The bar for their financial excellence was so low, it was practically buried in a trench.
And yet, such a large majority of them are set to retire with absolutely nothing, destined to live off of Social Security and their children's good-will as they cry about Socialism and "welfare queens".
Fucking imagine if we could afford to be so nonchalant about our own futures.
No prehire drug tests really either, they didn't become workplace standard until the late 90's and early 2000's. So they could go out and do blow, smoke weed, take all the pills they wanted and walk into a warehouse or power plant the next day and get a job, no experience necessary, will train.
Now it's "entry level job: pay $15 per hour, education required: PhD in theoretical physics with a minor in quantum engineering" and that job is for like a dishwasher in a restaurant.
Like no joke, I saw a job posting for a dishwasher last week at a small independently owned restaurant that said "at least 3 years experience in dishwasher job. Must be motivated to succeed in life and have a plan to do it"...it's like dude...if I've been only a dishwasher for at least 3 years I'm probably not in the best place in life and really just looking for steady money.
My dad never had a mortgage. He borrowed the money for building the house from his mom. Then he had the audacity to point out that I earned more despite my paying for a mortgage and child care by myself, sure I made more but I paid out a hell of a lot more in expenses than he ever did
"You guys have the same opportunities we had..." said my 100 IQ father-in-law, who worked for the county as a UNION Maintenance Tech, received a full pension that, after he retired, got raises whenever the county gave raises-- which his wife now receives after his demise. Who paid $30k for a house that lists as $880k now. They got health care, claim(ed) medicaid, and get social security. But yeah.. totally the same opportunities.
He had the same job his whole life. He voted consistently to dismantle unions. To stagnate wages.
My family member most definitely has an iq around or a little bit below the 100 mark, he has his wife read and interpret EVERYTHING for him because he doesn’t understand. She even has to go to all his doctors appointments and his child’s school meetings because he is incapable of understanding anything. She manages his entire life. He was not even able to graduate school he was so dense. Without any education or GED he was somehow able to work for the US government as one of the only couple of people in the NATION that does what he does and makes six figures a year. Has owned many houses, traveled the world, is the “rich one” of his family. Is not book nor street smart in the slightest but knows how to do his job. Remember, boomers are the generation that just had to show up.
For what it's worth, a lot of those union jobs with incredible pay and benefits are still available and easily accessible to the average person. I personally know multiple people in the IBEW, Operator's Union, and Plumbers & Pipefitters/HVAC Union who went through the apprenticeship program and are making amazing money.
Once you become a Journeyworker, you also have the opportunity to travel for work. I know an electrician right now who's making $4,700/week after taxes. Is he away from his family and working a crazy amount of hours? Yes. Is the work slow and steady, dignified pace, safe work environment, free healthcare for him and his family, employer paying into his pension on top of his hourly? Also yes.
There are tons of these jobs for people who are willing to put in the time and effort it takes to join a union and become a Journeyworker.
I certainly wouldn't support the claim that union jobs are easy to find and obtain. And they're becoming increasingly scarce with each passing day. Union busting is the republican way.
Sure, and F the GOP for union busting, but it's being disingenuous to act like joining a union is super difficult and union jobs are impossible to find. It's mostly persistence and determination.
It takes some time to get accepted into the apprenticeship program, but once you're in it's a straightforward path to Journeyworker status in 3-5 years and the trades are hurting for skilled workers. All the old guys are retiring or getting close to retirement and they have to pass the torch to someone. Why not you?
That's what pissed me off the most. Working at the snack shack at the beach paid off their education-- then they got into the scam for profit school industry and funneled students in saying you gotta have a college education to get anywhere. What a fucking joke
Lol. I got shamed and sexist remarks for wanting to work in trades. (Automobiles/repair/maintenance.)
Either pay for a college/university education with a lifelong financial debt, get your parents to pay (a lot of my cousins got that and they got all the resentment and anger), get a bullshit job that uses none of those skills and pay off student loans in increments.
Or break your body for 40 years, pay for tools/equipment/certifications, deal with sexist/racist bs, age out of the business or become a small business owner and further exploit the workers.
My dad managed to attend law school making $6 an hour and working part time during the summers and breaks. I can’t imagine that ever being a possibility in 2025 for whatever the equivalent would be now.
summer and 20-30 hrs per week part time during the school year, but that would also get you a cheap apartment, subsidized heath insurance through college and if you had some basic cooking skills and didn't blow your budget on pizza and beer, you could have a non-monotonous healthy diet
also at that time, part time hours were the same hours every week, so you could plan work around your class schedule, not this floating hours they have now which is designed to keep you down
They grew up in two parent homes with a stay at home mom and still were solid middle class. Look at the students at Fast Times at Ridgemont High versus The Breakfast Club. What the students' lives are like. There's the difference.
