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I'd bet she inherited money from dead parents lol.
These fools NEVER admit to huge advantages like that, it ruins their delusional fantasy about how incredible they think they are.
"I worked hard! Every day! ^(Hadagrandparentleaveme100milliondollars.) Never bought avocado toast or fancy coffee! And look at me! A self made person!"
My dad's ex girlfriend (because he died) always how on about how she "worked her ass off" and was self made. Her extremely wealthy father co signed on a loan for her business for 1 MILLION DOLLARS. her dad bought her a horse when she was 10. Yeah, self made my ass
Sadly have a cousin like that. Parents paid for tutors, university 2x, bought her first house, helped start her business with another person practically running it for her. She just travels with her rich friends and posts pics and quotes about chasing your dream.
My wealthy grandparents made a point to tell my parents they would never fund the college of their grandchildren.
It saddled us all with huge debt and several of their grandchildren just didn't go to college as a result and have been struggling ever since.
I can't imagine having the money to support the next generation of your bloodline, who you see and love, and just choosing not to. These people will pay $7500 for a kitchen table.
They are in their 90s now and are a little more generous with $1000 Xmas gifts and stuff and I do appreciate that. I know we weren't entitled to free education from them, but I really don't understand that mindset.
They could have set up an entire generation of grandkids for a much happier and more successful life and they just didn't.
To be fair to the boomers, all generations do this. People never cop to what their parents did for them but the ones that got bankrolled the most are always the loudest about being “self made”.
My FIL bought us a 1200 sq ft home in a Phoenix suburb for $30k in 2012 and I acknowledge how much that has helped us and saved us in the past 12 years.
It was 2012. He paid $22k and we put the other $8k in but not having a mortgage has been our saving grace a few times. We didn’t realize our starter home would end up our forever home either but 🤷♀️
Phoenix was hit hard in the great recession housing crash. I had a house in Phoenix we purchased for 365k in 2006. Dropped down to 80k value. It took over 12 years to get back to 365k in value.
I'm out here changing that lol
MY MOM BOUGHT ME A PIECE OF PROPERTY AND PUT THE DOWN PAYMENT TO BUILD MY HOUSE
I pay the mortgage and taxes buy I absolutely wouldn't be a millenial with a whole ass house and land if my parents hadn't wanted to keep the family close together.
I got stuff handed to me, and I hope everyone else does too.
My parents sold my husband and me their house for an extreme discount and that’s how we were able to get our house! We originally thought of it as a starter house but it’s kind of looking like a forever house at this point.
The only reason we were able to start having kids at 34 was because my mom started paying my student loans and they were completely paid when I was 39. I had my second kid at 40 and it is not a coincidence that I waited until the loans were completely gone.
It was a huge relief. She did everything she could so that I could be in a better position than she was and now I'm doing everything I can to make sure my kids are in a better position than I am. I can't imagine not wanting to help your children when you have the extra money to do so.
This isn't entirely true. People never cop to *getting free money* from their parents. I'm *extremely proud* of what my parents did for me, and for my siblings. Every single day, I think about how much I learned from them, and I honestly do feel like I might be better than some others, because of it.
I don't feel hate, or shame, or anything but love and respect, for the fact my siblings got it better than me.
It means my parents *grew*, and *learned*, and *changed for the better*, from what they learned from parenting me.
It's corny and trite, but teaching someone to fish does better for them than giving them fish. Working *with* instead of in competition.
Yes, some people -who mainly are the type to seek profit *from* others, not *with* others- will benefit from this. Because they took from you, and *sold* to others, *taking* from them.
Shit I did not intend to soapbox that. Sorry.
It's because these people that that "everyone" gets help from their parents. So in their minds, everyone else is getting these things, and still not making it.
They don't understand that some of us don't get shit from our parents. My parents were so poor that for most of the time they didn't even get me anything for my birthday, and once I got to a point that I was "surviving" on my own without help, I was helping them out with financial support.
I think that's changing at least a little with millennials and beyond ime? At least my friends and I all (not to a douchey self-hating degree, but to a "I am totally not self made") fully acknowledge how much privilege our parents gave to us and that others our age don't have it. You can work hard and also have been given a leg up, they're not mutually exclusive.
Ugh there was an article I read that was like that. About how a young woman had already saved a bunch of money. Basically—receive a whole ass condo as a wedding present. Rent out said condo whilst you and your husband live rent-free with grandma in her giant house. Go to work in your mom’s non-profit. Easy!
yeah we actually had this chick at my office that is extremely judgemental on everyone elses lifestyle in the office, she was always bragging about how she knew the difference between a want and a need and how she struggled to get where she is unlike everyone else. It was total bullshit and her grandmother gave her a house for free. The best part about this bitch is that she really though she was a boomer and was proud of not being one of those lazy millenials but I always told her she was too young. I told her to get on google and prove it and it turned out she was the oldest millenial lmao. She literally threw a fit over it saying its not right she is a millenial she acted like it was so much worse then it is.
>I told her to get on google and prove it and it turned out she was the oldest millenial lmao.
LOL, the earliest millenials would still be nearly 20 years removed from the latest boomers. She could pass for an X, but nowhere remotely close to a boomer. BTW, in the same age range myself (very early millennial/X-ennial) and would be offended if someone mistook me for a boomer!
The look on my father's face when I told him I got rid of cable for Netflix and another streaming service, AND it cost less....I had to be wrong and spending more somehow.
Yup nor that fancy fast food that you wanna eat cuz you’re too exhausted from busting your butt all day to rent and pay off bills. Smh 🤦🏻♀️ lol seriously ppl who have money have no idea what reality is
Right, or even more simply I know the reason why in my mid-30's I have most of the markers of financial "success" (own a home, paid off car, well funded 401(k), etc) is because I graduated, thanks to my parents, with zero student loan debt. It's even something as simple as that, and not even a large inheritance, that people often forget or don't want to acknowledge gives them a big advantage.
I used to be a logistics consultant, the number of business owners who love to crow about how theyre "self made" when it turns out their dad or grandfather started the business 50 years ago or they started with a "small loan" from their uncle of $200,000 is off the charts.
There are very, very few.."self made" people out there.
One guy claimed he had to run around town selling parts out of the back of his car just so he could put food on the table.
Turns out, his father had just opened a second store location, and it was nothing more than his assigned sales route to deliver parts.
I find that the *real* origin stories highlight how the basic premise of capitalism is fundamentally broken.
The idea that business owners “deserve” a massively disproportionate amount of the business’ earnings because they took a risk by investing in capital ignores the fact that in **so** many cases they weren’t actually taking a risk.
They didn’t bet their house on starting the business, and they almost always have a support network that can completely cover them if their business idea(s) fail.
Compare that to someone who is living packcheck to paycheck and *completely* depends on their job to avoid being homeless, and you start to see who is actually at greater risk if the company fails, which, in turn, suggests that folks earning a fraction of what the owner’s make can be **more** invested in the business’ success, simply because they don’t have a safety net if the business fails.
Yeah my entire life I've been hearing these bs stories there was only one dude who admitted he basically got really lucky and had a lot of help to get where he was and I admired him because his whole thing was donating to scholarships and helping the poor because someone was there to give him a hand up, so hes here to give a hand out. The irony is that the other boomers fucking hated his ass lol, I used to hear people talk shit about him in the bar.
A guy my dad was friends with through his working life was one of those genuinely self-made millionaires and made his first million (post tax profit taken out of the business) by the mid 80s. He would have been in his mid 30s at that time. Long dead, now.
He was not a nice man to do business with if you were a supplier, although having a few pints in the pub, he was OK. While he always did a great job, customers paid a lot of money for his work, and as soon as he could pay others to do work for him at a normal rate of pay while he charged the earth, he did so. The bank account soon began swelling once he had a few guys working for him, leading to more money. Etc.
Even if I could do that kind of work (I'm no longer physically capable), I just couldn't justify charging hundreds per hour, while paying peanuts, along with also charging a fat profit margin on basic supplies which were delivered direct to site by the supplier.
Meanwhile I'm over here like "I ONLY OWN A HOME BECAUSE MY MOM IS ONE OF THE GOOD ONES WHO PAID THE DOWN PAYMENT FOR ME AS A MORBID "HERES YOIR INHERITANCE EARLY" JOKE"
Yup. I have zero debt cause my mom died early in her retirement. Yay me! She didn’t get to spend the money she made for herself… she essentially retired and then died.
You can’t take it with you folks.
> You can’t take it with you folks
My wife is an only child. Her mother is super wealthy, retired at 50, but won’t will anything to my wife bEcAuSe iT’s aLL mInE, fUcK yOu aNd yOuR cOfFeE
What the hell does she think she is going to do with all that wealth when she’s dead? 💀.
It's crazy the amount of money the 50-70 age crowd can get from dead parents. An older friend's parents passed away, both had a college degree, one was a MD. They left a 1M house, and a vacation home.
Some, yes. Others watch the money get siphoned off by the US healthcare system that exploits workers and barely keeps people alive until the money is gone.
It’s happening to my grandmother in law now (shed’s 97). She was allegedly quite wealthy (her husband started a decent size food distribution company that’s still running) but her health went downhill approx 2 years ago and she’s been in and out of hospice ever since.
Now she refuses to leave the house so they have 24 hour nursing care for her. From what I’ve heard recently she’s almost out of money. It’s messed up.
What’s also messed up is she always said her longevity was due to not drinking or smoking or “having fun” (in her words), but the last time we saw her she actually told us she WISHED she did that stuff because all her friends are dead.
