Comments on: Are We Financially Worse Off Than Our Parents?

By: ctl

ctl — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:06:22 +0000

It’s hard to compare eras on just conjecture. Each generation, decade or era had its ups and downs. One common denominator through all the generations is that if you work hard, make good decisions, and plan financially you will at worst do “okay”, as long as you are not held back by chronic illness, addiction, or mental and emotional problems — or marry an idiot that drags you down with them. In today’s world, if you are doing “okay” financially, you are actually doing pretty well. — comparatively speaking — I don’t think many people in the US have a realistic view of what actually is poverty. We should all be thankful to be US citizens and not living in some third world shithole like most of the world.

By: middle age is realising you’ll never realise your dreams? | plonkee money

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:04:19 +0000

[...] are we financially worse off than our parents? [Moolanomy] [...]

By: Independence Day link love « Funny about Money

Independence Day link love « Funny about Money — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:18:44 +0000

[...] has a fresh take on the question of whether we’re better or worse off financially than our parents: what he calls “financial distractions.” This is a good insight that’s hard to [...]

By: Fugitive Specimen

Fugitive Specimen — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:17:36 +0000

Financial distractions… Anyone here ever heard of inflation. The dollar is incredibly weak to what it was in my parents day. I make more than my parents did but I can’t afford the things my parents have. Our current debtor economy also has a huge impact on the current situation. The debt bubble can only expand until the credit runs out then it retracts very quickly. The credit is running out. I consider myself fiscally responsible and did not buy a house that is 7x to 9x my income. The extremely flawed credit rating system sets the rates for the borrower and less than perfect credit will bite you in the wallet. Only one percent of credit reports are accurate (look it up) but lenders don’t care about accuracy when they are making huge profits off the interest rates. There are no doubt Financial Distractions, coupled to the psychology of a nation that is manipulated by a marketing engine that is impregnated in our POP culture. We got it you want it, and since the dollar has be devalued you’ll pay more for it. Our parents did not pay the 1000% markups on there goods that we do today. All Hail Profit

By: Pinyo

Pinyo — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:49:03 +0000

@KMC — Good additions to the list.

@Sara — Imagine what you can do with extra $1,600 a month.

@Jadin — Good point about our inflated level of expectation. When I grew up, I lived in a really small apartment too.

@Funny about Money — Good counter-points, but I would argue that our parents are less prone to go into debt to acquire things that they can’t afford based on lower savings rate and higher debt per person levels.

By: Funny about Money

Funny about Money — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:37:42 +0000

Hm. Lemme think. As a child of the Cretaceous Period, I have to agree that we didn’t have anything like all the expensive toys, conveniences, and necessities available today. But here are a few more or less defunct financial distractions from the Good Old Days:

Long-distance and toll call fees: It was mighty expensive to call friends and relatives across the country, and international calls were for the very wealthy.

Magazines, newspapers, and books. Most people enjoyed reading, and they read for fun. Everyone subscribed to two newspapers: a morning and an evening edition. And everybody took Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, Time, U.S. News & World Report, Cosmopolitan (not the oversexed women’s magazine but a fantastic general-interest monthly), Saturday Review, True (the Man’s Magazine), Argosy, Popular Mechanics, and National Geographic. Taken together, these probably cost as much as cable and cell phone service, combined.

Hot rods. Young men played with their cars. High-school kids took jobs so they could afford the gear to soup up their vehicles, and this often went on into young adulthood.

Automobiles that crapped out within three years of purchase. Planned obsolescence was a given. A car with 30,000 miles on it was a bucket of bolts. Every time you turned around, you were buying another car. And when Ralph Nader said the things were “unsafe at any speed,” he wasn’t kidding.

Kids. People married much younger than they do today, and they started having children shortly thereafter. Most families had three or four children. Raising a child was no cheaper then than it is today.

It’s probably a wash. If anything, life is better today than it was 50 years ago, in many ways. It’s certainly a lot more amazing!

By: Evan

Evan — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:02:02 +0000

Call me crazy, but whenever this discussion comes up between me and the wife I can only think of a quote from Billy Joel:

“The good old days weren’t always good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.”

I am 26 with my own home (albeit a condo!) 4 years of under grad done, 3 years of law school…but when the wife’s grandparents or my parents talk about “the good old days” they fail to mention that they lived with their parents/inlaws for YEARS trying to save up for that home which may only cost 2x or maybe they forgot to mention how many friends they lost in WWII – really was it worth it for the GI Bill….

I don’t know if this comment was anything more than a rant, but remember what I started with:

“The good old days weren’t always good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.”

By: Aryn

Aryn — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:21:51 +0000

Thanks for the link. I totally agree with you. My parents stretched to buy their house, but then my mom was able to leave the workforce for 12 years. I doubt I’ll be able to do that. Aside from the extra monthly gadget cost, life just seems more expensive now. College and housing costs have certainly gone through the roof since my parents were young. On the other hand, they pay less taxes than they once did.

By: Donna

Donna — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:10:58 +0000

It’s all about choice. You can choose to keep up with “the Jones” or not.
(The Jones are probably up their eyeballs in debt anyway!)

You have to decide what is important to you; is it a new car, big house, expensive “things”- or is it being a stay-home parent or working less hours to spend more time with your family, or investing money in a retirement fund?

Its about choice and sacrifice-it’s what our parents practiced while we were growing up. Today people think they don’t have choices because they have purchased really BIG financial distractions and have to work, work, work to pay for them.

By: Chad @ Sentient Money

Chad @ Sentient Money — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:03:40 +0000

It also depends on where you live. If you live in NYC, DC, San Fran, Southern Cal, etc. you are definitely not as well off as your parents. No way a few gadgets make up the over priced housing in those cities. Yes, it is still overpriced…more pain is on the way.

Also, poor to no health insurance and absolutely no pensions really places a heavy strain on workers. It’s not like everyone got big raises when these perks were taken away.

We might not be worse off, but we aren’t better off.