“Who Has Midlife Crisis Money?:
March 15, 2023 9:25 PM Subscribe
Millenials are hitting middle age. In August, The Times asked our 40-ish readers how they felt about their lives, now that they are — chronologically, at least — in midlife. Over 1,300 people responded in less than a week. One of our questions was about whether they had experienced a midlife crisis and how they would define the term.
Many people said they felt they couldn’t be having a midlife crisis because there was no bourgeois numbness to rebel against. Rather than longing for adventure and release, they craved a sense of safety and calmness, which they felt they had never known.
The notion of working at the same job for your entire career may have always been an illusion for a majority of Americans. But Gallup has found that millennials are the generation most likely to change jobs. In a July article in The Times about millennial economic anxiety, Charlotte Cowles explained how the economic outlook for this generation as we hit middle age is different from that of our boomer parents: At an age when many of them were able to own a home, millennials are “squeezed between the worst inflation rates of their lifetimes, eye-watering housing prices and the precarious fallout of the pandemic."
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The notion of working at the same job for your entire career may have always been an illusion for a majority of Americans. But Gallup has found that millennials are the generation most likely to change jobs. In a July article in The Times about millennial economic anxiety, Charlotte Cowles explained how the economic outlook for this generation as we hit middle age is different from that of our boomer parents: At an age when many of them were able to own a home, millennials are “squeezed between the worst inflation rates of their lifetimes, eye-watering housing prices and the precarious fallout of the pandemic."
Gift link
I dunno. I am 42. The year I turned 40 I switched jobs and bought a modular synthesizer. The modular was a great idea. The job was not (though it did introcduce me to commuting by train which is the best thing of all). Not exactly a motorcycle and an affair, but maybe I’m trying to live a little more intentionally with whatever small amount of agency I’ve gained.
I think the claim in some generational difference here has a lot more to do with demographic assumptions on what a “millennial” looks like versus what a “boomer” looks like. Midlife crises have always been portrayed as a white guy thing; maybe it’s best if we just let the term go.
posted by q*ben at 10:00 PM on March 15, 2023 [17 favorites]
I think the claim in some generational difference here has a lot more to do with demographic assumptions on what a “millennial” looks like versus what a “boomer” looks like. Midlife crises have always been portrayed as a white guy thing; maybe it’s best if we just let the term go.
posted by q*ben at 10:00 PM on March 15, 2023 [17 favorites]
um, don't millenials hit 40 in...2040? just asking questions...(so fucking dumb, nyt)
edit: millenials aren't born in the...millenium. (so fucking dumb, everyone)
posted by j_curiouser at 10:18 PM on March 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
edit: millenials aren't born in the...millenium. (so fucking dumb, everyone)
posted by j_curiouser at 10:18 PM on March 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
um, don't millenials hit 40 in...2040
You're thinking Gen-Z, inasmuch as generational names are a thing, millennials are people who were coming of age around 2000.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:24 PM on March 15, 2023 [12 favorites]
You're thinking Gen-Z, inasmuch as generational names are a thing, millennials are people who were coming of age around 2000.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:24 PM on March 15, 2023 [12 favorites]
I turned 39 today. My joke lately has been that my "midlife crisis" was finally landing a stable office job about a year and a half ago, after two decades of scraping and scrounging and hustling.
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:26 PM on March 15, 2023 [39 favorites]
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:26 PM on March 15, 2023 [39 favorites]
I only made it halfway through the article.
Yeah, I am old, and I survived a bunch of shit, and I still own nothing and not even the most hyperlocal politics respond to my needs and interests.
who the fuck has the patience for the second half of the article? People older than my parents? Carlos Slim and his coterie?
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 10:39 PM on March 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
Yeah, I am old, and I survived a bunch of shit, and I still own nothing and not even the most hyperlocal politics respond to my needs and interests.
who the fuck has the patience for the second half of the article? People older than my parents? Carlos Slim and his coterie?
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 10:39 PM on March 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
I did my midlife crisis well before I hit forty. I wasn't getting any younger. I'd long lost track of my various ridiculous childhood dreams. I needed a change. I ended up fumbling into road managing for a brilliant brand that were bound to fail. They were too damned good for the world. But I didn't particularly care. I was more interested in the mad poetry of it all.
Which is as much advice as I have for any younger human currently going through the changes. When in doubt, don't discount the mad poetry of it all.
posted by philip-random at 10:48 PM on March 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
Which is as much advice as I have for any younger human currently going through the changes. When in doubt, don't discount the mad poetry of it all.
posted by philip-random at 10:48 PM on March 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
Breaking news: time passes.
posted by vanitas at 10:52 PM on March 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by vanitas at 10:52 PM on March 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
the midlife crisis of every Millennium I know seems to be "maybe I just won't ever be able to buy a house, actually" and "well if climate change causes society to collapse then I guess I don't have to worry about the fact that I have been entirely unable to build any form of retirement savings"
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:53 PM on March 15, 2023 [65 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:53 PM on March 15, 2023 [65 favorites]
(I myself recently had the harrowing experience of looking at a Zillow listing for a place down the street from my parents' house, forced to confront the fact that I could never even DREAM of affording to live where I grew up)
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:54 PM on March 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:54 PM on March 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
> Which is as much advice as I have for any younger human currently going through the changes. When in doubt, don't discount the mad poetry of it all.
yeah, great, etc
if i had an "un-favorite" button i woulda hit it
the whole point of the article is that me and mine are hitting middle age, and there is no fucking reward. The "brass ring" doesn't even deliver brass, it is is something so substandard and half-assed that "brass" seems like an an accomplishment
thank god an even older sumbitch was here to tell us that actually, it is very easy to enter middle age with no assets, no hope, and no goals
just let the mad spirit of poetry take over
because poetry is a thing that people pay money for, right?
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 11:03 PM on March 15, 2023 [31 favorites]
the whole point of the article is that me and mine are hitting middle age, and there is no fucking reward. The "brass ring" doesn't even deliver brass, it is is something so substandard and half-assed that "brass" seems like an an accomplishment
for the record. This also happened to me. Born in 1959. Maybe I had options you and yours haven't had. But they all would've required my saying fuck you to most of the planet. We are where we are. The mad poetry is still out there.
posted by philip-random at 11:07 PM on March 15, 2023 [12 favorites]
for the record. This also happened to me. Born in 1959. Maybe I had options you and yours haven't had. But they all would've required my saying fuck you to most of the planet. We are where we are. The mad poetry is still out there.
posted by philip-random at 11:07 PM on March 15, 2023 [12 favorites]
> for the record. This also happened to me. Born in 1959. Maybe I had options you and yours haven't had. But they all would've required my saying fuck you to most of the planet. We are where we are. The mad poetry is still out there.
i am not angry, i am laughing, please don't tell people i was angry, actually all of my problems are exactly the same as the people who say i was angry
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 11:10 PM on March 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
Born in 1959. Maybe I had options you and yours haven't had. But they all would've required my saying fuck you to most of the planet.
Just to clarify--did you have options like "deploying nuclear weapons" or "being an oil exec"? Or is this just a generalization to retroactively excuse not having a lucrative career because of Principles?
Born in 1959, you were not 20 years old and about to finish college when 2008 happened. I would guess that your lifetime earnings did not suffer because of graduating into giant systemic failures such as what happened in 2008.
posted by knotty knots at 11:17 PM on March 15, 2023 [10 favorites]
Just to clarify--did you have options like "deploying nuclear weapons" or "being an oil exec"? Or is this just a generalization to retroactively excuse not having a lucrative career because of Principles?
Born in 1959, you were not 20 years old and about to finish college when 2008 happened. I would guess that your lifetime earnings did not suffer because of graduating into giant systemic failures such as what happened in 2008.
posted by knotty knots at 11:17 PM on March 15, 2023 [10 favorites]
I would guess that your lifetime earnings did not suffer because of graduating into
you might want to look into the Early 1980s Recession
] It is widely considered to have been the most severe recession since World War II.[2][3] A
posted by philip-random at 11:21 PM on March 15, 2023 [22 favorites]
you might want to look into the Early 1980s Recession
] It is widely considered to have been the most severe recession since World War II.[2][3] A
posted by philip-random at 11:21 PM on March 15, 2023 [22 favorites]
tldr: A lot more younger than median people with (ads here) ever fewer options are going to (ads here) be angrier at older than median people or (ads here) circumstances created by (ads here) older people
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:24 PM on March 15, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:24 PM on March 15, 2023 [14 favorites]
According to the wikipedia article, the term midlife crisis was invented in the mid 1960s, weren't really that common, and likely has quite limited applicability outside of the boomer generation.
Previous generations went to war, and if they returned unbroken, did not wonder if having a good career and loving family was "all that there is".
posted by meowzilla at 11:54 PM on March 15, 2023 [15 favorites]
Previous generations went to war, and if they returned unbroken, did not wonder if having a good career and loving family was "all that there is".
posted by meowzilla at 11:54 PM on March 15, 2023 [15 favorites]
I'm entering my late thirties, and my midlife crisis will be homelessness unless things change fairly dramatically. Oh, the mad poetry.
posted by Dysk at 12:29 AM on March 16, 2023 [18 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 12:29 AM on March 16, 2023 [18 favorites]
And yes, there was a bad 80s recession. I was born into it. I remember my parents being dirt poor students when I was a nipper. As poor as I've ever been. Poor enough that you go hungry sometimes.
The difference was that things got better for them. But the time they were getting into their late 30s, their life had changed to a more typical middle class one.
posted by Dysk at 12:30 AM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
The difference was that things got better for them. But the time they were getting into their late 30s, their life had changed to a more typical middle class one.
posted by Dysk at 12:30 AM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Not content with mapping their music tastes onto younger generations, we now have to suffer the same psychological problems as boomers (well, not just boomers, but you know). This is because capitalism as a system cannot accept change, even when it has made the system as a hole so hostile to anybody outside the norm - that is, anybody younger than 50, anybody who has migrated, anybody who has given up work for illness or care reasons. It’s also, essentially, American - you can’t afford to have a midlife crisis because you have to pay for your social care.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:10 AM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 1:10 AM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
OK, we have "boomers are all wealthy," "millennials are all miserable", "no one exists but boomers and millennials"... keep going, I almost have Ageism Bingo.
posted by zompist at 1:28 AM on March 16, 2023 [56 favorites]
posted by zompist at 1:28 AM on March 16, 2023 [56 favorites]
I was talking about my Gen X parents, whose experience from where I'm sitting sure looks a lot more similar to my boomer grandparents' than they do to mine.
posted by Dysk at 1:34 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 1:34 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Born in 78. Will probably die in the AI/climate wars still living like a 28 year old. Because when there's little reward for striving, why strive? When gender transition has rendered you non-ec and unpalatable to employers, what else is there? I could destroy my body making fast food, and still not be any better off than I am now I get laughed at on the streets when people aren't afraid I'm going to flirt with them or devour their children. No one would dare pay me a living wage, despite my talents.
Xennials and millennials are in for a grim, geriatric punk decline. Nobody's coming to save us, nobody gives a shit.
My retirement plan is having a massive stroke while busking for change.
posted by She Vaped An Entire Sock! at 2:05 AM on March 16, 2023 [36 favorites]
Xennials and millennials are in for a grim, geriatric punk decline. Nobody's coming to save us, nobody gives a shit.
My retirement plan is having a massive stroke while busking for change.
posted by She Vaped An Entire Sock! at 2:05 AM on March 16, 2023 [36 favorites]
"you might want to look into the Early 1980s Recession
] It is widely considered to have been the most severe recession since World War II.[2][3] A"
Older millennials were born in the early 1980s. They would absolutely have been affected by this, either in terms of their household at the time, or the availability of trickle-down wealth later.
I'm in the UK, a Xennial, and I've lived through five recessions/economic crises that I can remember off the top of my head, AND I was lucky enough not to actually graduate into one with triple the amount of student debt as younger millennials did.
posted by mippy at 2:13 AM on March 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
] It is widely considered to have been the most severe recession since World War II.[2][3] A"
Older millennials were born in the early 1980s. They would absolutely have been affected by this, either in terms of their household at the time, or the availability of trickle-down wealth later.
I'm in the UK, a Xennial, and I've lived through five recessions/economic crises that I can remember off the top of my head, AND I was lucky enough not to actually graduate into one with triple the amount of student debt as younger millennials did.
posted by mippy at 2:13 AM on March 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
I'm 40 and my midlife crisis is actually buying a house, although I'll probably be 41 before I manage to actually do it. I'm terrified, to be honest. It just doesn't seem realistic that the bank is going to say yes. I can't bring myself to believe it.
What I would have liked, I think in common with many, is some sense that by the time I hit my 40s the political machinery of my country actually responded to what my generation care about. But they don't and we are currently ruled by the opinions of a minority (you can see it right there in the election results).
So maybe my midlife crisis is going to be becoming a revolutionary. Because my friends have kids and I'd like them to survive long enough to consider buying their own homes.
posted by mathw at 2:29 AM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
What I would have liked, I think in common with many, is some sense that by the time I hit my 40s the political machinery of my country actually responded to what my generation care about. But they don't and we are currently ruled by the opinions of a minority (you can see it right there in the election results).
So maybe my midlife crisis is going to be becoming a revolutionary. Because my friends have kids and I'd like them to survive long enough to consider buying their own homes.
posted by mathw at 2:29 AM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
My midlife crisis was having a heart attack and realising my real midlife crisis was when I was 24yo and protesting the Iraq war. Accepting this was hard, but once I got over it small things stopped bothering me and life seems a little easier. I'm not worried about retirement or buying a house. I'm thinking of buying a muffin and enjoying it today.
posted by adept256 at 2:32 AM on March 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by adept256 at 2:32 AM on March 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
the term midlife crisis was invented in the mid 1960s, weren't really that common, and likely has quite limited applicability outside of the boomer generation.
If true, the people having midlife crises in the mid 60s were born in the mid 20s. That is the generation that went to war. Boomers were just tykes at the time. Of course, it goes back to Dante ("Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita") who wrote a whole epic poem about how the people who wronged him are tortured for eternity and he misses his ex.
My crop of elder millennials had quarter-life crises. Like clockwork, a year or two after graduating college. Wait, you mean this is what life is? We even invented a sarcastic term for it, adulting (which promptly got twisted into "those dumb millennials, so spoiled by participation trophies and avocado toast"). I'm not sure if we're going to have midlife crises in the classic "buy a flashy car, have an affair" sense, but I can see bits and pieces starting to percolate. My one friend has gotten super into watches.
posted by basalganglia at 2:38 AM on March 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
If true, the people having midlife crises in the mid 60s were born in the mid 20s. That is the generation that went to war. Boomers were just tykes at the time. Of course, it goes back to Dante ("Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita") who wrote a whole epic poem about how the people who wronged him are tortured for eternity and he misses his ex.
My crop of elder millennials had quarter-life crises. Like clockwork, a year or two after graduating college. Wait, you mean this is what life is? We even invented a sarcastic term for it, adulting (which promptly got twisted into "those dumb millennials, so spoiled by participation trophies and avocado toast"). I'm not sure if we're going to have midlife crises in the classic "buy a flashy car, have an affair" sense, but I can see bits and pieces starting to percolate. My one friend has gotten super into watches.
posted by basalganglia at 2:38 AM on March 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
I don't think midlife crisis fiction written by and for rich people in prestigious cities has ever had the general audience the NYT pretends it had.
It does seem even more out of touch today when the bottom (half? two thirds? three quarters?) [replace based on location] of the middle aged population is utterly fucked by rich boomers who have hoarded the majority of the housing stock.
posted by zymil at 2:44 AM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
It does seem even more out of touch today when the bottom (half? two thirds? three quarters?) [replace based on location] of the middle aged population is utterly fucked by rich boomers who have hoarded the majority of the housing stock.
posted by zymil at 2:44 AM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
OK, we have "boomers are all wealthy," "millennials are all miserable", "no one exists but boomers and millennials"... keep going, I almost have Ageism Bingo.
If anybody even remembers Gen X exists in these discussions, it's usually some young person snarling, "Oh, yeah, and you suck, too!"
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:46 AM on March 16, 2023 [47 favorites]
If anybody even remembers Gen X exists in these discussions, it's usually some young person snarling, "Oh, yeah, and you suck, too!"
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:46 AM on March 16, 2023 [47 favorites]
In retrospect it is extremely funny that there was an entire genre of movies that consisted of “Gen X guy goes on a rampage because he feels his stable, well-paying job is making him soft” (Office Space, Fight Club, The Matrix)
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:13 AM on March 16, 2023 [37 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:13 AM on March 16, 2023 [37 favorites]
Oh great, another thread about the differences between generations. I can feel my remaining brain cells dying by the thousands at the thought of it.
The reality of course is that intra-generational wealth and opportunity distribution is much more significant. That was true in the 1950s, the 1970s, and now.
The generation who came of age between 1950 and 1979 had a special moment, that's true but it's a mistake to think either that this is true of people outside of that band or to just ignore the fact that how rich their parents were completely wipes out the generational differences. Down to the fact that the idea of the midlife crisis was always that - an idea - that didn't apply to most people in the supposed target demographics.
The article even acknowledges this!
Levinson, who, along with his colleagues, published a book in 1978 titled “The Seasons of a Man’s Life,” which was based on his study of 40 mostly white, educated men between 35 and 45. “Seasons” partly focused on a man named Jim Tracy, a vice president and general manager at an arms manufacturer who left his wife, married a younger woman and left his job to start a new life with her. Dr. Levinson, according to Dr. Schmidt, held that “such a ‘midlife transition’ or ‘midlife crisis’ … was a universal feature of human life, shared across social and cultural differences.”
So basically this is a difference in the narrative but that narrative only ever applied to at most a subset of the elite.
