Comments on: The Baby Boomer Generation Wants It All

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:34:21 +0000

Sjaron, your house is not selling for one simple reason: it is priced too high. Generation X cannot afford it. What did you really expect? Your generation drove up the price of college, of housing, of medicine all while wages have actually dropped since your generation was in the workforce. If you want greed, take a look in the mirror. My generation certainly doesn’t feel sorry for you. So you repaid your $1 student loan. Big DEAL. Since you went to college, the price has quadrupled relative to income.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:57:11 +0000

WOW! All that anger out there! I came across this site by accident….I had Googled “What this generation wants in a home” because I’m having trouble selling my house which I’ve lived in since I was 25 years old. Yep…I’m a Boomer. I see good points on both sides, but it’s futile to name-call and lump everyone into one category. My husband and I met in high school, married young, and worked hard. In many ways, it WAS a different world. NOTHING was handed to either of us; not college, not a big wedding, no bridal or baby showers, no money towards a house down payment. I even paid “room and board” and BTW I, FOR ONE,REPAID MY NATIONAL DEFENSE STUDENT LOAN! We drove clunkers most of our married life, but still managed to eat well, raise 3 children, dress nicely, and give to charity. In middle age, after struggling for 10 years to build a successful business, we were FINALLY going to build a new home. We bought our FIRST new car….then, my husband died. Now, I’m trying to sell the house we spent our married life in. It’s a nice brick, solid house with some very nice features and I kept lowering the price til it is now “below market” and, you know what?….nobody wants it! It’s not “Pottery-Barn Cute”!!! Hey, Generation X….ever hear of a paint brush and paint? Ever hear of waiting for granite counters ’til you could afford them? Do you know the meaning of “strippable wall-paper”? Can you prune a tree? So tell me…….WHICH generation REALLY wants it all and wants it NOW!!??!!

By: Concerned Gen Y-er

Concerned Gen Y-er — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:45:27 +0000

Michelle,

I am in the same boat. I’ve given up all hope of ever having a child in my home, because all my (and my fiance’s) time and money will go towards the upkeep of his high-maintenance parents. They are going bankrupt and yet they’re spending more money than Paris Hilton on a shopping spree, so we’ll probably have to fund them before too long. My fiance and I want to have kids when we’re financially solvent, but that day will never come–all our resources will go to my in-laws.

By: MaryNorthernIllinois

MaryNorthernIllinois — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:42:19 +0000

No, Baby Boomers did NOT live only in prosperity. Haven’t you noticed that during this current recession pundits keep saying “It hasn’t been this bad for 26 years” or “36 years”…those were the recession and inflation years of the early 70’s (under Nixon) and the early 80’s (under Reagan).

Baby boomers were in their 20’s and 30’s during those years…interest rates very high and credit difficult; you couldn’t buy a house right out of college with little or no money down as you could recently.

The “free love” thing was a reaction against Viet Nam…unlike Iraq the military was supplied via the draft, and 53,000 Americans died.

The war was a HUGE crisis for us because WE WERE CHILDREN OF THE “GREATEST GENERATION”…WW II VETERANS. We had been raised to believe that the U.S. was the great hero of the entire world, yet here we were napalming children overseas along with other evils of that unwinnable war.

Young people avoided have children because you could never tell when Daddy might be drafted and then quite possibly killed.

For many years now no one has been forced to go to war against their will. We leave the military to lower class kids who can’t afford to go to college.