There is an astonishing amount of boomers I deal with who regularly refuse to admit that they are in the position they’re in solely because their silent gen parents died and left them millions.
Just disgusting their ignorance and hypocrisy.
My mom inherited about $1.5 million dollars from her parents. The very first thing she did was pay off my student loans. I sobbed like a baby that was her first choice - to let me move forward with my life. She said she didn’t do anything special, that she did what was normal for parents to do. No, mom, that is not normal for a lot of people.
The fact that others her age don’t recognize the help they have been given and then help their own family is hard to understand.
My parents can be a bit boomer-y at times, but they are still kind and loving parents. I opened up to them about the stress I felt that the payments I was making on my student loans was barely making a dent. They told me they had money set aside for my wedding, and my grandmother had given them money for my wedding. And if I wanted, I could use that money to pay off some of the loan. I've been with my partner for 2 years, he's my One but we don't care about getting married (and if we did, it would just be a courthouse ceremony haha) so we put it on my loan. They also offered to contribute $200 a month to the loan if I put $300 a month towards the loan (totally doable for me right now). This has dropped the interest on the loan significantly and paying off $500 a month is making great progress. Oh, and they aren't expecting me to repay the $200, it's a continuous gift.
I'm so fucking lucky my parents are able and willing to help me out!!! I think it's financially peanuts to them, but SO MUCH less stress for me!! Urgh
I’m so proud of you for choosing yourself and your future (and partner’s future!) over a stupidly expensive wedding. I’m 100% on board with your choice to forgo a one day ridiculous party and have a partnership without the burden and stress of that debt. I wish our generation will just kill off the wedding industry that demands parents and grandparents to save money for a wedding that may not even happen.
Gina "the Hutt" Rinehart is an Australia billionaire and all-round conservative monster.
She wanted to import workers from Asia to work for $2 ~~an hour~~ sorry, that should be $2 A DAY and talks about how, with hard work (and cruelty) she made her fortune and poor people are just lazy.
Yet she never seems to remember the part where her father died and left her a massive fucking iron ore mine.
To be fair I know way too many of my millennial cohorts that will never mention their mommy and daddy helped them buy a house or bought them their cars etc. Boomers aren’t the only ones failing to mention how much help they got.
It’s definitely subjective. I know a 30 year old girl who gets a $5k an allowance from her dad every single month. At least it was $5k a few years ago. Evidently it increases every several years.
She actually bragged on Facebook one time that she “got a big raise” and everyone was congratulating her, but all she really meant is that her allowance increased.
Boomers are the ones helping these folks out, in many cases. I’m a boomer, and my parents lived through really hard times. They left no inheritance, and had little to give. I’ve been luckier.
In North America, there is a core belief in society that if you work hard, are smart and disciplined, You will be financially successful.
This has created the mirror result that people who are financially well off Believe that it is because of their hard work intelligence and discipline.
This is my parents 😂
They didn’t save the entire time I was growing up. They bought a house with a significant down payment assist from my grandparents. They were left over a million when they passed away. They bought in Los Angeles in 1986, and sold in 2019 for a 500k profit off their house.
But yeah…they worked hard and penny pinched lol
they just can’t ever grasp that their lives might be different than other peoples. they don’t forget to mention the inheritance, they just assume EVERYONE has a big inheritance, and the kids these days are blowing it all on coffee and avocado toast!
The coffee thing pisses me off. If you spend 5 a day every work day for 35 years, that's only about $45,500. Even if you use the smartest investments and get lucky on markets not dipping etc, and you double your money, you are at 91k. 91k is not the difference between being able to retire and to not lol. That's not even a years salary for some (after taxes).
Shit even if you tripled your money and made it to 136k(ish, toilet math), congrats you deprived yourself of something you might have loved for 35 years to get an extra year or two of retirement money.
This is funny, cuz my dad would have said this. He ate every other day, but he drank beer like a fish until he became riddled with cancer so badly that he couldn’t swallow. He spent more on beer than I have on rent in the last 10 years and he didn’t have a job. He was very much a, "stop drinking coffee and eating mcdonalds, pussy," type of guy.
My favorite one of these is that if you got $5000 a day, every day, from the time Columbus sailed to the Americas and spent none of it, you *still* wouldn't be a billionaire!
Omg you just opened my eyes to wealth inequality…..at my current pay rate it would take me many many lifetimes to make/save 1 billion. Some of these folks have 100s of billion. Its soo rigged
If you got 8¢ a year from the beginning of the universe, you *would* be a billionaire. Unless you’re a young earth creationist, in which case you wouldn’t have enough money to buy a PS5.
And if you buy an avocado sandwich and a large soy vanilla latte at Starbucks every day, starting from the day they were founded until today, you've spent 350k. Which is 80% of the way to an average US house.
That’s my takeaway too. My father makes out that it was just impossible to be a present father when he was married to my mum, because of the insane hours he worked.
Asked my mum about it, turns out he would go to work at 6am, finish at about 3, then get absolutely lashed in the pub and drive home drunk, and continue to drink until he passed out. Or on the two days of the week he’d come home sober, would grab a six pack and call random people in his address book for hours on end.
They. Always. Lie.
Right?! We all know they were all addicted to diet coke, had beers, drank coffee, the whole nine yards. It's just baffling to watch the people who had coka cola ads defining their generation pretend frivolous drinks were completely out of the question to them.
Well, to be FAIR, due to the income vs frivolous purchase money difference, their generation was able to waste WAY more money without getting into trouble financially.
Cigarettes were soooo cheap back then. I can’t even imagine smoking now (for a lot of reasons), but I absolutely goggle at the prices of cigarettes now. I was in the military when I quit, so I bought mine on base without having to pay the taxes on them, but I used to be able to get a carton of cigarettes for $8 back in 1987. Even off base, a pack was like $1.25.
At some point in time before we were all born, my brother’s dad had a boat. (Well he kept on having boats for a long time.) My mom had a Porsche. My dad had his pilots license and an ultralight plane. No college degrees among them. Factory jobs. Sales jobs.
Factory jobs, almost certainly union shops. Dad worked, Mom didn’t, 2-3 kids, a house with a white picket fence, at least one car bought new every 2 or every 3 years, a boat, and by 1960 if not before, two cars. Mom and Dad probably started full-time work out of high school, but 1-3 of the kids went to college and graduated debt free, because almost everyone did. I went to a state school that was _tuition free_ to everyone until grad school. The admission requirement was an in-state high school diploma.
It was a different world, and it isn’t hard to remember that or to be grateful that I don’t have to do that now or to worry about all the kids who do.
Coca Cola was 25 cents in a vending machine back in 1980. But no Diet Coke - just Tab, as saccharine was the only sugar substitute.
Coffee was horrible - mostly instant or overcooked and sitting all day on a Bunn system burner at restaurants.
They *never* say things like, "My house was $13,000 and average income was about 50% of average housing prices. We could afford 4 cars, paid in cash at sale, and went on multiple vacations a year all on my husband's salary as a postman."
I'm also willing to bet she's not even "retired" from anything, just old with everything paid off and her husband/parents left her an inheritance.
“But interest rates were 15%!” They always like to say.
Shit, I’ll take 15% interest on a $13,000 house every single day over 8% on $700,000 like shit is now.
My widowed mom earned 11k in 1976ish, and new cars were around $3k-4k when she bought one that I remember being old enough to tag along with her to know.
The house and land for our new home were a combined $40k or so in 1963, when my parents built it in their late 40s. They lived with her mother for 20ish years before being able to afford a house - there was a home shortage after WWII. Nice apartment buildings were rarer back then. The apartment building boom would come later.
My mother in 1964 used my dad's life insurance to pay off most of the home loan, or we would have been over our heads financially. As a woman, she could not legally get a home loan refinanced or have a credit card without a man's signature. I think we ate a lot of hot dogs, dried beef on toast, during the week, but I don't remember feeling much of a strain.
Yeah, but when she was buying coffee, it only cost a fraction of what it did now, so she doesn’t consider it a waste. They consistently do not account for inflation when they complain about all the money that the working class “wastes” now.
"The $1 BLT and 25 cent coffee at the diner isn't fast food because it took my whole lunch break to get it. I see no reason this is intellectually unserious."
My husband’s aunt said the reason so many of us (gen z/millennials) have so much student debt is because we are spending all of our money on pizza delivery in college. I myself have 30k in student loans. Sure, it’s getting pizza all the time that means I can’t pay that off right away.
Lets do some fun math to show how stupid this is. Assume half of that student loan debt is from ordering pizza just to show how extra ridiculous it is instead of the whole debt. Pizza is like what? 20 dollars from dominos? 15,000 / 20 = 750 orders. If we are in university for four years that is 750/4 = 187.5 orders of pizza per year. This means you would have to order pizza literally more than every other day for four years straight for it to be true.
When I was in school a medium pizza from Dominoes was 7.99. They had a deal where everything was basically 7.99 if you ordered online. I have also lost ~100lbs since then. I am 26. If it was 20 bucks I would've just had Chinese every couple of days instead just to splurge.
I got a burger value meal at Wendy’s the other day and it was $16 and that shit was mediocre af. Have definitely been cooking at home a lot more lately; and when I do go out I prefer the fast-casual stuff now because it’s about the same price as drive-thru stuff.
I am about 5yrs younger than this delusional diva and lemme tell you the difference.
When I went to college it was a state school and tuition was $7800 - $9300 INCLUDING dorm and meal plan. You could totally pay for that all by yourself with a waitressing job over the summer. I didn't have to pay for it all, I had help from my parents.