It does seem even more out of touch today when the bottom (half? two thirds? three quarters?) [replace based on location] of the middle aged population is utterly fucked by rich boomers who have hoarded the majority of the housing stock.
Like, where do we think all this great boomer cash is going to go? Part of middle-age is your parents ageing and dying. All of that wealth is going to transfer to their millennial children. Maybe we'll all have our midlife crises later when the inheritances hit and by "we" I mean a subset of the population that includes everyone who contributes to and edits the NYT.
Boomers, incidentally, typically own zero or one houses with a vanishingly small privileged cohort owning two. All of those houses are going right to their kids as they downsize or die.
I've seen this again and again in London. At 22, we're all living (and "we" here is university graduates in their first professional jobs so it's already an elite tier) in shared houses and not having very much money to go out, typically your friend circle all lives in broadly equivalent rental accommodation and then in your late 20s everyone is moving in with partners and starting to think about buying and... silently without anyone saying anything about it explicitly, some people seem to be buying houses and flats that you absolutely know they cannot be affording on their incomes alone. Everybody knows what's going on - parents are transferring their wealth to provide deposits for mortgages and those same parents will continue to transfer wealth to their children (in the UK there is no limit on this - inheritance tax is a penalty you pay for having untrustworthy children or the misfortune of dying young).
In another ten years when the oldest children in my friend cohort are teenagers, I'll see another wave of property upsizing, likely also partially funded from parental largesse as valuable London houses, bought in the 1980s by their professional parents are sold and parents (now fully retired) move out of London. Meanwhile, there are people in that same cohort who still don't own any property, have substantial savings, nor can expect to receive anything from their own parents.
Maybe only those of us with mortgages get to have a midlife crisis?
posted by atrazine at 3:29 AM on March 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
The reality of course is that intra-generational wealth and opportunity distribution is much more significant. That was true in the 1950s, the 1970s, and now.
The generation who came of age between 1950 and 1979 had a special moment, that's true but it's a mistake to think either that this is true of people outside of that band or to just ignore the fact that how rich their parents were completely wipes out the generational differences. Down to the fact that the idea of the midlife crisis was always that - an idea - that didn't apply to most people in the supposed target demographics.
The article even acknowledges this!
Levinson, who, along with his colleagues, published a book in 1978 titled “The Seasons of a Man’s Life,” which was based on his study of 40 mostly white, educated men between 35 and 45. “Seasons” partly focused on a man named Jim Tracy, a vice president and general manager at an arms manufacturer who left his wife, married a younger woman and left his job to start a new life with her. Dr. Levinson, according to Dr. Schmidt, held that “such a ‘midlife transition’ or ‘midlife crisis’ … was a universal feature of human life, shared across social and cultural differences.”
So basically this is a difference in the narrative but that narrative only ever applied to at most a subset of the elite.
It does seem even more out of touch today when the bottom (half? two thirds? three quarters?) [replace based on location] of the middle aged population is utterly fucked by rich boomers who have hoarded the majority of the housing stock.
Like, where do we think all this great boomer cash is going to go? Part of middle-age is your parents ageing and dying. All of that wealth is going to transfer to their millennial children. Maybe we'll all have our midlife crises later when the inheritances hit and by "we" I mean a subset of the population that includes everyone who contributes to and edits the NYT.
Boomers, incidentally, typically own zero or one houses with a vanishingly small privileged cohort owning two. All of those houses are going right to their kids as they downsize or die.
I've seen this again and again in London. At 22, we're all living (and "we" here is university graduates in their first professional jobs so it's already an elite tier) in shared houses and not having very much money to go out, typically your friend circle all lives in broadly equivalent rental accommodation and then in your late 20s everyone is moving in with partners and starting to think about buying and... silently without anyone saying anything about it explicitly, some people seem to be buying houses and flats that you absolutely know they cannot be affording on their incomes alone. Everybody knows what's going on - parents are transferring their wealth to provide deposits for mortgages and those same parents will continue to transfer wealth to their children (in the UK there is no limit on this - inheritance tax is a penalty you pay for having untrustworthy children or the misfortune of dying young).
In another ten years when the oldest children in my friend cohort are teenagers, I'll see another wave of property upsizing, likely also partially funded from parental largesse as valuable London houses, bought in the 1980s by their professional parents are sold and parents (now fully retired) move out of London. Meanwhile, there are people in that same cohort who still don't own any property, have substantial savings, nor can expect to receive anything from their own parents.
Maybe only those of us with mortgages get to have a midlife crisis?
posted by atrazine at 3:29 AM on March 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
Metafilter: those of us with mortgages
posted by She Vaped An Entire Sock! at 3:36 AM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by She Vaped An Entire Sock! at 3:36 AM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
> the system as a hole
> Ageism bingo
> intergenerstional wealth transfer
>tl;dr
capitalism. it’s capitalism, right?
posted by girandole at 3:41 AM on March 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
> Ageism bingo
> intergenerstional wealth transfer
>tl;dr
capitalism. it’s capitalism, right?
posted by girandole at 3:41 AM on March 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
Every NYT lifestyle article ever: the subset of people who respond to a NYT polll, gently buffered by NYT writers, with the entire enterprise utterly blind to:
that narrative only ever applied to at most a subset of the eliteposted by Dashy at 3:44 AM on March 16, 2023 [11 favorites]
I feel like "oh don't worry, you'll just inherit a house someday" rather overlooks the situation for a lot of people. It used to be that you could make a reasonably comfortable life on a working class wage. Not enough to give meaningful wealth on to your kids necessarily, though, and doubly so they had several. Now, we apparently don't need to be able to make a comfortable life on a working class wage because our parents are going to leave us houses? I guess I can look forward to sharing my folks' retirement home with my three siblings when I'm King Charles's age? Yeah, I guess it's exactly the same way it's ever been...
posted by Dysk at 3:49 AM on March 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 3:49 AM on March 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
So like, there's an entire cohort of people who would be in a position to have a traditional midlife crisis in times past, who are now frozen out of that life. You didn't always need rich parents to afford somewhere to live.
posted by Dysk at 3:53 AM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 3:53 AM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Even if you accept the original notion of the midlife crisis I feel like it has dramatically shifted in several critical ways and become a seriously misshapen concept. One aspect of the midlife crisis was finally having the financial stability to engage in a bit of fiscal foolishness like the red two seater sportscar. Nowadays for many people that comes much later than 40 if at all. I didn't clear my student loans until I was almost 50. Another aspect of the midlife crisis was that your kids became adults but that has been pushed back the increased age of new parents. The other issue is that it is hard to really feel old while you parents are still alive and parents are living a lot longer than when the notion of midlife crisis was established. I'm just hitting that particular existential crisis now in my my mid 50s and my wife's parents are still going strong. My parents' parents died when my parents were in their thirties.
posted by srboisvert at 3:56 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 3:56 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
I feel like "oh don't worry, you'll just inherit a house someday" rather overlooks the situation for a lot of people. It used to be that you could make a reasonably comfortable life on a working class wage.
Last week I saw a real estate listing for a "Worker's Cottage" in Chicago for $1 million+.
posted by srboisvert at 4:00 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
Last week I saw a real estate listing for a "Worker's Cottage" in Chicago for $1 million+.
posted by srboisvert at 4:00 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
I spent some time last week doing a jigsaw puzzle and listening to videos from Gary's Economics. You probably don't need to listen to as many as I did, he has a pretty simple and repetitive message: in the UK, in Australia, in the US, a series of deliberate policy decisions has led to the wholesale transfer of wealth from the poor, the working class and the middle class to elites over the past 30 years and it has intensified over the past 3 years. And it's not totally visible right now because many people, boomers mostly, but also working and middle class Gen Xers and Millenials who partnered up, bought homes 15 years ago, and are still together, still own their own homes.
All of that wealth is going to transfer to their millennial children.
He's arguing that it isn't. Those houses will be bought by rich people as investments, as assets, not as places to live. For many, many people, the older generation selling off the family home to split the proceeds among the children or to pay for their retirement will mark the last point at which anyone in the family will ever own their own home, because house prices have now completely outstripped anybody on a regular income's capacity to pay. This may not be totally true outside major cities in the US - in Australia it wasn't true outside of Sydney probably until the last 5-10 years but it's true now, not just Sydney or Melbourne but everywhere, all up and down the coast and inland too.
Anyway despite advocating for community action in every video a lot of his videos have a distinctly doomerist streak (as does this comment, sorry) so don't follow those links if you don't need any of that in your life right now, but I thought Why do newspapers want you to stop buying avocado toast was a good intro explaining the proliferation of articles pretending people are scrimping and saving to buy a house when they're actually getting large cash gifts from their parents. He says these articles are not really intended for millenials or zoomers but to reassure boomers, saying that everything is still OK, it's OK that yours and everyone else's house is worth so much, your kids will still be OK, when in fact they will be, are already, have been for some time, fucked.
You didn't always need rich parents to afford somewhere to live.
Yeah, exactly.
posted by happyfrog at 4:06 AM on March 16, 2023 [54 favorites]
All of that wealth is going to transfer to their millennial children.
He's arguing that it isn't. Those houses will be bought by rich people as investments, as assets, not as places to live. For many, many people, the older generation selling off the family home to split the proceeds among the children or to pay for their retirement will mark the last point at which anyone in the family will ever own their own home, because house prices have now completely outstripped anybody on a regular income's capacity to pay. This may not be totally true outside major cities in the US - in Australia it wasn't true outside of Sydney probably until the last 5-10 years but it's true now, not just Sydney or Melbourne but everywhere, all up and down the coast and inland too.
Anyway despite advocating for community action in every video a lot of his videos have a distinctly doomerist streak (as does this comment, sorry) so don't follow those links if you don't need any of that in your life right now, but I thought Why do newspapers want you to stop buying avocado toast was a good intro explaining the proliferation of articles pretending people are scrimping and saving to buy a house when they're actually getting large cash gifts from their parents. He says these articles are not really intended for millenials or zoomers but to reassure boomers, saying that everything is still OK, it's OK that yours and everyone else's house is worth so much, your kids will still be OK, when in fact they will be, are already, have been for some time, fucked.
You didn't always need rich parents to afford somewhere to live.
Yeah, exactly.
posted by happyfrog at 4:06 AM on March 16, 2023 [54 favorites]
if anybody even remembers Gen X exists in these discussions, it's usually some young person snarling, "Oh, yeah, and you suck, too!"
Fellow Gen X raising a hand here too. I'm 46 (born in 1976) and have never made more than maybe 28K a year in my life (and that higher end was just in the last ten years).
I am working with a new therapist (thankfully her fees get reimbursed by my partner's very good insurance) and I had a very huge breakthrough when we talked about my upbringing. My parents divorced when I was young, both remarried, and their financial lives were very different. My dad--state trooper his entire life until retirement, then police chief until second retirement--did pretty well for himself, had a good portfolio, etc. Lost it all in the 2008 recession. My late stepdad and my mom...well, in hindsight, I have no idea what the fuck happened there with our finances. Like, they raised me and we were always always always dodging phone calls from debt collectors. We never owned a house when I was growing up, we didn't go on family vacations that I can recall, and it's not like my stepdad didn't have a decent job, my mom too for the time. But yeah, like I was not taught good money management and I didn't realize how much that contributed to my own adult mindset of money. Stability is a huge thing for me, apparently.
posted by Kitteh at 4:11 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
Fellow Gen X raising a hand here too. I'm 46 (born in 1976) and have never made more than maybe 28K a year in my life (and that higher end was just in the last ten years).
I am working with a new therapist (thankfully her fees get reimbursed by my partner's very good insurance) and I had a very huge breakthrough when we talked about my upbringing. My parents divorced when I was young, both remarried, and their financial lives were very different. My dad--state trooper his entire life until retirement, then police chief until second retirement--did pretty well for himself, had a good portfolio, etc. Lost it all in the 2008 recession. My late stepdad and my mom...well, in hindsight, I have no idea what the fuck happened there with our finances. Like, they raised me and we were always always always dodging phone calls from debt collectors. We never owned a house when I was growing up, we didn't go on family vacations that I can recall, and it's not like my stepdad didn't have a decent job, my mom too for the time. But yeah, like I was not taught good money management and I didn't realize how much that contributed to my own adult mindset of money. Stability is a huge thing for me, apparently.
posted by Kitteh at 4:11 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
A midlife crisis? In this economy?
posted by gauche at 4:45 AM on March 16, 2023 [22 favorites]
posted by gauche at 4:45 AM on March 16, 2023 [22 favorites]
millennials are people who were coming of age around 2000.
The general definition seems to be that Millennials, also known as Generation Y, were born between 1981 and 1996. That means they were aged between 4 and 19 at the millenium.
Entering the workforce one year before a major recession vs just 1 year later will have a huge affect on individual life outcomes. The idea we can lump everyone in a 20 year generation lifespan together as being "the same" is an idea that really needs to die. It is lazy journalism intended to divide people and have the working classes blaming each other for systemic failures.
posted by Lanark at 4:46 AM on March 16, 2023 [16 favorites]
The general definition seems to be that Millennials, also known as Generation Y, were born between 1981 and 1996. That means they were aged between 4 and 19 at the millenium.
Entering the workforce one year before a major recession vs just 1 year later will have a huge affect on individual life outcomes. The idea we can lump everyone in a 20 year generation lifespan together as being "the same" is an idea that really needs to die. It is lazy journalism intended to divide people and have the working classes blaming each other for systemic failures.
posted by Lanark at 4:46 AM on March 16, 2023 [16 favorites]
Our lives follow the line of a parabola. At the zenith of the parabola death is born. We all have mid life crises. It is an essential part of being human. Waxing and waning make one curve.
posted by DJZouke at 5:00 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by DJZouke at 5:00 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Like, where do we think all this great boomer cash is going to go? Part of middle-age is your parents ageing and dying. All of that wealth is going to transfer to their millennial children.
In the US, most of it will be wiped out by end-of-life medical costs for the dying boomers.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:09 AM on March 16, 2023 [98 favorites]
In the US, most of it will be wiped out by end-of-life medical costs for the dying boomers.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:09 AM on March 16, 2023 [98 favorites]
A sensation to stop trying for more and understand/enjoy what one has seems to be that turnover point. Often accompanied by feelings of rage/betrayal that the "you can do anything" promise of our youth omitted a shitload of terms and conditions.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:13 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:13 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
If anybody even remembers Gen X exists in these discussions, it's usually some young person snarling, "Oh, yeah, and you suck, too!"
We weren't even supposed to be here today!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:15 AM on March 16, 2023 [66 favorites]
We weren't even supposed to be here today!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:15 AM on March 16, 2023 [66 favorites]
I’m just trying not to suck any dicks on my way to the parking lot.
posted by dr_dank at 5:17 AM on March 16, 2023 [37 favorites]
posted by dr_dank at 5:17 AM on March 16, 2023 [37 favorites]
It is lazy journalism intended to divide people and have the working classes blaming each other for systemic failures.
Whether or not the system we have is failing, though, rather depends on who you're asking.
I'm sure that the ultra-wealthy, who are making more money faster out of things as they're now set up than anybody in any position even vaguely parallel to theirs has ever made before in the entire course of human history, would tell you that if they're being honest they like the system just fine.
Since deregulation and privatization and outsourcing and offshoring and union busting became the watchwords under Thatcher and Reagan, there has been an almost total decay of the wealth distribution systems that used to stop ultra-wealthy families functioning as straight-up financial black holes, sucking in all available productive assets until all property ownership eventually disappears permanently inside their event horizons and everybody understands that feudalism never really went out of style.
And quite a lot of the ultra-wealthy amuse themselves by owning news media. So no, screeds on the generation wars are not "lazy" journalism, they're exactly the stories the mainstream media pays for by design. Don't look at me, let's you and him fight!
In the US, most of it will be wiped out by end-of-life medical costs for the dying boomers.
That's the thing about money: it never really does get "wiped out," it just moves from weaker hands into stronger hands. The strongest hands, in 2023, are stronger than they have ever been. All those end-of-life medical costs go somewhere and if you follow the money you'll find that where it ends up is lining the pockets of the wealthiest people on the planet. Who, frankly, have no fucking clue what to do with it.
Billionaire Personality Disorder belongs in the DSM, and it's well past time we started staging non-voluntary interventions for it.
posted by flabdablet at 5:24 AM on March 16, 2023 [44 favorites]
Whether or not the system we have is failing, though, rather depends on who you're asking.
I'm sure that the ultra-wealthy, who are making more money faster out of things as they're now set up than anybody in any position even vaguely parallel to theirs has ever made before in the entire course of human history, would tell you that if they're being honest they like the system just fine.
Since deregulation and privatization and outsourcing and offshoring and union busting became the watchwords under Thatcher and Reagan, there has been an almost total decay of the wealth distribution systems that used to stop ultra-wealthy families functioning as straight-up financial black holes, sucking in all available productive assets until all property ownership eventually disappears permanently inside their event horizons and everybody understands that feudalism never really went out of style.
And quite a lot of the ultra-wealthy amuse themselves by owning news media. So no, screeds on the generation wars are not "lazy" journalism, they're exactly the stories the mainstream media pays for by design. Don't look at me, let's you and him fight!
In the US, most of it will be wiped out by end-of-life medical costs for the dying boomers.
That's the thing about money: it never really does get "wiped out," it just moves from weaker hands into stronger hands. The strongest hands, in 2023, are stronger than they have ever been. All those end-of-life medical costs go somewhere and if you follow the money you'll find that where it ends up is lining the pockets of the wealthiest people on the planet. Who, frankly, have no fucking clue what to do with it.