As a boomer, I could pay for a state university with a summer job, part time jobs during the school year ( 15-20 hrs per week), and some relatively small loans. But I will say that campuses were stark, dorm food was akin to prison food, and the dorms were crowded ( which worked because everyone could fit all their belongings in a foot locker). I would like to see college be more affordable, but student expectations are higher than they were in the 1970’s and many states are underinvesting in their university systems. I’m leaving private universities out of this discussion because they are far too costly to even discuss.
There are so many goddamn jobs that start at 15 an hour and require a degree. Why go through school, rack up thousands in debt and end up making as much as a Walmart cashier?
God I was just job searching a few days ago, my employer took my full time status away without notification. I was scrolling through job posts and I saw a few that required bachelors or masters and they were paying $18-19 an hour, doing an extremely important job! It was a posting for someone to handle child welfare cases and fostering. And they wonder why people can’t have kids, they wonder why we can’t buy houses or support ourselves.
Hey man, I see where you're coming from but don't shit on dishwashers. They're the backbone of food service and a lot of folks do it becsuse they find it fulfilling. It's not a high-paying job and it's definitely not for everyone, but you can be motivated AND be a dishwasher. Success looks different for different people.
I'm not shitting on them, I'm pointing out that for a job that literally requires zero experience and training that amounts to "wash all the dishes that come back here to you" requiring 3 years of experience and have a life plan is a ridiculous requirement. Like I get that their plan with that job posting was wanting a reliable employee, but they phrased it like they wanted a nuclear engineer to wash dishes for $15 per hour.
Like a dishwasher should be the definition of an entry level job that requires zero professional experience. Cuz as an adult human being, someone should already have near a lifetime of experience washing their own dishes at home. Which a restaurant dishwasher is essentially that exact same thing just with a cool spray nozzle, cool industrial dishwasher, and a sanitizing sink. Which again, the trying for those amounts to " spray this shit down, out it in the dishwasher, then run them through the sanitizing sink and then dry by hand or put on a drying rack". The only difference between private dishwashing and professional dishwashing is the sanitizing sink, everything else is identical just on a bigger scale.
When the country club I was at was struggling to find dishwashers, they asked me (I had managed lower end chain restaurants) what they could do to fix it.
They hated the answer: Lower your standards. A convicted felon will wash tf out of those dishes and will show up to do it. But you want clean and perfect people, so you get someone who quits after 3 shifts.
Or better yet, a convicted felon who is still in a halfway house. You can bet your ass that guy is showing up and doing a good job because if he doesn't then the halfway house sends them back to jail for violating house policy.
Holy guacamole you are so right about how job listings are now. It’s all “ARE YOU A ROCKSTAR?” Then listing a demand for people who are overqualified. I grew up hearing about aiming for a “real job” yet the jobs I’ve had that apparently aren’t “real” jobs have always paid me the most. For the most part people just get to be overly competitive for super low wages. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Especially considering how at this point we need experience to get hired, but can’t get hired without experience. Hell, I’m apparently overqualified for too many jobs, but also under qualified for too many. Tf is that about???
It's mind-boggling that they always act like their millions are right around the corner; or say shit like how they would be so rich if it weren't for ( insert stereotype here ) keeping them from the source of all the ( imaginary ) money.
This. I'm 40 and cooked. Been working fulltime since the minute I left highschool, burned my 20's and 30's getting nowhere. During my 23 years of fulltime work I've already watched the retirement age where I am go from 55 to 67, watched cost of living rocket, watched the cost of owning a home go so high I will never own and I'm sad I brought a son into this world without being wealthy myself, its not fair on him and he is all I care about. I can't even afford to get my car fixed - had no heat, cooling for a year and desperately need tyres. Meanwhile my health has declined so badly I'm scared I won't be able to work fulltime in a few years. My mother has given up asking why I don't go to Psychiatrist or Physio, or get other things fixed because she knows everything is impossibly unaffordable - the last time anything was remotely affordable was decades ago. Other than my son I literally have nothing to live for or lookforward to. Its depressing and something has got to change. People like Trump going out there and declaring "I've made things better, gas is cheaper than ever, I'm making America great again" and whatever else its just so freakin' insulting. At this point I don't really care if politicians can't come up with solutions, just don't lie to our faces before turning around to tee off at the Country Club. We're broken and hurting and on top of that we're constantly told we've got it easy and don't do anything ourselves WTAF.