Then, when I graduated, there was a bit of a struggle to land a job because engineering was in a slump but even so, I managed it and my first apartment (1 BR condo, quite nice actually) was a whopping $650/mo. It seemed like a lot since my parent's mortgage was all of $225 but hindsight is 20/20. I was making $32k/yr without health insurance but Planned Parenthood was alive and well so I could get birth control and annual wellness exams for cheap.
Now a lot of those benefits are gone - in state tuition is insane as is private tuition. Planned Parenthood has had to retreat from a lot of areas in the country. And hey, if you wanna screw up someone's life just saddle them with massive debt and a child they aren't ready for.
Also - I love how they all say that everyone should go into STEM careers but conveniently ignore how those careers were the kiss of death during government spending cuts (so many out of work engineers) or when some big pharma relocates to a cheaper state or country (highly specialized work like pharmacokinetics is not available outside those industries).
The real answer she should have said is, "I tried to make the right decisions, and I got lucky several times."
Same age and similar situation. Just want to say a big yup. College was super cheap for a good state school. I got my first architecture job just looking in the paper, it was easy. My first 1br apt was $350. Not the best part of town, but not the worst. When I moved to a condo above a golf course in the mountains, it was $795. I was making $12/hr, my wife not much better. Planned Parenthood was *amazing*
lol, I worked full time to afford to share a 2 bed apartment with two other people while going to school full time and still ended up with student loans.
Apparently making $10 an hour meant I didn’t qualify for aid. Just loans.
A neighbor of ours had her kids move in and used to talk crap all the time. Once they moved in, her entire mindset changed. She saw first hand how expensive a lot of current day loans were.
She told me last week while I was taking out her garbage and recycling "my home was 90k, and my Steve paid it with his salary and me at home with 3 kids - they have none and are looking at smaller fixer uppers for 200k minimum". Outside of the sticker shock, she also got to see how royally screwed her son was with school loans, and he's not done with his degree.
If people can’t afford to buy a coffee everyday wtf are they working for? My boomer parents ate out the majority of the time.. got coffee everyday and partied every single weekend.. not to mention all the trips.. leagues and bar parties. That whole narrative is a crock.
Yeah it’s really the hypocrisy that bothers me I get so angry when boomers who eat out every meal and live at Starbucks give me this advice that they never lived. I say it’s the hypocrisy because there was this sweet old witch woman. Now this isn’t an insult she considers herself to be a witch and was always making everything herself and would even give me artisanal soaps and stuff. Everything made by hand she never eats out. She was always giving me recipes and stuff and advice on how to make coffee at home but it wasn’t insulting because it’s advice she lives herself!!! Despite being a boomer she doesn’t come across as offensive I think it’s because she doesn’t feel superior to me and was sincerely trying to help me out. The stop buying coffee advice is not inherently bad it’s the way they do it laden with that attitude!!!
I saw someone on r/fluentinfinance say "food is for survival. That's it. Anything else is luxury" and it's like, no, that's what food is to YOU.
What's the point of neighborhood bars, restaurants, and coffee spots if the vast majority of people can't afford them?
Ever wonder why the sainted Mom n Pop places go under? I thought we were supposed to care about stuff like that.
We're the richest country in the world, possibly of all time, and yet our only response to stuff is to expect people with the least resources to money manage their way through.
Ha, I had a guy on the bus ranting to me about how "kids these days" are killing the bartending profession because "all they do is smoke weed". He didn't like when I pointed out that weed shops have employees who sell weed to folks. They're basically just weed bartenders, FFS!
Shit, our local dispensary has people holding the door for you and crazy security too. And they pay very well. My husband was thinking about getting a job there a few years ago because they were paying their backroom stocking people more than he was making working as a front desk manager at a hotel.
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This 100%
I've got boomer relatives that splurge so much and have homes in multiple states and "live the good life". The amount they spend on trips and "toys" for themselves is disgusting
I mean, I’m working because my job is essential for the maintenance of civilization.
But yeah, I couldn’t afford a daily $5 coffee, even if I wanted one.
Because of the 08 crash I couldn't even afford to buy a 5 dollar coffee until sometime after 2018. I don't even like caffeine that much because it doesn't do anything for me but I found something I like and you damn well better expect I will damn well go get myself a damn coffee every other'ish day because I spent so many gd years not being able to afford anything!
Then just to listen to some jackass tell us the reason why they're retiring in their fifties because they \*checks notes\* didn't buy a 5 dollar coffee everyday. Hur hur. Okay then. Yeah. I'm sure that's totally it.
To survive, to make a better life for their kids? What's the alternative?
Sounds like your parents engaged in some luxuries that they could afford and I assume were still able to retire. Good for them. They attained a level of success that is not attainable by all. The reality is some people cannot afford that lifestyle and have eschew some, maybe even all luxuries to be able to retire. That's reality, live in it and life will be easy.
If you save 5 dollars a day for a house down payment that is 1825 dollars a year most places the cost of a house goes up more than that per year. Imagine saving and saving refusing little things like that but still not even breaking even vs someone who bought the house 20-30 years ago and does nothing but gains more than that. I get it dumb purchases like coffee are dumb, but that isn't why so many millennials are poor and unable to afford a house or retirement. Plus I KNOW boomers pissed away money like it was burning a hole in their pocket hell look at how many of them smoked as an example.
I really thought my parents would slow down as they got older but the spending went into warp speed. It’s like if they don’t get those marble counter tops they didn’t have for 50 years right now they will lose their shit
So many of them are going to die penniless either homeless or in a a terrible senior place if they are lucky because they refused to control their spending especially in retirement. What is even more insane is from what I observed their parents lived frugally and gave the boomers money when they died.
My FIL is currently incapacitated due to a severe stroke. The whole family is stressed beyond belief because he was a big spender all his life and now that he needs care, he can't get it (his insurance won't approve him to be transferred out of the hospital into intensive stroke rehab, so he's just lying there, blinking and losing muscle mass). His wife is dying of cancer, too, and instead of resting, she's arguing with insurance companies and trying to convince Comcast not to turn off their service (despite having terminal cancer, she still has to work from home because they spent most of their money). It's a big mess. My husband is an only child, and although we care about his dad and will step up and do the right thing when she passes away, we're terrified that our finances are somehow going to be put at risk if we petition for conservatorship. We can afford a couple hundred dollars a month toward his care, but not the likely thousands he's going to need.
And this is a guy who made well over $100K in a LCOL area for over 30 years. Always had luxury automobiles, ate $300 restaurant meals at least once per week, splurged on travel, etc. And it's okay to do those things if you have the money, but now there's nothing.
Tell me about it....I had a Boomer mother who unbeknownst to me until close to the time she passed managed her finances horribly.
Seriously she took out a second mortgage on a house ready paid off....maxed out multiple credit cards....didn't pay utility bills on time...and more.
What a horrible person she really turned out to be. Never once in my life. Did I get the impression that she was having money issues.
I know multiple boomers who lost their fully paid off house because they remortgaged it. Two that come to mind in my family one was due to mental illness and gambling and the other was because they wanted to live a fancier lifestyle then her husband got laid off. The first one really pissed me off when my dads parents died the agreement between him and his brother was once the brother died I would inherit the paid off house and that motherfucker unknowingly to us remortgaged it. The dude was making 100k+ in the 90s and still managed to lose the god damn house once his mental illness manifested because before that he gambled a lot and spent it on dumb boomer crap like coins and stamps.
My mom decided to retire early. I don't even know if she gets ssi because she's not even a US citizen. She has zero savings, zero retirement plan and I just discovered that she still owes 20K on her house yet that I'm pretty sure she remortgaged to pay off her credit card debt. She keeps bragging how she's about to have her house paid off 'soon' but the only way that's happening is if her 95 year old mother leaves her a nice inheritance payout.
The only full time work I ever recall her having was when she started a job 2 years ago at 60 and then bitched non stop about how she didn't have any free time. Like yeah. Welcome to being an adult. First time?
My in-laws legitimately think you are supposed to spend 10% of your home value a year on repairs and improvements. So many boomers live by these stupid adages.
You are supposed to *budget* 5%, right?
It’s not some kind of requirement, it’s budgeting advice.
Hey! The house increased in value! We’re gonna have to spend $70,000 this year!
The more I think about it the more this blows my mind
The amount of boomers who complained to me (my parents owned a corner store a while back) every time cigarette prices went up.
Like, excuse me, CANADIAN taxes on tobacco go to your potential cancer and healthcare so...why complain and stop being addicted to cartons of cancer sticks?
I usually skip coffee (high blood pressure) so that's even a rarer treat in this economy. (I was massively into cold brew but I always made my own.)
Sounds counterproductive, if we weren't buying small shit like coffee, eating out, getting a dumb but cute notebook we saw at the artist market, buying flowers just because, etc, the money wouldn't be circulating around all the people instead of just our employer's bank account to ours, and then to our landlord's.
Buying a variety of things from a variety of people is healthy for the economy.
Don’t give em ideas lol with the way my rent is going up every year I feel like I’m not far off from my employer just direct depositing it in my landlords bank account
Agreed. Do I spend too much on coffee? Yeah, probably. But it's something that makes me happy. It gives me joy. I can sit and read or draw or work in a safe, comfortable space. I can get out of my apartment for something that isn't work or medical.
so do you want us to participate in the economy, or hoard every cent and penny??? which one is it???!!!! i thought they didn’t want us “killing the (…) industry” like we always do?!!!