Billionaire Personality Disorder belongs in the DSM, and it's well past time we started staging non-voluntary interventions for it.
posted by flabdablet at 5:24 AM on March 16, 2023 [44 favorites]
I've heard it said that violent revolution is a perfectly acceptable midlife crisis.
posted by BeReasonable at 5:30 AM on March 16, 2023 [25 favorites]
posted by BeReasonable at 5:30 AM on March 16, 2023 [25 favorites]
I was born in '71 and I vividly remember grade 5 and 6 where over half of the kids in my class went through divorces. They followed a pattern...first you'd see that their houses got messy/dirty as the women went on strike from domestic labour, then the dad would leave, possibly with a younger girlfriend, and get an apartment (usually in one of the spiff towers around Don Mills, shout out to Gen X Torontonians, some downtown) and have visits on weekends, and then the moms would fall off the economic ladder unless they remarried.
Maybe because that's my concept of a midlife crisis so I was primed for it, I experienced a lot of rage around when I was 43-47. Part of that was burning out in media as revenue vanished and horrible male C-suite people made bad decisions, and part of it was moving to a job I loved except for watching the incredibly smart and capable women one and two layers up from me hit a glass ceiling in the arts and again, the male executives behaving really badly (i.e. screaming profanities, having teams work until 11 at night for last-minute vanity projects, etc.)
So I found myself both burnt out and full of rage, so I had my own midlife crisis at capitalism. I was privileged to do so with a spouse with a stable job but I feel like...the feelings were a kind of lifelong build up of a gap between reality and expectation, and also feeling like I didn't want to waste my life. But for me that wasn't focused on the family but on the system.
So I guess what I'm saying is...I suspect there is a crisis of sorts but the NYT cannot recognize it.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:31 AM on March 16, 2023 [38 favorites]
Maybe because that's my concept of a midlife crisis so I was primed for it, I experienced a lot of rage around when I was 43-47. Part of that was burning out in media as revenue vanished and horrible male C-suite people made bad decisions, and part of it was moving to a job I loved except for watching the incredibly smart and capable women one and two layers up from me hit a glass ceiling in the arts and again, the male executives behaving really badly (i.e. screaming profanities, having teams work until 11 at night for last-minute vanity projects, etc.)
So I found myself both burnt out and full of rage, so I had my own midlife crisis at capitalism. I was privileged to do so with a spouse with a stable job but I feel like...the feelings were a kind of lifelong build up of a gap between reality and expectation, and also feeling like I didn't want to waste my life. But for me that wasn't focused on the family but on the system.
So I guess what I'm saying is...I suspect there is a crisis of sorts but the NYT cannot recognize it.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:31 AM on March 16, 2023 [38 favorites]
Like, where do we think all this great boomer cash is going to go? Part of middle-age is your parents ageing and dying. All of that wealth is going to transfer to their millennial children.
Incredibly expensive long-term care. Donated to Republican party after having brains rot due to 24//7 Fox News. Lost to scammers and grifters due to reduced mental function (but I repeat myself). Run of the mill bad financial decisions because they are only used to a world where everything goes up in value. But mostly really expensive long term care, $10,000 a month drugs that don't actually work, and a concourse of medical procedures that add perhaps six or nine very painful months of suffering to the end of their lives.
posted by snofoam at 5:32 AM on March 16, 2023 [54 favorites]
Incredibly expensive long-term care. Donated to Republican party after having brains rot due to 24//7 Fox News. Lost to scammers and grifters due to reduced mental function (but I repeat myself). Run of the mill bad financial decisions because they are only used to a world where everything goes up in value. But mostly really expensive long term care, $10,000 a month drugs that don't actually work, and a concourse of medical procedures that add perhaps six or nine very painful months of suffering to the end of their lives.
posted by snofoam at 5:32 AM on March 16, 2023 [54 favorites]
In line with snofoam - some of my parents' money is going to Florida condo fees because in the post-Surfside collapse they are getting hit with a ton of assessments because their condo is falling down too. That's basically a long con by developers and lack of regulation.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:35 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by warriorqueen at 5:35 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
Born in 1986. Turning 37 this year.
My midlife crisis happened just before the pandemic, and fortunately too, because it involved snatching up a 9 acre plot of land high up in the mountains of Nova Scotia, and land prices went so nuts post-covid that buying it later wouldn't have been remotely possible for me.
My retirement plan involves living in the woods like a crazed hermit. I have literally zero interest in any other kind of extrinsic validation.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 5:39 AM on March 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
My midlife crisis happened just before the pandemic, and fortunately too, because it involved snatching up a 9 acre plot of land high up in the mountains of Nova Scotia, and land prices went so nuts post-covid that buying it later wouldn't have been remotely possible for me.
My retirement plan involves living in the woods like a crazed hermit. I have literally zero interest in any other kind of extrinsic validation.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 5:39 AM on March 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
This thread inspired me to look up the price of the house I grew up in. It last sold for $50,000 and has been for sale for months for $155,000. Even I could buy it and I've despaired of buying anything for years. Of course you get what you pay for and there are no jobs there but at least it's cheap.
My family has a lot of space between generations, so I was born in the 80s, my dad was born in the 30s, and my grandfather was born in the 80s. I find it weird when adults have living parents and grandparents. I guess I'm on track to continue not being weird since we finally got around to having our only child. I'm mostly focused on accumulating what little I can to give him when he needs it. I'm not really on track for that but I'm trying.
I might still have a midlife crisis but I did plenty of drifting in my 20s and early 30s so I am hoping I got it out of my system. I can't buy a sports car but maybe I could paint my old Toyota red or something?
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 5:57 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
My family has a lot of space between generations, so I was born in the 80s, my dad was born in the 30s, and my grandfather was born in the 80s. I find it weird when adults have living parents and grandparents. I guess I'm on track to continue not being weird since we finally got around to having our only child. I'm mostly focused on accumulating what little I can to give him when he needs it. I'm not really on track for that but I'm trying.
I might still have a midlife crisis but I did plenty of drifting in my 20s and early 30s so I am hoping I got it out of my system. I can't buy a sports car but maybe I could paint my old Toyota red or something?
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 5:57 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was born in 1976. I've been telling people I've been having a midlife crisis since shortly before the pandemic because it felt to me like an accurate assessment/semi-humorous description of my emotional state. To wit: I am single, childless, low-level depressed. I feel stuck in my job because all risk feels dangerous because I don't have the financial security to take a huge a risk, because I don't make much money and I don't have a secondary source of income or a partner or a benefactor capable of/willing to let me slide. I don't have any savings to speak of. I do own a home, but it's not exactly a panacea, financially speaking, because I'm still in a fair amount of debt. I am farther than ever from doing any of things I ever thought I wanted to do as a child, and many of those things are closed off to me because of my age and context. I feel like a failure. I feel unwanted. I feel often desperately alone. I feel like I have given the best parts of myself away. I often feel used. I spend a lot of time trying not to feel jealous. I'm not a jealous person. But why does it seem so easy for other people in my position to be happy. I am not young enough to be cool or cool enough to impress the young, but I still want to do young people things, like go out and find endless possibility on stupid escapades. I listen to new music. I love going to shows. I'm tired of being the only middle aged woman alone at shows. I'm tired of not being invited to things because I am a solo middle aged woman. I am tired of being told how I should dress or act or represent myself because I am a middle aged woman. I hate referring to myself as a fucking middle aged woman. I swear to God, I preferred "girl." It feels, if you can believe it, less patronizing.
Also, I'm peri-menopausal. I'm afflicted with a variety of aches and pains. I have night sweats. I have hangovers from one cocktail. My knee is weird one day. My ankle the next. People are trying to talk me into bifocals. I carry readers at all times. I've had heart scares (just anxiety) and stomach scares (slightly more of a thing). I have raging case of medical PTSD which mostly derives from simply being a middle aged fat woman seeking medical care and being repeatedly ignored or misdiagnosed until I ended up in the hospital. I have a medicine cabinet full of things for all kinds of things, none of which actually help the baseline blech. They just make me feel needy and dependent and worthless because I can't seem to get any of my shit together and I'm an adult now, who is also dealing with aging parents, who are no picnic, not the least because they serve as a constant reminder to me of how much worse this shit is going to get. But they have savings. They have the confidence, however misdirected, of believing the world was made for them. They probably won't survive to have to deal with climate collapse or nuclear meltdown or whatever awful, terrible, no good very bad shit people have been prophesying my entire life, that seems increasingly likely to hit me at an age when I am even less capable than now of dealing with it.
This is supposed to be peak, right? Peak earning power? Peak relationships? Peak adult? And it sucks. And I know I'm lucky. I should be grateful. I should remember--I should never stop forgetting--how much worse it could be, how much worse it probably will be. I should live in the goddamn moment. And I feel guilty about it. And that makes me feel like a failure. And I go back to feeling stuck. I buy records. I buy shiny gold sneakers. I buy the sweater I always wanted when I was seventeen--which I still can't really afford, ps--and I think I will feel better. I get my exercise. I eat my veggies. I watch my intake. I watch my outlay. I go to therapy. I call my friends. I think, this is it? I think, fuck really? I think, this time thirty years ago, I was still waiting for someone to make me a mix tape and take me to prom. I was waiting for my life to take off (my high school's motto was "on the threshold of an excellent life"--which feels absolutely cruel in retrospect). I am still sort of waiting for the mix tape and the prom date. I still have crushingly real FOMO. But I know now that life is the perpetual what if, with all its attendant enthusiasm and anxiety. The best moments are those when you still believe it might work out, even when it doesn't. It is walking down the hall, watching the doors close so impossibly fast you know it's rigged and also knowing that people will tell you it's your own fault for not running fast enough. In thirty years I will be seventy-seven and if I'm still alive, that hallways is going to be a lot darker and shorter. And how do you bear all the coming grief? How do I best prepare myself for the inevitable and crushing disappointments yet to come? It absolutely sucks being a grown-up sometimes, y'all. I keep hearing the the 40s are the bottom of the U, happiness-wise, but I'm also worried that's some boomer nonsense, like pensions, that won't apply to me.
I don't think that this is a circumstance to be solved by sports car or an affair with a secretary or a Paul Simon album(I'm open to argument though, and "The Obvious Child" is a way sadder song to me now than it was in 1990, that's for sure) , but if this is not a midlife crisis, I don't know what a midlife crisis is.
posted by thivaia at 6:03 AM on March 16, 2023 [79 favorites]
Also, I'm peri-menopausal. I'm afflicted with a variety of aches and pains. I have night sweats. I have hangovers from one cocktail. My knee is weird one day. My ankle the next. People are trying to talk me into bifocals. I carry readers at all times. I've had heart scares (just anxiety) and stomach scares (slightly more of a thing). I have raging case of medical PTSD which mostly derives from simply being a middle aged fat woman seeking medical care and being repeatedly ignored or misdiagnosed until I ended up in the hospital. I have a medicine cabinet full of things for all kinds of things, none of which actually help the baseline blech. They just make me feel needy and dependent and worthless because I can't seem to get any of my shit together and I'm an adult now, who is also dealing with aging parents, who are no picnic, not the least because they serve as a constant reminder to me of how much worse this shit is going to get. But they have savings. They have the confidence, however misdirected, of believing the world was made for them. They probably won't survive to have to deal with climate collapse or nuclear meltdown or whatever awful, terrible, no good very bad shit people have been prophesying my entire life, that seems increasingly likely to hit me at an age when I am even less capable than now of dealing with it.
This is supposed to be peak, right? Peak earning power? Peak relationships? Peak adult? And it sucks. And I know I'm lucky. I should be grateful. I should remember--I should never stop forgetting--how much worse it could be, how much worse it probably will be. I should live in the goddamn moment. And I feel guilty about it. And that makes me feel like a failure. And I go back to feeling stuck. I buy records. I buy shiny gold sneakers. I buy the sweater I always wanted when I was seventeen--which I still can't really afford, ps--and I think I will feel better. I get my exercise. I eat my veggies. I watch my intake. I watch my outlay. I go to therapy. I call my friends. I think, this is it? I think, fuck really? I think, this time thirty years ago, I was still waiting for someone to make me a mix tape and take me to prom. I was waiting for my life to take off (my high school's motto was "on the threshold of an excellent life"--which feels absolutely cruel in retrospect). I am still sort of waiting for the mix tape and the prom date. I still have crushingly real FOMO. But I know now that life is the perpetual what if, with all its attendant enthusiasm and anxiety. The best moments are those when you still believe it might work out, even when it doesn't. It is walking down the hall, watching the doors close so impossibly fast you know it's rigged and also knowing that people will tell you it's your own fault for not running fast enough. In thirty years I will be seventy-seven and if I'm still alive, that hallways is going to be a lot darker and shorter. And how do you bear all the coming grief? How do I best prepare myself for the inevitable and crushing disappointments yet to come? It absolutely sucks being a grown-up sometimes, y'all. I keep hearing the the 40s are the bottom of the U, happiness-wise, but I'm also worried that's some boomer nonsense, like pensions, that won't apply to me.
I don't think that this is a circumstance to be solved by sports car or an affair with a secretary or a Paul Simon album(I'm open to argument though, and "The Obvious Child" is a way sadder song to me now than it was in 1990, that's for sure) , but if this is not a midlife crisis, I don't know what a midlife crisis is.
posted by thivaia at 6:03 AM on March 16, 2023 [79 favorites]
Like, where do we think all this great boomer cash is going to go? Part of middle-age is your parents ageing and dying. All of that wealth is going to transfer to their millennial children.
Have you seen how many reverse mortgage advertisements there are on television? The ones that pitch themselves as the perfect way to get retirement income because you get to keep living in your house? Who do you think gets the house after they're gone?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:05 AM on March 16, 2023 [27 favorites]
Have you seen how many reverse mortgage advertisements there are on television? The ones that pitch themselves as the perfect way to get retirement income because you get to keep living in your house? Who do you think gets the house after they're gone?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:05 AM on March 16, 2023 [27 favorites]
another strained article about the pains of the professional class, written explicitly to generate clicks and "discourse". classic nyt!
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 6:09 AM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 6:09 AM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
> Part of middle-age is your parents ageing and dying. All of that wealth is going to transfer to their millennial children.
In the US, most of it will be wiped out by end-of-life medical costs for the dying boomers.
My own parents have flat-out warned me and my brother that this most likely is what's going to happen, so we wouldn't expect a big inheritance.
I'm 53, and I only started working a job that paid me a living wage just after turning fifty. Many of us Gen-Xers were already up against this same situation, it's just that there weren't enough of us to be heard when we started making a stink about it. Hell, we were trying to raise alarms about Social Security running out back in the 90s.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:11 AM on March 16, 2023 [26 favorites]
In the US, most of it will be wiped out by end-of-life medical costs for the dying boomers.
My own parents have flat-out warned me and my brother that this most likely is what's going to happen, so we wouldn't expect a big inheritance.
I'm 53, and I only started working a job that paid me a living wage just after turning fifty. Many of us Gen-Xers were already up against this same situation, it's just that there weren't enough of us to be heard when we started making a stink about it. Hell, we were trying to raise alarms about Social Security running out back in the 90s.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:11 AM on March 16, 2023 [26 favorites]
That's also assuming someone doesn't outlive the length of the reverse mortgage and find themselves without a house.
At least in France people who purchase property through a viager have to keep paying the previous owner monthly stipends for the rest of their natural lives and are forbidden from asking about their health prior to closing. It can lead to some very generous arrangements
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:29 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
At least in France people who purchase property through a viager have to keep paying the previous owner monthly stipends for the rest of their natural lives and are forbidden from asking about their health prior to closing. It can lead to some very generous arrangements
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:29 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
It’s almost like, something like, I dunno, some arbitrary divisions between generations is being emphasized to distract from the fact that, for all people who have to work for a living and are not independently wealthy, things are getting worse, and we should work together to buffer ourselves against the economic system that put us all here, *exhales a puffy Kropotkin shaped cloud* man.
posted by furnace.heart at 7:00 AM on March 16, 2023 [36 favorites]
posted by furnace.heart at 7:00 AM on March 16, 2023 [36 favorites]
Since deregulation and privatization and outsourcing and offshoring and union busting became the watchwords under Thatcher and Reagan, there has been an almost total decay of the wealth distribution systems that used to stop ultra-wealthy families functioning as straight-up financial black holes
I don't really believe in an afterlife, but it makes me feel good to occasionally think of those two blowing each other in the bowels of Hell.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:04 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't really believe in an afterlife, but it makes me feel good to occasionally think of those two blowing each other in the bowels of Hell.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:04 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm 37. I graduated undergrad in 2008. My situation overall is incredibly lucky, I have a mortgage, I'm vested in a pension.(will it be there, dunno but it is way more than any of my friends are going to be able to do if it exists), my student loans were plsf so they are now gone. I also married youngish (25)and have stayed married. Most of my discretionary income is paying for childcare/school for my 4 year old which gives us a tight budget (we are on scholarship and it's still 10,000 a year) but it's a choice we are making. Next year she'll likely enter public school though.
But I'm the only person my age that I know like that. Many of my coworkers my age still have roommates. None of them have houses almost all rent (some of this is because I live in a big city). Most have jumped from job to job every couple years. Many spent a quite a few years in very low paying jobs.
Like, where do we think all this great boomer cash is going to go? Part of middle-age is your parents ageing and dying. All of that wealth is going to transfer to their millennial children.
Have you seen the cost of long term care ? All my families wealth is going to paying for them to stay alive. I will get no inheritance at all. It's all going to corporations. My MIL house is to be sold to pay for her memory care unit one get dementia is too bad for her to live independently. My grandparents house well likely be lost to pay for long term care. My mother is disabled and has been since I was a child so there's nothing there anyway.
I feel like the midlife crisis things I'm seeing are people my age looking to the future and deciding that they aren't going to be able to do it and that they stop engaging with the world in the same way.
