Will the US be a better place after the baby boomer generation passes (military, insurance)
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The biggest thing about buying a home. You need to buy it as a home. Period. As a place to live. Yes.. we outgrow them, we have job transfer's, but first and foremost a home should be bought as a home. Too many people thought they would jump on the real estate bandwagon (yes.. some boomers... some not). Leave that to the speculators. Personally, I could care less that they lost their money. They too were a big part of the reason that prices were too high to begin with. I worked in Mortgage Lending for 20 years.. thankfully getting out before the bust, and selling our home before the bust as well. A lot of us saw this coming. You can not blame one single entity for the bust. But if blame must be passed on.. we need to blame the banks, the realtors, the appraisers, the speculator's.. and finally the people themselves, because a great number of them did put themselves in a position to get burned... It was like the perfect storm.. all the different factors coming together at the same time. And... honestly... I don't think it's over quite yet...
I agree. When I referred to buying a home as an "investment" I was referring to those that went out on the rush to buy a second home, or those that saw an opportunity to "invest" in a second "home" and could afford to wait it out. I bet most of those second "homes" were bought in the hope of making a profit, probably rent it out to cover the expenses and not necessarily for the purpose of having a second home where they would split their time living between the two.
I recently returned to the States and am renting a house from someone who purchased five homes about two years ago - obviously he had money to invest and he parked his money in the housing market, which is like a roller coaster. Sales fell 2% in September. The question is: when will it be a good time to sell? I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Well, in regards to who we vote in there are not exactly a lot of non-boomer choices to pick from.
As for the bolded, then I take it you agree with me?
And why would the boomers complain about the world they were born into? They lived their peak years during much better times. It was easy for them to make bad decisions and then jump right back out of the hole. It ISN'T like that in the world anymore. One slightly wrong decision could set your entire life back today. Boomers had it easy and truly have no right to complain. Generation Y though? Hell 50% of the college graduates from that generation couldn't even find work for gods sake. I think the rate is only marginally better now at like 33%. I spent a whole year after college sending hundreds of resumes into a black hole with no interviews. Boomers NEVER faced an economy like that. I am doing good now, but my peers and I definitely had to work harder for it.
Oh, stuff it.
Here's how this boomer's life played out:
Graduated college in a terrible recession in 1979. Ever hear the phrase "Rust Belt"? That was coined for the area I was raised in at that time. No jobs, no future, no nothing.
I moved out of the Rust Belt to New England in 1980. I put my college degree to work in retail and delivering auto parts to repair shops. At night I was a stringer for a local newspaper. In short, I worked 7 days a week, 12 or more hours a day.
I lived in a crappy-ass apartment. My parents fronted me the money to buy a used 1980 Ford Pinto after about a year of living in a city with no public transportation. I paid them back, of course.
I remember being terribly excited to have $5 to spend on a freakin' broom at K-Mart. I felt so responsible.
The Reagan and Bush years did NOT result in Easy Street for us boomers. Do you actually know any? Why don't you ask them about their experiences, instead of making stuff up?
Eventually I got full-time work as a newspaper reporter, then editor. By 1996, after 15 years in the business, I was making $20,000 a year. Wheeeee! Livin' large, baby! But I decided to make a living wage instead, so I switched to marketing. By then, the good years of the Clinton era were actually starting to make me think I wouldn't die in poverty. I was hopeful and started a family.
Then came Bush II. Even you know what that meant. In my case, there were 2 layoffs in 8 years. A lot of unemployment, shame and embarrassment. As a boomer, it is entirely acceptable for me to be discriminated against in hiring because of my age. Not legal, but acceptable and easy to hide for employers. Do you have that problem, Mr. CravingMountains? I thought not.
Boomers have been facing the fact that they may never have meaningful employment again until they die. That's a reality for most of us. Do you contemplate spending the remaining years of your life in poverty and shame? I thought not.
I was fortunate that a former employer needed a warm body fast, and offered me a job a year ago. Don't know how long it will last. It's a small company, and you never know. I've reached the point where I'll be happy dying if I can get my youngest through two more years of college. That's the entire sum of my existence.
So that's the story of a later Boomer. Never had an economy this bad? Bullshyte. Try living in this economy as a 50-something, Mr. Arrogant Young Person. YOUR generation has our jobs with the blessing of society, and, as this thread indicates, you're all just waiting for us to die so you can grab whatever is left of our lives.
So go tell your sob story to someone else. My generation has NEVER had it good except for a few years in the '90s, and now it's too late for us.
Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
3,997 posts, read 4,139,194 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by softblueyz
I agree. When I referred to buying a home as an "investment" I was referring to those that went out on the rush to buy a second home, or those that saw an opportunity to "invest" in a second "home" and could afford to wait it out. I bet most of those second "homes" were bought in the hope of making a profit, probably rent it out to cover the expenses and not necessarily for the purpose of having a second home where they would split their time living between the two.
