The Gen Z Law Regarding Boomers For Off Season Sake.

[MTGomer]

If you want to dive into it I found a study from 2017 here.

prices of houses and groceries have doubled since 2017. Obviously the latter affects everyone equally.
I bought my first house in 2018.
It would be impossible to buy the same house today with the jobs we had then, which were good jobs, but those jobs are only paying about 5% more today than they were in 2018.

I think that’s the real divide. It isn’t generational, it’s those that owned real estate or other valuable assets prior to 2020 and those that didn’t.
If you’re making 100k living in a house you bought before everything went crazy, you’re probably doing fine.
If you are making $100k and trying to get started and don’t have equity in a house, it’s an uphill battle.

 

[more_cowbell]

Partly joking here, but if Millennials and Gen Zers saved more, maybe Taylor Swift wouldn't have as much money?

Roughly 60% of millennials, Gen Z would rather spend money on 'life experiences' like traveling, concerts now than save for retirement — are they making a big mistake?

No matter your age, you can balance your financial future with living your best life now — if you play it smart.

finance.yahoo.com

Young adults are getting used to living on a financial cliff

Millennials and Gen Zers are pulling in bigger paychecks, but much of their spending power is fueling short-term purchases like groceries and vacations, not savings.

www.nbcnews.com

last one is behind paywall

Gen Z’s self-sabotaging spending on ‘caviar bumps,’ luxury holidays, and designer bags is being driven by housing market rebellion and influencer lifestyle envy

“If I'm saving every single cent that I can to save toward a house, and you can't tell me in the next 10 years if that's even attainable, what am I saving for?”

fortune.com

 

[LuketheDog]

I just looked at Indeed for our local HVAC opportunities. 1+ year in the field gets $22/hr. You’d have to be at the journeyman level of experience to even get close to the starting number you mentioned.

I also looked at your city and it’s showing HVAC salaries starting at $45/50k and asking for two years experience. There was one project manager position that stated $75k, but that’s not exactly an apprentice position.

I know plenty of Gen Z kids (I’m quite a bit older) who’d jump at the chance to bust their hump for $80k, and plenty more who currently are at an apprentice level in the trades for a fraction of that.

And? What's your point? I know what the guy who owned a small 5-star HVAC business for 20+ years told me he was paying, straight from his mouth. He had 2-3 guys working for him full time and was desperate for more...

 

[SAJ-99]

@gouch and the rest of the Boomers (1945-1965), I assure you that your parent’s generation thought you were lazy. LOL.
Boomers are a large group and could possibly be divided in 2, but we will just leave it as that 20yrs. The things you benefitted from in that 20yrs are pretty amazing.

• You avoided the Great Depression
• You avoided a World War.
• CCC projects practically ensured that you grew up with a telephone, electricity, hundreds of miles of paved roads.
• You most likely had indoor plumbing and clean running water.
• Your parents may have benefitted from the GI Bill that paid for their education and gave low interest rate housing loans.
• You saw indoor refrigeration and air conditioning, automated washers and dryers, the invention of TV.
• Your life expectancy increased well over a decade from the time you were born. Your quality of life increased as well. Knee and hip replacements, angioplasty, cataract surgery (all in the top 10 of Medicare surgeries today) all started after every Boomer was born.
• College education was comparatively much cheaper for you, mostly because there were federal subsidies.
• Most importantly, post WWII, the US became an industrial manufacturing powerhouse because most of the developed world was left in pieces after the war while the US infrastructure was untouched. This, along with Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 making the US Dollar the world’s reserve currency, would benefit the US for decades to come. This was the greatest tailwind of them all.
• Tax rates have been on a steady decline since WWII.
• Many benefitted from the growth in two income households, but it also lead the spike in divorce. So we call it a wash.

Agree that it wasn’t all wine and roses. The 70’s inflation was certainly miserable. But I can get a good guess at a Boomer’s job if the 70’s inflation was their formative economic event of their life. They certainly didn’t work in a steel industry which had collapsed by the mid-80’s, or the textile industry which was off-shored by the 1990’s. The Boomers born later had plenty of obstacles with the start of Globalization.

Gen Z.

• You probably have never done without. Hell, you can get strawberries in January for a reasonable price and bananas for super cheap in every store. The logistical supply chains make your life pretty easy and stable.
• Technology makes everything easier. You can do massive and complex tasks in seconds. Information is at your fingertips, literally. And you still complain when you have to do stuff.
• Communication is easy. You have probably never written a letter and get mad when you don’t get a response from someone in an hour.

On the downside

• Globalization is a standard. The industrial jobs that left the US are slow to return and they are now more specialized. For many jobs, you are not just competing with people across the US but people in India or China or Brazil.
• You have to be smarter and more specialized and college is expensive due to reductions in federal contributions. The debt load can be overwhelming.
• Housing prices have increased almost out of your reach and there isn’t enough for sale to even think about buying one. (part of this is because Boomers probably own 2 and your expectations are too high).

