The great baby-boomer retirement wave is upon us. According to Census Bureau data, 44% of boomers are at retirement age and millions more are soon to join them. By 2030, the largest generation to enter retirement will all be older than 65.
The general assumption is that boomers will have a comfortable retirement. Coasting on their accumulated wealth from three decades as America’s dominant economic force, boomers will sail off into their golden years to sip on margaritas on cruises and luxuriate in their well-appointed homes. After all, Federal Reserve data shows that while the 56 million Americans over 65 make up just 17% of the population, they hold more than half of America’s wealth — $96.4 trillion.
But there’s a flaw in the narrative of a sunny boomer retirement: A lot of older Americans are not set up for their later years. Yes, many members of the generation are loaded, but many more are not. Like every age cohort, there’s significant wealth inequality among retirees — and it’s gotten worse in the past decade. Despite holding more than half of the nation’s wealth, many boomers don’t have enough money to cover the costs of long-term care, and 43% of 55- to 64-year-olds had no retirement savings at all in 2022. That year, 30% of people over 65 were economically insecure, meaning they made less than $27,180 for a single person. And since younger boomers are less financially prepared for retirement than their older boomer siblings, the problem is bound to get worse.
As boomers continue to age out of the workforce, it’s going to put strain on the healthcare system, government programs, and the economy. That means more young people are going to be financially responsible for their parents, more government spending will be allocated to older folks, and economic growth could slow.
The real villains here are the absurdly rich. Especially those who find ways to pay less in taxes.
The top 1% are the problem.
Tax the rich.
Even as people starve, they’ll defend those absurdly rich folk because one day it’ll be them starving people out!
Tax the wealthy more, they won’t lose any quality of life whatsoever, and the money they extorted from their fellow humans gets paid back to support them in their old age.
This isn’t actually a hard problem to solve if you take greed out of the equation.
Boomer mom inherited a house that was paid for, immediately did a reverse mortgage to fund her lifestyle.
Fuck you, mom.
When people pass on generational wealth, I read its usually gone within 3 generations.
Probably not true for billionaire level wealth, but for the people that work up millions or tens of millions.
The worst part, the absolute worst part, is that it’s a house my grandmother designed and my great grandmother financed.
4 generations of my family have lived there, and it will be gone when mom kicks off.
My wife’s grandparents and their parents were very very wealthy but my mil and her siblings have literally waited every cent of it and im talking millions of dollars. One aunt is a forever student, she has never had a job, never earned her own money in any way and has constantly used money for her own education while never earning any degrees. One uncle spent the vast majority on gambling and alcohol.
Why can’t they just stop eating Avocado toast?
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So the top two hundred net worth individuals have amassed 30% of us wealth and boomers hold half the wealth. No wonder young people are suffering…
I think the point is that those two hundred are Boomers. The rest of the boomers are broke.
Yeah it’s easy to get mad at boomers. It’s also easy to forget that medicare and social security are under attack. The divisionthat matters isn’t between generations, it’s between the rich and the poor.
This is occurring specifically because of the choices they collectively made.
It’s hard to be sympathetic.
In my country, 2030 is foreseen as the year the public retirement plan administration system will collapse due to this.
Dismantling public healthcare is a solution our government is already going for to the detriment of everyone (unfortunately) but public retirement plans cannot be changed retroactively to any extent, they are reducing the highest pensions and blocking the rest of them (inflation will de facto lower even the blocked ones) while at the same time increasing the retirement age progressively but still it isn’t enough.
We’re doomed, no matter how much blood and tears.
What country is that?
I’m ashamed to tell because people will start yelling… but it’s in my bio.
I am on Lemmy so it maybe shows a lot less than it does on other instances or platforms? In any case I can assume that it’s itally based in the “.it”
Look, there was a generation between Boomers and Gen X and the fact that they’re now just lumped in together is ridiculous. They’re called Boomers because they were born during the baby boom immediately following WWII. That boom did not last 20 years. Actual Boomers have been retired for a decade.
The last boomers haven’t. The youngest ones will be 60 this year. There are still tons of them in the workforce.
No, that’s what I’m saying. Those turning 60 this year are not Boomers. They are the generation that came between Boomers and GenX. Yeah, even this Wikipedia article lumps them in with Boomers, but they weren’t considered Boomers as they were coming of age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones They shouldn’t be now, either. Ask any of them if they consider themselves Boomers.
Gen X, always forgotten. Fuckin latchkey kids to the end.
I think a lot of us grew to prefer it that way.
There’s a lot to be said for being able to blend into a crowd and be forgotten. You sure can get away with a lot more, anyway.
This comment has given me far more food for thought than the first skim.
Yes, you’re correct. There is more.
Being content with being part of the crowd and being comfortable with your own identity in a way that you don’t need externalise it, because ultimately the validation that you receive can only come from you, because it won’t come from anywhere else. Someone else will claim the credit anyway.
Being comfortable not being noticed.
Just getting on with it. Work, life, pleasure, marriage, parenthood, careers, it’s probably not going to get any better, it’s probably going to be blamed on you anyway, just get on with it and hope no-one asks too many questions.
Find a nice quiet spot out of the wind for a snooze, knock off work at 4pm, quiet life with no surprises etc.
Cancer and death wiped out my parents’ shit. And apparently several financial crises are all it takes for a small business owner to give up their decades-old life insurance policy to afford food and utilities.
Isn’t it crazy to think that if they had moved to any other modern country, they wouldn’t have lost a dime from cancer.
Fuck when you put it that way.
