Are You Financially Better Off than Your Parents?

I am curious about this. I am 65. I am one of four children who grew up in a middle class suburb outside Denver.

I am more affluent than my parents were. I was a accountant and had a steady income. My Dad was a salesman and while his good years were probably better than my best years he had some real down years.

But of my three brothers and sisters I nmay be the only one who can say that. I think one sister is financially better off but that is because she continuously worked even when her children were small. She maes and makes a lot more than my mother did, who did not work until I was 12 and did not work full-time until I graduated from high school. The answer for the other two the answer is no.

But if I had asked my parents or grandparents the same question the answer would of been that of course they had better lifestyles than the previous generation.

 

Yes. Because I/we didn't have kids, and Tribune Co. treated me wonderfully for the 26 years I was there.

I'm currently making the salary Tribune Company was paying me in 1989 (and 50% of what they were paying me in 2011). My wife makes what Tribune was paying me in 1986. If we actually had to pay rent or mortgage today we'd be hard-pressed to save a nickel.

My oldest brother is a dermatologist. Yeah, he's doing much better than our dad ever did.

 

When I posted this I realized that the readers of this forum are an unrepresentative sample because of the hits journalists have taken financially due to the changes in the industry.

My grandfather worked for the Minneapolis morning paper from 1945 until 1953. His final job was as an assistant Sunday copy editor. I am pretty sure that editorial staff in the 70'sat the Star-Trib were financially better off than the staff in my grandfather's era.

The Star-Trib and the Boston Globe are the two most successful big city metros in today's economic environment. But I wonder, how much better the Star-Trib staff today is doing than the staff in 1945.

 

FUR CHILDREN LIVES MATTER TOO

 

Interesting question and thanks for asking it.

Only have a single mother. She’s retired (almost 80) and has a lot more cash on hand than I do and will for a while. Also has $360k in free and clear real estate value. But she lives off $2800 a month in SS and pension. And she’s good with it. Busted her ass for 30 years as a single parent and never made more than 43k a year.

I don’t have the cash or the equity but I’ve been fortunate to build a healthy 401k that I’m on track for low 7 figures, as long as I put away 18-20k a year and don’t draw from it until age 71.

As an only child, all of the plinko chips will flow to me anyway

 

My dad was a doctor, so little chance I’ll ever be better off than they were when I was a kid.

But he passed away in 2016, and my mom has been living off his retirement and disability since, and I’m much better off than she is now. She sold their house and now rents a little Bumblefuck townhouse. I do most of her finances and unless she’s hiding something, I’m not sure how she lives the way she does on so little.

When I was a journalist, I wasn’t even better off than my past self who delivered pizza a decade earlier.

 

I think the best way to look at it is where your parents were when they where at your current stage of life.
In that case, I'd say it's pretty close to dead even.
My current net worth is more than my parents if you look at pure numbers, but I am at my highest earning years, and they've been living off retirement and social security for 20+ years.
If I'd stayed in the newspaper business, I'd be far worse off than they were or even are.

 

Our family has, finally, realized the importance of this -- choosing a good career field to begin with, and we have been trying hard to drum the idea into the heads of the younger generation of our family.

A lot of us were stupid in terms of the fields we chose, financially speaking, anyway. We did what we wanted at the time, and chose our fields of work based on that. But we've gained some perspective in all the years that have passed, and now, oftentimes, we lament not choosing more wisely, again, financially speaking, at least.

It really is so important, when you're young and trying to figure out what you want to do, to look and think ahead. It doesn't mean you can't still end up in a field you'd like, but you need to not say that pay/money don't matter.

 

I have no great regrets. I've spent 40 years doing what I like to do --- and what I'm pretty good at. I've never missed a paycheck (actually had two of them for four months in 2021), am debt free and have a really nice 401(k). [/DocHolliday]

And for all the financial perils in our business, Tribune paid me really well for more than a quarter-century. And Sam Zell grossly overpaid for my shares when he took the company private.

 

I’m not. Probably would be level with their pace if I had stayed married. But I don’t hate the person I am now and don’t take that anger out on people around me. That’s worth a house and intact 401k. I’d make the trade again.

 

Interesting question ... and for both my parents and my wife and I, the timing of moves/selling a house impacts the answer.

I certainly have made less in journalism than my Dad made as a purchasing manager in the hospital industry, and maybe less than my Mom made as a nurse (she worked part-time jobs when my sister and I were little in the 1970s, then earned a nursing degree in the mid-1980s). My wife switched from teaching in elementary school to physical therapy, a move which improved both her mental and financial situation. I'm still in newspapers, and while I've never made more than the mid-40s per year (and most years was well below that), I really have no complaints about the pay. I knew that going into the business in 1994.

Now, the houses. My parents visited the Phoenix area in the late 1980s, fell in love with it, and decided to move there before they retired (in their early 40s, actually). That time period, the early 1990s, coincided with a recession, and housing hit a temporary slump in the Phoenix area when they moved. So they got a good price on their home, have since paid it off, and will be able to eventually sell it for more than twice what they paid.

My wife and I lucked into the same situation by moving to North Idaho in summer of 2009, at the depth of the recession. Many houses were owned by people who were "underwater" on their loans, and we got a steal. When we sold it in 2021, the housing market was red hot, interest rates were low, and we sold it for more than double what we paid.

So regardless of salaries, I consider our family very fortunate.