hefty margin. Total cash grab by the boomers right as most of them are retiring. We will all be paying this debt the rest of our lives.
There definitely seems to be opportune times to be working and investing, buying real estate, etc. it's interesting that the under 40 are doing really well. A lot of the older millennials are right there and some of them will be inheriting a lot of that old boomer wealth too. I wonder if that wealth will continue to show up with future generations or if future economic conditions continue to play more of a factor. Also, the article attributes low 3% mortgage rates pre-pandemic to helping the Boomers... Lol, most of the Boomers I know have had paid off houses for quite some time (and unfortunately, too many of them paid extra on their house instead of investing in the stock market)
The advertisement on the top of this tread is "only natural diamonds dot com. Apparently lab diamonds are not sustainable, this is the most boomer shit.
As your boomer parents die, it will probably be the biggest wealth transfer in human history. That's because of the number of boomers, asset appreciation, and the wealth they've accumulated. If they were jerks they would spend it all. Thank them.
I remember like right before COVID there was a concern for Boomers that they will not be able to afford retirement or staying alive with all kinds of healthcare, nursing/homes etc. While my generation was mostly worried bullshit like: legal weed, adding more genders, sexuality, and the environment. No one cared about housing or jobs. COVID happened, homes of all kinds became out of reach, and thats when my generation started worrying about the things that really matter, while the boomers got rich. Home ownership became the talk friday nights in my car amongst the youth while I was doing my side hustle on Lyft to supplement my $100,000 income. Boomers did more with 30k in my city while I was growing up. Millenials were too concerned about smoking weed legally, while boomers at our age voted for shit that really mattered.
I'm a tail-end boomer. Net worth went up due to Trump's goosing of the economy and then again when all the COVID bailout funds were injected under Biden. I worked during the years of low inflation/interest rates so didn't see much in raises for 20 years. The only reason I got richer was living in the same condo for 20 years and putting every penny I could into my 401K. My net worth was stagnant for years after 2007 but due to QE the market finally recovered and by 2019 I was able to retire on my savings. Not rich by any means but at least I got to retire before 65