The great baby-boomer retirement wave is upon us. According to Census Bureau data, 44% of boomers are at retirement age and millions more are soon to join them. By 2030, the largest generation to enter retirement will all be older than 65.
The general assumption is that boomers will have a comfortable retirement. Coasting on their accumulated wealth from three decades as America’s dominant economic force, boomers will sail off into their golden years to sip on margaritas on cruises and luxuriate in their well-appointed homes. After all, Federal Reserve data shows that while the 56 million Americans over 65 make up just 17% of the population, they hold more than half of America’s wealth — $96.4 trillion.
But there’s a flaw in the narrative of a sunny boomer retirement: A lot of older Americans are not set up for their later years. Yes, many members of the generation are loaded, but many more are not. Like every age cohort, there’s significant wealth inequality among retirees — and it’s gotten worse in the past decade. Despite holding more than half of the nation’s wealth, many boomers don’t have enough money to cover the costs of long-term care, and 43% of 55- to 64-year-olds had no retirement savings at all in 2022. That year, 30% of people over 65 were economically insecure, meaning they made less than $27,180 for a single person. And since younger boomers are less financially prepared for retirement than their older boomer siblings, the problem is bound to get worse.
As boomers continue to age out of the workforce, it’s going to put strain on the healthcare system, government programs, and the economy. That means more young people are going to be financially responsible for their parents, more government spending will be allocated to older folks, and economic growth could slow.
Why can’t they just stop eating Avocado toast?
Okay, fuck YOUR boomers then. I’m sorry you descend from such assholes. And while we’re at it, fuck the wealthy and super wealthy who don’t give their money to do good in the world. And okay let’s fuck those non-wealthy who wasted what money they earned on selfish shit.
But there’s a lot of old people who’ve never become wealthy because they were fair and kind and helpful to others instead. They still vote for government policies that benefit people worse off than they, and they make a good effort to embrace diversity, fight climate change, promote truth and science and peace. They didn’t die of COVID because they masked up and got the vaccines and rejected ivermectin. They may not be a majority but there’s still a lot because the whole is so large. They don’t deserve extra special treats but they don’t deserve to die homeless either.
Bigger picture is eat the rich, don’t let them divide us. Age and generation isn’t the problem. It’s a side effect of the income gap. It doesn’t take a saint to empathize, it takes a human. If you spit the same shit back at them, you’re as bad as they are and the next generation will look at us the same way.
Income gap is and always has been the problem. Eat the rich.
By a majority, the poorer demographic of boomers voted for them, though. That trend increased as they continued to age.
If we get their voting records and fund only the ones who voted with any empathy for their fellow humans, maybe we can talk.
On a tangent: While we are at it, let’s not allow healthcare for the ones that rejected science and vocally supported those who supported violence against healthcare workers. Maybe some consequences for the Me Generation for once?
Yup, even if you’re a poor retiring boomer you don’t deserve a social safety net if you spent your whole life committed to destroying it. Conservative boomers who are the large majority of boomers voted in the conservative assholes explicitly to gut the “new deal” that their parents put in place for them. “I got mine” was their motto, well now live in it.
You should get the retirement you voted for all your life. Show me your blue voting record and you can have a social safety net.
You’re wrong. All but one state voted for Reagan the first time. This was absolutely a multi-generational thing.
Boomer mom inherited a house that was paid for, immediately did a reverse mortgage to fund her lifestyle.
Fuck you, mom.
When people pass on generational wealth, I read its usually gone within 3 generations.
Probably not true for billionaire level wealth, but for the people that work up millions or tens of millions.
The worst part, the absolute worst part, is that it’s a house my grandmother designed and my great grandmother financed.
4 generations of my family have lived there, and it will be gone when mom kicks off.
My wife’s grandparents and their parents were very very wealthy but my mil and her siblings have literally waited every cent of it and im talking millions of dollars. One aunt is a forever student, she has never had a job, never earned her own money in any way and has constantly used money for her own education while never earning any degrees. One uncle spent the vast majority on gambling and alcohol.
Some people actually like being perpetual students, but to not earn any degrees while doing that is crazy. Like, get PhD or 2 if you want to spend forever in school and if you ever get bored of it then you’d have something to use. Also if you’re good at it, you can even get scholarships or grants along the way.
That’s usually because often the second generation grew up seeing and learning (and possibly expereincing) the work that initially generated that wealth.
The 3rd generation only saw and experienced the lifestyle that comes with already having the wealth, and doesn’t really have an innate understanding of what it took to generate it.
You’d think knowing this trend is persistent and why, that most people with generational wealth would set up trusts so it couldn’t be destroyed.
Here, Iive a lifestyle with this perpetual allowance that probably gets persistently better as the wealth grows.
