Are You Financially Better Off than Your Parents?

All I had in a three-network universe at 4 p.m. in 1969 were Dark Shadows and The Fintstones.

 

The crummy part for the Gen X’ers is that there aren’t enough of us. We’re totally going to get screwed on Social Security and retirement age as there aren’t enough of us to vote our interests.

Upside is that, as the Boomers depart the workplace, we’re the last ones in the workplace who won’t lose productivity because of TikTok videos.

 

Both my parents worked and had a smaller family than I have -- two kids to four. I have done just as well if not better than my dad. Much of their financial success is attributed to owning their house for 40 years, and there is plenty out there about how much that has helped their generation -- being able to much better afford real estate, even on lower level jobs, at the time. They also benefited from my grandmother buying my dad savings bonds decades ago. A little thing that has paid off greatly for them.

My wife makes more than me so it definitely plays a role in our standing, but again, my mom always worked too. My sister has a stable job and is single without kids and sometimes still struggles, so luck of the draw I guess?

 

I’m almost 50 but I want to work until 73 — my mom couldn’t wait until she hit 66 (with 20 years of working for a state government) as that gave full pension. She hated that job but she also got married at 19 and divorced at 37 (with me, an 8 year old at the time). Just the two of us. She had nothing to start over with and we had very little growing up.

BUT she always worked to get me in a better position than she was in. Right now, I definitely am in a good place for income but my costs are about to go to way up - two in college for one year as I strive to keep them from any college debt.

My ideal plan is to keep building up my 401k ($2.5M if I keep putting in my current level for the next 25 years), my mom’s property values will be about 500k in a decade. Social security, if I can stay at this income level, will get me 4400 a month.

If I can not spend $1.5M of the retirement, I want to put that into a trust for my eventual grandkids but under one stipulation. No one finds out about what I’ve set aside for them until they’re 50. That way they won’t blow it on stupid shit.

 

Good question. Truth is, I don’t know. I think we’re a mixed bag.

My mother was the child of immigrants. Her father died during her senior year of high school and she went right to work right after graduation. My grandmother stayed at home, and I think she lived off Social Security and maybe a pension?

My father’s parents also were immigrants, albeit more successful. My grandfather was a psychiatrist and my grandmother was, I think, an editor of some sort (non-newspapers.) My Dad doesn’t really talk much about his childhood. My grandparents split up and both of them died in their fifties.

My parents worked a lot of different jobs (retail, car sales, home health care, janitorial, bus driver) through the years. From what I understand, my paternal grandparents left them some money that they were able to use to buy our house and keep the lights on through the years. We weren’t rich; we weren’t poor, but I’m sure sometimes they had to count their nickels.

They’re doing OK now financially. Their house is paid off. They can afford some trips. They have some money saved, and my father has a small pension with the bus company and they both get Social Security.

As for me, I’d say currently, I’m probably at the same financial level that they were when I was their age; but I’ve had an easier time with it. Unlike my parents, I haven’t had to juggle two or more jobs, or be out of the house working and commuting for 14-15 hours a day.

Our oldest, on the other hand, when he wraps up college and if he does well on the internship that he already has lined up and gets a job offer in an in-demand industry, may end up making more money fresh out of college than what I’m currently making now after 30 years in and out of journalism.

 

We have a 60-something meteorologist. Our social media people wanted him to develop a presence on TikTok. His response was “Yeah, that’s what I need - a bunch of comments calling me a ‘creeper.’”

 

That last part. My son is an engineer. In 16 months when he graduates, he will be earning at age 22 what I worked 23 years in journalism to finally make.

And I couldn’t be happier.

 

We do fine. We have a nice house with a pool in a nice neighborhood. We’re on track to be in good shape for retirement.

At the same time, my dad was a high school teacher for years. He retired almost 20 years ago… and I’m pretty sure his annual salary from his pension is still more than I make. By the time she retired my mom was making more than him and invested very well. My folks paid $27k for a house that will probably sell for seven figures.

(My wife and I are both only children, which will benefit us greatly.)

 

I was a terrible latchkey kid at first. My instructions were to get off the school bus, lock the door behind me and not let anyone in until mom or dad got home. But that felt dreadfully boring to a second grader, plus with my brother still at day care the time felt too valuable to squander. So I kept inviting Joey, the kid next door, to come over and play Battleship. After a couple of months of lectures, my Aunt Marsha got an apartment downstairs at our complex and so I was sent there after school for a couple of years instead.

 

I have less than zero intent to work full time past 62 and certainly not into my 70s because quite honestly, I don't expect to live that long. I hope I do, and I don't have any health issues, but fate and I have always had a love/hate relationship.
Now the one thing I learned from the COVID lockdown, is I no longer have interest in going cold turkey in quitting work. I have to have a routine. I hope to retire then work 2-3 days a week on one of three fishing piers at my retirement spot... chatting with people, selling bait, drinks and t-shirts, sweeping the floor, taking out the trash, etc. If I make enough doing that to pay my taxes and insurance, bonus.

 

I think I'd like to ease into retirement by working 15 hours or so a week at a tennis pro shop or store stringing rackets and whatnot.

And I expect to live into my 90s. Father and two grandmothers made it to 92, 94 and 90, so the genes are there.

 

Such an interesting question without a defining timeline. I've never been rich as an adult, but I have been poor as a child. My Mom was never poor as a child yet was poor as a young mother. Divorced at 34 with 5 kids, food stamps, a car without rear window glass, we had a phone line. The neighbors gave out our phone number as theirs because they had none. We all just ran across the porch "phone for you". This is 1965-1968. However, she scraped and scrapped and generated a comfortable living for herself as an adult, bringing us along, picking up pieces from a life she knew existed.

She had the privilege of previously living outside of that poverty. Of knowing what exists beyond, and having been educated in that world. Her father, a dentist in Wilmington, NC, refused to help her unless she moved back to the south from, I suppose, our traitorous north. She didn't obviously, or I'd have no story here.

I'm not sure a young mother today given the same circumstance could do it. Not for try, but economy. Therefore, my mother did better than I.