Millions of baby boomers are getting caught in the country’s broken retirement system

[winb83]

Breh they don’t want to hear that.


You’re the bad guy for telling others to invest / save their money. Instead people should be allowed to spend $700 / month on a depreciating car and rack up credit card debt with overpriced designer clothes.

If people spend their entire lives pushing the limits of what their income level affords them never living below their means they shouldn't be surprised when in the end once they stop bringing in income they can't afford the lifestyle they've grown accustomed to.

At some point everyone reaches a level of comfort where exceeding that is a true luxury and not necessary. Past that point is either wealth building or treading water.

 

[winb83]

I would suggest separating your experience and then looking at it from a structural lens. I think one of the issues with discussing personal finance is that there is a strong tendency to conflate personal experience and large scale problems and constraints.

No one can only live at a certain level max. That is divorced from my personal experience. As an individual it is either your job to expand your income to the point where that level is comfortable to you or keep your lifestyle in line with what your income affords you.

Ideally whatever that level is you want to find a way to live below it so you can have extra money to save.

Maybe for me that level is $35,000 a year in spending or less and for someone else it's $100,000 a year or less. We may start from different positions but both are tasked with keeping out spending below that limit.

Things like income inequality and personal experiences don't change that. If you consistently live at the edge of what you can you won't be able to save, invest, and have the means for a time when you can no longer live at that level.

 

[Macallik86]

No one can only live at a certain level max. That is divorced from my personal experience. As an individual it is either your job to expand your income to the point where that level is comfortable to you or keep your lifestyle in line with what your income affords you.

Ideally whatever that level is you want to find a way to live below it so you can have extra money to save.

Maybe for me that level is $35,000 a year in spending or less and for someone else it's $100,000 a year or less. We may start from different positions but both are tasked with keeping out spending below that limit.

Things like income inequality and personal experiences don't change that. If you consistently live at the edge of what you can you won't be able to save, invest, and have the means for a time when you can no longer live at that level.

I am frugal and live off less than half of what I make as well.

I think you are confusing saving diligently with structural gaps that can quickly destroy the average American including those that save appropriately. Medical debt and Housing debt both surpassed living beyond your means in a study I saw cited.

Also, I don't think you quite realize how you were unconsciously bred for a frugal lifestyle. The fact that your parents gave you a 12 year old car shows that:

1. Your parents were in your life and were actively providing/guiding you.
2. The fact that they had an operational 12 year old car speaks to their values.
3. The fact that they handed that car onto you instead of buying you a new car speaks to their values.
4. My guess is you don't have dependents that could negatively affect your costs or unforeseen costs.

All of these factors are not a given and can each extremely impact someone's financial future.

 

[winb83]

I am frugal and live off less than half of what I make as well.

I think you are confusing saving diligently with structural gaps that can quickly destroy the average American including those that save appropriately. Medical debt and Housing debt both surpassed living beyond your means in a study I saw cited.

Also, I don't think you quite realize how you were unconsciously bred for a frugal lifestyle. The fact that your parents gave you a 12 year old car shows that:

1. Your parents were in your life and were actively providing/guiding you.
2. The fact that they had an operational 12 year old car speaks to their values.
3. The fact that they handed that car onto you instead of buying you a new car speaks to their values.
4. My guess is you don't have dependents that could negatively affect your costs or unforeseen costs.

All of these factors are not a given and can each extremely impact someone's financial future.

Medical debt I concede but housing debt that is something you choose. You can rent your whole life if needed. You can buy a home you can afford.

I'm not frugal I'm cheap. When it comes to stuff I'm interested in I will blow tons of money on it. When it comes to other things I don't care about as much I won't.

I've never been a car person. I'm approaching 40 and I've never owned a new car in my life. I'm also on my first car note I got at age 36 and I borrowed $10,000.

My parents did breed me to pay attention to my finances and tried to get me to be frugal but it mostly didn't hold on me. For example from 2012 to 2020 I've spend over $12,000 on TV sets. 8 of them. That's stupid. In the same amount of time I spend well over $4000 on soundbars for those TVs.