Boomers need to remember that they raised Gen X, Millennials and even some Gen Z. They are the way they are because of you. Americans need to stop complaining about each other and start trying to fix the problems we have. Realize that the decisions a person faces today have different inputs than a similar decision made in a previous generation. This has always been true. Any solution to our problems is going to involve sacrifices from everyone.

 

[RobG]

prices of houses and groceries have doubled since 2017. Obviously the latter affects everyone equally.
I bought my first house in 2018.
It would be impossible to buy the same house today with the jobs we had then, which were good jobs, but those jobs are only paying about 5% more today than they were in 2018.

I think that’s the real divide. It isn’t generational, it’s those that owned real estate or other valuable assets prior to 2020 and those that didn’t.
If you’re making 100k living in a house you bought before everything went crazy, you’re probably doing fine.
If you are making $100k and trying to get started and don’t have equity in a house, it’s an uphill battle.

I mostly agree, but it depends a lot on where you live.

 

[gouch]

@gouch and the rest of the Boomers (1945-1965), I assure you that your parent’s generation thought you were lazy. LOL.
expectations are too high).

Yup my parents generation wasn't afraid to tell me how lazy I was and that if I would cut my hair and shave, I might have a chance in life. Of course, I didn't trust anyone over 30.

 

[MTGomer]

@gouch

• Housing prices have increased almost out of your reach and there isn’t enough for sale to even think about buying one. (part of this is because Boomers probably own 2 and your expectations are too high).

Boomers upsizing instead of downsizing is a super interesting trait of that generation too. Yesterday and this AM I did a survey of a $1.4M 4k sq ft house with a 1200 sq ft detached. The new owners closed Monday and won’t be moving in for a few months but they need the survey so their architect can figure out how big of an addition they can push against the setback and will also be adding an ADU against the detached.
This is common work for a common client type for me. It’s not right or wrong, it just isn’t what every other generation has done when they hit 65 or 70.

 

[gouch]

The problem gen Z has is that they are reaching adulthood at a tough time. All my kids reached adulthood after 2005 and had a pretty easy time of it, comparatively speaking. Other than that little blip around 2008, times were pretty good. All of them owned homes before age 25.

 

[gouch]

Boomers upsizing instead of downsizing is a super interesting trait of that generation too. Yesterday and this AM I did a survey of a $1.4M 4k sq ft house with a 1200 sq ft detached. The new owners closed Monday and won’t be moving in for a few months but they need the survey so their architect can figure out how big of an addition they can push against the setback and will also be adding an ADU against the detached.
This is common work for a common client type for me. It’s not right or wrong, it just isn’t what every other generation has done when they hit 65 or 70.

I think it is because of the invention of the IRA and 401k. Retirees no longer have to downsize, they can keep on growing their investment. That definitely has an effect on the housing market.

 

[noharleyyet]

Boomers upsizing instead of downsizing is a super interesting trait of that generation too. Yesterday and this AM I did a survey of a $1.4M 4k sq ft house with a 1200 sq ft detached. The new owners closed Monday and won’t be moving in for a few months but they need the survey so their architect can figure out how big of an addition they can push against the setback and will also be adding an ADU against the detached.
This is common work for a common client type for me. It’s not right or wrong, it just isn’t what every other generation has done when they hit 65 or 70.

Are they are either loaded & want it coz they want it, or loaded enough to make a decision based on speculated appreciation?

*edit to add, pretty much what @gouch posted.

 

[Doublecluck]

Yup my parents generation wasn't afraid to tell me how lazy I was and that if I would cut my hair and shave, I might have a chance in life. Of course, I didn't trust anyone over 30.

My wife’s moms grandma to me at 17 years old, 1997

“come here so I can cut that pony tail off you so you might have a chance at being a man some day”

At the birth of our first child holding her talking to my wife’s mom in the delivery room.

“Looking at the parents you would never think they could produce someone so beautiful”

Hahahaha. lol.

She was 90 something then, lived a few more years. God I miss that woman! Said things that needed to be said the way they were. Came from a time when people didn’t put up with bs. They don’t make many like that any more.

 

[Sytes]

Boomers (1945-1965)

Let's get this straight moving forward - according to my PhD in Googology:

I assure you that your parent’s generation thought you were lazy.

My "WWII" Grandfather and Grandmother were both Navy for WWII.
I recall joining them for dinner as a young buck of... 13 or 14? On the simple level, I took the salt from the table and tattered some on the freshly served dinner Grandmother made. As I placed the salt back on the table and took hold of the pepper - my Grandfather reached over, grabbed my wrist and starred me dead in the eyes, "Your Grandmother made this dinner for you. The least you can do is taste it before..." I don't recall the rest though as a Gen X'er, he was quick to ensure I knew my place at their table.
Amazing grandparents!

