Well, if Gen X and Millennials wanted their own fortunes they should have planned ahead like boomers and been born back when a house cost $7,500.
/sarcasm
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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Lazy millennials can't even be born on time.
Watching Married with Children and realizing this dude is working as a store clerk and supporting a family of 5 on that single wage without actually living paycheck to paycheck and then realizing this isn't a fictional representation of the timeperiod, is really goddamn depresssing.
In less than 40 years the inequality of wealth distribution and the cost of living has changed so drastically that then they could live on one paycheck and now you only get by with a minimum of two.
for those curious but lazy, married with children was started filming in 1987 and supposed to take place in schaumberg illinois, so historically those homes were 4x less expensive than today.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=historical+home+value+Schaumburg+Il+in+1987
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That's because the real wealth transfer has been to the billionaires and close to billionaires.
Nothing will fix that short of a cyclical historic repetition of the French Revolution.
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I'm GenX. I've spent my entire life watching the Boomers fuck things up, then having to wade through the debris they leave in their wake.
I'm not expecting that to change now.
GenX here as well. My mother died horribly of cancer when I was 13 and my father left about two weeks after her death and I was legally transferred to the State's custody.
I've been told I'm "lucky" in that I'll never have to shoulder my parent's debt. So, you other people don't know how lucky it was to be an orphan! But no really, a finical planner literally indicated to me that, THAT was a positive. And somehow that's really colored my opinion on where we are as a society.
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Thank you every piece of shit asshole that bucks against the idea of universal healthcare. Fuck you a billion times over. Price gouging out of control capitalist bullshit
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Gen X here. I do not expect any inheritance at all.
And how much of this "fascination" with generational wealth transfer is actually companies salivating over potential profits?
Elder millenial here. I expect no inheritance from my mom or grandparents and no social security. I'm one of the lucky ones though. My dad died ten years ago and left me just enough to make a down payment on a house.
The moral of the story is, give your parents cigarettes and hope the cancer kills them quick before the bills can pile up.
Don't believe the social security scare tactics. It's always been a shell game. It isn't some pile of money that runs out if we don't pay into it. It is just another line item. Short of voting for it to die, it will be there.
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Chances are, corporations are already plotting how to get the boomers to spend as much as possible before they pass away.
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Shit. Throw in a few reverse mortgages to pay for Meemaw and Pop pop's cruise every 6 months, and we won't even get that generational housing.
There was a segment on NPR recently where they were talking about how many Boomers are selling their houses to pay for medical bills and long-term care, leaving little to nothing for their children.
My Boomer parents had one of those "I'm spending my kids' inheritance" bumper stickers on one of their RVs and it was no joke. New RVs every couple of years, driving around the country part of each summer, new boats every couple of years, two timeshares, one in Branson, one on the gulf coast FL, two houses, one in the Adirondacks, one outside Orlando, flying back and forth twice a year, a new gold wing every couple of years. They don't believe they're rich.
My father worked his whole life as a telephone lineman, retired at 55. My mother worked swing shift in processing at Kodak. Neither started wealthy. My dad had to purchase my grandfather's farmhouse. My mother didn't inherit anything. And they didn't think one second about passing anything down.
Placing the blame on medical costs for the generation as a whole is letting them off the hook, again. Boomers are too selfish to pass anything down anyway.
Not true. They voted, and THAT legacy will be with us for a LONG time...
And sadly, I don't even mean DT - there's Ted Cruz, Moscow Mitch, the whole cohort - along with all the international agreements that we've already pulled out of and so on.
See, they left us something after all?! :-P This economy, lack of access to healthcare, and so much more!?
Btw, I don't know about you, but I have a retirement plan for my old age. I plan to die. :-P
In fairness, it is less that they are "selfish" and more that they are "clueless" (to the point of obstinacy, outright refusing to open their eyes) - b/c as you said, your mother didn't inherit anything, and yet THEY are fine, so why wouldn't you be, with nothing left to you either? (remember as you think this through to remove all of the actual "facts" first, and add the layer of Faux News Nostalgia factor)
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lol…. Transfer. I was taken out of my father’s will because told him that Trump was a traitor to his country.
My mom disowned me at 16 (my sister got everything) and my dad left all his money to his 5th wife.
Transfer happened, just not to me or my half-brother.
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That is sad. But also trying to blackmail children with not giving them one's money after one doesn't need them anymore is even more sad
Yeah. He’s pathetic. As you could guess… we do t talk anymore.
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I'm Gen X with an adult daughter.
I have never received a penny from a deceased family member and have watched too many people getting into nasty fights over the crumbs left by their recently departed loved ones.
It's become a life priority to leave my daughter a clean estate, with no debt encumbrance, and no possibility for any other person to get at it.
At present, if I were to take my leave from this mortal coil today, she would net roughly $300k.
Part of my plan is to get everything out of my estate and into her hands before healthcare takes it all. Fuck them.
The irony here is that she won't need it. She's done well for herself. I anticipate that when it's my turn to shake hands with the devil, she'll more likely than not use the proceeds for some charitable pursuit.
The point is that I want her to make that choice rather than giving some doctor his semi-annual Ferrari that he'll drive for six months then dispose of.