Picture somebody like that spending money on silly stuff like that but driving a 12 year old car. That's far from frugal it's pretty dumb. All that money spend on TVs and soundbars could have bought a car. If invested from 2012 to now it could probably have paid for a car worth twice the $17,000 I paid for my current one. I could have bought 2 TVs and 2 soundbars and still accomplished that.

 

[Serious]

Medical debt I concede but housing debt that is something you choose. You can rent your whole life if needed. You can buy a home you can afford.

I'm not frugal I'm cheap. When it comes to stuff I'm interested in I will blow tons of money on it. When it comes to other things I don't care about as much I won't.

I've never been a car person. I'm approaching 40 and I've never owned a new car in my life. I'm also on my first car note I got at age 36 and I borrowed $10,000.

My parents did breed me to pay attention to my finances and tried to get me to be frugal but it mostly didn't hold on me. For example from 2012 to 2020 I've spend over $12,000 on TV sets. 8 of them. That's stupid. In the same amount of time I spend well over $4000 on soundbars for those TVs.

Picture somebody like that spending money on silly stuff like that but driving a 12 year old car. That's far from frugal it's pretty dumb. All that money spend on TVs and soundbars could have bought a car. If invested from 2012 to now it could probably have paid for a car worth twice the $17,000 I paid for my current one. I could have bought 2 TVs and 2 soundbars and still accomplished that.

I'm not there yet but maybe in a few more years....

Right now I still don't put a price on a good time / experience.

 

[Robbie3000]

The journey provides hope for people and helps them get out of bed every day. Folks out here struggling to pay for their kid's college education and the expectation is that they'll have $1 million saved for retirement, that simply doesn't make sense. But Americans, in general (as evidenced on this board), be on their masochistic Dave Ramsey "financially responsibility" tip and morally justify the fukked up game so I don't expect anything to change.

TBF, the people in this article made really poor decisions in life and many acknowledge it.

On a macro scale, the boomers stood around or actively participated politically in destroying unions and pension benefits.

 

[NinoBrown]

They have no one to blame but themselves, they signed their demise by gutting the middle class and wrecking Millennial and Gen-Z growth....

 

[winb83]

The journey provides hope for people and helps them get out of bed every day. Folks out here struggling to pay for their kid's college education and the expectation is that they'll have $1 million saved for retirement, that simply doesn't make sense. But Americans, in general (as evidenced on this board), be on their masochistic Dave Ramsey "financially responsibility" tip and morally justify the fukked up game so I don't expect anything to change.

My parents sent me to community college to start then said the rest is on you.

Again you get in where you fit in. If you can’t afford to pay to send your kids to an expensive school then you don’t.

Your kids can take out loans. They could have worked in school before that for things like grants and or scholarships. As a parent past 18 your children are adults. Before then they had options.

 

[winb83]

they signed their demise by gutting the middle class and wrecking Millennial and Gen-Z growth....

Boomers enjoyed a generation of employment those two generations won’t ever know. Pensions and unions were things boomers had that millennials, zoomers and hell even gen-x don’t and won’t.

 

[Dorian Breh]

Boomers finally feeling the pressure from the damage they've done to the younger generations economy

Guess they need to pull themselves up by they bootstraps

 

[Dorian Breh]

Brehs in this thread acting like baby boomers weren't the OG credit card moollionaires.

If you think today's generation are bad getting on payment plans in order to buy the newest iPhone or blowing money on Only Fans thots when they themselves are paycheck to paycheck just do some research.

The Boomers were the most financially reckless and illiterate generation we probably ever will have or even can ever have again.

Their recklessness is the most direct cause for our current economic issues as well as the crashes caused by dotcom and real estate over speculation.

Furthermore the boome generation specifically changed the laws to allow them to spend like lunatics, mortgaging against the future, potential income of the younger generations that hadn't even been born yet.

Add to that the incredible, irreversible damage they did to the environment, which will have an even larger negative impact on the economy than anything we have seen so far, and you won't see me crying over any of these old fukks struggle.