Are You Financially Better Off than Your Parents?

I don't know all the ins and outs of my dad's finances. He was a store manager for Pep Boys from the late 30s until the mid 70s. He never got the next big promotion to advance from store manager. He wanted to be a district manager. He once told the owner, Moe Strauss, (yes, Manny, Moe and Jack were real people) something about meaningless Christmas gifts (toasters, waffle irons) and asked for something useful like stock. Moe said that was an interesting plan. Then he walked away and mumbled that nobody tells him how to run his company.

I know we had what we needed, but not extras. My parents built a house in Santa Monica (2 bed, 1 bath) in 1947. We were there until 1962 when they starting building the Santa Monica Freeway (the 10) and took out our neighborhood. We had to really tighten our belt when they bought a new house in another part of town for $28,500 ion 1962. That was more than they wanted to spend.

We had no fancy vacations. Those were usually visiting my aunt in Oakland then going to Tahoe. My dad loved to play cards. His sister was married to a very successful dentist, so they had money. Even though I played drums throughout school, there was no way I could even ask for a drum set or lessons. Even though we lived at the beach, there was no way I could ask for a surfboard. I had to really suck it up to ask for a new baseball glove when I made the high school JV team in 1968 (I still have it). I had been using the same glove since I was 11 in Little League.

Dad bought a couple of shithole apartments in Santa Monica and Venice and made a couple of dollars from them. He did all the maintenance, despite working 6 days a week at Pep Boys. He had some stock. After he retired in 1975, he worked the CD game. That was his social outlet, check the newspaper for bank ads about CDs then invest when he found ones he liked.

I will never forget the day in 2013, just after he died, when my brother and I went around town to identify his investments, alert the bank that my dad had died. It was heart-tugging. He would visit banks and chat with the tellers. They were his friends. One guy was being particularly slow doing the paperwork, and when I looked at him, tears were rolling down his cheeks. Dad had CDs in about a half-dozen banks. We visited the lawyer who drew up his living trust, then drove around. When we were done, we had uncovered more than $1 million in investments. It was a true treasure hunt. A month later, the $28,500 house sold for $1.1 million. Dad lived there for 51 years.

To answer the question, I believe that investment possibilities that were available and safe for those of my dad's era are not available to us today. I am happy and comfy, thanks to my inheritance. My house, worth probably in the $1.3-$1.5 range, is paid for. Our cars are paid for. No debt. I am lucky, because of my dad.

 

This seems to be the most consistent difference between when people my age (and older) grew up and when people my age (and younger) became parents. That, and our parents by and large didn't benefit as much from inheritance.

Who with kids HASN'T taken them on some fabulous vacations? According to my ultra-scientific Facebook feed, nobody.

 

I know the question in the thread title is if you’re financially better off than your parents, but as I’ve read through these responses and thought about them, I’ve been reflecting on the one way in which my sister and I are way better off than our parents, because of our parents.

Both of my parents grew up in violent, abusive households. So violent and abusive that they believed their only way out was to get married.

I’m the result of one of the few teenage pregnancies that actually was somewhat carefully planned. My parents got married on New Year’s Day 1968, and my 16-year-old mother had me seven months later, one week to the day after my father turned 18. My sister was born three years later, meaning my mom had two children when she was 19.

My dad got the factory job a couple of years later and held on to that for 12 years, getting laid off right about the time he and my mom split up for good. They were married 14 years, and under the circumstances, that’s about 13 years longer than most people would expect.

Our financial situation was very up and down, owing to the fact that my dad was either sitting out a furlough or on strike pretty much every other year. My mom started working full-time when I was 6. There was about a two-hour overlap after school between her work shift and his, so my sister and I were full-on latchkey kids from the time I was 8.

In my neighborhood, the measure of financial success was 1/do you have a car? 2/do you have a phone? 3/are your utilities always on? For us, the answer was always yes to those questions. For most of my neighbors, that was not the case. There wasn’t much else, but we always had transportation, communication and electricity.

But here’s the more important thing my parents did: They made a very conscious decision to stop the cycle of abuse from the previous generations of their families.

For whatever we didn’t have growing up, my sister and I were never scared of our parents. We never knew the pain and fear they knew as children. My parents were children themselves when we were born, so they really didn’t know what they were doing, but they knew what not to do and they put effort every day into making sure we grew up with the peace that they never knew. They broke the cycle.

