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How many BB were laid off? Without work? Had to go five years just to get back to where they were?
To assume that everyone will have a picture perfect career trajectory if they only *put in the effort* is naive. Layoffs, mergers, companies bought and sold and jobs eliminated ... dip into savings, etc. Medical bills. Too many ifs to count.
It's a different world and to assume that everyone will be retiring no problem *if only* they put in the effort is foolish.
We can argue about the exact degree, but generally, every generation starts out "poor" and accumulates wealth as they progress in their careers. And there are many poor individuals who are retired or close to it - so as short-sighted as our govt. is, they are barely thinking about THAT, much less the generation with 30 years to go. As is usually the case, everyone has to wait their turn. In the meantime, you can either be bitter or you can save ANYTHING you can now - when you're young the smallest amounts have many years to accrue - and don't be too conservative because you also have many years to make up any losses. Get busy!
I'm surprised you and so many others either are not aware of or choose to deny the now-well-established generational outcome stats.
By the S&H schema, the oldest Xers just turned 56 --- only 11 years from FRA! I think one can now safely make some conclusions about Xers as a generation, vis a vis retirement prospects.
I do agree that Millennials may end up doing better later in life, if our society ends up breaking out of the current stagnation in time.
all our kids and their spouses earn more today this early on in their career's than i retired at .
within 10 years of graduation "
one is a full partner at a national law firm with 900 attorneys
one is a cpa for one of the most well known hedge fund managers in the world
one owns a successful auto leasing business
one works in cabling and communication wiring
one is a big wig at the NBA
all stayed focused at what they wanted to do and pulled it off . there friends , not so much . many are still trying to find direction and focus in to something that pays
Every generation has it's superstars.
For the vast middle, it's been a story of shrinkage over successive generations. The high water mark for the middle was The Silent.
I'm surprised you and so many others either are not aware of or choose to deny the now-well-established generational outcome stats.
By the S&H schema, the oldest Xers just turned 56 --- only 11 years from FRA! I think one can now safely make some conclusions about Xers as a generation, vis a vis retirement prospects.
I do agree that Millennials may end up doing better later in life, if our society ends up breaking out of the current stagnation in time.
The late boomers were born 1964. They are only 52 now. It depends on what you read.
Young Gen-Xers and Millennials are starting decent paying careers much later in life, making much less than their parents, and are unable to save any money at all due to high cost of living and debt, and flattening investment gains.
Their retirement will arrive and they will have likely zero or negative net worth. On top of that, social security will likely be somewhat insolvent and unable to pay even the meager benefits it now provides. And medicare will hardly be in better shape.
The only way I see this crisis being handled is by the economy taking several enormous body blows, a plummeting housing market, along with plummeting cost of services, e.g. massive deflationary pressures, product/food shortages, etc.
Rich baby boomers make the political decisions in this country and the insane wealth of the baby boomer generation (and even their pension-fattened parents) is distorting the discussion here of what it means to be a retiree - even a modest retired couple of a mailman and a teacher are retiring filthy rich compared to how the young generations will.
Are there any think tanks studying what it will mean for a generation to retire with virtually no money, in a country that will likely not have today's safety net?
no need to worry, we are headed to universal income , it is currently the only workable or viable solution.
It is very clear that we are coming to the end of full or even vaguely close to full employment. Simply put it is very easy for the world to make vastly more than we need or want even at the status quo.
We will drift to everyone receiving a basic income that is livable. Who will pay? Well above a certain threshold taxes will be high. I am not claiming nobody will work, but that fewer of us will be qualified to fill the positions due to advanced robotics and highly advanced AI.
Frankly it is much closer than people understand.
And our social safety nets will grow vastly as we embrace a new reality where most of us are simply surplus to needs....
How many BB were laid off? Without work? Had to go five years just to get back to where they were?
To assume that everyone will have a picture perfect career trajectory if they only *put in the effort* is naive. Layoffs, mergers, companies bought and sold and jobs eliminated ... dip into savings, etc. Medical bills. Too many ifs to count.
It's a different world and to assume that everyone will be retiring no problem *if only* they put in the effort is foolish.
Thank you. I am so tired of posting this myself.
In my working career I have been laid off several times, had my 401k stolen by my union (worked for a trust office for bunch of crooked ones) and had serious medical illnesses which involved a lot of medical bills.
To the OP, there are no guarantees in life, take care of yourself the best you can and don't expect others to be talking about your future.
For the vast middle, it's been a story of shrinkage over successive generations. The high water mark for the middle was The Silent.
Not the way I see it. Not what the number show us. There are more and more people with bigger houses, bigger and fancier SUVs, boats, cellphones, ipads, digital cameras, 40" TV screens, and on and on and on.
The only people who seem to be losing are those at the bottom of the middle class. They lost out to automation, foreign manufacturing, the loss of agricultural jobs, consolidation in retailing, and competition from illegal aliens. In fact I think the situation is even worse. Those without skills and without higher education have moved from the bottom of the middle class to the lower class.
The late boomers were born 1964. They are only 52 now. It depends on what you read.
As I wrote, by the S&H schema. My reason to follow that schema? It maps very well to macro economic and mass societal reality. As opposed to brute force arbitrary demarcations based solely on overall mass birth rate > X.
(BTW d(Birthrate)/dt is way, way more interesting!)
Not the way I see it. Not what the number show us. There are more and more people with bigger houses, bigger and fancier SUVs, boats, cellphones, ipads, digital cameras, 40" TV screens, and on and on and on.
The only people who seem to be losing are those at the bottom of the middle class. They lost out to automation, foreign manufacturing, the loss of agricultural jobs, consolidation in retailing, and competition from illegal aliens. In fact I think the situation is even worse. Those without skills and without higher education have moved from the bottom of the middle class to the lower class.
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