By: Proud Gen X-er

Proud Gen X-er — Sat, 09 May 2009 23:47:04 +0000

Well well – I have to recommend the book Generations to anyone reading this. It is true that the Boomer elite are the most blatantly self centered, hypocritical and smug generation in recent memory, on the whole. My respect to those few who still hold true ’60s ideals of peace and love, who did not succumb to the “greed is good” mentality of the late ’70s and ’80s. There are not many left. The vast majority of Boomers willfully turned credit use into credit abuse with the rampant pimping of unsecured loans to unsuspecting Xer consumers. They have decided that the way to win their game and disinherit us is to convince Gen X that they are worthless and unentitled to a decent life. If they can cast Gen Xers as druggies, burn-outs, lazy and anti-social (all the trappings of a mis-spent youth that many of them, when they had the luxury to do so, engaged in themselves), they can win the game, they think, by casting themselves as somehow more enlightened or deserving. Gen Xers – you need to form grass roots organizations with your peers. Try to do business chiefly with those born between 1961 and 1981. If you can get past the negative messages the boomers and the silents before them saddled you with in childhood as they were piously contemplating their collective navel, and support your own community, we may yet prevail. Just remember – the boomers willfully and blatantly mortgaged our future. I ask you – does such a generation – proflagate, unproductive and confrontational in their youth, given the world by their G.I. Generation parents, driving up costs by encouraging credit-based consumption to their unsuspecting juniors – deserve the fat retirement they are now constantly whining about?

One other thing X-ers: Do you want to show YOUR cultural superiority to smug Baby Boomers? Start listening to jazz music. REAL jazz music. Boomers hate it because it reminds them that their parents (whom they resented and despised) had a superior culture in many respects to their three-or-four chord Rock and Roll pablum. It’s also very hip, and most boomers have forgotten how to swing, so you will be one up on them in having a rich cultural activity and interest, that takes intelligence, is wholesome but fun, and that is not money-based. Face it: popular music has stagnated in this country anyway. Why not go REALLY retro (like to the late ’50s/early ’60s). Do it Xers: piss off a baby boomer today by showing him/her your cultural superiority. You will have fun while being a smug boomer’s worst nightmare.

By: AB

AB — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:41:02 +0000

So, who are the parents of a lot the “whiny, hateful, narcissistic, self-absorbed” gen Xers, yes, that would be the Baby Boomers. How did you raise your children to be like this?

By: Spingman Tribbs

Spingman Tribbs — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:10:33 +0000

Yes, CGA, today’s American Generation-X is certainly part of the PROBLEM, not the solution. Have been a problem for America from birth Their whiny, hateful, narcissistic, self-absorbed arrogance will remain a problem until their deaths. Will be HELL’S problem afterward.

By: CGA

CGA — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:21:25 +0000

Right all baby boomers are to blame. You effing babies. Frankly this boomer and husband worked as commercial fishers in Alaska and got taken to the cleaners by NAFTA and Exxon while you gen-xers were eating imported salmon and living the good lif with mommy and daddy. We have a very modest house, $2,000 cars and shop at Sunflower Market. For 20 years I have watched gen xers getting jobs making 100+K a year doing nothing but managing, managing, managing…not really producing anything….buying million dollar homes and razing them to build mcmansions. Arrogant and self absorbed.
As for gen Y, a good example is the kid across the street who is in college for crop propagation and is amazed that I grow my own lettuce…organically, dude …wow. Well he was obviously smokin’ his own lettuce, but you get the picture. Absolutely no common sense. Didn’t think he could grow his own…except at the university.

So you can blame the people before you if it makes you feel better, but it still won’t feed you, whiners. If you’re not part of the solution you are part of the problem.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:43:48 +0000

Baby Boomers worry me. I look at my inlaws who “want it all”, have gone bankrupt twice, but still spend insane amounts and have a big house… big back yard etc. I worry that Gen Y (my husband new husband and I!) will be taking care of them… and paying for their mistakes. Whereas we keep it real, live in a tiny apartment, older car – yet earn a lot of money.

By: Albany Homes

Albany Homes — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:18:37 +0000

Back when I was a kid (born in 62) it was very rare to have both parents working. Dads went out and worked while Moms stayed home and raised the family. Then as time went on and families wanted the larger homes and new cars they sent Mom out to work. Perfect for a while but what happens now that spending outpaces the income of both parents? Oops,we don’t have anyone else to send out to work. I guess we’ll have to start yanking the kids out of high school, and get them jobs to help pay for the 4,000 sq ft home and the new BMW in the driveway!