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Even ignoring the health care costs, the transfer isn't going to save anything. The vast majority of wealth is concentrated in a small number of families, so only those few will benefit anyway. It was never a generational problem, it was always a problem of wealth concentration among the rich.
My mom was a boomer and died when I was a young adult.
Because she was wildly irresponsible with money, as many boomers were in the early internet days, and because of cancer, the only asset really left after she died was the house, which my step dad sold because they were upside down on it after the bubble burst. He didn’t really come out ahead on it.
I was left with nothing but her stuff to sell off. I made about $4k total on it, and it took months on eBay to even get that.
I hope it’s better for others, but I rather expect it won’t be unless they are already pretty well off -and- make a point to preserve as much as they can, which most won’t because “I earned it I’m going to spend it as I see fit”. (Which, you know, totally fair, but doesn’t help if you are banking on inheritance)
I want to sympathize with this since about the only asset worth anything from my boomer father when he died was what remained of good savings after selling his house.
The short version is that he got Alzheimer's, and we were forced to put him into a care facility. We sold off his house and dumped the money into a trust account so his power of attorney could use it for his needs (mainly paying for equipment and everything with regards to his failing health and the long term care facility). He was pretty smart with money but when the remainder of the funds from his house being sold were divided among his direct descendants, we were looking at 30-40k each.
My brother and I went in on a house together with the money and after the down payment, there wasn't much left, and now we each have about $2300 a month in mortgage payments instead of rent. Predictably, the house needs some pretty serious work, and we've been trying to tackle what we can on our own. The only real benefit we got from all this is that in 25 years or so, we won't have to pay the mortgage anymore, and the mortgage won't really increase over time; so we're kind of fixed in terms of rent increases.
We're considering this our "forever home" because we don't really want to move again and because we're going to do everything we can to make it ours. It has enough space to do that though some areas need a lot of work to get them where we want them.
It's just sad that his entire life of working and earning money and saving, being the penny pincher he was, only amounted to around $150k. Three siblings and lawyers fees later and we have to pool our inheritance to make enough cash to put a down payment on a house.
There's a lot of other contributing factors, which I won't get into here, but that's just so sad to me.
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I grew up poor so wealth transfer wasn't really a phrase spoken at our house. I always thought inheritances were just plot points on tv or for the rich to maintain their power.
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The wealth the Boomers amassed decades ago was good enough to pay off a mortgage and pay for their retirement. It didn't include passing anything to the next generation. The money itself became borderline worthless because their "Greed is good" and "I've got mine. Fuck you" mindset quite literally destroyed the world. The economy is just as fucked as the planet.
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No transfer for me. My boomer dad already sold our family's property to slumlords
Then they find out that a parent put a reverse mortgage on the family home...
It's kind of ridiculous how rich people get everyone riled up about estate taxes that will barely impact them, if at all. It will impact the rich though, extensively if they're not careful with their arrangements.
I'm just about 40, my parents are in their early 60's. When they pass on, I'm most likely already hitting retirement age myself. I don't need extra cash when I'm old.
Oh, you will. When my grandmother had to rely on Medicare and the shitty insurance she got through retirement her healthcare cleaned out her bank account and most of her retirement
Luckily I live in a country with universal healthcare.
First of all, good for you. Genuinely.
Second of all, please do your part to keep it that way. I'm not saying this is your new life goal but if anyone even brings up the idea of privatizing your healthcare system you tell them to move to America instead of fucking up what you have.
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One of my mothers boomer quotes , "I'm going to spend my kids inheritance". She did too. She is now 84 and needs to sell and borrow. Good thing I believed her when she started saying this in 1988.
for many, health care costs will claim the bulk of that wealth.
They system was designed that way. Save for retirement so corporate healthcare can get it.
I'm fully aware my parents will die and leave me nothing, unless they leave me their debts. I have no children to burden.
I don't have kids because the world is already significantly worse than when I was a kid, and the dissolution of the ecosystem that sustains our species is only increasing.
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I'm a millennial with boomer parents. Not really interested in planning for their deaths, thanks. They're a lot more conservative than I am and clearly don't understand how they benefited from generational wealth themselves, but I still love them and would rather they stick around a bit longer than be able to pay for a house.
Thankfully, I've never imagined gaining anything from my mom when she passes some day. Thankfully her parents set up a trust so she isn't homeless, but when she finally gives in to assisted living, those bills will eat whatever is left.
She's always like, "but I'm leaving you the house!"
The house is full of worthless collectibles and smells terrible after decades of floods and cats. If she got hit by a bus tomorrow I'd probably sell it to one of those seedy We Buy Ugly Houses companies.
Oh neat, so our robust free market economy that is more meritocritous than anywhere else on earth is actually a giant sham, better hope you have rich parents!
All that stuff your parents told you your whole life about working hard studying hard and you'd be guaranteed to make it? Oops, they were wrong, now help them figure out how to access their Hulu account, again. What? You've barely eaten? Ah, pff, builds character!
If someone figures out a way to actually set up a business that soylent greens the boomers, I'll figure out how to do some exquisite cooking recipes with it.
Eat the rich
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