But i guess people just trust their children too much.
The Chinese even have an idiom for this exact phenomenon, the saying goes, “富不过三代”. Translated literally, it says wealth does not persist beyond three generations.
Wouldn’t it just be because it’s divided among all their great grand children and spouses? If everyone had 4 children, the wealth would be divided 4^3=64 times. So, $1 million becomes $15k (assuming none is spent by the first 2 generations).
It was talking about wealth levels where passing it down to your children wouldn’t kill it. (Edit 1 million is a lot of money, but at the same time it’s not a lot of money. In many places its not enough to live a comfortable life off with a family indefinitely)
Like you have 40 mil and 3 children and give to those 3.
13.3 mil is with a very safe 3.5% withdrawal is 465.5k a year for each child to spend. At 3.5% that wealth will probably become much larger and be able to grow indefinitely as it’s below the 4% safe rule.
By the time you die it could be 30-50 mil or more and you then give it to your kids. You maintained the generational wealth and passed it on
But instead these children are spending it poorly and they each die with 4 million.
That’s still over a million each for each child of the child, even with 3 kids each, and each of those kids could probably turn it back into generational wealth but then they also spend it poorly.
My parents had a VERY nice house and decided to spend unwisely. They lost the house and all the equity in it, then bought a smaller house. They have since wasted every penny they have ever earned on random shit that they can acquire for their back yard. My parents could have put everyone through college or made a down payment on a house but decided instead to just spend and spend.
Because it was in the family for 2 generations before mom. My grandmother designed it, and my great grandmother financed it.
It was their desire it stay in the family. Ideally, when mom died, it should have gone to my sister, if we’re maintaining a matrilinear line.
Thanks for responding! If the home is owned by your mother, isn’t she allowed to do with it what she wants? Or was there some sort of plan set in place that she’s now reneging on?
I’m not very familiar with generational wealth or the processes by which it’s established so I apologize if I’m coming off as ignorant or if what I’m asking is too personal (grew up incredibly poor and I thought this stuff was, like, a movie plot more than anything else).
At any rate, thanks again for your response!
They have about as much of a claim on the house that their mother did anyway
The mother had a claim because the house was literally given to her, which was the right of it’s previous owner.
This person has no claim.
If the previous owners wanted it to remain with the family line they should have formalized that by placing the house in a trust.
FYI, based on your follow-up comment, this wasn’t a “genuine question” it was more of a self-serving opportunity to impart your beliefs and opinions onto someone else. It’s a bad look, regardless of the shitty opinion you shared. Just thought you might want to know
This is quite the presumptuous take, almost a self-serving opportunity to impart your opinion onto someone else. Just thought you might want to know
The real villains here are the absurdly rich. Especially those who find ways to pay less in taxes.
The top 1% are the problem.
Tax the rich.
Even as people starve, they’ll defend those absurdly rich folk because one day it’ll be them starving people out!
No it isn’t. That wave should have already hit. The 2010’s called and they want their news item back. The real story is why aren’t they retiring?
(Because they don’t have a retirement)
I think boomers that have high paying and powerful jobs are working longer than ever because they want to. The other side of the boomer wealth inequality, yes, those ones have to.
In fact, every time I have seen a thread on the topic of boomers working past retirement because they can’t afford to retire on Lemmy so far, someone chimes in about how they’re in their late 60s and love their job as a [something rarely unpleasant], so they want to keep working.
As if that’s the same as someone in their 70s working the fryer at Burger King.
I mean, anyone got some data to reference to look at so we can clear the air?
I’m 46. When I was in high school we were told “pursue teaching or healthcare because everyone doing it now will be retired”.
I didn’t pursue either thank god because
- They didn’t retire
- When they did or openings came up they were replaced by low wage immigrants that were willing to get paid less to do the same job with a worse title.
I went into aviation. I’ve heard that “all the pilots that joined the airlines after 'Nam are gonna retire en masse any minute now and we’ll never find enough pilots” lie for 20 years now, and the next mouth I hear that lie come out of is going to rapidly break into small, wet pieces.
Don’t you need verified degrees and licenses to do those jobs? I would imagine immigrants picking oranges, never seen one bedside at a hospital or in a child’s school.
What teachers do you know aren’t retiring once they qualify for their full pension?
Most folks in that profession are in the GTFO stage.
I think the point is that we are coming up on the moment when those retirees who didn’t retire in the 2010’s, because they had no money to retire with and can’t live on the joke salary of what social security has become, are all about to be forced by nature and an employment structure that’s is hungry for younger talent to actually retire. And we have no infrastructure to handle that.
I was told this could be all fixed by pulling up your bootstraps and a firm handshake.