I recently returned to the States and am renting a house from someone who purchased five homes about two years ago - obviously he had money to invest and he parked his money in the housing market, which is like a roller coaster. Sales fell 2% in September. The question is: when will it be a good time to sell? I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Some markets are starting to come back slowly. But some are still so glutted with repo's that it is going to take years. We sold a home before the crash... and bought another not to long ago. And we've taken a hit on paper. The bank foreclosures in our area are just pulling prices down so far and it seems that those are the only comparable sales that appraisers are using. And while we're not seeing it yet.. I expect mortgage rates to start climbing after the first of the year. HHmm.. so a good time to sell.. might be now.. because before long the rates may become the next hinderance to a good market??? I'm just glad that we're not buying or selling right now... in it with this one for the long haul....
Graduated college in a terrible recession in 1979. Ever hear the phrase "Rust Belt"? That was coined for the area I was raised in at that time. No jobs, no future, no nothing.
I moved out of the Rust Belt to New England in 1980. I put my college degree to work in retail and delivering auto parts to repair shops. At night I was a stringer for a local newspaper. In short, I worked 7 days a week, 12 or more hours a day.
I lived in a crappy-ass apartment. My parents fronted me the money to buy a used 1980 Ford Pinto after about a year of living in a city with no public transportation. I paid them back, of course.
I remember being terribly excited to have $5 to spend on a freakin' broom at K-Mart. I felt so responsible.
The Reagan and Bush years did NOT result in Easy Street for us boomers. Do you actually know any? Why don't you ask them about their experiences, instead of making stuff up?
Eventually I got full-time work as a newspaper reporter, then editor. By 1996, after 15 years in the business, I was making $20,000 a year. Wheeeee! Livin' large, baby! But I decided to make a living wage instead, so I switched to marketing. By then, the good years of the Clinton era were actually starting to make me think I wouldn't die in poverty. I was hopeful and started a family.
Then came Bush II. Even you know what that meant. In my case, there were 2 layoffs in 8 years. A lot of unemployment, shame and embarrassment. As a boomer, it is entirely acceptable for me to be discriminated against in hiring because of my age. Not legal, but acceptable and easy to hide for employers. Do you have that problem, Mr. CravingMountains? I thought not.
Boomers have been facing the fact that they may never have meaningful employment again until they die. That's a reality for most of us. Do you contemplate spending the remaining years of your life in poverty and shame? I thought not.
I was fortunate that a former employer needed a warm body fast, and offered me a job a year ago. Don't know how long it will last. It's a small company, and you never know. I've reached the point where I'll be happy dying if I can get my youngest through two more years of college. That's the entire sum of my existence.
So that's the story of a later Boomer. Never had an economy this bad? Bullshyte. Try living in this economy as a 50-something, Mr. Arrogant Young Person. YOUR generation has our jobs with the blessing of society, and, as this thread indicates, you're all just waiting for us to die so you can grab whatever is left of our lives.
So go tell your sob story to someone else. My generation has NEVER had it good except for a few years in the '90s, and now it's too late for us.
Pfffft on your whiny, self-righteous generation.
Yup.
I bought my first home in 1979 at a percentage rate of 11 5/8th only to have the value of the house drop 40% in one year. I sold it in 1995 for what I bought it for. I worked my way through college and didn't graduate until I was 31. I had $25K in charge card debt run up getting through college that took me 3 years to pay off. After graduating I bought a new couch to replace the one that I picked up out of someone's trash back in 1980 and my first and only new car (needed it for a 45 mile commute). The next 16 years were great. I had a good paying job with great benefits in engineering. Then I got downsized out at the ripe old age of 47. I'm now 54 and struggling to find work in a society that considers me too old to bother with. I'm just praying I can keep from hitting my IRA in the next 13 years and that social security is stil there when I retire. I am SOL otherwise and I know it.
The company I used to work for went bankrupt and bought me out of my pension so I don't have anything other than my IRA and it's not enough. I'm currently teaching high school for half of what I made as an engineer but this job is iffy because I have a principal who just doesn't like me for whatever reason who is gunning for me. The joke in the school is that I must have kicked his grandmother in a previous life and he has video. My peers can't figure this out. They think highly of me. If he wins and I'm denied tenure at the end of the year, I don't know what I will do. Denial of tenure is a death sentence to a teacher's career.
I've been looking for an engineering job for a year now with no luck. I've had a couple of phone interviews where they just wanted more information (not real interviews) but that's it. It's very depressing. I know several baby boomers who chose to retire at 62 and start taking social security early becuase they've been out of work for a few years and they have given up.
Yes, us baby boomers have it so great. Who makes this stuff up? Recessions are much worse if you're too old to find work and too young to retire than they are if you're at the beginning of your career and have time to recover. With less than $350K in my IRA, I'm screwed if I can't keep working for the next 13 years and SS isn't there for me. This is not where I planned to be at this point in my life. The only bright side is that my kids will get lots of help with college from Uncle Sam.
Its amazing. How did society function before all those electronic devices came into play? To think we actually had to think to come up with solutions to problems that are solved today with the push of a button. All you have to do is think which button to push.
One thing I've noticed about the kids I attend college classes with is they cannot think. They google adn think that's thinking. What's really funny is they're arrogant about being able to FIND answers. They're not even their answers but they think themselves so cool because they can use google. The problem is they can't think their way out of a paper bag. They'd have to google that.
