A lot of baby boomers took their retirement up front.
Because hope and change wasn’t as advertised?
My big problem is the bleak future I see for my kids and grandkids, but I’ll not be killing myself over it.
For the most part Americans have not accepted the fact that we are running on borrowed fumes. We have squandered most of the advantages we had as a country as the boomers squandered their savings. Then we have trouble facing the fact that nobody gives a damn. No accomplishments past, present or future means they (we) get no respect. I say this as the last boomer (born 1963). There will be nothing left when I get old except for what I am able to create myself.
Older white males are being rendered irrelevant.
FR helps me fight the gloom.
More gobbledygook from those who taught boomers to believe the gobbledygook. In before the blame-the-boomers-crowd.
From personal and professional experience:
1. File for Chapter 7 BK.
2. Become a Fuhrmaniac ("Eat to Live", by Joel Fuhrman).
The first recommendation is based on recent work experience dealing with troubled borrowers. Considering his situation, he's never going to get credit again (his credit score is likely in the low 500s at best), so get that credit albatross off his neck. It will stop those calls from debt collectors.
I've been following Fuhrman's plan 85-90%, and I'm off metformin, looking forward to getting off Crestor (it's a goal). Another 15 lbs, and I'll be at my weight when I graduated from Jump School 37 years ago.
I'm not passing judgment on moral hazard. I've seen enough moral hazard demonstrated by Wall Street to give this guy a break.
Our government is a very oppressive invasive system. Thy have stolen the futures of both the old and young. There is $13.4T that has been stolen form Social Security dating back to JFK. The federal retirement system is unfunded so add this liability to the debt. The whole debt of our den of thieves government is somewhere between $100T and $200T. The government has crashed real estate values. The Fed has inflated the dollar to somewhere around 10% of its value.
Where is the good news?
Life without God is an empty existence of chasing smoke and ash. Everything the world tells you is a lie.
Pray for America to Wake Up
There rose up a generation that knew not the LORD.
Baby Boomers are the worst generation this country has ever seen. Think about every bad thing in this country, and it was promoted, normalized, and propagated by the Baby Boomers. Not all of them of course. Just a sizable percentage.
I’m a retired baby boomer, a widow, and was a hippie back in the day. But unlike Frank Turkaly I have no credit card or mortgage debt, do not take any prescription medications, and am not estranged from my family. Rather my grandchildren live within walking distance and are a part of my everyday life. I’m involved with their activities and have my own interests too. I wouldn’t change a thing. Offing myself is not in the picture.
Unless you are employed by the government the higher salary you have earned from decades of hard work makes you a target for every cost cutter in the company. Your knowledge and experience is devalued and every special interest group with a quota demand wants you out. The politically correct rules require you to walk on eggshells, choose your words carefully and be sensitive to everyone around you but anyone can ridicule and attack you with impunity. You are typically ordered to clean up the messes made by young, politically correct careerists who are given authority without responsibility, screw things up and then move on to something else.
Wives and children in this era of self-absorbtion are typically unappreciative of all that you have done for them. You are expected to be a bottomless pit of money and fix things when there is a problem. Other than that none of them care about you.
Social Security is insolvent and may or may not be around when you need it. Probably not.
All you have to look forward to is doing things for other people who will never do anything for you.
I'm thinking maybe 'cause this is the least-churched genration in American history.
Most of their parents are divorced, sex is cheap, and life itself is no longer sacred (numbing affect of legal infanticide).
Not only Boomers but we all face a bunch of carpola in this life. Greed both in Govt. and some in corporate have helped dent or wreck savings for many yet personal responsibility is the biggest issue in this matter. Suicide is not the answer and having a long term focus beyond this troubled life to the one eternal puts it all in perspective. Easy for me to say right? and dare I speak for all situations.
Sometime ago Forbes ran feature about why do we feel so bad when we have it so good. In one of her better articles Peggy Noonan got it right. One of her statements (paraphrasing) was that the Baby Boomers are the first generation in the history of mankind that believed it could create a Utopian society (I recall that she pointed out that other generations understood that his was reserved for the afterlife). Second, she pointed out that the boomers were realizing that they are increasingly responsible for wrongs of society.
You can never draw too much from studies like this because circumstances change so much from period to period and also you don’t know how good information from the past was. First, people died earlier in the past so there were less old people to be available to kill themselves. Second, people may have killed themselves all the time in the past but it was socially taboo and families probably covered it up, perhaps even with the help of police and coroners.
If there is a reason, though, my guess would be that each generation has become more self-centered, starting with the Boomers. And if life doesn’t work out for self-centered people, they are more likely to kill themselves rather than deal with adversity.
To hell with baby boomers... At least the good majority of them. Baby boomers are the worst generation. Selfish, freeloading, and all about themselves. Enjoy your cushy pensions and social security. Because SS will be gone for me and my family, pensions don’t even exist anymore.
They sacrificed my future and my children’s future. This political and family structure meltdown was on there watch!
“We know that what men want to do is work — that’s a very strong ethic for them,” . . . The idea that so many of us in this country have been brought up with — that you work hard, you get your house, you get your American dream, everything is rosy — it hasn’t worked out. A lot of these boomers aren’t going to earn as much money as their parents did. They aren’t going to be as secure as their parents were. And that’s quite troubling for the boomers.”
They voted for liberalism and are now getting what they voted for. The boomer generation largely turned away from God and country and they are finding that without God and country there's not a whole lot left. It's hard for me to feel pity for a group that did this to themselves.