I’ll be eternally grateful for that.

 

Man, Florida is really fucked up.

 

Wow. That is a fantastic post, FNF. Really, wonderful.

 

I’ve been thinking about this and reading all the thoughtful posts since it went up. What a great question/conversation.

My snap judgement was yes, I’m better off. But it’s not as clear as I first thought.

My parents were both college grads. Dad was ROTC, then 11 years in the Air Force. Mom was a military wife for that time. Three kids all born during his service time, me the youngest.

When dad got out, our family had very little money. Dad did sales for a bit. Then settled in for most of the rest of his career as the distribution manager of a warehouse. He liked it. Could dress casual. They left him alone.

Mom was a substitute teacher then went to work full time in a government job when I was 10 or so. Put in 20 years.

I never did without (I don’t recall the real money crunch, I was too little, but my sisters do). But we weren’t well off. No big family vacations and stuff like that.

But they put all three of us through college. None of us had much debt when we graduated. Which now I can’t get over how important that is compared to the debt most college kids have now.

They retired at 65. There was some inheritance money from both sides of the family. They travelled, mostly trips to see me and my sisters.

Dad died in 2017. Mom has health issues, but has enough to live comfortably in the senior community she enjoys. One of the places of that has independent living but has higher levels of care as needed. It’s not cheap, but money isn’t an issue. Which is such a comfort.

I’ve climbed the ladder in the biz, from making $18,000 my first year out of college at a tiny outlet, to the last 18 years making good money in a major market. My wife has a great job, works at a high level and makes a lot more than me. After accumulating some significant debt early in our marriage, for a variety of reasons, we’re just about in the black.

Of course, while we make a good living, the cost of living pretty nuts. So that’s a big factor in bottom line “better off.”

So right now, I guess the answer is “not yet.” If things go well the next few years, or at least status quo, I’ll say “yes, I’m better off than my parents.”

The older I get, the more in awe of my parents I am. They were always supportive. Kind.

And provided three kids with the opportunity to get a great education and pursue our dreams.

So, in that sense, I will be better off because of everything my parents did for me. And their pride in the success of us three kids is a level of success that’s hard to define.

 

I’ve always thought the greatest gift my parents gave me was the opportunity for a higher education.

Side note, I was originally an engineer for 3 yrs in college and parents almost disowned me when I said I was going to law school, they thought I was bypassing a great solid engineering career. They got over it and helped me through law school and were ultimately fine with it by graduation.

 

That's the best thing. Knowing (or at the very least, believing) you made them proud.

 

One thing that scares the shit out of me on a regular basis is the thought of my kids being worse off than me.

I’m not even talking financially. I have a history of substance abuse, and my kids, especially my son, display the same self-destructive tendencies way too much for my liking.

 

One key is having parents who passed wealth down to you.

That said, my wife’s dad is essentially a parasite when it comes to family money. It’s a reason why he will die alone in Florida at his second home.

Thankfully, we protected ourselves as much as possible from him and her mom helped ensure some wealth would make it to her.

 

My dad was a believer in the "spend it since you can't take it with you" philosophy. I'm not opposed to this. He also made nowhere near enough to reasonably live that kind of lifestyle.

The best was when he died 24 hours before his life insurance policy kicked in. He'd only gotten it a year before, when he was already pretty sick. At least I got a lot of miles paying for the funeral.

 

It's a source of pride for me that I am the only one in my immediate family to attend college.
My dad (as you might have read above) graduated from high school near downtown L.A., went to the Pep Boys office (he loved cars) and got a job at their store in his neighborhood. About four years later, they opened a new store in Santa Monica and they sent him there to be the manager.
Mom grew up on a farm in Idaho, and hated it. After high school, she was allowed to move in with an aunt in Santa Monica. She went to a business school and learned to be a secretary. She did a little of that before meeting dad, getting married and becoming a housewife.
My brother was a thug in high school. After one year at junior college, his lack of academic awareness/ambition was obvious. He enlisted in the Navy, re-upped and did eight years before a vision problem forced him out with a medical discharge. He probably would have been a career sailor if his vision hadn't failed. He followed that with 30 years in the USPS.
Me, junior college then major college for a BA degree. Newspaper guy for 44 years in all. I got a profession I liked and was good at, but not monetarily lucrative. Not complaining.