My high school students are like that as well. They really think googling an answer is the same as coming up with one on their own. It's funny how they can answer questions on their lab reports so eloquently but mix up the words when asked to write an explanation on a test. I wonder how that happens?
I bought my first home in 1979 at a percentage rate of 11 5/8th only to have the value of the house drop 40% in one year. I sold it in 1995 for what I bought it for. I worked my way through college and didn't graduate until I was 31. I had $25K in charge card debt run up getting through college that took me 3 years to pay off. After graduating I bought a new couch to replace the one that I picked up out of someone's trash back in 1980 and my first and only new car (needed it for a 45 mile commute). The next 16 years were great. I had a good paying job with great benefits in engineering. Then I got downsized out at the ripe old age of 47. I'm now 54 and struggling to find work in a society that considers me too old to bother with. I'm just praying I can keep from hitting my IRA in the next 13 years and that social security is stil there when I retire. I am SOL otherwise and I know it.
The company I used to work for went bankrupt and bought me out of my pension so I don't have anything other than my IRA and it's not enough. I'm currently teaching high school for half of what I made as an engineer but this job is iffy because I have a principal who just doesn't like me for whatever reason who is gunning for me. The joke in the school is that I must have kicked his grandmother in a previous life and he has video. My peers can't figure this out. They think highly of me. If he wins and I'm denied tenure at the end of the year, I don't know what I will do. Denial of tenure is a death sentence to a teacher's career.
I've been looking for an engineering job for a year now with no luck. I've had a couple of phone interviews where they just wanted more information (not real interviews) but that's it. It's very depressing. I know several baby boomers who chose to retire at 62 and start taking social security early becuase they've been out of work for a few years and they have given up.
Yes, us baby boomers have it so great. Who makes this stuff up? Recessions are much worse if you're too old to find work and too young to retire than they are if you're at the beginning of your career and have time to recover. With less than $350K in my IRA, I'm screwed if I can't keep working for the next 13 years and SS isn't there for me. This is not where I planned to be at this point in my life. The only bright side is that my kids will get lots of help with college from Uncle Sam.
I'm sorry for your situation ... we 50-somethings are all in this together.
I have to add that I'm thrilled to have $40K in my 401(K). Blew through a lot just to survive after unemployment ran out. And hubby has never had a job with a savings plan, and has always lived paycheck to paycheck.
I tell him that that $40K oughtta last us about three months.
So liberals and Democrats don't have any baby boomers in their party?
OP, your post is a disgrace and disrespectful. What did you expect... them to pay your way all your life? What's wrong, is the gravy train must be over for you and your mift
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Must be just a tad luckier then some of my fellow boomers. Maybe it's because I'm right on the tail end? (1961). or had some good advice? I graduated highschool in '79 The ole man saw farming was going nowhere so he advised I join the Navy. Missed the double digit inflation years of the 80's. (Folks held on but just barely) Got out in '93 been working in the Municipal utility industry eversince.......It was tough at first, 8.00bucks an hr is hard to stretch with a faimly of 4! 20yrs later 6 figurers goes a whole lot further!!!Some good breaks, lots of hard work pays off!
Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
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End of the baby boomer's here. Graduated in 1980. Yep... Right smack dab in the middle of high unemployment and high, high interest rates. Very small rural farming community in the midwest, where if you did go to college it was the local junior college majoring in secretarial skills so you could work at the local grain elevator or the bank. Well.. I decided to forego that route, started in the bookkeeping dept (which back then was setting at big old machines and sorting cleared checks by hand).
Got married with the clothes on my back and less than 100 bucks to my name, to a boomer (Graduated in 1978) who decided to go into the oil/gas industry. But that meant travel. All over the country. So not only did we get to support our home and family in our home community, we got to support a whole second household on the road. And believe me... that ain't cheap. And... yep.. that's right. No per diem. We paid (and still do) pay the expenses to keep him on the road. Fast forward through the kid and we get to my father-in-law who we took care of during his long bought with pancreatic cancer. MD Anderson Cancer center took care of the biggest part of our savings during this time... just about time to.... put kid through college. He went off to college and with that expense we sold our home, our furniture, basically everything we owned so that I could go on the road and perhaps we could save some money. Put 20 years of our lives in some boxes.. put them in storage... bought an RV.. and off we go. We thought we were finally going to get ahead after the boy was paid for.. so a couple of years ago, we made the plunge again... bought another house (yippee.. the prices had come down!) and decided that it would be our retirement home in a few years. And while it still will be... I doubt that we can ever afford to retire and actually go home to it..... It's been an adventure that's for sure. And the few things we have we have worked for. Every last dime of it.
Yep... we boomers... we were handed everything weren't we?
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Yup.
Recessions are much worse if you're too old to find work and too young to retire than they are if you're at the beginning of your career and have time to recover. With less than $350K in my IRA, I'm screwed if I can't keep working for the next 13 years and SS isn't there for me. This is not where I planned to be at this point in my life. The only bright side is that my kids will get lots of help with college from Uncle Sam.
