Are You Financially Better Off than Your Parents?

Might be equal. Might be a little better off. We never did too terribly growing up, and my parents benefited greatly from living in their purchased house for more than 40 years. My mom sold that after my dad died and moved into a smaller place in a retirement community and bought her current one outright, and she has a good amount of savings and a few bonds that my dad got from my grandma. She's worth quite a bit at the moment, although not tons of it liquid, and she doesn't even realize it.

But if you look at similar points in life, my family is probably better off. Good deal of real estate equity, a decent enough retirement, and some savings. So if it doesn't all go to crap then should be better off.

My sister on the other hand didn't fare as well. I just probably got lucky.

 

We grew up in an 850sf house for five people. My dad typically sold two weeks of his vacation every year (does anyone even allow employees to do that anymore?).

That's the kind of financial stress I assume he must have felt with three growing boys, even though he never really let on. We could have used a second income, but my mother was determined that we not be latch key kids and to keep a clean and organized house with regular meal times. So she only went to work part time when her youngest (me) was in college.

 

I should say that despite not being in the greatest financial position -- probably not as well off financially as my parents -- I don't really have any regrets about having gone into journalism, either. Not as a career.

But I am certainly cognizant of the fact that I never made much, and realize now how much better off I probably could've/would've been, financially speaking, had I followed some other possible directions I'd once considered -- nursing or radiology/X-ray technician.

As I said, I don't think I'm better off than my parents. They supported a large family on my dad's modest income, but managed to do well for themselves with each home they sold and were able to finance the building of the lake house to which they retired at Lake Nacimiento, where they spent, probably, the most contented dozen years of their lives before my grandmother's needs became prevalent and they moved south again, buying outright their last home, in which my mom still lives.

I am unlikely to ever be able to buy any more property or build any custom home -- certainly not in California. But, I am good with my money and I've manage to do other things. I travel quite a bit, and have built up a genuine art collection along the way. And, despite my always humble income, I managed to pay off my small condo several years ago, and I've been able to build up some savings thanks primarily to Walmart's good 401k. So, I do have some money and some equity.

Most of the time, I feel fortunate and blessed. But I can't help feeling like I kind of just have to hope that whatever I have will be enough to carry me through whatever the future holds.

 

My grandfather had three children go into journalism. One got hired by a trade in New York City, after five years if trying into journalism and made a good living. The other two never got out out of small town dailies and did not make a good living though they did love the job.

Financially I wanted to do as wella s my dad. I knew a reporter at the Denver Post and found out that my Dad, who was in a relatively prosperous point in his career, was making top of the scale at the Denver Post.

I was one of four stringers covering high school sports for a local weekly. I realized that I was not the best writer of the four and maybe the worst. If I was not the best sports stringer on a suburban weekly there was no way in hell I would never make it to a Denver paper and I did not want to earn less money. I determined that a mediocre accountant could make a lot more money than a mediocre journalist working at a small [paper. So I got an accounting degree.

So I went into accounting. Given what happened to newspapers I am very glad I did. Not so much for extra money but because I never lost a job and never feared a layoff.

 

Definitely.

Grew up as the only child of two mentally/physically challenged adults (who never should’ve had a kid, but that’s another story) and I’ve managed to graduate college, keep myself employed for the past 20 years and not have too much debt ($7k in student loans, car loan; plus 28 years on the mortgage). Student loans should be gone in a couple years.

My girlfriend was 39 when we met. I was 40. We’re way behind in life. We don’t have kids (yet). We hope to, somehow, some day. I’m somewhat insistent on making sure that any kid we take in has more opportunities than I did. She came from a relatively stable two-parent household and had a very good basic education. She realizes how important that was to where she is now.

I feel like if you’re having kids you owe it to put them in a position where they can, somewhat easily, be able to land where you were. Many variables there, of course, but just a general guideline.

 

Hard to say. In terms of take-home pay, yes. I'm making the best money I've ever made in newspapers while my mom bounces from one clerical job to another and my dad has worked the same job at the same small community college since 1988. Even if we change the comparison to similar stages in life, my parents were public school teachers paying for three kids and all the expenses that come with that while I have no spouse, kids, car, or major drain on my income beyond student loans and rent.

