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.
So the top two hundred net worth individuals have amassed 30% of us wealth and boomers hold half the wealth. No wonder young people are suffering…
I think the point is that those two hundred are Boomers. The rest of the boomers are broke.
Yeah it’s easy to get mad at boomers. It’s also easy to forget that medicare and social security are under attack. The divisionthat matters isn’t between generations, it’s between the rich and the poor.
This is occurring specifically because of the choices they collectively made.
It’s hard to be sympathetic.
I feel nothing for the boomers who aren’t ready.
If there is any sort of ask to “feel for” someone, it’s probably the retiree’s children.
Look, there was a generation between Boomers and Gen X and the fact that they’re now just lumped in together is ridiculous. They’re called Boomers because they were born during the baby boom immediately following WWII. That boom did not last 20 years. Actual Boomers have been retired for a decade.
There’s a lot to be said for being able to blend into a crowd and be forgotten. You sure can get away with a lot more, anyway.
The last boomers haven’t. The youngest ones will be 60 this year. There are still tons of them in the workforce.
No, that’s what I’m saying. Those turning 60 this year are not Boomers. They are the generation that came between Boomers and GenX. Yeah, even this Wikipedia article lumps them in with Boomers, but they weren’t considered Boomers as they were coming of age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones They shouldn’t be now, either. Ask any of them if they consider themselves Boomers.
Ironically I think they are referred to as the silent generation. I’m genx my parents are boomers and older brother is silent generation. I think.
I was born in 1962 and I consider myself a Boomer. I have a friend born in 1961 who considers himself GenX. It’s life circumstances and attitude that determine where you fit.
Also, everybody please remember all these generational labels are made-up bullshit and vast generalizations that might be useful for some meta-analysis of trends, but they’re less than useless when it comes to understanding individual behavior.
Like I taught my kids, the minute you start thinking all people in “Group Whatever” are alike, you lose.
I’m not sure it changes this conversation to argue about that. The usual demographic description of Boomers is those born up to 1964. If we define the Jones cohort, this just splits that in half, and that article gave an ending date 1965. I’m not sure how it matters to this conversation.
My older brother was born in 1965 and would be pissed off if anyone called him a boomer. We should do that
Someone born in 1950 was only 64 10 years ago. There are plenty of older boomers that have been waiting to retire into their 70s.
Elevated birth rates lasted at the very least until the late 1950s. It was more than just a few years.
There are plenty of older boomers that have been waiting to retire into their 70s.
So what? They should’ve been retired for a decade. Sticking around in the workforce is tantamount to theft of wealth and opportunity from the generation coming up behind them.
The “late 1950s” boomers are literally the only ones who have any excuse to not be retired yet.
You don’t need an excuse to not be retired. Plenty of people just don’t have the means to retire so are still working. Or plenty of boomers are housing or at least helping their millennial kids with bills and therefore don’t retire. Why should a 69 year old who is still totally active leave their job, which puts their mental and physical health at risk all while moving to a smaller, fixed income at a time of crazy price increases just to make room for other people to make more? They’re getting screwed by grocery prices and insurance spikes too
While generally right here.
they have not been retired for nearly a decade. THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN. but they’ve been holding on. How many companies have fossils still leading them?
as someone in my 40’s, just before millenials. We were lost because there’s simply no way up the ladder to places the boomers refused to vacate. doesn’t matter how educated, experienced many of us were, There was a ceiling. We were told “hold your turn. boomers will retire soon”… they’re in their 70’s and 80’s now. My parents included (Thankfully with us). But they’re all STILL TRYING TO WORK!
My parents at least DID retire Mostly. MY dad still does some work because to the boomers, work was living. they really knew nothing else.
problem is now the combination of Covid and age, and many of them legit dying while still working, we’ve got a clusterfuck of an economic problem (here in Canada, we’re already experiencing this wave). Immigration, Local resources, and infrastructure is just simply not setup for the mass wave of retirees going straight into either homes, or the ground. We can’t import people fast enough to fill all the jobs, and the faster we import them, we can’t build homes fast enough to keep the housing in check.
have to get ahead of this 10 years ago sadly. We’re too late and we’ll all be playing reactionary for the next 20 years in regards to the shifting demographcs.
You cannot get me to empathize with boomer retirement woes, when they built their gilded sky-fort by looting the peace dividend after WW2 and told everyone else to fuck off and make it their own way. Every single generation since has been poorer, had less wealth and ability to save for retirement, all while the boomers vote themselves more and more entitlements.
The trickled fire sale from retirement funds and portfolios is going to be brutal. Every market transaction needs a counterparty, and if everyone else is too broke to buy stock/bonds/houses at the price your financial ‘planner’ values it, the bubble pops.
