Quote:
Originally Posted by Sliver
I think a huge thing for us GenXers and Millennials is we need to be helping the Zers and the generations coming up behind us more than the Boomers helped us.
I look at any wealth my wife and I may accumulate as familial wealth versus just money for us to blow on cruises and BS travel to ride elephants in Thailand because yOu CaN't TaKe It WiTh YoU.
In my view, setting money aside to ensure my kids (and eventual grandkids) will be able to get their degrees without any debt (or as little as possible) and have money for use as a down payment on a home is waaaay more important than selfish pursuits.
Life is way too hard and way too unpredictable. I think buying security for the generations coming behind you if you have excess is way more important than throwing on your cargo shorts and sandals and walking around another beach with a bunch of other grey-hairs.
I don't like the way boomers did their retirements. They really did seem to have a selfish ideology. I know they get picked on a lot these days, but they've always been like this and it has always surprised me how the ones I know seemed to hoard and blow their wealth on themselves instead of setting up the younger people coming up behind them. We're breaking that chain in my family.
As my wife and I get older, too, we want to be sure to exit the work world at an appropriate time to make room for the people coming up. How many old boomers do you know just sort of hobby-working even though they don't need the money because they're too uninteresting to develop hobbies? I know several who are just sort of #### blocking younger people from moving up in their careers because they won't make room (granted that's starting to change pretty quickly as they start to sail off into the sunset). I don't think the parents of the boomers acted like that. Really odd how that generation's worldview developed to the extent I think you can make some accurate generalizations.
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Your altruism won't extend beyond your kids, though, and rightfully so. All wealth is familial wealth, typically, which only entrenches the divide between the haves and have-nots. Your kids are lucky. I'm lucky because I'm an only child and my parents are in a very comfortable financial position, but many people weren't born on third base.