Did The Freaking Baby Boomers Screw Gen X, Millennials And Gen Z?

Maybe a little, however they also opened up massive opportunity

Every once in a while, you come across an article like this —

— that does nothing but add to the misery.

Make no mistake. To a significant extent, things suck in America.

However, that’s not good enough to reason to wallow in the problem of the day. Whether it’s the retirement, housing, overall cost of living or some other crisis. I feel like I have written enough about the problem at the links and elsewhere to further depress attendees at an Elliott Smith convention.

So, today, we focus on the bright side. Remember that inherently American (or, I guess, English) trait of always looking at the bright side? (Whatever. We ultimately co-opted it in America and made it our own).

I read the article behind the above headline three times. To the end. Before I got paywalled. There’s not an instance of anything helpful.

It’s merely incessant identification of the problem that reads like a case study in learned helplessness —

The system implemented by older working generations has left millennials and Gen Zers in oversized student debt that impedes wealth building and saving up for retirement. In the housing world, many are simply struggling to afford rent, and those who have finally saved up enough to afford a place are now being outbid by boomers with all-cash offers. “Gen Z and millennials are facing challenges related to rising costs in education, housing, and healthcare,” notes Biesman. “Some attribute these escalating costs, in part, to policy decisions and economic conditions that were influenced by previous generations, including the baby boomers” …

No wonder financial anxiety is elevated for Gen Zers and at a peak state for millennials to the point where they’re feeling depressed. While many do feel financially stable, some only feel that way because they’re dependent on their boomer parents for help.

The more the media focuses almost solely on how bad things are, the more we believe we have zero control over own destinies.

So, yeah, could I sit around and blame my 89-year old Dad and 76–year old Mom for my life as a 48-year old man? Definitely. I could. But I don’t. Because that would be a waste of my time and a disservice to them. They didn’t do anything “wrong” other than buy the bill of goods the government and corporate America sold to them — the American dream — and get while the getting was good.

Now, thanks to their good fortune, hard work and some savvy, I’ll inherit a few bucks from them one day. Which is the only silver lining the learned helplessness article could find in the situation. Boomers screwed young people, but at least they have a ton of wealth to pass on!

Back to my life as a 48-year old man. To show — funny how the mind works, isn’t it?

I could say life sucks because —

• I don’t own a home.
• I drive a shitty car.
• I don’t have anything even close to enough money to traditionally retire.
• I pay an outrageous amount of money for healthcare.
• And so on and so forth.

But I don’t take these things and morph them into a poor me, life sucks, blame the Boomers, the world is unfair lifestyle. Lots of people do. This identification of the problem and feeling sorry for themselves amid inaction — basically learned helplessness — becomes their identity. It becomes their lifestyle.

I choose — key words choose and chose — to look at these things and take them for what they are.

• I chose to live in expensive cities where I never felt comfortable and could not realistically take the plunge into home ownership.
• I chose and choose to rent because it felt and feels like a better immediate financial decision and I like the lifestyle it affords.
• I chose and choose to do work I enjoy rather than work I hate that pays more and could have covered the cost of an American dream equivalent to or better than the one my parents lived and are living.
• I chose and choose every single thing — good, bad, neither or otherwise — that brought and is bringing me to where I am today.

Absolutely, my parents had more opportunity — or, put more accurately, a clearer pathway — to buy a home, always have a new car, receive a pension, have their healthcare paid for (and so on) than I did.

No doubt.

However — and this is the thing articles like the one highlighted and the learned helplessness lifestyle many people my age and younger choose to lead love to ignore — our parents’ prosperity didn’t come with a guarantee for future generations.

We just live in a different world than they did. Or, at least, we live in a different world than the 55-to-60-plus crowd came up in. To that extent, they didn’t screw us. How can we blame them for taking advantage of the tools (economic and otherwise) they had at their disposal?

The only area where I hold some —though not all — boomers culpable is in the unrealistic expectations they have for their kids and other people younger than them. They sometimes hold us to a standard they see as necessary to have what they have.

Young people don’t work hard enough. They’re lazy. What’s all this crap about quiet quitting and having experiences over things?

It’s difficult to make boomers and older understand and accept what motivates — or doesn’t motivate — somebody who is Gen X, a millennial or Gen Z.

So, if you have demanding, guilt-tripping, even rude and condescending parents or grandparents breathing down your neck, I get it. It can be tough to shake chasing their expectations. It can be difficult to not feel like a failure.

But this is where another choice comes in. And you know what it is.

Learned helplessness or seizing the opportunity this dynamic — this seemingly unfortunate turn of events — has created.

I choose the latter. This doesn’t make me special, or even smart.

I just don’t want to be bitter and resentful. It doesn’t feel good. It’s not good for you. For your kids. For the people around you. For the world.

So I choose to not futilely chase the American dream. It’s no longer attainable. To even live a life at the median in America, you need to make like $150,000 a year. Who wants that kind of pressure? Who needs that much overhead?

Accept the cards you’ve been dealt. Embrace the reality of the world around you with only one condition — you’ll forge your own path, rather than continue trying to retrace the route your parents took.

You can still do this in America.

For every prohibitively expensive place, there’s a small(er) city you can afford to carve out a nice life in. For every place with what we like to call overpriced housing and evident social ills, there’s a quiet place out on the countryside calling your name.

In the interactions I have with readers who respond to my writing, I see people who prefer the slower pace of life these and other potential settings in America provide. And for a relatively, if not objectively affordable price.

There is an appetite — a big and healthy one — for a life that isn’t a mid-six figure or higher home, two expensive cars in the driveway, one in the garage and a pool with a jungle gym in the backyard.

So screw Mom and Dad (though put it to them more gently). Screw the American dream. Move to Toledo, Ohio. Move out to the middle of nowhere and grow your own vegetables. Create your own adventure.

Or if you want to be in a big city. If you feel the need to own a place in the middle of some sort of urban action. If you crave a lifestyle that’s decidedly not American. Do some variation of what I’m working on right now. Move to another country.

There couldn’t be anything more foreign to my parents than the idea of selling pretty much everything you own and moving to Spain — or any other place where you don’t speak the language and will be an outsider. And this is because my perspective is completely different than theirs. The circumstances governing my present and future — financial and otherwise — also completely different.

So, of course, they don’t get it.

They were sandwiched between parents or grandparents who might have made the journey from Europe to America for a better life and their kids who might seriously consider making the journey to Europe from America for a better life.

Funny how life works, isn’t it?

No matter how you choose to construct it, remember — amid the gloom and doom headlines, articles that only lament and complain, and people stuck in physical and psychological ruts — there is a better life. Even if it’s not the one you’ve become accustomed to seeing played out over the course of most of your life.

If you’d like to know more about the journey I’m on, follow me on Medium.

You can also subscribe to my Never Retire: Living The Semi-Retired Life newsletter where I chronicle my big decisions on lifestyle, housing and cost of living, which includes moving to Spain sooner rather than later.

This article is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.