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:05 AM on March 16, 2023 [23 favorites]
But I'm the only person my age that I know like that. Many of my coworkers my age still have roommates. None of them have houses almost all rent (some of this is because I live in a big city). Most have jumped from job to job every couple years. Many spent a quite a few years in very low paying jobs.
Like, where do we think all this great boomer cash is going to go? Part of middle-age is your parents ageing and dying. All of that wealth is going to transfer to their millennial children.
Have you seen the cost of long term care ? All my families wealth is going to paying for them to stay alive. I will get no inheritance at all. It's all going to corporations. My MIL house is to be sold to pay for her memory care unit one get dementia is too bad for her to live independently. My grandparents house well likely be lost to pay for long term care. My mother is disabled and has been since I was a child so there's nothing there anyway.
I feel like the midlife crisis things I'm seeing are people my age looking to the future and deciding that they aren't going to be able to do it and that they stop engaging with the world in the same way.
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:05 AM on March 16, 2023 [23 favorites]
thivaia, I vibe with your frustration so hard. SO HARD. I never finished college--didn't even make it through my first year because reasons--so I have never had a career. I have had jobs, but never a career. Now that 50 isn't too far off the horizon, I am internally panicking all the time that I have done nothing with my life. I am internally panicking that while it's great having a stable partner who brings in the majority of our income, I have nothing like that of my own so if he left me or whatever, I'd be fucked. I am internally panicking that my mother is growing old in the US while I am here and I don't think I can help her if she had go into care because money. I am internally panicking that I got one shot to live a life and I didn't do it.
posted by Kitteh at 7:06 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 7:06 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
This advice will in no way solve any of the structural problems of the world (well maybe it will a little), but something I did that might help some other folks facing the prospect of being forever renters.
Get all your closest friends together and buy a multi-family home in a city you like. Splitting a mortgage 5 or 6 ways is a lot easier than you think, a lawyer can draw up a contract so you don't end up fighting over everything as time goes on, and you can even help your friends and lovers through that last bit of their PHD or job search, or drug rehab or whatever, because often you only need 40-50% of the group actually earning money to make it work.
I did this, and we all sat down and were like "is this just going to be like living in apartments we own on top of each other, or something else?" We decided to have group dinners a couple times a week, go in on group grocery purchases, we are upgrading the heating to heat pumps, and are going to do solar after that to lower our utility bills (also there are lots of government money for it now with 0% loans in our area so why not). One of our members just got done with school and now are finances are all adjusting as they start paying into the house.
We help each other through tough times, and split the duties of owning a home amongst us all based on what we like doing/are good at. Yes there are fights over stuff, and yes its not always perfect, but most of the time its pretty good. We are all nearing that 40ish age, so I guess this is what we did for our midlife crisis.
Now most of us have gone from being in debt, to at the very least paying that debt off, some of us are actually able to save some money, and as more and more of us get done with whatever and start working it only gets better. Last year we started a little garden in the side yard, and this year we are expanding it.
Community is one way out of the rent trap, its hard, and a lot of work, but it can be done. Best of luck out there folks. Remember you don't have to go alone!
posted by stilgar at 7:11 AM on March 16, 2023 [42 favorites]
Get all your closest friends together and buy a multi-family home in a city you like. Splitting a mortgage 5 or 6 ways is a lot easier than you think, a lawyer can draw up a contract so you don't end up fighting over everything as time goes on, and you can even help your friends and lovers through that last bit of their PHD or job search, or drug rehab or whatever, because often you only need 40-50% of the group actually earning money to make it work.
I did this, and we all sat down and were like "is this just going to be like living in apartments we own on top of each other, or something else?" We decided to have group dinners a couple times a week, go in on group grocery purchases, we are upgrading the heating to heat pumps, and are going to do solar after that to lower our utility bills (also there are lots of government money for it now with 0% loans in our area so why not). One of our members just got done with school and now are finances are all adjusting as they start paying into the house.
We help each other through tough times, and split the duties of owning a home amongst us all based on what we like doing/are good at. Yes there are fights over stuff, and yes its not always perfect, but most of the time its pretty good. We are all nearing that 40ish age, so I guess this is what we did for our midlife crisis.
Now most of us have gone from being in debt, to at the very least paying that debt off, some of us are actually able to save some money, and as more and more of us get done with whatever and start working it only gets better. Last year we started a little garden in the side yard, and this year we are expanding it.
Community is one way out of the rent trap, its hard, and a lot of work, but it can be done. Best of luck out there folks. Remember you don't have to go alone!
posted by stilgar at 7:11 AM on March 16, 2023 [42 favorites]
41. I’m earning the most I’ve ever earned but it doesn’t go as far these days, so instead of being simultaneously greedy and frivolous with my money I’ve decided to do the same with my time.
On top of school and employment, I volunteered my ass off in my 30s, and there were whole months I didn't have time to exercise, and days when I didn’t eat breakfast until 9 PM. And forget about keeping a clean house or going to the doctor!
Now these organizations, run by my esteemed elders, wonder why a childless woman doesn’t want to give up all her evenings and weekends to their cause. What else could I possibly have to do if I’m not a man or a mom? Who wouldn’t want to drive to a fundraiser in the exurbs at rush hour after a long day of work, and listen to a bunch of retirees talk about how my generation needs to step it up because theirs has cruises to go on?
Since the pandemic, my priorities are career, exercise, and sitting home watching hockey with my husband and cats — in roughly that order. Everything else yields to those things. My time is precious and I’m tired of allocating it to everyone else first.
posted by armeowda at 7:16 AM on March 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
On top of school and employment, I volunteered my ass off in my 30s, and there were whole months I didn't have time to exercise, and days when I didn’t eat breakfast until 9 PM. And forget about keeping a clean house or going to the doctor!
Now these organizations, run by my esteemed elders, wonder why a childless woman doesn’t want to give up all her evenings and weekends to their cause. What else could I possibly have to do if I’m not a man or a mom? Who wouldn’t want to drive to a fundraiser in the exurbs at rush hour after a long day of work, and listen to a bunch of retirees talk about how my generation needs to step it up because theirs has cruises to go on?
Since the pandemic, my priorities are career, exercise, and sitting home watching hockey with my husband and cats — in roughly that order. Everything else yields to those things. My time is precious and I’m tired of allocating it to everyone else first.
posted by armeowda at 7:16 AM on March 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
Cheers to you, stilgar, but you do know that finding five or six people to live with that you won't wind up hating after 30-50 years is basically winning the lottery. It's hard enough to find one person you want to live with for more than a decade.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:17 AM on March 16, 2023 [27 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:17 AM on March 16, 2023 [27 favorites]
There are quite a few comments in this thread that would have benefitted from first reading the actual article. It's not perfect, and explicitly isn't talking about all people, but it also isn't the stereotypical NYT style section article where they profile three people who live in a gentrifying neighborhood in New York and who always turn out to be the scions of extremely wealthy or well-connected parents. It's worth reading, and it makes a bunch of the points that have been brought up here.
I'm Gen X, but not much older than a lot of the people who were profiled/interviewed for the article. There's a lot in what they described that I relate to, though my experiences have also differed in many ways. I very much agreed with the concluding paragraph of the article:
The stressors of midlife for so many Americans are not existential; they’re material — economic, familial and political. They’re about the seemingly decent paycheck that is spent almost entirely on child care, student loan repayment and medical debt, leaving nothing to build a nest egg or save for their children’s futures. They’re about the median home price increasing 50 percent since January 2020 and grocery prices that are 10 percent higher than they were in January 2022. They’re about a sandwich generation caring for boomers and babies, being squeezed until there’s nothing left.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:22 AM on March 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
I'm Gen X, but not much older than a lot of the people who were profiled/interviewed for the article. There's a lot in what they described that I relate to, though my experiences have also differed in many ways. I very much agreed with the concluding paragraph of the article:
The stressors of midlife for so many Americans are not existential; they’re material — economic, familial and political. They’re about the seemingly decent paycheck that is spent almost entirely on child care, student loan repayment and medical debt, leaving nothing to build a nest egg or save for their children’s futures. They’re about the median home price increasing 50 percent since January 2020 and grocery prices that are 10 percent higher than they were in January 2022. They’re about a sandwich generation caring for boomers and babies, being squeezed until there’s nothing left.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:22 AM on March 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
30-50 is optimistic. 3-5 would be optimistic. Isn't the classic saying that going on a holiday together is a good way to ruin a friendship?
posted by Dysk at 7:22 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 7:22 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
simple and repetitive message: in the UK, in Australia, in the US, a series of deliberate policy decisions has led to the wholesale transfer of wealth from the poor, the working class and the middle class to elites over the past 30 years and it has intensified over the past 3 years.
simple, repetitive, and we know this to be true.
inter-generational frictions get way too much play. They naturally exist, but if you find yourself accepting wholecloth generalizations about any group (especially so as to produce anger) you are probably being distracted from the real problem. Put aside the caricatures, we are all products of this shit.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:31 AM on March 16, 2023 [11 favorites]
simple, repetitive, and we know this to be true.
inter-generational frictions get way too much play. They naturally exist, but if you find yourself accepting wholecloth generalizations about any group (especially so as to produce anger) you are probably being distracted from the real problem. Put aside the caricatures, we are all products of this shit.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:31 AM on March 16, 2023 [11 favorites]
I'm 43, not a millennial. Oregon Trail generation. We're different.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:35 AM on March 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:35 AM on March 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
I’m just trying not to suck any dicks on my way to the parking lot.
Hey pal, speak for yourself
posted by pickinganameismuchharderthanihadanticipated at 7:37 AM on March 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
Hey pal, speak for yourself
posted by pickinganameismuchharderthanihadanticipated at 7:37 AM on March 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
As a young Gen X (born right on the Gen X/Millennial line), my quarter-life crisis blended seamlessly into my midlife crisis with nothing in between. I graduating college right into the dot com collapse and then grad school right into the housing crisis. I spent my twenties as my country slogged through the horrors of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and my thirties as it slogged through the (checks charts) Afghanistan and Iraq wars. It took me five years out of college to land a salaried job (not in my chosen fields), and five years out of grad school to land one adjacent to my chosen field. Neither has felt particularly stable, and I spend every hour convinced this will be the moment I lose it all.
posted by UltraMorgnus at 7:38 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by UltraMorgnus at 7:38 AM on March 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
My husband and I (no kids) managed to buy a house when I was about 42. It's not exactly a good house, and although I love having my own space, it doesn't seem like the kind of property to increase in value past a certain point because it's old, and we don't quite have the skills or the money to maintain it or renovate it like it needs. So we may be those old folks living in a house with rain coming through the ceiling as we grumble at each other in front of the television.
I also suspect I've done nothing with my life. We made a will, because that's what we needed to do, and it seemed a little pathetic every time I said the words "our estate." Hah! It's not quite an empire of dirt, but it's not much more than that. At least a friend said she would take the pets if we both got hit by a bus tomorrow.
Thivaia, I'm a year older than you, and my current Paul Simon album of choice is "So Beautiful or So What."
posted by PussKillian at 7:42 AM on March 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
I also suspect I've done nothing with my life. We made a will, because that's what we needed to do, and it seemed a little pathetic every time I said the words "our estate." Hah! It's not quite an empire of dirt, but it's not much more than that. At least a friend said she would take the pets if we both got hit by a bus tomorrow.
Thivaia, I'm a year older than you, and my current Paul Simon album of choice is "So Beautiful or So What."
posted by PussKillian at 7:42 AM on March 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
Well, good news, a lot of the economic inequality in American wealth distribution is going to be fixed by end of life care costs and... reverse mortgages apparently. So that's good, we won't be continuing a pattern of wealth inequality that way!
Except for the fact that an awful lot of 40-something NYT readers with wealthy parents will have parents with good financial advisors who started putting assets beyond the reach of Medicaid years ago. They get to keep their wealth into the next generation.
posted by atrazine at 7:49 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Except for the fact that an awful lot of 40-something NYT readers with wealthy parents will have parents with good financial advisors who started putting assets beyond the reach of Medicaid years ago. They get to keep their wealth into the next generation.
posted by atrazine at 7:49 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Gen X. We bought a house in the 90s, it wasn’t some genius financial move on our part but more of a “oh man, the new landlords who bought our apartment suck, it’s not gonna cost us that much more to buy.” We were lucky, especially in hindsight. It was affordable then, a few years before the 2000s home market started going nuts and sending prices spiraling. I know so many people who are getting crushed by rent these days, and forget about buying a home. The millennials and Gen Z got an absolute shit deal. Exploding college prices, the “American Dream(tm)” being unattainable, little to look forward to for the future. We are SO glad we didn’t have kids. We wouldn’t want to leave them to this future.
posted by azpenguin at 8:00 AM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by azpenguin at 8:00 AM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
(I'm kind of excited that I never bought a house? Who wants that much debt? Renting and "throwing my money away" is working out well.)
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:02 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:02 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Community is one way out of the rent trap, its hard, and a lot of work, but it can be done. Best of luck out there folks. Remember you don't have to go alone!
posted by stilgar
I am shocked shocked to see Stilgar recommending sietches.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:31 AM on March 16, 2023 [27 favorites]
posted by stilgar
I am shocked shocked to see Stilgar recommending sietches.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:31 AM on March 16, 2023 [27 favorites]
stilgar > Get all your closest friends together and buy a multi-family home in a city you like
god I came close to that and it was a giant fucking mess, my relationship got shattered by it, the biggest wage-earner and her wife tried to paint me as a horrible person to our entire social circles, in retrospect I really should have said "no I do not want to share a house with you" when she revealed her dream of the whole house kind of being a horny playspace but I really needed to get the fuck out of Boston and my SOs really really liked her and her wife and assured me it would be great
but then again we also did not do several important things on Stilgar's list, we were renting, there was no legal contract, we never drew up any kind of chore rota so there was a lot of unhappiness over shit like "oh god the biggest wage-earner made a giant pot of chili and dirtied more dishes than there are in the entire kitchen, and nobody involved in eating it is lifting a finger to deal with it, and here I am working from home and having to do her fucking dishes just to be able to get a drink"; after I was kicked out I hear a succession of other people ended up in the "does not eat of the giant chili but ends up cleaning after it" position as the constant rotation of Seattle furry housemates brought other people into that place, if I ever end up in a group living situation again I sure as fuck am going to make sure we have a chore rota that is examined every few months
also pretty much involved in this was a trans furry who was aspie as fuck, myself included, I strongly recommend having multiple people involved who actually have more than two functioning mirror neurons in their brains if you try this
posted by egypturnash at 8:50 AM on March 16, 2023 [18 favorites]
god I came close to that and it was a giant fucking mess, my relationship got shattered by it, the biggest wage-earner and her wife tried to paint me as a horrible person to our entire social circles, in retrospect I really should have said "no I do not want to share a house with you" when she revealed her dream of the whole house kind of being a horny playspace but I really needed to get the fuck out of Boston and my SOs really really liked her and her wife and assured me it would be great
but then again we also did not do several important things on Stilgar's list, we were renting, there was no legal contract, we never drew up any kind of chore rota so there was a lot of unhappiness over shit like "oh god the biggest wage-earner made a giant pot of chili and dirtied more dishes than there are in the entire kitchen, and nobody involved in eating it is lifting a finger to deal with it, and here I am working from home and having to do her fucking dishes just to be able to get a drink"; after I was kicked out I hear a succession of other people ended up in the "does not eat of the giant chili but ends up cleaning after it" position as the constant rotation of Seattle furry housemates brought other people into that place, if I ever end up in a group living situation again I sure as fuck am going to make sure we have a chore rota that is examined every few months
also pretty much involved in this was a trans furry who was aspie as fuck, myself included, I strongly recommend having multiple people involved who actually have more than two functioning mirror neurons in their brains if you try this
posted by egypturnash at 8:50 AM on March 16, 2023 [18 favorites]
Millennial here, graduated undergrad in 2008, and I feel like the issue is and has always been the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the very few. The article walked around it without saying directly that this is the reason why so many of us feel insecure or don’t have the money for a mid-life crisis, as one of the interviewed subjects said. I agree completely with the take that a mid-life crisis is a mostly manufactured, white upper middle class phenomenon.
As someone who got caught up in the inter-generational blame game during the 2008+ financial crisis and beyond, even here on Metafilter: We need to look at the people who have far too much money, not years.
posted by glaucon at 8:51 AM on March 16, 2023 [11 favorites]
As someone who got caught up in the inter-generational blame game during the 2008+ financial crisis and beyond, even here on Metafilter: We need to look at the people who have far too much money, not years.
posted by glaucon at 8:51 AM on March 16, 2023 [11 favorites]
Lanark: “The idea we can lump everyone in a 20 year generation lifespan together as being "the same" is an idea that really needs to die. It is lazy journalism intended to divide people and have the working classes blaming each other for systemic failures.”I like to use Joshua Glenn's cohort names. Mostly so people will ask me, "What is a Darwikian?"
“Generations,” Joshua Glenn, Hi-Lo Brow , 02 March 2010
- 1944-53: [Boomers] Blank Generation
- 1954-63: [Boomers] OGXers
- 1964-73: [Generation X, Thirteenth Generation] Reconstructionists
- 1974-82: [Generations X, Y] Revivalists
- 1983-92: [Millennial Generation] Social Darwikians
- 1993-2002: [Millennials, Generation Z] TBA
The generation who came of age between 1950 and 1979 had a special moment
my class of 75's special moment was graduating from high school in a factory town and realizing that all the factories that had been hiring right and left for decades had stopped - as the price of oil went up, the president resigned, inflation soared, and we lost a war
the world has seen many special moments since then
i'd also like to offer the idea that it's all crisis if you don't have enough money
posted by pyramid termite at 8:57 AM on March 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
my class of 75's special moment was graduating from high school in a factory town and realizing that all the factories that had been hiring right and left for decades had stopped - as the price of oil went up, the president resigned, inflation soared, and we lost a war
the world has seen many special moments since then
i'd also like to offer the idea that it's all crisis if you don't have enough money
posted by pyramid termite at 8:57 AM on March 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
my class of 75's special moment was graduating from high school in a factory town and realizing that all the factories that had been hiring right and left for decades had stopped - as the price of oil went up, the president resigned, inflation soared, and we lost a war
. . . and we're livin' here in Allentown.
posted by The Bellman at 9:04 AM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
. . . and we're livin' here in Allentown.
posted by The Bellman at 9:04 AM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Like, where do we think all this great boomer cash is going to go? Part of middle-age is your parents ageing and dying. All of that wealth is going to transfer to their millennial children.
