[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

In all fairness, the baby boomers made out like bandits.

Typically emerging from university debt free into a healthy economy with high paying jobs, able to buy inexpensive good housing at low fixed mortgage rates. Night and day from what the current generation faces.

Today, university graduates are anywhere from $30-60k in debt, entering a weak economy with salaries stuck in neutral during years of inflation, while the jobs themselves demand much higher productivity. Housing is now ten times more expensive for comparable quality, with much harsher mortgage rates. Marriage and family are pushed back by a decade or more, with no hope of ever having an American dream like their parents.

How to get around this mess is that baby boomer parents often have a mortgage free home, and by living with them, debts can be paid off somewhat faster, while expenses are kept down. But even so, there is no job security, and savings might be wiped out with layoffs.

For increasing numbers, though, even with parental help, there is no future that is anywhere near as prosperous, no matter how hard they work. Those days are over for 10-20 or even 30 years, even if the federal government finally gets under control in 2012.

[brytlea]

I don’t know anyone without a mortgage. And yeah, I’m a boomer... (barely, I’m that unfortuante tail end of the baby boom)

[oh8eleven]

In all fairness, the baby boomers made out like bandits. emerging ... into a healthy economy
Oh yeah, real healthy except for that little "flare-up" in Vietnam, 20% inflation, 25% mortgage rates, gasoline embargoes, LBJ's taxes skyrocketing to support VN and the GREAT Society forcing our wives to go to work, Jimmy Carter's idiocy and DISCO!
Yeah, we really made out.

[decimon]

Well, I was born in 1945 and nothing you wrote applies to me. Sure never saw a high-paying job or cheap housing.

[Bigg Red]

Really? This Boomer put herself through college. It took me 5 years because I had to take off for two nonsuccessive semesters to work and save up money again. And I had a loan to pay after graduation.

High paying job? No.

Inexpensive housing? Well, yeah. My first apartment was pretty cheap, but it was also in a bad neighborhood, a stone's throw away from a prison. (My mother was not happy about that.)

Young people today don't believe in starting out at the bottom. It's got to be a house right away and brand new furniture. In my day, you started out with other people's give away furniture. Try getting your kids to take your cast-offs these day.

[willyd]

are you nuts?

the baby boomers were in their late 20’s to 30’s in the early to late 70’s.

Mortgage rates got up to 17%. 20% downpayment required.

Gas was $5 a gallon during the embargo...that is like $20 a gallon today.

That is worse than today.