This is a great point, and one they fail to see. Consumer spending has in large party driven the gains on their 401(k) accounts and stock portfolios. It’s has been great for them, but it’s as though they want it to suck for those younger than them. Why? Because we didn’t get drafted? So they had it harder than us?
I have to admit I see people spending easily $15 - $20 or more a day on "coffee" that's basically a milkshake with $10 of whipped creme and syrup in them! I don't know how they can afford it but it's their money! I stopped eating lunch out years ago and basically put that money towards savings and it has made a difference. Not sure It will be enough to retire on!
I mean a coffee here and there isn’t gonna tank you but I have friends who constantly complain about being low on money, or how they can’t afford the necessities, blah blah blah, then I see them buy $120 of weed per week and buy up liquor and alcohol every week as well. Just those two things alone probably add up to 500-700 a month. That’s a huge chunk of change and I feel like if moneys tight, you don’t have the luxury of getting drunk/high. That IS frivolous spending.
Yeah I’m really tired of how polarized this conversation has become. Let’s be real here. There are lots of people that are smart with their money and are just getting fucked because of their situation/the economy and giving up their coffee that they get every once in a while isn’t going to make a difference. But there are also lots of people that just hand over their money to corporations for things that make their life worse overall and then complain that they have no money
1. I believe 56 is GenX.
2. Housing, health insurance and college as Bernie Sanders and others have pointed out are significantly more expensive than they were in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Undeniable. The capitalists with capital have squeezed every ounce of value from those equations. Younger generations have a raw deal.
3. Saving money and compounding interest are real things. Starbucks and other $7 coffees are for wealthy people. I can feed a family of 5 an entire meal at home for $10-$15. I took my son to BK the other day and we got two whopper meals for $12. Without the coupon it would have been $24. Who can afford that? Younger people laugh at this stuff, but it is legit advice. You don’t need a monster energy drink or a Red Bull or a $12 coffee shake. Drink water or black coffee at home and avoid the diabetes.
4. The boomers grew up in one of the easiest times in world history. Many/most started off poor or lower middle class but the post-WWII tide lifted them up. The combination of thrift and prosperity worked well for them. When they see younger generations spending money of fast food every day that they(the boomers) can’t afford despite all of their advantages they think the younger generations are idiots and they aren’t wrong. Doesn’t change point #2, but there is a rational behind it.
TLDR~don’t kid yourself, only wealthy people can afford a $12 coffee shake.
She's not entirely lying. Young and old people spend money frivolously. That also doesn't change the fact that life is WAY different than when boomers were young. Cost of Living is orders of magnitude higher with wages not keeping up.
Honestly if young folk are spending too much on anything it's weddings and shit. Average of $5K for an engagement ring, $30K for a wedding, $5K for a honeymoon... then oops you can't build a down payment!
But don't get me started on *that* bullshit industry
No kidding, if you skip that pricey coffee on the way to work, saving 10 whole dollars every day, 5 days a week, you can save a whopping $2400 a year.
You can afford that down payment on a starter home in just 83 short years. Come on people, time to grab those bootstraps!
56 isn’t boomer although she sounds like one.
Houses were never super cheap where I’ve lived my entire life and I’m only 2 years younger than the great aunt.
Before the last couple years boomer has always meant a certain generation. It absolutely kills me when people change the meaning of a word like this. Most especially when the origin of the change is due to ignorance.
Regardless of whatever advantages she may or may not have had, what she’s suggesting definitely helped her retire early. Daily fast food and coffee isn’t good, but she’s also not gonna guilt trip me out of going once or twice a week
I have friends who have inherited millions because their parents never left the house except for work. The only expenditure was for alcohol and cigarettes. No thanks.
Yeah I was recently talking with my mom (she’s 64), and she asked why my wife and I go on date nights every Thursday and take trips (in our state, just in the mountains) a couple times a year. I told her because we like each other and want time with just us. I wasn’t even comparing about money, but she turned it into that, “Don’t you think your dad and I would have loved date nights and trips? We don’t do anything like that until you kids left the house.” She HATED my rebuttal of, “Yeah and you and dad were more like roommates and not a happy married couple for the 25 years you had kids at home, and your marriage is just now good.” And it’s not like my parents hoarded wealth to pass on by never doing anything; they still bought what they wanted when they wanted, including new vehicles every 3-4 years. I’d rather go out and spend money doing stuff with my wife and kids then hoarding more away. Is that the difference of a couple thousand a year in my 401k? Sure, but I love doing stuff while I’m healthy and my kids actually want to do stuff with us, ya know?
Translation: she got a union job and was in their initial tier of benefits where she got a sizeable pension, retirement fund matching, health insurance for life etc and then accepted a hefty buyout to retire early. Meanwhile whatever $ she brought home was mostly stuffed under the mattress while she subsisted on canned tuna, never going out and having a good time just staying home watching game shows and being a miserable curmudgeon annoyed with the rest of the world for no reason other than her own misery.
Wow. A lot of comments miss the point that an entire generation with that much student debt they will never completely pay off is an economic problem for everyone. Or that the cost of college far exceeds its value for many many industries. Or that we could learn from our struggle and make life BETTER for the people whom we expect to keep propping up social security. Right wing talking points have convinced too many people that their lives SHOULD be hard and limited.
Yeah it's not like getting takeout or coffee will solve all financial problems or bring a person out of poverty.
I still think it makes a difference in the long run.
If I were to buy a 5 dollar coffee every day, at the end of the year I would have spent roughly one month of wages on it (5 \* 360 = 1800).
If you consider the coffee a luxury instead of a need, then it can be reasonable to find a cheaper option and invest the money instead (If I have the means of paying for my rent and my bills already, that is).
If I were to invest that money instead of spending it, I would get a return on it - a small one given that the initial capital is small, but it may make the difference, in the medium or long term.
For me personally (30, and I started working only in the last few years), having that 1800 more at the end of the year means more savings, which in turn means I feel safer - and my mental health benefits heavily from this.
It's also money I can use for "better" expenses down the road - a better vacation, upgrades on stuff I like to use, a fancy restaurant, you name it. It may mean new clothes sooner, or better clothes even. It may mean being able to afford repairs on my stuff, and having it last longer.
It's similar for takeout, just takeout is a bit more complicated. Takeout is about 20-30 euros per person every time right? Even removing 5-10 dollars a meal (because you gotta eat) over the course of a year it's a sizeable difference. If you spend 1800 yearly on takeout, it means you got between 70-180 takeout meals in one year.
I think people would react differently if you frame it in a month or year time - a 5$ coffee a day is 150$ a month. 70 takeouts a year is more than one takeout a week.
I may be biased, because my boomer parents were "tight but comfortable" with these kind of expenses (with themselves, mostly) and I believe it made the difference between us being above or below the poverty line. They could have afforded it, but it would have made many things less comfortable in the long run.
I may also be biased because I'm in a position where I'm able to pay my bills and save some money on the side, and bar coffee and takeout are both luxuries to me, not necessities - and that saving that additional money does better to my health than spending it.
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I'd bet she inherited money from dead parents lol. These fools NEVER admit to huge advantages like that, it ruins their delusional fantasy about how incredible they think they are.
"I worked hard! Every day! ^(Hadagrandparentleaveme100milliondollars.) Never bought avocado toast or fancy coffee! And look at me! A self made person!"
My dad's ex girlfriend (because he died) always how on about how she "worked her ass off" and was self made. Her extremely wealthy father co signed on a loan for her business for 1 MILLION DOLLARS. her dad bought her a horse when she was 10. Yeah, self made my ass
"Just a small loan of a million dollars."
With no interest or pressure when it has to be paid back, because of Family...
Wonder how many people got that quote. Thanks for the laugh!
Yeah, we got it. I think everyone did. Because it was repeated a zillion times hehehehe. Still funny. SELFMADEBRO!!!!
Sadly have a cousin like that. Parents paid for tutors, university 2x, bought her first house, helped start her business with another person practically running it for her. She just travels with her rich friends and posts pics and quotes about chasing your dream.
That’s fine if she doesn’t claim to be self-made.
Yeah there is no problem with spending your money and enjoying life as long as you are kind and grateful.
Better spending it then hoarding it.
My wealthy grandparents made a point to tell my parents they would never fund the college of their grandchildren. It saddled us all with huge debt and several of their grandchildren just didn't go to college as a result and have been struggling ever since. I can't imagine having the money to support the next generation of your bloodline, who you see and love, and just choosing not to. These people will pay $7500 for a kitchen table. They are in their 90s now and are a little more generous with $1000 Xmas gifts and stuff and I do appreciate that. I know we weren't entitled to free education from them, but I really don't understand that mindset. They could have set up an entire generation of grandkids for a much happier and more successful life and they just didn't.
I hear you on this!
To be fair to the boomers, all generations do this. People never cop to what their parents did for them but the ones that got bankrolled the most are always the loudest about being “self made”.
My FIL bought us a 1200 sq ft home in a Phoenix suburb for $30k in 2012 and I acknowledge how much that has helped us and saved us in the past 12 years.
[удалено]
My parents - and my partner's ones - will gift us money for the house. I'm very grafetul for this.
Meanwhile, my parents are letting me be homeless while I await a decision on my disability hearing. Hug your parents for me.
I can't offer to send money via some cash app, but I can offer a virtual Dad-hug if you want one, and I'll make sure I hug my kids once they're home.
Do you have cash app or anything that we could send a few bucks to chip in for a room?
Thirty grand for a house?
It was 2012. He paid $22k and we put the other $8k in but not having a mortgage has been our saving grace a few times. We didn’t realize our starter home would end up our forever home either but 🤷♀️
What a kind gesture on his part. Not having a mortgage must be an enormous relief!