If your parents are wealthy odds are they will live in their eighties. If they retired early at 55 you're looking at ~30 years of wealth burn through even without the exponential run-up of health care costs in their final years (in the US).
So if you're lucky(and your parents are unlucky) you probably get what's leftover somewhere in your late 50s to 60s.
Fortunately US life expectancy is plummeting and the wealthy are getting recklessly stupid so maybe wealth turn over will accelerate.
posted by srboisvert at 9:17 AM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
If your parents are wealthy odds are they will live in their eighties. If they retired early at 55 you're looking at ~30 years of wealth burn through even without the exponential run-up of health care costs in their final years (in the US).
So if you're lucky(and your parents are unlucky) you probably get what's leftover somewhere in your late 50s to 60s.
Fortunately US life expectancy is plummeting and the wealthy are getting recklessly stupid so maybe wealth turn over will accelerate.
posted by srboisvert at 9:17 AM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
here's a novel idea to those worried about generational wealth - get a life insurance policy on your parents. Make it a big one and pay the dues.
Many places in the USA you don't pay income taxes on a life insurance payout. FYI.
posted by djseafood at 9:27 AM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
Many places in the USA you don't pay income taxes on a life insurance payout. FYI.
posted by djseafood at 9:27 AM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
Also "this boomer cash" is ... not every boomer? Like yes, as a generation they're wealthier but as a lot of folks in this thread have noted, a lot of our parents are broke as fuck.
Turns out my "midlife" crisis (ha, assuming I would live into my 80s! hysterical if true) is going to be buying my mother a home, because she can't support herself like, at all, once she stops working, which she is determined to do, because the birthright of boomers is retirement right? So not only will I not inherit anything from her, I will in fact be fucking over MY old age, spending 2x living expenses for the next bazillion years to keep her afloat. My midlife crisis is that I finally got to a place where I could think about having any kind of future and almost immediately have to give it up.
Luckily I inherited the genes that die young.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:27 AM on March 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
Turns out my "midlife" crisis (ha, assuming I would live into my 80s! hysterical if true) is going to be buying my mother a home, because she can't support herself like, at all, once she stops working, which she is determined to do, because the birthright of boomers is retirement right? So not only will I not inherit anything from her, I will in fact be fucking over MY old age, spending 2x living expenses for the next bazillion years to keep her afloat. My midlife crisis is that I finally got to a place where I could think about having any kind of future and almost immediately have to give it up.
Luckily I inherited the genes that die young.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:27 AM on March 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
I’m Gen X (55) and here to say ageism is real and get used to it millennials. I haven’t worked in my field in six years. In that time I’ve managed to get two interviews. So I’ve basically retired and work in the service industry. Wonderful.
posted by misterpatrick at 9:28 AM on March 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by misterpatrick at 9:28 AM on March 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
The thing about group housing is that everyone needs to be managing their mental health okay most of the time - the critical part of that is "am I in a headspace where I can realistically assess my needs, my contributions and the needs/contributions of the other people involved".
If you can say realistically "I need a social house, not a house of introverts, and I'm going to feel excluded and alone if everyone is in their rooms all the time" you won't move into the house you've been repeatedly told is all introverts and then get mad. (One of my short-term housemates.) If you can listen when your gut says, "this person will not be happy here at all AND they will share their unhappiness", you won't invite them to move in over your own doubts and end up with the Angry Extrovert.
As people get older they get better at this and tend to get a handle on what they need to manage their mental health. It's not that you have to be flawlessly mentally healthy to live in a group house; you just need to be able to identify the conditions you need to feel okay and to identify the things you will truly struggle to do despite your best efforts. I'm relatively untidy; I don't need tidy housemates but could manage in relatively tidy house where most things are put away most of the time on a rolling basis and surfaces are not dirty. I would not be a good housemate for people who were really committed to keeping a beautiful, decorated house and never leaving a dish in the sink or a bottle out of a cabinet in the bathroom.
It's fine to live in a messy, noisy group house as long as everyone involved is happy with that - I've visited several extremely messy, noisy, high-drama punk houses where everyone was basically glad to be there.
I would be fine with a serious group house buy now since I'm Old and have had several long-term housemates, but you've got to be wise to yourself before you get into one.
posted by Frowner at 9:54 AM on March 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
If you can say realistically "I need a social house, not a house of introverts, and I'm going to feel excluded and alone if everyone is in their rooms all the time" you won't move into the house you've been repeatedly told is all introverts and then get mad. (One of my short-term housemates.) If you can listen when your gut says, "this person will not be happy here at all AND they will share their unhappiness", you won't invite them to move in over your own doubts and end up with the Angry Extrovert.
As people get older they get better at this and tend to get a handle on what they need to manage their mental health. It's not that you have to be flawlessly mentally healthy to live in a group house; you just need to be able to identify the conditions you need to feel okay and to identify the things you will truly struggle to do despite your best efforts. I'm relatively untidy; I don't need tidy housemates but could manage in relatively tidy house where most things are put away most of the time on a rolling basis and surfaces are not dirty. I would not be a good housemate for people who were really committed to keeping a beautiful, decorated house and never leaving a dish in the sink or a bottle out of a cabinet in the bathroom.
It's fine to live in a messy, noisy group house as long as everyone involved is happy with that - I've visited several extremely messy, noisy, high-drama punk houses where everyone was basically glad to be there.
I would be fine with a serious group house buy now since I'm Old and have had several long-term housemates, but you've got to be wise to yourself before you get into one.
posted by Frowner at 9:54 AM on March 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
Repeat after me, generational politics is just a distraction from class politics. Maybe more millennials are lacking security, but that's not an issue unique to that generation and is far more dependent on class than anything else.
posted by Aleyn at 10:09 AM on March 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
posted by Aleyn at 10:09 AM on March 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
I'd call mine less of a "crisis" and more of an "ennui". Similar but less active and cheaper.
More seriously, I'm very lucky to be earning good money but still unable to save enough to buy property. In large part because the sacrifices required would diminish the quality of my life when I'm still young(ish). Reading comments here makes me think that I'm not alone in making this decision, rather than just being an avocado toast loving layabout.
posted by slimepuppy at 10:12 AM on March 16, 2023
More seriously, I'm very lucky to be earning good money but still unable to save enough to buy property. In large part because the sacrifices required would diminish the quality of my life when I'm still young(ish). Reading comments here makes me think that I'm not alone in making this decision, rather than just being an avocado toast loving layabout.
posted by slimepuppy at 10:12 AM on March 16, 2023
I did the "buy a house with multiple people" thing and it means I have a house, which is pretty great. In our case it was 3 adults, with a 4th who pays a much-lower-than-market rent to us because he didn't want to be tied down to one location. We've been doing this since 2011. It works for us but I really don't know if it's a solution for many (let alone most) people since it really does require tremendous luck and dovetailing of interests/skills/personality traits. We do have a rule that everybody in the house has to be seeing a therapist at least monthly. But we could still easily be derailed if one of us becomes unable to work. It's a sort of life hack that reveals the inherent injustice of the system.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:18 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by joannemerriam at 10:18 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Mod note: Comment removed. Please stick to the Guidelines and refrain from making light jokes in a serious discussion, such as using the word "Chinesium".
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 10:23 AM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 10:23 AM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
that's not an issue unique to that generation and is far more dependent on class than anything else.
Oh yeah absolutely, nearly all of the other millennials I know are filthy goddamn rich, tbh, and they are having the very "traditional" affairs and cars crisis. There's a little bit of dread in there about eldercare, sure, but mostly seems to be logistical (as in, how do we care for mom when she lives 6 states away and refuses to move) rather than "wow we are literally all going to actually starve in like 10 years."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:33 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm 55. We sold our house (barely breaking even) in 2017 after a health crisis to downsize and start over. We decided to rent for a while until we figured out our next move. My current goal is to keep saving and hopefully have enough cash by retirement to put in a very sizable down payment if not buy outright a home. When I look at my retirement cash flow projections minimizing housing costs seems like the key. That kind of requires a 2008-level market crash, which on the surface seems inevitable given the insane increase in prices recently. But so much of that was bought with cash, I don't actually see where the next mortgage crisis comes from. People will just sit on their paid-off houses until they decide to sell on their terms.
So plan B is to figure out where we move for retirement if retiring in the US is not possible.
I’m Gen X (55) and here to say ageism is real and get used to it millennials...
And all that above assumes I can keep earning at my current level for another 10 years. That probably isn't the best assumption.
posted by COD at 10:36 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
So plan B is to figure out where we move for retirement if retiring in the US is not possible.
I’m Gen X (55) and here to say ageism is real and get used to it millennials...
And all that above assumes I can keep earning at my current level for another 10 years. That probably isn't the best assumption.
posted by COD at 10:36 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
In the US, most of it will be wiped out by end-of-life medical costs for the dying boomers.
People who are worried about a few hundred K in end of life expenses are not the rich 1%, there are people out there who will spend $100,000 on a single bouquet of flowers.
posted by Lanark at 10:40 AM on March 16, 2023
People who are worried about a few hundred K in end of life expenses are not the rich 1%, there are people out there who will spend $100,000 on a single bouquet of flowers.
posted by Lanark at 10:40 AM on March 16, 2023
I also think that by generally marrying later and often not the first person they went on a date with, millennials are far less likely to have the 'midlife crisis' via an affair and motorcycle. People who marry young are far more likely to get a divorce.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:40 AM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:40 AM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Interestingly, I (a younger millenial) was just talking with my parents the other day about one of my older cousins, who seems to be going through all the classic mid-life crisis stuff - left his wife and kids, took up with a younger woman at his office (where he is the boss, yikes), partying it up in various tropical locales with fancy sports cars, etc.
He seems to be the exception that proves the rule as someone who has been able to replicate a life trajectory from "the good old days", marrying his high school sweetheart and having kids very young, stay-at-home wife handling all household stuff to allow him to focus on boosting his career/earnings.. all backed by family wealth (e.g. having their "starter home" gifted to them with no strings attached at age 20). Everyone else in my cohort has had to struggle with finding someone non-horrible to partner with, getting two careers started, saving up to be able to afford kids, etc to the point where that whole schedule has been pushed back at least 10 years if not indefinitely. But frankly, having that extra 10+ years of life experience has perhaps convinced some of us that the white picket fence life isn't worth aspiring to after all, hopefully obviating the need for a crisis (mid-life or otherwise) in the first place.
Another feature of my cousin's mid-life crisis is a newfound enthusiasm for social media, making it trivially easy to observe the whole mess from afar. Mostly I just feel second-hand embarrassment. Like, it's just so obvious. What a waste. We all liked his ex-wife better anyways.
posted by btfreek at 10:46 AM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
He seems to be the exception that proves the rule as someone who has been able to replicate a life trajectory from "the good old days", marrying his high school sweetheart and having kids very young, stay-at-home wife handling all household stuff to allow him to focus on boosting his career/earnings.. all backed by family wealth (e.g. having their "starter home" gifted to them with no strings attached at age 20). Everyone else in my cohort has had to struggle with finding someone non-horrible to partner with, getting two careers started, saving up to be able to afford kids, etc to the point where that whole schedule has been pushed back at least 10 years if not indefinitely. But frankly, having that extra 10+ years of life experience has perhaps convinced some of us that the white picket fence life isn't worth aspiring to after all, hopefully obviating the need for a crisis (mid-life or otherwise) in the first place.
Another feature of my cousin's mid-life crisis is a newfound enthusiasm for social media, making it trivially easy to observe the whole mess from afar. Mostly I just feel second-hand embarrassment. Like, it's just so obvious. What a waste. We all liked his ex-wife better anyways.
posted by btfreek at 10:46 AM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
People who are worried about a few hundred K in end of life expenses are not the rich 1%, there are people out there who will spend $100,000 on a single bouquet of flowers.
That's true, but also there are 99% other household income percentages, so not everything only applies to the 1%. And I say that as someone who thinks end of life costs are constantly overstated. But even if I think that, there are definitely some cases where someone does have a few hundred thousand in retirement, and a unique health scenario will take them from 'comfortable retirement' to 'debtor' with no way out due to age and health.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:48 AM on March 16, 2023
That's true, but also there are 99% other household income percentages, so not everything only applies to the 1%. And I say that as someone who thinks end of life costs are constantly overstated. But even if I think that, there are definitely some cases where someone does have a few hundred thousand in retirement, and a unique health scenario will take them from 'comfortable retirement' to 'debtor' with no way out due to age and health.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:48 AM on March 16, 2023
the "buy a house with multiple people" thing
Cohousing is relevant to this notion. I mostly just know of it via a few radio documentaries. One detail that stuck was that, in general, it doesn't work when you try to do it with a bunch of friends. Because living with people is not the same thing as being friends with them. Different dynamics. Different concerns. Different goals.
I definitely like the idea of it. Not a cult.
posted by philip-random at 10:50 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Cohousing is relevant to this notion. I mostly just know of it via a few radio documentaries. One detail that stuck was that, in general, it doesn't work when you try to do it with a bunch of friends. Because living with people is not the same thing as being friends with them. Different dynamics. Different concerns. Different goals.
I definitely like the idea of it. Not a cult.
posted by philip-random at 10:50 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
my quarter-life crisis blended seamlessly into my midlife crisis with nothing in between.
Yup, this. I had a job I loved, got laid off from it, and that career is no longer viable. I got a "settle for" job that I was quite cool and froody with, but it's straight up been poisoned for the last half of said career and I just don't know what to do. I'm never going to do anything I care about for a living again (also AI will apparently take over all creative work anyway) and some job where I sit in the basement with the stapler not offending people with my existence doesn't exist.
"I feel stuck in my job because all risk feels dangerous because I don't have the financial security to take a huge a risk, because I don't make much money and I don't have a secondary source of income or a partner or a benefactor capable of/willing to let me slide."
With you there. I am having a really, really, really horrible bad time with my job, but would I ever be able to get another one? Probably not. How am I going to live if I can't work here? Truthful answer is I probably....can't.
Cheers to you, stilgar, but you do know that finding five or six people to live with that you won't wind up hating after 30-50 years is basically winning the lottery. It's hard enough to find one person you want to live with for more than a decade.
What occurs to me with the group house idea is that people will continue to date, find SO's, and then want to move out of the house (or have the SO move in). Unfortunately, group homes can kind of be revolving doors. This is why I gave up on having roommates.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:54 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yup, this. I had a job I loved, got laid off from it, and that career is no longer viable. I got a "settle for" job that I was quite cool and froody with, but it's straight up been poisoned for the last half of said career and I just don't know what to do. I'm never going to do anything I care about for a living again (also AI will apparently take over all creative work anyway) and some job where I sit in the basement with the stapler not offending people with my existence doesn't exist.
"I feel stuck in my job because all risk feels dangerous because I don't have the financial security to take a huge a risk, because I don't make much money and I don't have a secondary source of income or a partner or a benefactor capable of/willing to let me slide."
With you there. I am having a really, really, really horrible bad time with my job, but would I ever be able to get another one? Probably not. How am I going to live if I can't work here? Truthful answer is I probably....can't.
Cheers to you, stilgar, but you do know that finding five or six people to live with that you won't wind up hating after 30-50 years is basically winning the lottery. It's hard enough to find one person you want to live with for more than a decade.
What occurs to me with the group house idea is that people will continue to date, find SO's, and then want to move out of the house (or have the SO move in). Unfortunately, group homes can kind of be revolving doors. This is why I gave up on having roommates.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:54 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
..there are 99% other household income percentages
Whether you are in the 97% or the 5% percentile, doesn't really matter when the richest 1 percent are grabbing nearly two-thirds of all new wealth.
posted by Lanark at 10:58 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Whether you are in the 97% or the 5% percentile, doesn't really matter when the richest 1 percent are grabbing nearly two-thirds of all new wealth.
posted by Lanark at 10:58 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Taking out a life insurance policy on your PARENTS? Millennials never grow up, that's supposed to be your spouse and then you get caught after they die in a suspicious car accident and you fly off to Cancun with your younger lover.
posted by kingdead at 10:59 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by kingdead at 10:59 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
I turn 52 in a week. My wife and I own our house outright after spending many years doubling down on mortgage payments using her entire salary. I have made good money for many years as a back-end web developer and we have money saved up and stuff going into retirement savings. My wife retired due to sexism and agism after a string of crappy jobs. We have two daughters and the eldest is almost done with university and the youngest starts in the fall and neither of them will have to take out loans.
Both sets of our parents are boomers with houses and other assets that will be sold and split up between the kids.
By any standard I feel like I have been a success and now view my job as making sure my kids have a chance in this fucked up world. We literally made a plan when both of us were making a fraction of what we make now and have successfully executed on it. It sucked a lot at times but I was always thinking long-term.
At the same time I acknowledge the pain I read in this thread. The disappointment many of you feel due to circumstances way beyond your control. I can also understand folks reading what I wrote and feeling mad at me over how my life turned out. We definitely got help along the way from our parents when things got financially difficult. Not “parents bought us the house” help but “parents loaned us money that we paid back” help.