It's less clear in terms of long-term financial position. My mom declared bankruptcy several years ago, but she owns her house and should be able to sell at a profit and downsize when she retires in the next few years. My dad also owns his house (bought off his parents) and has been paying into his college's 401(k) for 30 years or so. Meanwhile, barring a bizarre turn of events, I'm going to be a perma-renter. I've also had to rebuild my savings several times -- getting stiffed over five figures of severance pay, losing all my retirement savings after trusting the wrong people, and becoming a full-time student in my late 30s -- and only been able to start saving for retirement since late 2020.

We haven't had this explicit conversation so I can't say for sure, but it seems like if my parents continue working beyond the next two or three years it'll be because they choose to do so. I feel increasingly doubtful I'll be able to say the same at their age. Part of that is probably down to the uncertainty around the industry as well as poor numeracy and general pessimism on my part. Even so, being better off than my parents feels like an ephemeral thing that could go the other way at a moment's notice.

 

No and yes.

I’ll be lucky to get close to my dad without an inheritance. He had a great tech job and retired with all the perks. Meanwhile between journalism and teaching, I’m just not going to match that. Thank to teaching and my wife’s job, we’re going to be just fine financially.

Compared to my mom, however, I’ll be much better. Mom worked for the post office and makes a living, but I’ll be better off.

It’s also interesting as a millennial child of boomers, I have several things going against me when trying to match my dad: student loan debt, housing costs, pension uncertainty, and energy costs. My dad would have done well even if he was my age today, but it was easier in the 70s/80s to get started and he had a good base by the 90s.

But it is TBD. My wife (who financially will be much better off than her working-class parents) will likely be lapping me in terms of pay in the next 10 years.

 

How much of that is due to your spouse entering the work force and participating in the work force and having smaller families? In my family I have held a steady job and my wife never worked full time until my oldest son graduated from high school.

But my sisters never left really left the work force. My sense of it is that males are not generally doing as well as their fathers. I think a great deal of that is due to the loss of a paternalistic corporate culture. Now many corporations, not just publishers, think nothing of firing employees. Back in the 70's and 80's there were lots of memories of the Great Depression and there was a lot of reluctance to downsize, especially if the company was still profitable.

Anda s many whoa re reading this sadly know, a loss of a job is frequently destructive to the finances of a person and their family.

 

I think we're in much the same position as TrooperBari. We certainly make more money than my dad did at his prime, first as an early-era cable TV executive and later as head of electronics at a small college. My mom worked as a homemaker, and my dad's mom lived with us throughout my childhood through high school.

But as far as being comfortable for the long run, my father's military service (he topped out as an Air Force liutenant colonel) meant that he never had to worry down the line. We had a nice house; upon retirement and my grandmother's transition to long-term care, they moved from Pennsylvania to Florida because they wanted to, and they lived well there.

As for my wife and I, we got a good payout from my newspaper pension prior to its being frozen. But we are pretty dependent past that on the whims of our 401(k).

We're both working at 64/65, for considerably less than we made during our prime earning years. My wife plans to retire next year, but I might work to 70 in order to have the SS maximum upon retirement, plus I like working where I am now.

What we get out of all this -- we'll probably end up about as well off as my parents, but we will have had to work considerably harder on the back end to get there.

 

Same here. Generational wealth for the win!

But I am certainly not in a better financial position than my parents were, either at my age or now.

They were both civil servants who owned a home and two cars at this point. I may not have thought we were rich, since I grew up in an apartment while several of my friends lived in houses -- but my parents owned that apartment too, before selling it to move to the house where my mom still lives.

Thanks to pensions and investments, my mom makes more money as a retiree than when she was working. I tease her about being The One Percent. She isn't, but she's certainly more than comfortable.

Meanwhile, I qualify for a moderate-income, rent-controlled apartment... which is how I'm able to live in the increasingly expensive metro area I happen to love. Most of my friends own homes and have partners and children. Am I better off than they are? That's very much a matter of perspective.

 

Why you talkin' shit, dude? lol

We got to be by ourselves, all the time, unattended, unthoughtabout, unreared, uncared for ...

... and had unbridled love for our real parents, MTV.

 

Oh yeah, Gen X … totally forgot about you guys