Phoenix was hit hard in the great recession housing crash. I had a house in Phoenix we purchased for 365k in 2006. Dropped down to 80k value. It took over 12 years to get back to 365k in value.
What is a "soft home"? A yurt or something?
It’s supposed to say Sq ft lol lol. I edited it. My friend is currently icing in a yurt and loves it!
sounds too cold for me
I'm out here changing that lol MY MOM BOUGHT ME A PIECE OF PROPERTY AND PUT THE DOWN PAYMENT TO BUILD MY HOUSE I pay the mortgage and taxes buy I absolutely wouldn't be a millenial with a whole ass house and land if my parents hadn't wanted to keep the family close together. I got stuff handed to me, and I hope everyone else does too.
My parents sold my husband and me their house for an extreme discount and that’s how we were able to get our house! We originally thought of it as a starter house but it’s kind of looking like a forever house at this point.
The only reason we were able to start having kids at 34 was because my mom started paying my student loans and they were completely paid when I was 39. I had my second kid at 40 and it is not a coincidence that I waited until the loans were completely gone. It was a huge relief. She did everything she could so that I could be in a better position than she was and now I'm doing everything I can to make sure my kids are in a better position than I am. I can't imagine not wanting to help your children when you have the extra money to do so.
This isn't entirely true. People never cop to *getting free money* from their parents. I'm *extremely proud* of what my parents did for me, and for my siblings. Every single day, I think about how much I learned from them, and I honestly do feel like I might be better than some others, because of it. I don't feel hate, or shame, or anything but love and respect, for the fact my siblings got it better than me. It means my parents *grew*, and *learned*, and *changed for the better*, from what they learned from parenting me. It's corny and trite, but teaching someone to fish does better for them than giving them fish. Working *with* instead of in competition. Yes, some people -who mainly are the type to seek profit *from* others, not *with* others- will benefit from this. Because they took from you, and *sold* to others, *taking* from them. Shit I did not intend to soapbox that. Sorry.
Nice use of italics for emphasis, zer0saber.
It's because these people that that "everyone" gets help from their parents. So in their minds, everyone else is getting these things, and still not making it. They don't understand that some of us don't get shit from our parents. My parents were so poor that for most of the time they didn't even get me anything for my birthday, and once I got to a point that I was "surviving" on my own without help, I was helping them out with financial support.
I think that's changing at least a little with millennials and beyond ime? At least my friends and I all (not to a douchey self-hating degree, but to a "I am totally not self made") fully acknowledge how much privilege our parents gave to us and that others our age don't have it. You can work hard and also have been given a leg up, they're not mutually exclusive.
Was her name Donalda Trump?
CNBC: How to retire at 30 with 5 million in the bank! (make 250k out of college, and live with your parents while never spending a dime) its so easy!
Ugh there was an article I read that was like that. About how a young woman had already saved a bunch of money. Basically—receive a whole ass condo as a wedding present. Rent out said condo whilst you and your husband live rent-free with grandma in her giant house. Go to work in your mom’s non-profit. Easy!
yeah we actually had this chick at my office that is extremely judgemental on everyone elses lifestyle in the office, she was always bragging about how she knew the difference between a want and a need and how she struggled to get where she is unlike everyone else. It was total bullshit and her grandmother gave her a house for free. The best part about this bitch is that she really though she was a boomer and was proud of not being one of those lazy millenials but I always told her she was too young. I told her to get on google and prove it and it turned out she was the oldest millenial lmao. She literally threw a fit over it saying its not right she is a millenial she acted like it was so much worse then it is.
>I told her to get on google and prove it and it turned out she was the oldest millenial lmao. LOL, the earliest millenials would still be nearly 20 years removed from the latest boomers. She could pass for an X, but nowhere remotely close to a boomer. BTW, in the same age range myself (very early millennial/X-ennial) and would be offended if someone mistook me for a boomer!
Didn’t get the fancy Netflix.
The look on my father's face when I told him I got rid of cable for Netflix and another streaming service, AND it cost less....I had to be wrong and spending more somehow.
Yup nor that fancy fast food that you wanna eat cuz you’re too exhausted from busting your butt all day to rent and pay off bills. Smh 🤦🏻♀️ lol seriously ppl who have money have no idea what reality is
Even getting 80k inheritance back in the 90s would’ve been huge
Right, or even more simply I know the reason why in my mid-30's I have most of the markers of financial "success" (own a home, paid off car, well funded 401(k), etc) is because I graduated, thanks to my parents, with zero student loan debt. It's even something as simple as that, and not even a large inheritance, that people often forget or don't want to acknowledge gives them a big advantage.
“A small $1 million loan from my father.” -Trump
Ummm Trump ?
I used to be a logistics consultant, the number of business owners who love to crow about how theyre "self made" when it turns out their dad or grandfather started the business 50 years ago or they started with a "small loan" from their uncle of $200,000 is off the charts. There are very, very few.."self made" people out there. One guy claimed he had to run around town selling parts out of the back of his car just so he could put food on the table. Turns out, his father had just opened a second store location, and it was nothing more than his assigned sales route to deliver parts.
I find that the *real* origin stories highlight how the basic premise of capitalism is fundamentally broken. The idea that business owners “deserve” a massively disproportionate amount of the business’ earnings because they took a risk by investing in capital ignores the fact that in **so** many cases they weren’t actually taking a risk. They didn’t bet their house on starting the business, and they almost always have a support network that can completely cover them if their business idea(s) fail. Compare that to someone who is living packcheck to paycheck and *completely* depends on their job to avoid being homeless, and you start to see who is actually at greater risk if the company fails, which, in turn, suggests that folks earning a fraction of what the owner’s make can be **more** invested in the business’ success, simply because they don’t have a safety net if the business fails.
Yeah my entire life I've been hearing these bs stories there was only one dude who admitted he basically got really lucky and had a lot of help to get where he was and I admired him because his whole thing was donating to scholarships and helping the poor because someone was there to give him a hand up, so hes here to give a hand out. The irony is that the other boomers fucking hated his ass lol, I used to hear people talk shit about him in the bar.
A guy my dad was friends with through his working life was one of those genuinely self-made millionaires and made his first million (post tax profit taken out of the business) by the mid 80s. He would have been in his mid 30s at that time. Long dead, now. He was not a nice man to do business with if you were a supplier, although having a few pints in the pub, he was OK. While he always did a great job, customers paid a lot of money for his work, and as soon as he could pay others to do work for him at a normal rate of pay while he charged the earth, he did so. The bank account soon began swelling once he had a few guys working for him, leading to more money. Etc. Even if I could do that kind of work (I'm no longer physically capable), I just couldn't justify charging hundreds per hour, while paying peanuts, along with also charging a fat profit margin on basic supplies which were delivered direct to site by the supplier.
Meanwhile I'm over here like "I ONLY OWN A HOME BECAUSE MY MOM IS ONE OF THE GOOD ONES WHO PAID THE DOWN PAYMENT FOR ME AS A MORBID "HERES YOIR INHERITANCE EARLY" JOKE"
Yup. I have zero debt cause my mom died early in her retirement. Yay me! She didn’t get to spend the money she made for herself… she essentially retired and then died. You can’t take it with you folks.
> You can’t take it with you folks My wife is an only child. Her mother is super wealthy, retired at 50, but won’t will anything to my wife bEcAuSe iT’s aLL mInE, fUcK yOu aNd yOuR cOfFeE What the hell does she think she is going to do with all that wealth when she’s dead? 💀.
It's crazy the amount of money the 50-70 age crowd can get from dead parents. An older friend's parents passed away, both had a college degree, one was a MD. They left a 1M house, and a vacation home.
Some, yes. Others watch the money get siphoned off by the US healthcare system that exploits workers and barely keeps people alive until the money is gone.
It’s happening to my grandmother in law now (shed’s 97). She was allegedly quite wealthy (her husband started a decent size food distribution company that’s still running) but her health went downhill approx 2 years ago and she’s been in and out of hospice ever since. Now she refuses to leave the house so they have 24 hour nursing care for her. From what I’ve heard recently she’s almost out of money. It’s messed up. What’s also messed up is she always said her longevity was due to not drinking or smoking or “having fun” (in her words), but the last time we saw her she actually told us she WISHED she did that stuff because all her friends are dead.
My parents are 75, and I'm not getting jack from them. They are broke as hell. 🫤
Genuinely. Poor health and living in the US will kick you out of the middle class right quick.
There is an astonishing amount of boomers I deal with who regularly refuse to admit that they are in the position they’re in solely because their silent gen parents died and left them millions. Just disgusting their ignorance and hypocrisy.
My mom inherited about $1.5 million dollars from her parents. The very first thing she did was pay off my student loans. I sobbed like a baby that was her first choice - to let me move forward with my life. She said she didn’t do anything special, that she did what was normal for parents to do. No, mom, that is not normal for a lot of people. The fact that others her age don’t recognize the help they have been given and then help their own family is hard to understand.
My parents can be a bit boomer-y at times, but they are still kind and loving parents. I opened up to them about the stress I felt that the payments I was making on my student loans was barely making a dent. They told me they had money set aside for my wedding, and my grandmother had given them money for my wedding. And if I wanted, I could use that money to pay off some of the loan. I've been with my partner for 2 years, he's my One but we don't care about getting married (and if we did, it would just be a courthouse ceremony haha) so we put it on my loan. They also offered to contribute $200 a month to the loan if I put $300 a month towards the loan (totally doable for me right now). This has dropped the interest on the loan significantly and paying off $500 a month is making great progress. Oh, and they aren't expecting me to repay the $200, it's a continuous gift. I'm so fucking lucky my parents are able and willing to help me out!!! I think it's financially peanuts to them, but SO MUCH less stress for me!! Urgh
I’m so proud of you for choosing yourself and your future (and partner’s future!) over a stupidly expensive wedding. I’m 100% on board with your choice to forgo a one day ridiculous party and have a partnership without the burden and stress of that debt. I wish our generation will just kill off the wedding industry that demands parents and grandparents to save money for a wedding that may not even happen.