As shared earlier:

Again, IMO, senior generations tend to disapprove of the sociological evolution of society. We have our comfort and when we are forced to live within the turn of newer generational outlooks - seems via much more accessible social media / more pronounced protests / technological advancements - it pisses off us older gens faced to conform or not...

Yup - All good here.

edit: Oops - "My "Post War" "WWII" Grandfather and Grandmother" corrected. It's a Gen X tragedy...

 

[noharleyyet]

Let's get this straight moving forward - according to my PhD in Googology:

View attachment 317593



My "Post War" Grandfather and Grandmother were both Navy for WWII.
I recall joining them for dinner as a young buck of... 13 or 14? On the simple level, I took the salt from the table and tattered some on the freshly served dinner Grandmother made. As I placed the salt back on the table and took hold of the pepper - my Grandfather reached over, grabbed my wrist and starred me dead in the eyes, "Your Grandmother made this dinner for you. The least you can do is taste it before..." I don't recall the rest though as a Gen X'er, he was quick to ensure I knew my place at their table.
Amazing grandparents!

As shared earlier:


Yup - All good here.

Why don't you all f-fade away

 

[VikingsGuy]

Old people - "I had it hard, the young people have it easy these days and they are too lazy to survive"
Young people - "The old had it cush back in the day, destroyed the planet and made it so I have no hope"

The date of the first such exchange can not be identified as it has repeated itself for centuries. There is no news here.


When I look at my millennial kid and her friends, and my two Zers and their friends I would say the vast majority are working hard and making decent choices (even if not the choices I would have made in their shoes). I can say the same about my peer Gen X friends/family and the hated boomers that I know. But I do think two things are a bit different but to a louder effect. First, it feels like there has been an increase in the percentage of the Millennial/Gen Z cohorts that are excessively whiny (but still a small minority) - whiners are part of every generation, just seems like the kids of the Boomers are more frequently whiners (too many participation trophies I suspect). Second, social media allows the most irritating amongst us to have a constant megaphone to their lips.

In short, if we don't implode over the current us/them polarization, the US is set up well compared to other countries to "win" the next century. That is not to say all is perfect, but that economics are relative - and being energy independent, food independent, having sufficient capital, having sufficient innovation systems, decent age demographics, no actual military threat in the hemisphere etc. places us in an enviable position if we don't f* it up with internal squabbling.

 

[Straight Arrow]

Let's get this straight moving forward - according to my PhD in Googology:

View attachment 317593



My "WWII" Grandfather and Grandmother were both Navy for WWII.
I recall joining them for dinner as a young buck of... 13 or 14? On the simple level, I took the salt from the table and tattered some on the freshly served dinner Grandmother made. As I placed the salt back on the table and took hold of the pepper - my Grandfather reached over, grabbed my wrist and starred me dead in the eyes, "Your Grandmother made this dinner for you. The least you can do is taste it before..." I don't recall the rest though as a Gen X'er, he was quick to ensure I knew my place at their table.
Amazing grandparents!

As shared earlier:


Yup - All good here.

edit: Oops - "My "Post War" "WWII" Grandfather and Grandmother" corrected. It's a Gen X tragedy...

Correction: I am of the post war "Silent Generation" ... as evidenced by my quiet demeanor!

 

[MTGomer]

Partly joking here, but if Millennials and Gen Zers saved more, maybe Taylor Swift wouldn't have as much money?

Roughly 60% of millennials, Gen Z would rather spend money on 'life experiences' like traveling, concerts now than save for retirement — are they making a big mistake?

No matter your age, you can balance your financial future with living your best life now — if you play it smart.

finance.yahoo.com

Young adults are getting used to living on a financial cliff

Millennials and Gen Zers are pulling in bigger paychecks, but much of their spending power is fueling short-term purchases like groceries and vacations, not savings.

www.nbcnews.com

last one is behind paywall

Gen Z’s self-sabotaging spending on ‘caviar bumps,’ luxury holidays, and designer bags is being driven by housing market rebellion and influencer lifestyle envy

“If I'm saving every single cent that I can to save toward a house, and you can't tell me in the next 10 years if that's even attainable, what am I saving for?”

fortune.com

We can’t afford T Swift tickets. We spent all our money on avocado toast.

 

[more_cowbell]

We can’t afford T Swift tickets. We spent all our money on avocado toast.

Avocado toast is a gateway luxury…

It leads to caviar bumps and renting houses in the Hamptons.

 

[Sytes]

Correction: I am of the post war "Silent Generation" ... as evidenced by my quiet demeanor!

Duly noted:
Post War I (*Silent Generation) henceforth recorded





*Selective political tendencies may apply. See legal description noted within the Democrat or Republican defined national platform.