Don’t fall for the generational war and the class war. One can be successful and also want everyone else to have a better life too.
posted by grmpyprogrammer at 11:00 AM on March 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
Both sets of our parents are boomers with houses and other assets that will be sold and split up between the kids.
By any standard I feel like I have been a success and now view my job as making sure my kids have a chance in this fucked up world. We literally made a plan when both of us were making a fraction of what we make now and have successfully executed on it. It sucked a lot at times but I was always thinking long-term.
At the same time I acknowledge the pain I read in this thread. The disappointment many of you feel due to circumstances way beyond your control. I can also understand folks reading what I wrote and feeling mad at me over how my life turned out. We definitely got help along the way from our parents when things got financially difficult. Not “parents bought us the house” help but “parents loaned us money that we paid back” help.
Don’t fall for the generational war and the class war. One can be successful and also want everyone else to have a better life too.
posted by grmpyprogrammer at 11:00 AM on March 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
Wow your wife really got the toughest part of that deal. Had to use her entire salary to fund the house and then sexism and ageism ends her career/crappy jobs. Sigh.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:04 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:04 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
I would say "had to" is a bit too strong. It was a choice we made and our mortgage would've gotten paid off either way -- this would've been the year we were finally mortgage-free without doing it.
But, yes, she definitely got a lot rawer deal than I did. Now she hangs out at home with me (I've worked remotely for a very long time) and she volunteers once a week for a local charity. We enjoy hanging out in our backyard and enjoying the landscaping and the pool that the pervious owners paid to have put in and have finally gotten to the point where our youngest can be left unsupervised long enough for us to start planning some travelling and try and enjoy our lives as a reward for 25 years of literally following a plan.
posted by grmpyprogrammer at 11:11 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
But, yes, she definitely got a lot rawer deal than I did. Now she hangs out at home with me (I've worked remotely for a very long time) and she volunteers once a week for a local charity. We enjoy hanging out in our backyard and enjoying the landscaping and the pool that the pervious owners paid to have put in and have finally gotten to the point where our youngest can be left unsupervised long enough for us to start planning some travelling and try and enjoy our lives as a reward for 25 years of literally following a plan.
posted by grmpyprogrammer at 11:11 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
She "had to" in part because of the whole history of sexism and women's salaries, etc though. Small distinction, wasn't trying to say you forced her. Rather she was forced.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:13 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:13 AM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
I also think that by generally marrying later and often not the first person they went on a date with, millennials are far less likely to have the 'midlife crisis' via an affair and motorcycle.
Let's not forget the number of marriages that blew up because one or both partners were unable to pretend they were straight anymore. Much less a feature of millennial life. I used to say that accidentally dating, but not actually getting engaged to before the two of you figured it out, a gay man was a distinctive feature of 80s/90s college life. Earlier, you'd get married out of denial and/or a need to stay closeted and both of you would be miserable. Time passed, and the college kids now hand out cards on their first date specifying 19 identity categories they belong to. Which has its own drawbacks, but is a whole lot better than the pre-80s scenario.
posted by praemunire at 11:27 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Let's not forget the number of marriages that blew up because one or both partners were unable to pretend they were straight anymore. Much less a feature of millennial life. I used to say that accidentally dating, but not actually getting engaged to before the two of you figured it out, a gay man was a distinctive feature of 80s/90s college life. Earlier, you'd get married out of denial and/or a need to stay closeted and both of you would be miserable. Time passed, and the college kids now hand out cards on their first date specifying 19 identity categories they belong to. Which has its own drawbacks, but is a whole lot better than the pre-80s scenario.
posted by praemunire at 11:27 AM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
... enjoy our lives as a reward for 25 years of literally following a plan.
I'm glad it's working out for you, but keeping your head down for 25 years and postponing "life" is a real risk in a world where none of us are guaranteed to have the health necessary to enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Cue stories of people that put in 40 years at the plant and die of a heart attack two weeks into retirement.
What we need is a world that lets those of us not in the 1% enjoy life not as a reward for 25 years of labor, but as a condition of living in the first place.
posted by COD at 11:27 AM on March 16, 2023 [22 favorites]
I'm glad it's working out for you, but keeping your head down for 25 years and postponing "life" is a real risk in a world where none of us are guaranteed to have the health necessary to enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Cue stories of people that put in 40 years at the plant and die of a heart attack two weeks into retirement.
What we need is a world that lets those of us not in the 1% enjoy life not as a reward for 25 years of labor, but as a condition of living in the first place.
posted by COD at 11:27 AM on March 16, 2023 [22 favorites]
The math on "set your housing costs on one salary and use the second for savings/debt reduction" was sound at a time when you actually could carry a house on one salary. i.e. 25 years ago. As much as I hate to link to the National Post, here's the story in one graph.
We're also mortgage-free although not debt-free because I bought windows, and here are my pro tips:
1. Buy your first house in 1994.
2. Or before 2000.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:32 AM on March 16, 2023 [12 favorites]
We're also mortgage-free although not debt-free because I bought windows, and here are my pro tips:
1. Buy your first house in 1994.
2. Or before 2000.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:32 AM on March 16, 2023 [12 favorites]
Last comment and then I will let this thread keep flowing.
It never felt like we postponed anything -- I found a partner who was mostly interested in the same kind of domestic life I was, and we had two kids, and hobbies, and visited family, took a few expensive trips (Disney in Florida for both kids when they turned 5).
And to be perfectly transparent -- my wife's salary went to doubling our mortgage payments while my salary paid for everything else -- groceries, heating, electricity, car payments, clothing, you name it.
Being mortgage-free and debt-free makes one feel like a unicorn when it used to be normal for my boomer parents.
posted by grmpyprogrammer at 12:06 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
It never felt like we postponed anything -- I found a partner who was mostly interested in the same kind of domestic life I was, and we had two kids, and hobbies, and visited family, took a few expensive trips (Disney in Florida for both kids when they turned 5).
And to be perfectly transparent -- my wife's salary went to doubling our mortgage payments while my salary paid for everything else -- groceries, heating, electricity, car payments, clothing, you name it.
Being mortgage-free and debt-free makes one feel like a unicorn when it used to be normal for my boomer parents.
posted by grmpyprogrammer at 12:06 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm 59, old enough to remember when I was fully in Generation X before they moved the guideposts and I landed in the gap. I have to push back a little, grmpyprogrammer, because I am fine falling for the class war. You did everything right and it worked out for you, that's great - but you shouldn't have to do everything absolutely right and manage to avoid every single pitfall to succeed even modestly. A system without some room for an occasional misstep is not a working system. I had older parents who died when I was in my mid 40s and that's how I was able to afford to buy a house, because I did not marry well. That was dumb. I had a kid way too young with the wrong person and then I screwed up and married an even worse person later. So I was 45 when I got onto the real estate ladder and while I was already in the process of buying a house when my mother died, it was really an inheritance that made that ever a possibility for me. I did not marry well and in a better world, the mythical world of the mid 20th century that we were raised to believe in, that shouldn't have disqualified me from ever achieving the middle class.
Buying a house and getting into the middle class doesn't seem like a possibility for my Millennial kids. That's why they all live with me, now (and why none of us live in Asheville anymore, where all this is exacerbated.) I am trying to move heaven and earth (literally, sigh) so they can one day inherit a modest little house in a not great neighborhood in a small town in Oregon. I don't know if it's even going to be possible because I don't know how long I will be able to keep my job and I do know it's unlikely I will get another one. I have no safety net in the form of a husband, no savings and nothing, really, but a college degree, an admin job, the house and a 13 year old truck.
Gen X was somewhat screwed; the millennials are almost completely screwed and I do not know what the hell is going to happen as we slide into the new feudalism with a little help from our billionaire overlords. For years my retirement plan was a healthy heroin habit and a midnight shift waiting tables at the Waffle House with a cozy nest in the dumpster out back. Now that I can see old age on the horizon, I wish that wasn't so realistic.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:11 PM on March 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
Buying a house and getting into the middle class doesn't seem like a possibility for my Millennial kids. That's why they all live with me, now (and why none of us live in Asheville anymore, where all this is exacerbated.) I am trying to move heaven and earth (literally, sigh) so they can one day inherit a modest little house in a not great neighborhood in a small town in Oregon. I don't know if it's even going to be possible because I don't know how long I will be able to keep my job and I do know it's unlikely I will get another one. I have no safety net in the form of a husband, no savings and nothing, really, but a college degree, an admin job, the house and a 13 year old truck.
Gen X was somewhat screwed; the millennials are almost completely screwed and I do not know what the hell is going to happen as we slide into the new feudalism with a little help from our billionaire overlords. For years my retirement plan was a healthy heroin habit and a midnight shift waiting tables at the Waffle House with a cozy nest in the dumpster out back. Now that I can see old age on the horizon, I wish that wasn't so realistic.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:11 PM on March 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
The idea of saving up for retirement always makes me think of my uncle. He was a late Boomer. He had a career and was on track to retire. Then he got sick and couldn't work in that field anymore. He moved back home and used the money he saved to train for a new career. Just as that career was getting started he got cancer and died six months later. I put money into a 401k but I know that there's a good chance I'll never live to see retirement. So I spend more money than I should now because the possibility of a future retirement is not a guarantee. Not everyone gets the chance.
posted by downtohisturtles at 12:13 PM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by downtohisturtles at 12:13 PM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also "this boomer cash" is ... not every boomer? Like yes, as a generation they're wealthier but as a lot of folks in this thread have noted, a lot of our parents are broke as fuck.
That was my point. For some reason, some people are reading my comment as "calm down, fellow millennials, we'll all be inheriting loads of sweet wonga soon" which is not my point at all. My point is that the real inequality remains within rather than between generations and attempting to make claims about generational wealth disparities doesn't work because:
1) wealth is not equally distributed within boomers - a moderate number of whom have substantial accumulated wealth but many of whom don't have shit.
2) that inequality will "echo" into the generation of millennials as the children of the wealthy or reasonably well-off inherit substantial unspent retirement funds and houses, carefully protected from nursing home fees by trusts.
The thing about group housing is that everyone needs to be managing their mental health okay most of the time - the critical part of that is "am I in a headspace where I can realistically assess my needs, my contributions and the needs/contributions of the other people involved".
As someone who exists in a social space where large numbers of people have lived together in large, rotating, and raucous non-family units for decades now, I have to say, regretfully, that my personal experience has been that the people who should live together in such structures and people who do are almost completely disjoint sets.
posted by atrazine at 12:32 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
That was my point. For some reason, some people are reading my comment as "calm down, fellow millennials, we'll all be inheriting loads of sweet wonga soon" which is not my point at all. My point is that the real inequality remains within rather than between generations and attempting to make claims about generational wealth disparities doesn't work because:
1) wealth is not equally distributed within boomers - a moderate number of whom have substantial accumulated wealth but many of whom don't have shit.
2) that inequality will "echo" into the generation of millennials as the children of the wealthy or reasonably well-off inherit substantial unspent retirement funds and houses, carefully protected from nursing home fees by trusts.
The thing about group housing is that everyone needs to be managing their mental health okay most of the time - the critical part of that is "am I in a headspace where I can realistically assess my needs, my contributions and the needs/contributions of the other people involved".
As someone who exists in a social space where large numbers of people have lived together in large, rotating, and raucous non-family units for decades now, I have to say, regretfully, that my personal experience has been that the people who should live together in such structures and people who do are almost completely disjoint sets.
posted by atrazine at 12:32 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've been trying to argue my theory that fertility rates are collapsing because Gen Y (Millennials) and Gen Z ended up under an economic model where they had to pursue their tuition individually, build up their career well into their 30s, and then have a sufficient income to afford a large home. By the time reproduction happens in their 30s or 40s, most parents don't have the stamina and energy to bring a third child into their family. Home prices keep rising faster than their wages, so the only cost saving millennials could make was to avoid having children.
First Nation reserve communities struggle to participate in the modern Canadian economy (which also is similar across the first world economies), so their opportunity costs in having children are much lower. First Nation reserve communities still have above replacement fertility
South Korea is a very capitalist nation where the state doesn't typically interfere in the working hours of employees, so employees get pressured by their employers to work hours that are crazy from a North American and European perspective. And they may have had short term economic success, but it comes at a fertility rate that's 0.78 children per woman. They are number one in the world in witnessing a demographic collapse. Their pension fund is expected to collapse by 2055. I strongly doubt South Korea's Gen Alpha and Gen Beta are going to want to support all the child free retirees through taxation once the pension fund collapses.
I fully believe in higher progressive income taxation so that young people enjoy higher wages or subsidies because the wealth and income that's trapped by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos doesn't do much for the long term survival of nation states. Oligarchs aren't having children in proportion to their income, so there's no point in trying to protect their income.
posted by DetriusXii at 12:35 PM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
First Nation reserve communities struggle to participate in the modern Canadian economy (which also is similar across the first world economies), so their opportunity costs in having children are much lower. First Nation reserve communities still have above replacement fertility
South Korea is a very capitalist nation where the state doesn't typically interfere in the working hours of employees, so employees get pressured by their employers to work hours that are crazy from a North American and European perspective. And they may have had short term economic success, but it comes at a fertility rate that's 0.78 children per woman. They are number one in the world in witnessing a demographic collapse. Their pension fund is expected to collapse by 2055. I strongly doubt South Korea's Gen Alpha and Gen Beta are going to want to support all the child free retirees through taxation once the pension fund collapses.
I fully believe in higher progressive income taxation so that young people enjoy higher wages or subsidies because the wealth and income that's trapped by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos doesn't do much for the long term survival of nation states. Oligarchs aren't having children in proportion to their income, so there's no point in trying to protect their income.
posted by DetriusXii at 12:35 PM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
My midlife crisis involved getting reasonably decent health insurance so I could finally get diagnosed as ADHD (and a whole slew of other comorbidities) so now I know exactly why I've been such a walking disaster my whole life!
I also suppose that my current plan move across the country might qualify. But, really, it's more like I'd rather be overworked somewhere where I feel like I at least have the illusion that I can make my own choices.
posted by PearlRose at 12:36 PM on March 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
I also suppose that my current plan move across the country might qualify. But, really, it's more like I'd rather be overworked somewhere where I feel like I at least have the illusion that I can make my own choices.
posted by PearlRose at 12:36 PM on March 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
minor reaction to the article itself, I appreciated the argument that the normalization of "the middle age crisis" can entirely be traced to one specific academic being envious of one specific rich-ish guy. Has anyone checked if the academic started sleeping with undergrads right then?
posted by clew at 12:43 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by clew at 12:43 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don’t know if anyone else watched it, but this Frontline documentary, Age of Easy Money, should resonate with anyone here who has watched in horror as the US elite captured more and more for themselves after the 2008 crisis they caused.
posted by glaucon at 1:00 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by glaucon at 1:00 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
DetriusXii’s comment on South Korea had me wondering how/if other countries categorize their demographics. Having lived in a few different European countries I don’t recall these discussions but I also wasn’t keeping an eye out for them.
posted by misterpatrick at 2:32 PM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by misterpatrick at 2:32 PM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Age of Easy Money, should resonate with anyone here who has watched in horror as the US elite captured more and more for themselves after the 2008 crisis they caused.
I'm sorry but that is terrible episode and everyone arguing against easy money is a questionable person. I mean 25:00 minutes in, the Fed guy who voted against it straight up says it "you punish the saver". Who saves money? People who already have a lot of it. Everyone explains it in the worst terms too: "drinking a Coke instead of meat and potatoes"....
"market tantrums".... (Also way to admit you don't believe in any form of efficient market hypothesis if you believe in "market tantrums").
Everyone one of those people is insufferable.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:35 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm sorry but that is terrible episode and everyone arguing against easy money is a questionable person. I mean 25:00 minutes in, the Fed guy who voted against it straight up says it "you punish the saver". Who saves money? People who already have a lot of it. Everyone explains it in the worst terms too: "drinking a Coke instead of meat and potatoes"....
"market tantrums".... (Also way to admit you don't believe in any form of efficient market hypothesis if you believe in "market tantrums").
Everyone one of those people is insufferable.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:35 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
I turned 39 today. My joke lately has been that my "midlife crisis" was finally landing a stable office job about a year and a half ago, after two decades of scraping and scrounging and hustling.
This is exactly what happened to me. I turned thirty-nine this summer, and in September I got the first steady, "adult", office job I have ever had. My benefits and stuff just kicked in. I was the first new hire in the office in several years. My job is basically low-stakes Papers, Please. I do a lot of stamping and alphabetizing.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:51 PM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
This is exactly what happened to me. I turned thirty-nine this summer, and in September I got the first steady, "adult", office job I have ever had. My benefits and stuff just kicked in. I was the first new hire in the office in several years. My job is basically low-stakes Papers, Please. I do a lot of stamping and alphabetizing.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:51 PM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
(I'm kind of excited that I never bought a house? Who wants that much debt? Renting and "throwing my money away" is working out well.)
Not to make anybody feel bad, but: The good thing about having a mortgage is that the payments never increase. If you buy when prices are relatively low, and get a good interest rate, that low monthly payment will never, ever go up. And adjusted for inflation, your payment is actually getting smaller every year. If you stay in the same home for years, your monthly payment will end up being way, way under current market prices.
Your homeowners insurance and property taxes may increase, but your base cost of paying for a place to live won't. That's a great advantage of buying over renting.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:01 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Not to make anybody feel bad, but: The good thing about having a mortgage is that the payments never increase. If you buy when prices are relatively low, and get a good interest rate, that low monthly payment will never, ever go up. And adjusted for inflation, your payment is actually getting smaller every year. If you stay in the same home for years, your monthly payment will end up being way, way under current market prices.