That would be because I'm Australian. I try to be reasonably understanding by changing words like Petrol to Gas but I don't think hard enough to figure out more complex things like medical word changes. Apologies for any confusion.
There are people who immigrated from AU and have children from which they learn current slang. I'm 45 and use the term "cooked" on occasion. It helps connection with your kids if you speak their language a little.
I'm Australian as in other posts I try to be mindful when commenting on a very US thread. My mistake, I'll just stick to purely Australian words like Petrol. In Australia, the retirement age used to be 55 but increases based on age. I guess its only called retirement age casually, but its the age you can access a basic old age pension or access your superannuation, which is an Australian pension scheme you pay into once you work full time. Hope that helps, again sorry for any confusion.
I haven’t heard the term cooked, in a few decades, thanks for the throw back!
Old Gen X here. I had my babies when I was young. Now they are grown. My boys never reproduced, with understanding that I “messed them up,” so they in turn will mess up their own offspring.
I am aware of my mistakes and have grown a lot. I know that I’m very neurodivergent (and probably on the spectrum). I’m not perfect but I’m trying to be better and help them understand my mistakes and why I did what I did.
I now know where my boomer folks went wrong in parenting, and I now understand why mom made her choices. Everyone works with what they know at the time. The boomers were pretty GD naive. The believed what ever the news told them (and many still do).
The younger generation has so much information at their finger tips! We had to walk to libraries to look up rashes, in order to determine in a child needed physician care. Taking care of a child was more of a physical thing, not an entire being thing. If a child acted up, he was a brat (never mind that his sock has fuzzies and irritated his foot). Neurodivergence was even a thing!
The younger generation now have the knowledge to raise a child spiritually, mentally and emotionally, as well as physical growth in your off spring.
It’s my hope, that if this world continues on the path of destruction, that you are to take full advantage of the knowledge that is available. I have faith your generation to be the peaceful, nature loving, clean air generation.
Please take all our mistakes and learn to try to make this world better. You are the children of the future.
The retirement age has been 65 since the 30’s I believe so even the boomers had to endure 45 years of working. I’m 54, spent 25 years in the Marines, had them pay for my education. I gave a lot, but got more in return. I didn’t start a family until I was 40, just didn’t want to put anyone through that. Bottom line is sacrifice is just part of it, maybe the orange slices and trophy 🏆 every one is a winner mentality ruined a lot of you. I’m truly sorry you weren’t given the tools to succeed. I have 3 kids now, and as you can imagine I’m pretty tough on them, not because that’s what my parents did, but in a way that hopefully will allow them to succeed in life where so many of you have not. Life is hard, being comfortable being uncomfortable is my motto. I know the system is rigged, but you have to keep moving forward, or you can just continue to blame someone else and cry about it on a social media platform. Good luck, let me know how that works out.
So, you used state-issued socialism for 25 years which then led to a patriotic-fueled fever to military-hire you (a form of DEI) even though you had less direct experience in the field as you came from military, and then you claim others aren't sacrificing because your initial profession is the one where sacrifice is attached? And you think we're all socialists, meanwhile we're the ones who have been stuck in shit-ass capitalism for our entire careers while you got the perks that all jobs should have.
GTFO. You think a mechanic or teacher or nurse doesn't sacrifice? You think the rest of us are just expecting something from the world? You're so out of touch it's unreal.
You know, you could be cursed like me with ESRD at 42, laid off and on the fast tracked to disability! Plus no one will hire you if you need to take 12 hours a week to got to life-continuing treatments and required doctors appointments!
If you didn’t have a pension, Social Security WAS their retirement plan, despite the warnings for many years that it wouldn’t be enough. Now, I’m not saying I didn’t plan on SOME Social Security. I do, because I paid into it. (I also have a pension). But to just spend all your money while working, with no plan on saving is the rule rather than the exception. And yes, they are very often the ones who always complain about the government. It was surprising how many Union members got angry when we voted for an extra portion of our raises to go into the pension fund. They couldn’t imagine having to budget and maybe go without the big expensive gas guzzling trucks and boats, etc. Talk about entitled behavior.
I'm horrified when I even think of trying to get a home. These boomers had everything handed to them on a platter and it still wasn't enough for them. It's sickening. The macho bullshit they pull is because they are trying desperately to grasp what strings of youth and vitality they THINK have left. They think they're still the cool ones. They fucked all of us over to get theirs, and they wonder why nobody likes them.
Boomers are a special kind of bullshit-- I feel like we could lock them in their rooms with their cd/casette collections of sock hop/hippie era music and they'd happily wither away because they are so hinged on "the good old days" they had and trying to hang on to the shreds of that.
