Different Generations Don’t Understand Each Others’ Finances

Members of each age cohort are talking past each other on money issues — and that’s a problem

I’m a member of Generation X, and members of Gen X are extremely good at observing the generations around them. (We’re a small generation, so I think we watch the others carefully in a self-defense kind of way.)

And here’s what this Gen X’er has noticed about the way the different generations communicate among themselves and with one another. We mostly call each other names, and we don’t tend to listen to people in different generational cohorts. We especially don’t talk to one another about money.

And that’s a problem. For everyone.

A while back I wrote an article about the housing crisis. I wanted to focus on the fact that I don’t think anyone really understands why our housing crisis in America (and worldwide) became such a widespread and seemingly unsolvable issue.

I wrote it primarily because, in my suburb, every property developer in the state (and lots from out of state) are proposing building endless four- to six-story apartment buildings filled with extremly expensive 1BR and studio apartments. We already have a lot of those, but if you go to any meetings at City Hall to ask if maybe somebody, somewhere, somehow, couldn’t just build a couple of fricking condos, seemingly everyone else yells “NIMBY” at you and your request for a couple of condos is laughed right out of the room.

It’s frustrating.

So my article was really more of a response to progressives who tend to yell “NIMBY” at people, as I tried to point out various aspects of the housing problem that don’t get as much airtime as the simple demand “we need more housing units.” Then I made the following comment.

Baby Boomers, those people aged between 60 and 75 or so, are very forthright about loving their homes and not wanting to leave their homes. Because of the good health many of them have enjoyed, they still feel able to take care of large homes and yards; leading to a situation where 28% of “large homes” owned in America are owned by Boomers (Millennials with kids, by contrast, only own 14% of “large homes”).

In reply, I got a comment from a Boomer who was NOT HAPPY with me. I don’t like to quote comments exactly (your comments are your property, I believe), but the gist was that this person was a Boomer; they did not like what they thought was my suggestion that all Boomers should just die and clear out of their houses; and there were plenty of empty homes around them that people should buy.

I’ll admit it. I laughed out loud. Because if there’s one thing I expect Boomers to do (and this IS unkind of me, but it is also my true, lived experience), it’s to pick up their ball and go homeif they don’t agree with everything I’m saying. I did ask this person to please tell me what area of the world or U.S. this was, because it would be helpful to me to know where people might be able to afford a house.

No answer.

I also pointed out that, although I sometimes like to have a little fun with Boomers, I don’t actually blame them for everything. In fact, when I write articles like There Will Be No Baby Boomer Wealth Transfer, I’m trying to draw attention to what I think is a really shitty narrative, especially towards Boomers. (If you don’t have time to read that article, the attitude is: “Don’t worry, kids, when the Baby Boomers die they’ll give you all their money through inheritance.”)

No answer.

And that’s when I really started thinking. The thought I mainly had, based on that comment, was: “The generations really do not understand each other when it comes to money.”

And that’s a problem.

In America, we have a class system. We should just admit it already. And then we should all commit to talking with each other more about who has money and how they use it.

I first realized there was a problem with generational understanding when I was trying to explain to my mother, a member of the Silent Generation, how friends of mine, both with extremely high-profile, high-responsibility jobs in the medical industrial complex, could not afford a small home in the Oakland/San Francisco area, where my friend is from, and where her mother still lives. That was just crazy to me, that people most likely pulling down half a million bucks a year couldn’t buy a house where they wanted to live.

And my mother said, “Well, maybe they should have just saved their money better.”

I laughed at that too, because if that wasn’t a total Silent Generation answer, I don’t know what is. It was like a preview of our 2024 election, in which two members of the Silent Generation are trying very hard to act like anyone can still “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.” (Okay, technically Trump is a Boomer born in the first year of Boomerism — 1946 — but I’d say he really belongs in with the Silents, born between 1928 and 1945.)

My mother doesn’t get it for many reasons. She worked insanely hard as a farmer. My family saved all the money they could. We had good luck in the form of good health and my parents largely paid for our medical care — with cash and with nothing more than “disaster insurance” — through the 1980s and early 1990s, at which point their youngest kid (me) left home for college and promptly took over her own medical treatment and sweated it out without insurance until she got her first professional job.

But the main reason my mom doesn’t get it is because SHE DOESN’T WANT TO. She feels they deserved to be successful. My dad didn’t miss a milking, morning or night, for something ridiculous like twenty years. Her kids did what they were told and we got good grades and, most importantly, just took over our own lives at age 18. If anyone else can’t make all that happen — well, they just aren’t trying hard enough.

And they certainly aren’t saving their money enough.

Interestingly enough, in an article about money and numbers and the need to speak with each other more specifically about our incomes and our expenses, I’m not going to try and convince you with numbers.

(Although Gen X also loves busting chops, and I can’t resist pointing out that “older boomers won the pandemic” — coming out of it with 14 trillion more dollars than they went into it with.)

I don’t think, in our culture, that any of us can convince each other with numbers any more. We’re awash in statistics and information and top-notch journalism and none of that seems to be making us any smarter.

Instead, I leave you with these questions: Are we getting anywhere, with healthcare costs and job losses and rising inflation and housing crises, by not talking with and understanding one another? What financial beliefs do you have that are keeping you from listening to others about their money problems and challenges?

Mine is being annoyed by people endlessly shouting NIMBY! and YIMBY! at one another and never looking at more of the causes of the housing crisis. But I want to let it go. I want to let it go so I can focus more on what the economic problems are, for everyone.

Because someone, somewhere, wants us to keep not talking to one another, and not figuring it out. And whoever that someone is (I’m guessing it’s someone very, very wealthy), I don’t want to play their game anymore.

Do you?