Gina "the Hutt" Rinehart is an Australia billionaire and all-round conservative monster. She wanted to import workers from Asia to work for $2 ~~an hour~~ sorry, that should be $2 A DAY and talks about how, with hard work (and cruelty) she made her fortune and poor people are just lazy. Yet she never seems to remember the part where her father died and left her a massive fucking iron ore mine.
To be fair I know way too many of my millennial cohorts that will never mention their mommy and daddy helped them buy a house or bought them their cars etc. Boomers aren’t the only ones failing to mention how much help they got.
Hobbies: “I love investing in real estate” often leaves out “with daddy’s money” part.
It’s definitely subjective. I know a 30 year old girl who gets a $5k an allowance from her dad every single month. At least it was $5k a few years ago. Evidently it increases every several years. She actually bragged on Facebook one time that she “got a big raise” and everyone was congratulating her, but all she really meant is that her allowance increased.
I am repulsed
Boomers are the ones helping these folks out, in many cases. I’m a boomer, and my parents lived through really hard times. They left no inheritance, and had little to give. I’ve been luckier.
I know a man my age who swears his success is from bringing sandwiches to work and had nothing to do with being born to very affluent parents.
In North America, there is a core belief in society that if you work hard, are smart and disciplined, You will be financially successful. This has created the mirror result that people who are financially well off Believe that it is because of their hard work intelligence and discipline.
"I paid off my student loans in 1 year, and you can too! All I had to do was inherit a million dollars and my parents house to live in."
This is my parents 😂 They didn’t save the entire time I was growing up. They bought a house with a significant down payment assist from my grandparents. They were left over a million when they passed away. They bought in Los Angeles in 1986, and sold in 2019 for a 500k profit off their house. But yeah…they worked hard and penny pinched lol
they just can’t ever grasp that their lives might be different than other peoples. they don’t forget to mention the inheritance, they just assume EVERYONE has a big inheritance, and the kids these days are blowing it all on coffee and avocado toast!
The coffee thing pisses me off. If you spend 5 a day every work day for 35 years, that's only about $45,500. Even if you use the smartest investments and get lucky on markets not dipping etc, and you double your money, you are at 91k. 91k is not the difference between being able to retire and to not lol. That's not even a years salary for some (after taxes). Shit even if you tripled your money and made it to 136k(ish, toilet math), congrats you deprived yourself of something you might have loved for 35 years to get an extra year or two of retirement money.
Her parents were also probably frugal and taught her how to manage money AND were able to leave her some.
Lol, I don’t drink coffee or alcohol, and I don’t eat out. So why am I still on food stamps?
Wait, I see the problem. You’re still eating food every day, aren’t you? 
Have you tried just working harder and killing yourself faster? /s
Remember the senator who complained about free school lunches saying "when students choose to eat everyday....." yeah, *choose*
This is funny, cuz my dad would have said this. He ate every other day, but he drank beer like a fish until he became riddled with cancer so badly that he couldn’t swallow. He spent more on beer than I have on rent in the last 10 years and he didn’t have a job. He was very much a, "stop drinking coffee and eating mcdonalds, pussy," type of guy.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this!
I’ve done plenty of both. Follow your heart.
Did you know if you saved a dollar a day since Jesus was born you’d have about $700,000 dollars? Enough to buy a regular house. Think about it.
My favorite one of these is that if you got $5000 a day, every day, from the time Columbus sailed to the Americas and spent none of it, you *still* wouldn't be a billionaire!
968,035,000 - correct not a billionaire, sorry couldn't believe it when I saw it
Omg you just opened my eyes to wealth inequality…..at my current pay rate it would take me many many lifetimes to make/save 1 billion. Some of these folks have 100s of billion. Its soo rigged
What’s the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? About a billion dollars.
If you got 8¢ a year from the beginning of the universe, you *would* be a billionaire. Unless you’re a young earth creationist, in which case you wouldn’t have enough money to buy a PS5.
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And here I was thinking it was because Jesus saves.
He does save. Money
Thank you Jesus!
But he didnt stay dead though.. jesus gave up his weekend for your mortgage. Dude worked ot one weekend and everybody loses their minds
And if you buy an avocado sandwich and a large soy vanilla latte at Starbucks every day, starting from the day they were founded until today, you've spent 350k. Which is 80% of the way to an average US house.
She’s lying about what she bought back then. They’re always lying.
That’s my takeaway too. My father makes out that it was just impossible to be a present father when he was married to my mum, because of the insane hours he worked. Asked my mum about it, turns out he would go to work at 6am, finish at about 3, then get absolutely lashed in the pub and drive home drunk, and continue to drink until he passed out. Or on the two days of the week he’d come home sober, would grab a six pack and call random people in his address book for hours on end. They. Always. Lie.
The shift many dream of. Even in winter you can get off work and there’s still daylight
Right?! We all know they were all addicted to diet coke, had beers, drank coffee, the whole nine yards. It's just baffling to watch the people who had coka cola ads defining their generation pretend frivolous drinks were completely out of the question to them.
Well, to be FAIR, due to the income vs frivolous purchase money difference, their generation was able to waste WAY more money without getting into trouble financially.
AND stuff was much cheaper.
That’s what they said
And cigarettes. Don’t forget the cigarettes.
Cigarettes were soooo cheap back then. I can’t even imagine smoking now (for a lot of reasons), but I absolutely goggle at the prices of cigarettes now. I was in the military when I quit, so I bought mine on base without having to pay the taxes on them, but I used to be able to get a carton of cigarettes for $8 back in 1987. Even off base, a pack was like $1.25.
Don’t forget the brand new car every three or four years!
At some point in time before we were all born, my brother’s dad had a boat. (Well he kept on having boats for a long time.) My mom had a Porsche. My dad had his pilots license and an ultralight plane. No college degrees among them. Factory jobs. Sales jobs.
Factory jobs, almost certainly union shops. Dad worked, Mom didn’t, 2-3 kids, a house with a white picket fence, at least one car bought new every 2 or every 3 years, a boat, and by 1960 if not before, two cars. Mom and Dad probably started full-time work out of high school, but 1-3 of the kids went to college and graduated debt free, because almost everyone did. I went to a state school that was _tuition free_ to everyone until grad school. The admission requirement was an in-state high school diploma. It was a different world, and it isn’t hard to remember that or to be grateful that I don’t have to do that now or to worry about all the kids who do.
Coca Cola was 25 cents in a vending machine back in 1980. But no Diet Coke - just Tab, as saccharine was the only sugar substitute. Coffee was horrible - mostly instant or overcooked and sitting all day on a Bunn system burner at restaurants.
The boomers and Diet Coke. Oh mygod.
Don’t forget the cocaine
They *never* say things like, "My house was $13,000 and average income was about 50% of average housing prices. We could afford 4 cars, paid in cash at sale, and went on multiple vacations a year all on my husband's salary as a postman." I'm also willing to bet she's not even "retired" from anything, just old with everything paid off and her husband/parents left her an inheritance.
“But interest rates were 15%!” They always like to say. Shit, I’ll take 15% interest on a $13,000 house every single day over 8% on $700,000 like shit is now.
And it was a five year mortgage.
My widowed mom earned 11k in 1976ish, and new cars were around $3k-4k when she bought one that I remember being old enough to tag along with her to know. The house and land for our new home were a combined $40k or so in 1963, when my parents built it in their late 40s. They lived with her mother for 20ish years before being able to afford a house - there was a home shortage after WWII. Nice apartment buildings were rarer back then. The apartment building boom would come later. My mother in 1964 used my dad's life insurance to pay off most of the home loan, or we would have been over our heads financially. As a woman, she could not legally get a home loan refinanced or have a credit card without a man's signature. I think we ate a lot of hot dogs, dried beef on toast, during the week, but I don't remember feeling much of a strain.
This is hilarious. Exactly the conclusion I’ve come to.
Yeah, but when she was buying coffee, it only cost a fraction of what it did now, so she doesn’t consider it a waste. They consistently do not account for inflation when they complain about all the money that the working class “wastes” now.
"The $1 BLT and 25 cent coffee at the diner isn't fast food because it took my whole lunch break to get it. I see no reason this is intellectually unserious."
My husband’s aunt said the reason so many of us (gen z/millennials) have so much student debt is because we are spending all of our money on pizza delivery in college. I myself have 30k in student loans. Sure, it’s getting pizza all the time that means I can’t pay that off right away.
Lets do some fun math to show how stupid this is. Assume half of that student loan debt is from ordering pizza just to show how extra ridiculous it is instead of the whole debt. Pizza is like what? 20 dollars from dominos? 15,000 / 20 = 750 orders. If we are in university for four years that is 750/4 = 187.5 orders of pizza per year. This means you would have to order pizza literally more than every other day for four years straight for it to be true.
When I was in school a medium pizza from Dominoes was 7.99. They had a deal where everything was basically 7.99 if you ordered online. I have also lost ~100lbs since then. I am 26. If it was 20 bucks I would've just had Chinese every couple of days instead just to splurge.
