Fewer than half of all boomers have saved enough for retirement. They'll be forced to rely on their millennial and Gen Z kids.
The great baby-boomer retirement wave is upon us. According to Census Bureau data, 44% of boomers are at retirement age and millions more are soon to join them. By 2030, the largest generation to enter retirement will all be older than 65.
The general assumption is that boomers will have a comfortable retirement. Coasting on their accumulated wealth from three decades as America's dominant economic force, boomers will sail off into their golden years to sip on margaritas on cruises and luxuriate in their well-appointed homes. After all, Federal Reserve data shows that while the 56 million Americans over 65 make up just 17% of the population, they hold more than half of America's wealth — $96.4 trillion.
But there's a flaw in the narrative of a sunny boomer retirement: A lot of older Americans are not set up for their later years. Yes, many members of the generation are loaded, but many more are not. Like every age cohort, there's significant wealth inequality among retirees — and it's gotten worse in the past decade. Despite holding more than half of the nation's wealth, many boomers don't have enough money to cover the costs of long-term care, and 43% of 55- to 64-year-olds had no retirement savings at all in 2022. That year, 30% of people over 65 were economically insecure, meaning they made less than $27,180 for a single person. And since younger boomers are less financially prepared for retirement than their older boomer siblings, the problem is bound to get worse.
As boomers continue to age out of the workforce, it's going to put strain on the healthcare system, government programs, and the economy. That means more young people are going to be financially responsible for their parents, more government spending will be allocated to older folks, and economic growth could slow.
Look, there was a generation between Boomers and Gen X and the fact that they're now just lumped in together is ridiculous. They're called Boomers because they were born during the baby boom immediately following WWII. That boom did not last 20 years. Actual Boomers have been retired for a decade.
Maybe boomers will finally stop blocking the healthcare reforms that they will desperately need. If they can turn off TV news long enough to see their own problems instead of the made-up problems they are trained to focus on.
My father has Parkinson’s and my mother, who was his primary caregiver, passed a few months ago. They went from being comfortable with their finances and having a small, but nice home, to my father now going into a nursing home and likely lose everything he owns because of how expensive nursing care is. We are looking at $7k a month with zero assistance from Medicare and he has enough money that he doesn’t qualify for Medicaid but will burn through all his assets in just a short time. It’s ridiculous that people work hard and save and it’s all gone in a flash.
Those lazy boomers just don't wanna work any more, my generation (millenial) has at least two jobs and shares a apt with 6 other people. Or why don't they just learn to code?
After all, Federal Reserve data shows that while the 56 million Americans over 65 make up just 17% of the population, they hold more than half of America’s wealth — $96.4 trillion.
How is that wealth distributed? What do you wanna bet it's REALLY skewed towards rich people hoarding like old dragons? What's the median, not average, wealth of the boomers?
Tax the wealthy more, they won't lose any quality of life whatsoever, and the money they extorted from their fellow humans gets paid back to support them in their old age.
This isn't actually a hard problem to solve if you take greed out of the equation.
In my country, 2030 is foreseen as the year the public retirement plan administration system will collapse due to this.
Dismantling public healthcare is a solution our government is already going for to the detriment of everyone (unfortunately) but public retirement plans cannot be changed retroactively to any extent, they are reducing the highest pensions and blocking the rest of them (inflation will de facto lower even the blocked ones) while at the same time increasing the retirement age progressively but still it isn't enough.
My dad would have been a boomer. Guy did have the advantage of entering the workforce during a time when it was still not only possible but even normal to expect to hold the same job for decades, but that and a kid who cared about him were about all he ever had to his name. And then he lost the job too.
He fought hard as shit, but with zero legs up and several of them permanently down, he never managed anything resembling the life he (or anyone else) hoped for, and after he died, the palliative nurse told his remaining family he was better off.
Being born in a lucky generation makes it easier, but it doesn't guarantee one has it easy. It's not an age group, it's a behavior. Not that we aren't already in the Find Out stage, for that to matter. But the fewer people under the impression all the bad people are going to die out, the better.
Cancer and death wiped out my parents' shit. And apparently several financial crises are all it takes for a small business owner to give up their decades-old life insurance policy to afford food and utilities.
You cannot get me to empathize with boomer retirement woes, when they built their gilded sky-fort by looting the peace dividend after WW2 and told everyone else to fuck off and make it their own way. Every single generation since has been poorer, had less wealth and ability to save for retirement, all while the boomers vote themselves more and more entitlements.
The trickled fire sale from retirement funds and portfolios is going to be brutal. Every market transaction needs a counterparty, and if everyone else is too broke to buy stock/bonds/houses at the price your financial ‘planner’ values it, the bubble pops.
Oh no. Kinda seems like we should be funneling money into welfare, huh. Maybe something livable so those that can't find or maintain employment aren't digging in the trash? Bad times for anyone who expected perpetual growth.
So a couple narratives, right. One is that they're just gonna blow all their generational wealth on nothing and blah blah blah fuck off, and then those that do have generational wealth are just gonna get it eaten up by government inheritance taxes, and maybe debt collectors, who are less sympathetic, because fuck debt and specifically people looking to wring old people for all their worth. Scum, lowest of the low, should be lined up and pelted with. Maybe small coins? Pocket change? Could be kind of ironic.
At the same time, little weird that people will make a big stink about medicare and social security going underwater, and then not want to pay taxes on inheritance, because they're entitled to it. That shit doesn't track, really. They could advocate for less spending on the military, sure, but if the conception of the economy is that it just kind of works like how a house balances debt (it doesn't), then paying debts should be good, no? Weird double standard in western culture, still. Everyone hates usury, but simultaneously conceives of "the economy" as working through it, and "the economy" as being, if not good, then incredibly important and worth protecting at all costs. Point is, the common conception of how the economy works is flawed, and then some people have an idea of how it should work, but, in any case, the ire should be drawn with that, rather than with "the boomers". Attacking "the boomers" is weird. It's treating a symptom, not the cause.
Second, also a weird note, is that "the boomers", monolithically, are holding onto their jobs, or something. Certainly, a good proportion, and probably the majority that are still holding out, are doing so because of a lack of alternative, and despite how good it may feel, it's probably not moral to blame someone for, say, being an alcoholic in their 20's and 30's, and say they don't deserve to retire on that basis. Kind of scummy. A good amount of boomers face that situation, and face worse situations where they aren't even at fault for their positions, really. Any racial minority, really, including some we now consider to be white.
Then, a small proportion are refusing to retire because they're just at the top of the company. Board executives, big decision making guys. Unfortunately for the rest of us, we will never get their positions. If they retire, will their job be taken by some millenial? Will it be taken by someone in Gen X? Would it even matter, or would the position inherently be both corrupting, and magnetic to the corruptible and corrupt? Probably the latter, probably it wouldn't matter who it went to, because it's just part of a larger power structure and whoever gets hired is going to be in further service to said power structure, as it's self-reinforcing.
Also, this shit is never true. ohhhhh no social security is going away because the boomers are retiring! nooo! you should be able to invest your retirement into a private account on the basis that the government's social security and retirement plans are going belly up because of all the boomers! nooo! this shit has been spinning for like 40 years, do not believe the hype.