Your homeowners insurance and property taxes may increase, but your base cost of paying for a place to live won't. That's a great advantage of buying over renting.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:01 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’m just trying not to suck any dicks on my way to the parking lot.
That's fine, more dicks for the rest of us
(this is what I wanted to post originally but I figured I better at least try to contribute)
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:10 PM on March 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
That's fine, more dicks for the rest of us
(this is what I wanted to post originally but I figured I better at least try to contribute)
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:10 PM on March 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
I started reading this thread in the morning, and I've been reading it all day, and ya know what? I don't feel any better.
I'm thankful my parents have military retirements and healthcare for the rest of their lives. I won't have to worry about them for another 15 or 20 years, when they may need additional assistance beyond those retirements to cover a decent nursing home or something. By then I expect to have my Mad-Max rolling fortified compound operational, so hopefully me and my closest waste-warriors will be able to make the dangerous trek across the Core States to make sure they both have access to clean water, as well as make sure the generators are running. If the generators fail and the Retiroculus shuts off, it's a hell of a time trying to explain the state of the world and get them to put them back on. Thankfully they relax once the old recordings of OAN start to play.
We pay the overseer and the community warden the usual tithe of high quality scrap and algae fuel from the coast, as well as 4 days hard labor. Of course they siphon most of our water and biodiesel while we work, but it's a small price to pay for peace of mind. Whoever thought to convert the used missile silos into retirement cells was a genius.
posted by jellywerker at 4:19 PM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm thankful my parents have military retirements and healthcare for the rest of their lives. I won't have to worry about them for another 15 or 20 years, when they may need additional assistance beyond those retirements to cover a decent nursing home or something. By then I expect to have my Mad-Max rolling fortified compound operational, so hopefully me and my closest waste-warriors will be able to make the dangerous trek across the Core States to make sure they both have access to clean water, as well as make sure the generators are running. If the generators fail and the Retiroculus shuts off, it's a hell of a time trying to explain the state of the world and get them to put them back on. Thankfully they relax once the old recordings of OAN start to play.
We pay the overseer and the community warden the usual tithe of high quality scrap and algae fuel from the coast, as well as 4 days hard labor. Of course they siphon most of our water and biodiesel while we work, but it's a small price to pay for peace of mind. Whoever thought to convert the used missile silos into retirement cells was a genius.
posted by jellywerker at 4:19 PM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
(I'm kind of excited that I never bought a house? Who wants that much debt? Renting and "throwing my money away" is working out well.)
Not to make anybody feel bad, but: The good thing about having a mortgage is that the payments never increase. I
Still absolutely certain I'm coming out ahead. I don't have maintenence costs, don't pay property taxes, own freedom of movement, and zero house debt.
#TeamNeverOwnProperty
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:31 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Billionaire Personality Disorder belongs in the DSM, and it's well past time we started staging non-voluntary interventions for it.
posted by flabdablet
The most destructive mental and moral pathology of all, the inability to understand and accept the meaning of the word 'enough'.
posted by Pouteria at 4:33 PM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet
The most destructive mental and moral pathology of all, the inability to understand and accept the meaning of the word 'enough'.
posted by Pouteria at 4:33 PM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Prisons.
Free healthcare, food, housing. Commit a violent felony when you turn 65 and you’ll be set for life, so to speak.
…not a joke. It’s the best retirement deal many people will ever get, which is just a remarkably terrible state of affairs.
posted by aramaic at 4:42 PM on March 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
Free healthcare, food, housing. Commit a violent felony when you turn 65 and you’ll be set for life, so to speak.
…not a joke. It’s the best retirement deal many people will ever get, which is just a remarkably terrible state of affairs.
posted by aramaic at 4:42 PM on March 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
> "The good thing about having a mortgage is that the payments never increase."
In the US. Fixed-rate mortgages aren't really a thing in the UK, for example.
posted by kyrademon at 4:56 PM on March 16, 2023
In the US. Fixed-rate mortgages aren't really a thing in the UK, for example.
posted by kyrademon at 4:56 PM on March 16, 2023
Err, yeah. Or Australia.
Canstar calculations show for the Australian mortgage holder with a $500,000 loan, today's hike adds $82 to the monthly mortgage repayment. On that same loan, since interest rates were at the rock-bottom 0.1 per cent in April 2021, monthly repayments have increased by $1051. Borrowers with larger loans of $1 million have seen their monthly repayments increase by an eye-watering $2103 over the same 10 months.
- RBA delivers 10th consecutive interest rate hike as cost of living bites, 7 March 2023
posted by happyfrog at 5:04 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Canstar calculations show for the Australian mortgage holder with a $500,000 loan, today's hike adds $82 to the monthly mortgage repayment. On that same loan, since interest rates were at the rock-bottom 0.1 per cent in April 2021, monthly repayments have increased by $1051. Borrowers with larger loans of $1 million have seen their monthly repayments increase by an eye-watering $2103 over the same 10 months.
- RBA delivers 10th consecutive interest rate hike as cost of living bites, 7 March 2023
posted by happyfrog at 5:04 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Still absolutely certain I'm coming out ahead. I don't have maintenence costs, don't pay property taxes, own freedom of movement, and zero house debt.
Maintenance and property tax costs are usually implicitly rolled into rent, to some degree or another.
That's not to say that the burden of solving home maintenance problems yourself isn't real. We've been trying to fix certain problems with our house for almost the entire time we've owned it (going on 7 years). They're not existential problems, but they're persistent and annoying.
The debt thing isn't a big deal, since it's paid in monthly installments -- which, again, are increasingly below market housing costs over time. That feels especially gratifying in times of rapidly rising housing costs, i.e., everywhere in the U.S. right now (but it's been the situation for many years in NYC).
And you can get out from under the debt it by simply selling the house. Obviously, the amount of gain or loss that you realize with the sale will depend on market conditions.
But I realize that debt is a psychological burden as much as anything, and if thinking about the totality of the debt weighs on your mind, notwithstanding the fact that it's not going to come due all at once, then by all means, keep renting.
Despite the fact that I'm no longer a renter, I would like to see our society tilt toward giving renters a lot more protections than they have now.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 5:13 PM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Maintenance and property tax costs are usually implicitly rolled into rent, to some degree or another.
That's not to say that the burden of solving home maintenance problems yourself isn't real. We've been trying to fix certain problems with our house for almost the entire time we've owned it (going on 7 years). They're not existential problems, but they're persistent and annoying.
The debt thing isn't a big deal, since it's paid in monthly installments -- which, again, are increasingly below market housing costs over time. That feels especially gratifying in times of rapidly rising housing costs, i.e., everywhere in the U.S. right now (but it's been the situation for many years in NYC).
And you can get out from under the debt it by simply selling the house. Obviously, the amount of gain or loss that you realize with the sale will depend on market conditions.
But I realize that debt is a psychological burden as much as anything, and if thinking about the totality of the debt weighs on your mind, notwithstanding the fact that it's not going to come due all at once, then by all means, keep renting.
Despite the fact that I'm no longer a renter, I would like to see our society tilt toward giving renters a lot more protections than they have now.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 5:13 PM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
44, married to someone a few years older. My midlife crisis has been perimenopause, coming to terms with aging parents, and not having a kid, and things seeming like they happened "a few years ago" but they actually happened 20 years ago.
But I wanted to share that both my spouse and I are in union workplaces doing work we at least mostly believe does good. I often feel like a leftover remnant of an older time of job stability and dignity. And it's not everything, and life isn't wonderful, but it's something to feel safe and to feel useful.
I also my local union's President - I feel like this has helped me avoid spiraling about income inequality, health care, climate change and the death of wild animals and nature. Instead, I have frustrating conversations with management and get angry, and try to help my people and listen to them, even though systemic problems in the US are so deep that a unionized workplace can't solve them all. Anyway, organizing, justice, and community are a way forward. It is hard but it helps and we can try to help each other. I help people in their 20s and people who are retiring in their late 60s. We have the same common interest in having stable jobs, living wage income, and a voice in our workplace.
posted by lizard music at 6:28 PM on March 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
But I wanted to share that both my spouse and I are in union workplaces doing work we at least mostly believe does good. I often feel like a leftover remnant of an older time of job stability and dignity. And it's not everything, and life isn't wonderful, but it's something to feel safe and to feel useful.
I also my local union's President - I feel like this has helped me avoid spiraling about income inequality, health care, climate change and the death of wild animals and nature. Instead, I have frustrating conversations with management and get angry, and try to help my people and listen to them, even though systemic problems in the US are so deep that a unionized workplace can't solve them all. Anyway, organizing, justice, and community are a way forward. It is hard but it helps and we can try to help each other. I help people in their 20s and people who are retiring in their late 60s. We have the same common interest in having stable jobs, living wage income, and a voice in our workplace.
posted by lizard music at 6:28 PM on March 16, 2023 [21 favorites]
Reading this article intersects with another idea that has been floating around for me this week.
Half of Today's Five-Year-Olds will Live to Be 100. - National Geographic and supposedly a person who will live to be 200 has already been born.
I was like, have they ever met a really old person (like 90s)??? Why would you want to remain in that state for another 20, 30, 100 years?
I mean - I get fear of death.
Which is really what the midlife crisis is about. You have sublimated the self to work and support the health insurance, the mortgage, the kids, the school debt. And then just like Lieber and Stoller you pause and think, "Is that all there is?" in a Peggy Lee voice, and their answer was not so far off from poetry.
Let's keep dancing.
Because the bitterness of life will only hasten your demise.
posted by Word_Salad at 6:42 PM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Half of Today's Five-Year-Olds will Live to Be 100. - National Geographic and supposedly a person who will live to be 200 has already been born.
I was like, have they ever met a really old person (like 90s)??? Why would you want to remain in that state for another 20, 30, 100 years?
I mean - I get fear of death.
Which is really what the midlife crisis is about. You have sublimated the self to work and support the health insurance, the mortgage, the kids, the school debt. And then just like Lieber and Stoller you pause and think, "Is that all there is?" in a Peggy Lee voice, and their answer was not so far off from poetry.
Let's keep dancing.
Because the bitterness of life will only hasten your demise.
posted by Word_Salad at 6:42 PM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Still absolutely certain I'm coming out ahead. I don't have maintenence costs, don't pay property taxes, own freedom of movement, and zero house debt.
Maintenance and property tax costs are usually implicitly rolled into rent, to some degree or another.
Hey? I'm aware, that's so obvious as to not need to be said. Can't make you believe it, but I know my choice was a very smart one for me, now and long term. Owning property is a losing game. I refuse to play, it's a con.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:33 PM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Maintenance and property tax costs are usually implicitly rolled into rent, to some degree or another.
Hey? I'm aware, that's so obvious as to not need to be said. Can't make you believe it, but I know my choice was a very smart one for me, now and long term. Owning property is a losing game. I refuse to play, it's a con.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:33 PM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Repeat after me, generational politics is just a distraction from class politics. Maybe more millennials are lacking security, but that's not an issue unique to that generation and is far more dependent on class than anything else.
If you don't see the generational politics in what happened when the boomers pulled up the ladder on university funding I really don't know what to say to you. About a quarter of the way through gen-x university became something about 80% of the population had to take out a defacto mortgage to get. Before that it was practically free. Those boomers did this to their own children and their own class.
posted by srboisvert at 7:51 PM on March 16, 2023 [11 favorites]
If you don't see the generational politics in what happened when the boomers pulled up the ladder on university funding I really don't know what to say to you. About a quarter of the way through gen-x university became something about 80% of the population had to take out a defacto mortgage to get. Before that it was practically free. Those boomers did this to their own children and their own class.
posted by srboisvert at 7:51 PM on March 16, 2023 [11 favorites]
Can we all please agree to table the "is it better to be renting vs. owning" sidebar, because it's one of those things for whom everyone has different opinions and arguing about it ain't gonna get us nowhere, and focus on the fact that for the people who DO want to buy, they can't?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:01 PM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:01 PM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Can we all please agree to table the "is it better to be renting vs. owning" sidebar, because it's one of those things for whom everyone has different opinions and arguing about it ain't gonna get us nowhere, and focus on the fact that for the people who DO want to buy, they can't?
I had a whole long thing all written up, but then saw your post and deleted it. I agree, in that abstract renting vs buying is completely situational and isn't really the point here.
But, the specific situation of people's access to being able to buy a house/apartment, or have access to good rental housing, is dependent on the kinds of factors that are described in the article. If you graduated from college in the "right" year and made the "right" choices then probably you had the option to buy a house at a great time or have the resource to deliberately choose to rent. Someone with a different life trajectory, not so much. To the article's point, there is a whole narrative which starts with buying the "starter house" and having some kids, and ends up in a stereotypical midlife crisis with a sports car and an affair, that just isn't relevant to a lot of people currently.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:20 PM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
I had a whole long thing all written up, but then saw your post and deleted it. I agree, in that abstract renting vs buying is completely situational and isn't really the point here.
But, the specific situation of people's access to being able to buy a house/apartment, or have access to good rental housing, is dependent on the kinds of factors that are described in the article. If you graduated from college in the "right" year and made the "right" choices then probably you had the option to buy a house at a great time or have the resource to deliberately choose to rent. Someone with a different life trajectory, not so much. To the article's point, there is a whole narrative which starts with buying the "starter house" and having some kids, and ends up in a stereotypical midlife crisis with a sports car and an affair, that just isn't relevant to a lot of people currently.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:20 PM on March 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Also, I think we're forgetting in the whole rent/buy debate that even *renting* is becoming incredibly unaffordable. I guess driven by the insane increases in property values? Was given the option for close to a 20% bump this year. Rent is about 50% of our household income right now. Trying to go back to a decent paying job because the stress of that hasn't been good.
We won't have rent in the rolling fortified compound, but everyone has to pull their weight. Thankfully all skills are welcome in the wasteland, and you can never have too many proven dowsers. There's plenty of handles and greebling on the outside if you want to hop on. The fortification is just for the cockroaches and carnivorous deer.
posted by jellywerker at 8:33 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
We won't have rent in the rolling fortified compound, but everyone has to pull their weight. Thankfully all skills are welcome in the wasteland, and you can never have too many proven dowsers. There's plenty of handles and greebling on the outside if you want to hop on. The fortification is just for the cockroaches and carnivorous deer.
posted by jellywerker at 8:33 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
I guess driven by the insane increases in property values?
Nope, driven by the landlord class's realization that they have the world by the nuts and should play that for all it's worth.
posted by praemunire at 8:48 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Nope, driven by the landlord class's realization that they have the world by the nuts and should play that for all it's worth.
posted by praemunire at 8:48 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
#TeamNeverOwnProperty
I rent. I've lived in the same town for 15 years. In that 15 years, I've moved 10 times. I've actually wanted to move maybe once. But landlords want to sell up, or otherwise exit the rental market.
I want a kind of stability and predictability in my life that renting from someone else can never afford me.
posted by Dysk at 9:04 PM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
I rent. I've lived in the same town for 15 years. In that 15 years, I've moved 10 times. I've actually wanted to move maybe once. But landlords want to sell up, or otherwise exit the rental market.
I want a kind of stability and predictability in my life that renting from someone else can never afford me.
posted by Dysk at 9:04 PM on March 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
all the people making these bonkers pronouncements about how it's normal verging on universal to have living parents when you're older than 35 are making my night & giving me the giggles to boot
every time I feel like taking my "generation" by the lapels & giving them a good shake and telling them all to snap out of it, I have to remind myself the reason they all sincerely believe they aren't like regular middle aged people, they're cool middle-aged people, is because so many of them have parents. for some of us it is impossible to admit that when we get awful and old we are just like all other awful old people, except for our troubles matter and are big whereas their troubles didn't matter and were tiny, until those other awful old people are dead. cheer up it'll definitely happen
posted by queenofbithynia at 9:25 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
every time I feel like taking my "generation" by the lapels & giving them a good shake and telling them all to snap out of it, I have to remind myself the reason they all sincerely believe they aren't like regular middle aged people, they're cool middle-aged people, is because so many of them have parents. for some of us it is impossible to admit that when we get awful and old we are just like all other awful old people, except for our troubles matter and are big whereas their troubles didn't matter and were tiny, until those other awful old people are dead. cheer up it'll definitely happen
posted by queenofbithynia at 9:25 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
So... you don't think it's normal to have living parents at 35? Like , I know a lot of people don't, but a lot of people do. I'm in my mid thirties, and I have living grandparents. It's certainly no less normal than the alternative.
posted by Dysk at 9:30 PM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 9:30 PM on March 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Borrowers with larger loans of $1 million have seen their monthly repayments increase by an eye-watering $2103 over the same 10 months.
It's been said this is the reason (variable vs fixed) is why Australia will be able to suppress inflation with less interest rate rises than the US - because every time they hike rates, they reduce disposable income for all 5 million households with mortgages, thus reducing demand. If they only hiked rates for new home buyers, they're only reducing intention to buy of the 600,000 houses that sold per year, and instead of buying a house, they might spend the money elsewhere in the economy instead, thus not reducing demand much at all, in fact, it could lead to a general increase in demand for other non-housing goods.
Of course, like with a lot of economic theory, there's a lot of caveats, and open debate about how significant consumer level demand is vs industry level demand, eg is the interest rate effect primarily about cooling business investment rather than consumer spending. Also, it might not matter much in the end, because if the US keeps hiking rates to manage inflation then the AUD will depreciate if we don't match those hikes, and with a depreciating AUD comes imported inflation so the RBA will have to hike anyway to match.
As some evidence of this theory, we can see that over the last year the US has had to hike their rates harder than Australia has.