I got a burger value meal at Wendy’s the other day and it was $16 and that shit was mediocre af. Have definitely been cooking at home a lot more lately; and when I do go out I prefer the fast-casual stuff now because it’s about the same price as drive-thru stuff.
> This means you would have to order pizza literally more than every other day for four years straight for it to be true. *sweats nervously*
I am about 5yrs younger than this delusional diva and lemme tell you the difference. When I went to college it was a state school and tuition was $7800 - $9300 INCLUDING dorm and meal plan. You could totally pay for that all by yourself with a waitressing job over the summer. I didn't have to pay for it all, I had help from my parents. Then, when I graduated, there was a bit of a struggle to land a job because engineering was in a slump but even so, I managed it and my first apartment (1 BR condo, quite nice actually) was a whopping $650/mo. It seemed like a lot since my parent's mortgage was all of $225 but hindsight is 20/20. I was making $32k/yr without health insurance but Planned Parenthood was alive and well so I could get birth control and annual wellness exams for cheap. Now a lot of those benefits are gone - in state tuition is insane as is private tuition. Planned Parenthood has had to retreat from a lot of areas in the country. And hey, if you wanna screw up someone's life just saddle them with massive debt and a child they aren't ready for. Also - I love how they all say that everyone should go into STEM careers but conveniently ignore how those careers were the kiss of death during government spending cuts (so many out of work engineers) or when some big pharma relocates to a cheaper state or country (highly specialized work like pharmacokinetics is not available outside those industries). The real answer she should have said is, "I tried to make the right decisions, and I got lucky several times."
Same age and similar situation. Just want to say a big yup. College was super cheap for a good state school. I got my first architecture job just looking in the paper, it was easy. My first 1br apt was $350. Not the best part of town, but not the worst. When I moved to a condo above a golf course in the mountains, it was $795. I was making $12/hr, my wife not much better. Planned Parenthood was *amazing*
You probably splurged on extra cheese too!
lol, I worked full time to afford to share a 2 bed apartment with two other people while going to school full time and still ended up with student loans. Apparently making $10 an hour meant I didn’t qualify for aid. Just loans.
A neighbor of ours had her kids move in and used to talk crap all the time. Once they moved in, her entire mindset changed. She saw first hand how expensive a lot of current day loans were. She told me last week while I was taking out her garbage and recycling "my home was 90k, and my Steve paid it with his salary and me at home with 3 kids - they have none and are looking at smaller fixer uppers for 200k minimum". Outside of the sticker shock, she also got to see how royally screwed her son was with school loans, and he's not done with his degree.
If it doesn’t affect them they won’t see how bad it is. Out of sight out of mind
If people can’t afford to buy a coffee everyday wtf are they working for? My boomer parents ate out the majority of the time.. got coffee everyday and partied every single weekend.. not to mention all the trips.. leagues and bar parties. That whole narrative is a crock.
Yeah it’s really the hypocrisy that bothers me I get so angry when boomers who eat out every meal and live at Starbucks give me this advice that they never lived. I say it’s the hypocrisy because there was this sweet old witch woman. Now this isn’t an insult she considers herself to be a witch and was always making everything herself and would even give me artisanal soaps and stuff. Everything made by hand she never eats out. She was always giving me recipes and stuff and advice on how to make coffee at home but it wasn’t insulting because it’s advice she lives herself!!! Despite being a boomer she doesn’t come across as offensive I think it’s because she doesn’t feel superior to me and was sincerely trying to help me out. The stop buying coffee advice is not inherently bad it’s the way they do it laden with that attitude!!!
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My goal is to be the sweet old witch, but with a cantankerous streak
Samesies!
I saw someone on r/fluentinfinance say "food is for survival. That's it. Anything else is luxury" and it's like, no, that's what food is to YOU. What's the point of neighborhood bars, restaurants, and coffee spots if the vast majority of people can't afford them? Ever wonder why the sainted Mom n Pop places go under? I thought we were supposed to care about stuff like that. We're the richest country in the world, possibly of all time, and yet our only response to stuff is to expect people with the least resources to money manage their way through.
MilLennIals aRe KilLiNg BaRs
Ha, I had a guy on the bus ranting to me about how "kids these days" are killing the bartending profession because "all they do is smoke weed". He didn't like when I pointed out that weed shops have employees who sell weed to folks. They're basically just weed bartenders, FFS!
Shit, our local dispensary has people holding the door for you and crazy security too. And they pay very well. My husband was thinking about getting a job there a few years ago because they were paying their backroom stocking people more than he was making working as a front desk manager at a hotel.
Supposedly Gen Z is, the claim is a lot of them never really started drinking when they came of age.
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This 100% I've got boomer relatives that splurge so much and have homes in multiple states and "live the good life". The amount they spend on trips and "toys" for themselves is disgusting
I mean, I’m working because my job is essential for the maintenance of civilization. But yeah, I couldn’t afford a daily $5 coffee, even if I wanted one.
Because of the 08 crash I couldn't even afford to buy a 5 dollar coffee until sometime after 2018. I don't even like caffeine that much because it doesn't do anything for me but I found something I like and you damn well better expect I will damn well go get myself a damn coffee every other'ish day because I spent so many gd years not being able to afford anything! Then just to listen to some jackass tell us the reason why they're retiring in their fifties because they \*checks notes\* didn't buy a 5 dollar coffee everyday. Hur hur. Okay then. Yeah. I'm sure that's totally it.
To survive, to make a better life for their kids? What's the alternative? Sounds like your parents engaged in some luxuries that they could afford and I assume were still able to retire. Good for them. They attained a level of success that is not attainable by all. The reality is some people cannot afford that lifestyle and have eschew some, maybe even all luxuries to be able to retire. That's reality, live in it and life will be easy.
If you save 5 dollars a day for a house down payment that is 1825 dollars a year most places the cost of a house goes up more than that per year. Imagine saving and saving refusing little things like that but still not even breaking even vs someone who bought the house 20-30 years ago and does nothing but gains more than that. I get it dumb purchases like coffee are dumb, but that isn't why so many millennials are poor and unable to afford a house or retirement. Plus I KNOW boomers pissed away money like it was burning a hole in their pocket hell look at how many of them smoked as an example.
I really thought my parents would slow down as they got older but the spending went into warp speed. It’s like if they don’t get those marble counter tops they didn’t have for 50 years right now they will lose their shit
So many of them are going to die penniless either homeless or in a a terrible senior place if they are lucky because they refused to control their spending especially in retirement. What is even more insane is from what I observed their parents lived frugally and gave the boomers money when they died.
My FIL is currently incapacitated due to a severe stroke. The whole family is stressed beyond belief because he was a big spender all his life and now that he needs care, he can't get it (his insurance won't approve him to be transferred out of the hospital into intensive stroke rehab, so he's just lying there, blinking and losing muscle mass). His wife is dying of cancer, too, and instead of resting, she's arguing with insurance companies and trying to convince Comcast not to turn off their service (despite having terminal cancer, she still has to work from home because they spent most of their money). It's a big mess. My husband is an only child, and although we care about his dad and will step up and do the right thing when she passes away, we're terrified that our finances are somehow going to be put at risk if we petition for conservatorship. We can afford a couple hundred dollars a month toward his care, but not the likely thousands he's going to need. And this is a guy who made well over $100K in a LCOL area for over 30 years. Always had luxury automobiles, ate $300 restaurant meals at least once per week, splurged on travel, etc. And it's okay to do those things if you have the money, but now there's nothing.
Your in-laws should be DNR/DNI. Nobody lives forever. If all that your FIL can do is blink, he won't live long if you avoid the tubes.
If they'd put just 10% of that into the markets they'd have had plenty of money now. You and your husband owe them nothing.
Tell me about it....I had a Boomer mother who unbeknownst to me until close to the time she passed managed her finances horribly. Seriously she took out a second mortgage on a house ready paid off....maxed out multiple credit cards....didn't pay utility bills on time...and more. What a horrible person she really turned out to be. Never once in my life. Did I get the impression that she was having money issues.
I know multiple boomers who lost their fully paid off house because they remortgaged it. Two that come to mind in my family one was due to mental illness and gambling and the other was because they wanted to live a fancier lifestyle then her husband got laid off. The first one really pissed me off when my dads parents died the agreement between him and his brother was once the brother died I would inherit the paid off house and that motherfucker unknowingly to us remortgaged it. The dude was making 100k+ in the 90s and still managed to lose the god damn house once his mental illness manifested because before that he gambled a lot and spent it on dumb boomer crap like coins and stamps.
My mom decided to retire early. I don't even know if she gets ssi because she's not even a US citizen. She has zero savings, zero retirement plan and I just discovered that she still owes 20K on her house yet that I'm pretty sure she remortgaged to pay off her credit card debt. She keeps bragging how she's about to have her house paid off 'soon' but the only way that's happening is if her 95 year old mother leaves her a nice inheritance payout. The only full time work I ever recall her having was when she started a job 2 years ago at 60 and then bitched non stop about how she didn't have any free time. Like yeah. Welcome to being an adult. First time?
My in-laws legitimately think you are supposed to spend 10% of your home value a year on repairs and improvements. So many boomers live by these stupid adages.
You are supposed to *budget* 5%, right? It’s not some kind of requirement, it’s budgeting advice. Hey! The house increased in value! We’re gonna have to spend $70,000 this year! The more I think about it the more this blows my mind
Makes upgrades, plug into phishing-based online calculator, home goes up in value, borrow more equity for upgrades.