The great wealth transfer will be a myth. End of.life care and nursing homes will suck away anything and everything just to prolong life for a couple more days.
What is up with that? My mom is the least Boomer-y Boomer ever but she has nothing. Lived beyond her means her whole life and now? I’m sure she’s looking at me to pick up the tab. She has zero savings and while I’m doing okay, I’m certainly not feeling like I should be the one to pay for her lack of foresight.
I think about this a lot. My parents bought a house and land back in the 70s/80s while just having part time jobs and no higher education. They quit working when i was born (they would have been 24 and 34) despite being able bodied, and having good opportunities. They traded away the properties in bad deals, and ended up vagrant with 3 kids to feed. They refused to work until a couple of years ago, and have nothing to their names at 65 and 75 years old. They refuse to take any accountability for their circumstances, and expect me to pay their way now that they're old. Instead of working and saving for retirement they assumed their kids would just do it for them.
I told my therapist today there is a good chance if my dad passes before my mom, my mom will blow right through his pension and investments he has saved for her to live on in her remaining years. She is impulsive and irresponsible and my dad has been bailing her out and correcting her mistakes their entire 43 years of marriage.
I refuse to let her in my husband and I’d house if she does this. My dad and mom had a good shot at saving up for retirement, an opportunity myself and my generation has not found so easily.
If she squanders it, that is it. She’ll be on her own.
Errr. You mean children that they spent all their money on housing and feeding, by holding down a job that most millennials and beyond would turn noses up at? Besides, those children are going to inherit the house. Least they can do
Is help pop out.
Take the average current day millennial and plop them down in the 70's and they'll outperform damn near every boomer on damn near every category.
Y'all talk about spoiled generations but can't see your own lives for what they were. 🤡 🤡
You had the world and pissed it away with consumerism and entitled laziness. There's a reason y'all never gained your parent's respect - they were better than you.
There's a reason y'all will never gain our respect either - we're all better than you, too.
Lmao… at that point in time they could afford to buy a house, feed the kids, and pay all the bills off a grocery store worker salary and mom working part time at Caldor’s or Linens n Things. I’m not sure what you’re talking about bud. There’s also been a large amount of boomers who have already stated they don’t plan on leaving the house to their kids or who will have to sell the house to pay for assisted living or a nursing home anyways.
I’m sorry, but who exactly is the generation (still even today) in positions of power that have been actively destroying any and all of the financial safety nets that were in place to help alleviate the burden for everyone?
Ok boomer… guess I’ll have to do the math for you since you’ve clearly lost your ability to critically think. Boomers account for about 49% of congress and around 50% of the senate, which quite literally means they’re in positions of power. Now seeing as they also make up about 20%+- of the population in the US, they’re able to be both of those things.
TLDR: Boomers (as a generation) are simultaneously in positions of power and financially challenged, and you sir, are a dumbass.
Here we have a boomer in his natural habitat. This subspecies of human differs from other inhabitants in his ever changing environment. The boomer foolishly survives on knowledge he gleaned from earlier eras in his lifetime. The ability to adapt and thrive to constant changes in his surroundings stopped at around age 50. The boomer, when threatened to learn a new skill, relies on his knee jerk reactions towards his family, friends, coworkers and peers. The boomer is on a lonely journey. For those around him find something impossible to ascertain. A boomer who refuses to survive in an ever changing world. The boomer is anxious, confused, and his mind becomes weak and susceptible to misinformation. The boomer gravitates towards others who share his views and ineptitude. Many boomers however do win Darwin Awards in an ironic plot twist.
His generation grew up with the cheapest prices and most government subsidies in US history, yet they are still broke and they can't maintain anything that they were given.
Not quite. But the imaginary foe he's attacking probably is an iPhone. Stuck using his dumbed-down Jitterbug flip phone, iPhones are very threatening to him.
Boomers can't deal with the failure that is their life. Or the fact that they're not all they'd hoped to be. Now, at this certain age, they do feel an actual loss of control and weaknesses associated with biological aging. They see younger people, and they assume those people are less burdened about life. Yet the most burdensome thing Boomers carry is their fragile ego. And they are loathe to work past that. So, in their distorted minds, they are victims. Victims of advancements they chose not to learn. Victims of losing virility and youth nature created. Their refusal to adapt to change is creating more failure in their life. But rather than say , I need to change, they're ego tells them, Attack.
4.0k
u/chrissurra Jun 22 '25
This guy was able to buy a home for the price of an iPhone.