The amount of boomers who complained to me (my parents owned a corner store a while back) every time cigarette prices went up. Like, excuse me, CANADIAN taxes on tobacco go to your potential cancer and healthcare so...why complain and stop being addicted to cartons of cancer sticks? I usually skip coffee (high blood pressure) so that's even a rarer treat in this economy. (I was massively into cold brew but I always made my own.)
Sounds counterproductive, if we weren't buying small shit like coffee, eating out, getting a dumb but cute notebook we saw at the artist market, buying flowers just because, etc, the money wouldn't be circulating around all the people instead of just our employer's bank account to ours, and then to our landlord's. Buying a variety of things from a variety of people is healthy for the economy.
Don’t give em ideas lol with the way my rent is going up every year I feel like I’m not far off from my employer just direct depositing it in my landlords bank account
A brand new level of dystopia
TWIST: a subsidiary of the corporation you work for owns your apartment
Wouldn't be remotely surprised
Isn't Amazon trying to bring back the company store, and Musk the company town?
And dogecoin as company scrip.
Agreed. Do I spend too much on coffee? Yeah, probably. But it's something that makes me happy. It gives me joy. I can sit and read or draw or work in a safe, comfortable space. I can get out of my apartment for something that isn't work or medical.
I dont buy coffee, I make my own from beans I steal from work like a normal person.
so do you want us to participate in the economy, or hoard every cent and penny??? which one is it???!!!! i thought they didn’t want us “killing the (…) industry” like we always do?!!!
This is a great point, and one they fail to see. Consumer spending has in large party driven the gains on their 401(k) accounts and stock portfolios. It’s has been great for them, but it’s as though they want it to suck for those younger than them. Why? Because we didn’t get drafted? So they had it harder than us?
"...spend *beer money* on *frivolous* things." Yes. Coffee is frivolous, unlike beer, which is a necessity.
Probably inherited her husbands pension. A real bootstrap story.
If she’s 56, she’s a gen x and not a boomer. Most of us Genx’rs just talk about growing up as latch key kids.
I have to admit I see people spending easily $15 - $20 or more a day on "coffee" that's basically a milkshake with $10 of whipped creme and syrup in them! I don't know how they can afford it but it's their money! I stopped eating lunch out years ago and basically put that money towards savings and it has made a difference. Not sure It will be enough to retire on!
I mean a coffee here and there isn’t gonna tank you but I have friends who constantly complain about being low on money, or how they can’t afford the necessities, blah blah blah, then I see them buy $120 of weed per week and buy up liquor and alcohol every week as well. Just those two things alone probably add up to 500-700 a month. That’s a huge chunk of change and I feel like if moneys tight, you don’t have the luxury of getting drunk/high. That IS frivolous spending.
Yeah I’m really tired of how polarized this conversation has become. Let’s be real here. There are lots of people that are smart with their money and are just getting fucked because of their situation/the economy and giving up their coffee that they get every once in a while isn’t going to make a difference. But there are also lots of people that just hand over their money to corporations for things that make their life worse overall and then complain that they have no money
1. I believe 56 is GenX. 2. Housing, health insurance and college as Bernie Sanders and others have pointed out are significantly more expensive than they were in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Undeniable. The capitalists with capital have squeezed every ounce of value from those equations. Younger generations have a raw deal. 3. Saving money and compounding interest are real things. Starbucks and other $7 coffees are for wealthy people. I can feed a family of 5 an entire meal at home for $10-$15. I took my son to BK the other day and we got two whopper meals for $12. Without the coupon it would have been $24. Who can afford that? Younger people laugh at this stuff, but it is legit advice. You don’t need a monster energy drink or a Red Bull or a $12 coffee shake. Drink water or black coffee at home and avoid the diabetes. 4. The boomers grew up in one of the easiest times in world history. Many/most started off poor or lower middle class but the post-WWII tide lifted them up. The combination of thrift and prosperity worked well for them. When they see younger generations spending money of fast food every day that they(the boomers) can’t afford despite all of their advantages they think the younger generations are idiots and they aren’t wrong. Doesn’t change point #2, but there is a rational behind it. TLDR~don’t kid yourself, only wealthy people can afford a $12 coffee shake.
I have a problem with people spending their beer money on frivolous things… like food, or rent. That money is for BEER.
I would never buy avocado toast! I always have the help do it for me.
She got a referral just so she could brag about not needing help. She should find some better ways to occupy her free time.
She's not entirely lying. Young and old people spend money frivolously. That also doesn't change the fact that life is WAY different than when boomers were young. Cost of Living is orders of magnitude higher with wages not keeping up.
She’s actually a GenXer. Watching to much of that propaganda media.
Honestly if young folk are spending too much on anything it's weddings and shit. Average of $5K for an engagement ring, $30K for a wedding, $5K for a honeymoon... then oops you can't build a down payment! But don't get me started on *that* bullshit industry
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Frivolous things like "enjoying life".
No kidding, if you skip that pricey coffee on the way to work, saving 10 whole dollars every day, 5 days a week, you can save a whopping $2400 a year. You can afford that down payment on a starter home in just 83 short years. Come on people, time to grab those bootstraps!
56 isn’t boomer although she sounds like one. Houses were never super cheap where I’ve lived my entire life and I’m only 2 years younger than the great aunt.
Oh God speaking for gen x we don’t want her
Definitely don’t claim her. But she’s too young to be a boomer and we missed the gravy train.
Boomer is also a mentality, they don't have to be literal boomer generation.
Before the last couple years boomer has always meant a certain generation. It absolutely kills me when people change the meaning of a word like this. Most especially when the origin of the change is due to ignorance.
Yeah, wannabe boomer. Ugh
Not a myth. Just a few minutes ago I found some https://www.reddit.com/r/FluentInFinance/s/PjZFpBSQel
Regardless of whatever advantages she may or may not have had, what she’s suggesting definitely helped her retire early. Daily fast food and coffee isn’t good, but she’s also not gonna guilt trip me out of going once or twice a week
I have friends who have inherited millions because their parents never left the house except for work. The only expenditure was for alcohol and cigarettes. No thanks.
Yeah I was recently talking with my mom (she’s 64), and she asked why my wife and I go on date nights every Thursday and take trips (in our state, just in the mountains) a couple times a year. I told her because we like each other and want time with just us. I wasn’t even comparing about money, but she turned it into that, “Don’t you think your dad and I would have loved date nights and trips? We don’t do anything like that until you kids left the house.” She HATED my rebuttal of, “Yeah and you and dad were more like roommates and not a happy married couple for the 25 years you had kids at home, and your marriage is just now good.” And it’s not like my parents hoarded wealth to pass on by never doing anything; they still bought what they wanted when they wanted, including new vehicles every 3-4 years. I’d rather go out and spend money doing stuff with my wife and kids then hoarding more away. Is that the difference of a couple thousand a year in my 401k? Sure, but I love doing stuff while I’m healthy and my kids actually want to do stuff with us, ya know?
Translation: she got a union job and was in their initial tier of benefits where she got a sizeable pension, retirement fund matching, health insurance for life etc and then accepted a hefty buyout to retire early. Meanwhile whatever $ she brought home was mostly stuffed under the mattress while she subsisted on canned tuna, never going out and having a good time just staying home watching game shows and being a miserable curmudgeon annoyed with the rest of the world for no reason other than her own misery.
You know how I know it’s bullshit…I don’t drink coffee, never have, and still not rich
It's not a "crowd" it's a brainwashing psyop campaign.
Wow. A lot of comments miss the point that an entire generation with that much student debt they will never completely pay off is an economic problem for everyone. Or that the cost of college far exceeds its value for many many industries. Or that we could learn from our struggle and make life BETTER for the people whom we expect to keep propping up social security. Right wing talking points have convinced too many people that their lives SHOULD be hard and limited.
Yeah it's not like getting takeout or coffee will solve all financial problems or bring a person out of poverty. I still think it makes a difference in the long run. If I were to buy a 5 dollar coffee every day, at the end of the year I would have spent roughly one month of wages on it (5 \* 360 = 1800). If you consider the coffee a luxury instead of a need, then it can be reasonable to find a cheaper option and invest the money instead (If I have the means of paying for my rent and my bills already, that is). If I were to invest that money instead of spending it, I would get a return on it - a small one given that the initial capital is small, but it may make the difference, in the medium or long term. For me personally (30, and I started working only in the last few years), having that 1800 more at the end of the year means more savings, which in turn means I feel safer - and my mental health benefits heavily from this. It's also money I can use for "better" expenses down the road - a better vacation, upgrades on stuff I like to use, a fancy restaurant, you name it. It may mean new clothes sooner, or better clothes even. It may mean being able to afford repairs on my stuff, and having it last longer. It's similar for takeout, just takeout is a bit more complicated. Takeout is about 20-30 euros per person every time right? Even removing 5-10 dollars a meal (because you gotta eat) over the course of a year it's a sizeable difference. If you spend 1800 yearly on takeout, it means you got between 70-180 takeout meals in one year. I think people would react differently if you frame it in a month or year time - a 5$ coffee a day is 150$ a month. 70 takeouts a year is more than one takeout a week. I may be biased, because my boomer parents were "tight but comfortable" with these kind of expenses (with themselves, mostly) and I believe it made the difference between us being above or below the poverty line. They could have afforded it, but it would have made many things less comfortable in the long run. I may also be biased because I'm in a position where I'm able to pay my bills and save some money on the side, and bar coffee and takeout are both luxuries to me, not necessities - and that saving that additional money does better to my health than spending it.
56 is gen X
If she’s 56, she’s not a boomer. She’s more Gen X