I don't work in bank lending so I'm not 100% clear on the details but I was under the impression that banks evaluated mortgage holders on their ability to survive a 7.5% interest rate regardless of what the current rates were. I purchased a house when rates were 7.5% and I later purchased another one when rates were 3.0% and my borrowing capacity was the same even though my income had more than doubled and I had fully paid the first one off, so it does feel like the banks were evaluating me against being able to pay back 7.5%. We are a long way off from hitting 7.5% again so I don't think there's cause for worry.... yet.
posted by xdvesper at 10:43 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's been said this is the reason (variable vs fixed) is why Australia will be able to suppress inflation with less interest rate rises than the US - because every time they hike rates, they reduce disposable income for all 5 million households with mortgages, thus reducing demand. If they only hiked rates for new home buyers, they're only reducing intention to buy of the 600,000 houses that sold per year, and instead of buying a house, they might spend the money elsewhere in the economy instead, thus not reducing demand much at all, in fact, it could lead to a general increase in demand for other non-housing goods.
Of course, like with a lot of economic theory, there's a lot of caveats, and open debate about how significant consumer level demand is vs industry level demand, eg is the interest rate effect primarily about cooling business investment rather than consumer spending. Also, it might not matter much in the end, because if the US keeps hiking rates to manage inflation then the AUD will depreciate if we don't match those hikes, and with a depreciating AUD comes imported inflation so the RBA will have to hike anyway to match.
As some evidence of this theory, we can see that over the last year the US has had to hike their rates harder than Australia has.
I don't work in bank lending so I'm not 100% clear on the details but I was under the impression that banks evaluated mortgage holders on their ability to survive a 7.5% interest rate regardless of what the current rates were. I purchased a house when rates were 7.5% and I later purchased another one when rates were 3.0% and my borrowing capacity was the same even though my income had more than doubled and I had fully paid the first one off, so it does feel like the banks were evaluating me against being able to pay back 7.5%. We are a long way off from hitting 7.5% again so I don't think there's cause for worry.... yet.
posted by xdvesper at 10:43 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Huh? US life expectancy is ~76. If you’re middle-aged now you were still born in the era when people started procreating by their mid-20s if not earlier. I would expect most folks in the US in their 40s to have at least one living parent.
posted by praemunire at 10:53 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 10:53 PM on March 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Losing a parent relatively early in life definitely amplified the ticking of the clocks for me, and I do think I see that in other people who’ve experienced the same.
Some people get progressively less mature as the ticking gets louder, though. Backstage at the comedy theatre, premature orphans and half-orphans were indeed the “norm,” and while our sense of mortality was a constant presence, so were the fart jokes.
posted by armeowda at 11:11 PM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Some people get progressively less mature as the ticking gets louder, though. Backstage at the comedy theatre, premature orphans and half-orphans were indeed the “norm,” and while our sense of mortality was a constant presence, so were the fart jokes.
posted by armeowda at 11:11 PM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Isn’t life-expectancy increasing? I was born in 1970 and was thinking it’s my turn to have a mid-life crisis.
posted by bendy at 11:58 PM on March 16, 2023
posted by bendy at 11:58 PM on March 16, 2023
In the US? Down a little since the 2010s and then down more b/c covid.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:41 AM on March 17, 2023
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:41 AM on March 17, 2023
Huh? US life expectancy is ~76. If you’re middle-aged now you were still born in the era when people started procreating by their mid-20s if not earlier. I would expect most folks in the US in their 40s to have at least one living parent.
Life expectancy is really meaningless here since it includes childhood mortality. Children are unlikely to have kids.
The actuarial life table is more telling. The life expectancy of an 80 year is 88 years. People who make it to 65 will on average live into their mid eighties. I don't know if it is intuitive or counter-intuitive but the older your parents currently are the older they will be when they die.
Isn’t life-expectancy increasing?
It's down 2.2 years over the last few years. Part covid but mostly opioid epidemic (because opioids kill younger people on average than covid does as far as we know - long term implications of covid infection remain unknown and unknowable for now).
posted by srboisvert at 4:28 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Life expectancy is really meaningless here since it includes childhood mortality. Children are unlikely to have kids.
The actuarial life table is more telling. The life expectancy of an 80 year is 88 years. People who make it to 65 will on average live into their mid eighties. I don't know if it is intuitive or counter-intuitive but the older your parents currently are the older they will be when they die.
Isn’t life-expectancy increasing?
It's down 2.2 years over the last few years. Part covid but mostly opioid epidemic (because opioids kill younger people on average than covid does as far as we know - long term implications of covid infection remain unknown and unknowable for now).
posted by srboisvert at 4:28 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
That's not to say that the burden of solving home maintenance problems yourself isn't real.
As you rightly point out, Artifice_Eternity, it can take *years* to solve a gnarly structural problem and its many ramifications. Not to mention the time sink of calling building professionals, and watching them make mistakes over and over again.
With smaller plumbing and carpentry issues, homeowners will often be inclined to take these on themselves. Learning construction via YouTube can be an exciting pastime, but it can also be a massive, black-hole sized time sink.
Yes, you can get out from under your debt and sometimes make a profit when selling, but it can be heartbreaking to leave a treasured environment, and at the end of things, you have to start from scratch and find a new house.
Plus, your career or life goals might not align with the market. You might need to move to a different locale in a slow real estate market, meaning your house will languish on the books for months and months prior to the sale.
Homeownership is burden-filled. The burden of debt and debt payments. The burden of maintenance and repairs. The burden of lacking the flexibility to move at a moment's whim. There can be many joys in owning and fixing one's own home, but renting--especially in areas with beautiful, well-equipped and appointed rental housing--should be looked at as a possible alternative based on your life goals.
posted by Gordion Knott at 4:28 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
As you rightly point out, Artifice_Eternity, it can take *years* to solve a gnarly structural problem and its many ramifications. Not to mention the time sink of calling building professionals, and watching them make mistakes over and over again.
With smaller plumbing and carpentry issues, homeowners will often be inclined to take these on themselves. Learning construction via YouTube can be an exciting pastime, but it can also be a massive, black-hole sized time sink.
Yes, you can get out from under your debt and sometimes make a profit when selling, but it can be heartbreaking to leave a treasured environment, and at the end of things, you have to start from scratch and find a new house.
Plus, your career or life goals might not align with the market. You might need to move to a different locale in a slow real estate market, meaning your house will languish on the books for months and months prior to the sale.
Homeownership is burden-filled. The burden of debt and debt payments. The burden of maintenance and repairs. The burden of lacking the flexibility to move at a moment's whim. There can be many joys in owning and fixing one's own home, but renting--especially in areas with beautiful, well-equipped and appointed rental housing--should be looked at as a possible alternative based on your life goals.
posted by Gordion Knott at 4:28 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Housing is a land of contrasts - let's maybe focus on the fact that both renters AND owners are facing rising prices.
Similarly, the longevity of parents is also a land of contrasts - let's maybe focus on the fact that no matter WHEN your parents die, they've probably had to spend a good deal on late-life medical care and haven't been able to keep any wealth in the family like they probably wanted.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:47 AM on March 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Similarly, the longevity of parents is also a land of contrasts - let's maybe focus on the fact that no matter WHEN your parents die, they've probably had to spend a good deal on late-life medical care and haven't been able to keep any wealth in the family like they probably wanted.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:47 AM on March 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
let's maybe focus on the fact that no matter WHEN your parents die, they've probably had to spend a good deal on late-life medical care and haven't been able to keep any wealth in the family like they probably wanted.
I don't know what actual averages are for this, but just anecdotally, the people I've known personally who have passed away, including in my own family along with parents of friends, have not had the experience you describe. That's not to diminish it, because it absolutely happens, but it's not universal either to have end of life care absorb everything.
The biggest issue is that most people simply don't have a lot of assets. Between their parents not starting with much and then end of life expenses, most people just aren't going to inherit all that much. This article cites a 2021 study that: "found that households in the top 5 percent of the nation’s income distribution receive inheritances between 4 to 12 times larger than households in the bottom 80 percent. And regardless of income, the median inheritance for someone aged 56-65 was about $19,800. The median inheritance for groups younger than 46 or older than 75 was consistently under $10,000."
Those are "downpayment on a new car" or "pay off credit card debt" amounts, not "buy yourself a four bedroom house for cash" money.
We've had discussions here many times about how disconcerting it is when half of your friends/acquaintances start buying expensive houses even though they have the same crappy job that you do, because of not-talked-about gifts and interest free loans from wealthy parents. I'm now at the stage of life where people I know are starting to inherit, and some are getting very small amounts, if anything (or were having to subsidize their parents, so the "inheritance" is simply no longer having that expense), and others are literally getting millions. With close friends, we talk about it, and it really does bring up weird feelings for all of us. I feel like none of us were prepared at all for having to process and deal with this aspect and especially the complex feelings around it.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:27 AM on March 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don't know what actual averages are for this, but just anecdotally, the people I've known personally who have passed away, including in my own family along with parents of friends, have not had the experience you describe. That's not to diminish it, because it absolutely happens, but it's not universal either to have end of life care absorb everything.
The biggest issue is that most people simply don't have a lot of assets. Between their parents not starting with much and then end of life expenses, most people just aren't going to inherit all that much. This article cites a 2021 study that: "found that households in the top 5 percent of the nation’s income distribution receive inheritances between 4 to 12 times larger than households in the bottom 80 percent. And regardless of income, the median inheritance for someone aged 56-65 was about $19,800. The median inheritance for groups younger than 46 or older than 75 was consistently under $10,000."
Those are "downpayment on a new car" or "pay off credit card debt" amounts, not "buy yourself a four bedroom house for cash" money.
We've had discussions here many times about how disconcerting it is when half of your friends/acquaintances start buying expensive houses even though they have the same crappy job that you do, because of not-talked-about gifts and interest free loans from wealthy parents. I'm now at the stage of life where people I know are starting to inherit, and some are getting very small amounts, if anything (or were having to subsidize their parents, so the "inheritance" is simply no longer having that expense), and others are literally getting millions. With close friends, we talk about it, and it really does bring up weird feelings for all of us. I feel like none of us were prepared at all for having to process and deal with this aspect and especially the complex feelings around it.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:27 AM on March 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I turn 40 soon and saw a take on the NYT article on TikTok that resonated with me: the millennial mid-life crisis is burnout, and we’ve been burned out for a long time. Some of us for decades now.
I hit max burnout just over a year ago after doing 2 years of pandemic working from home while parenting a medically-complex kid through online elementary school. My husband hit max burnout this past fall and just quit his demanding job because he had become an angry shell of the person I married a dozen years ago. Will we be OK? Hopefully. Do I dream of selling the house we can afford on one income only because we bought at the bottom of the market in 2012 and think about moving to a different country? Every single day. Does my boomer dad ask me asinine questions like “why don’t young people want to work these days”? Yes (and we don’t really talk anymore because my crispy millennial anger offends his “respect the patriarchy” world view).
posted by Maarika at 7:43 AM on March 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
I hit max burnout just over a year ago after doing 2 years of pandemic working from home while parenting a medically-complex kid through online elementary school. My husband hit max burnout this past fall and just quit his demanding job because he had become an angry shell of the person I married a dozen years ago. Will we be OK? Hopefully. Do I dream of selling the house we can afford on one income only because we bought at the bottom of the market in 2012 and think about moving to a different country? Every single day. Does my boomer dad ask me asinine questions like “why don’t young people want to work these days”? Yes (and we don’t really talk anymore because my crispy millennial anger offends his “respect the patriarchy” world view).
posted by Maarika at 7:43 AM on March 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
It's weird that the article is supposedly about "milliennials" but only talked to "40ish people", which is only the oldest few years of millennials plus the youngest gen X. I'm not convinced the oldest millennials (early 40s) are any more similar to younger millennials like me (30s) than they are to younger gen X (mid-late 40s) in the first place, but lumping everyone in their 40s together and calling them "millennials" is just weird.
Anyway, I see a huge division in my peers between those who had stable, high-paying jobs in their mid-late 20s (or even early 30s, for the older millennials) or help from parents and could buy a house before house prices really exploded ~5-10 years ago (at least in my area), and those who missed the boat on that opportunity. I'm in the second group, partially as a result of finishing undergrad in 2009 and deciding to go to grad school because of the dismal job market at the time.
I'm not sure I believe in mid-life crises in the first place, but most other millennials I know are way too busy trying to get a stable career, figuring out if they can afford their first house, deciding whether to have kids, in some cases struggling with not being able to have kids they wanted, and in many cases raising a small kid or two (I don't know anyone who can afford more than two, which I suppose could still change, but I know many people who've recently been snipped after one or two). Who has the energy for flashy cars or affairs or whatever a mid-life crisis is supposed to be with all of that going on? I certainly don't, now that I'm raising a toddler and trying to figure out if I can buy my first home soon.
I turned 39 today. My joke lately has been that my "midlife crisis" was finally landing a stable office job about a year and a half ago
I'm about a year and a half from 39 and desperately trying to land one of these now, after an endless series of one year contracts, nearly a decade in university and over a decade living with roommates (an experience that was mostly positive but still makes me seriously side-eye the proposal to buy a big house with even the best of friends, since in all those years living with a long series of different friends, I only found two people I was happy living with long-term, and then I found a partner and moved out, as people generally do eventually). I might finally feel like I can breathe for a minute if I can get one.
posted by randomnity at 7:53 AM on March 17, 2023
Anyway, I see a huge division in my peers between those who had stable, high-paying jobs in their mid-late 20s (or even early 30s, for the older millennials) or help from parents and could buy a house before house prices really exploded ~5-10 years ago (at least in my area), and those who missed the boat on that opportunity. I'm in the second group, partially as a result of finishing undergrad in 2009 and deciding to go to grad school because of the dismal job market at the time.
I'm not sure I believe in mid-life crises in the first place, but most other millennials I know are way too busy trying to get a stable career, figuring out if they can afford their first house, deciding whether to have kids, in some cases struggling with not being able to have kids they wanted, and in many cases raising a small kid or two (I don't know anyone who can afford more than two, which I suppose could still change, but I know many people who've recently been snipped after one or two). Who has the energy for flashy cars or affairs or whatever a mid-life crisis is supposed to be with all of that going on? I certainly don't, now that I'm raising a toddler and trying to figure out if I can buy my first home soon.
I turned 39 today. My joke lately has been that my "midlife crisis" was finally landing a stable office job about a year and a half ago
I'm about a year and a half from 39 and desperately trying to land one of these now, after an endless series of one year contracts, nearly a decade in university and over a decade living with roommates (an experience that was mostly positive but still makes me seriously side-eye the proposal to buy a big house with even the best of friends, since in all those years living with a long series of different friends, I only found two people I was happy living with long-term, and then I found a partner and moved out, as people generally do eventually). I might finally feel like I can breathe for a minute if I can get one.
posted by randomnity at 7:53 AM on March 17, 2023
Life expectancy is really meaningless here since it includes childhood mortality. Children are unlikely to have kids.
I know--this is why those medieval life expectancies that have passed into pop culture are misleading. But in this case, that just brings the expected lifespan down artificially. In other words, people who reach the age of having kids will live longer than ~76, increasing the odds people in their 40s will have a living parent.
posted by praemunire at 7:56 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I know--this is why those medieval life expectancies that have passed into pop culture are misleading. But in this case, that just brings the expected lifespan down artificially. In other words, people who reach the age of having kids will live longer than ~76, increasing the odds people in their 40s will have a living parent.
posted by praemunire at 7:56 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
still makes me seriously side-eye the proposal to buy a big house with even the best of friends
The limited extent of the proposed solution here is apparent, and the problems real, so I'm not trying to pick on you. But I've often noticed--Mefi is big on communal solutions in theory, but then is sometimes quite surprised to realize they involve their own sets of tradeoffs (and impose their own necessary structures). Living in common, on any scale, is hard, man. At the same time, we're sitting here bemoaning (correctly) a scenario that we arrived at in considerable part because of a pathologically individualist ethos.
posted by praemunire at 8:02 AM on March 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
The limited extent of the proposed solution here is apparent, and the problems real, so I'm not trying to pick on you. But I've often noticed--Mefi is big on communal solutions in theory, but then is sometimes quite surprised to realize they involve their own sets of tradeoffs (and impose their own necessary structures). Living in common, on any scale, is hard, man. At the same time, we're sitting here bemoaning (correctly) a scenario that we arrived at in considerable part because of a pathologically individualist ethos.
posted by praemunire at 8:02 AM on March 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
One thing that I have noticed in my experience with co-housing situations, is that the money you save by having a cheaper rent/mortgage is often offset by the time and emotional labour that you have to spend on keeping your household together.
I've lived in communal houses that ranged from 6 housemates to 16. This was in my broke-ass hippy phase. I definitely enjoyed communal living on the whole, and it was great for saving money, but I found myself pretty emotionally exhausted. So many house meetings, so much talking, and negotiating, and trying to arrange chores, and dealing with interpersonal drama. Living well with other people requires so much deliberate organization and effort that it is essentially another full time job.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:05 AM on March 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
I've lived in communal houses that ranged from 6 housemates to 16. This was in my broke-ass hippy phase. I definitely enjoyed communal living on the whole, and it was great for saving money, but I found myself pretty emotionally exhausted. So many house meetings, so much talking, and negotiating, and trying to arrange chores, and dealing with interpersonal drama. Living well with other people requires so much deliberate organization and effort that it is essentially another full time job.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:05 AM on March 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
The limited extent of the proposed solution here is apparent, and the problems real, so I'm not trying to pick on you. But I've often noticed--Mefi is big on communal solutions in theory, but then is sometimes quite surprised to realize they involve their own sets of tradeoffs (and impose their own necessary structures). Living in common, on any scale, is hard, man. At the same time, we're sitting here bemoaning (correctly) a scenario that we arrived at in considerable part because of a pathologically individualist ethos.
I'm kinda confused about the pick on you part since I don't disagree with any of this, and am actually strongly in favour of communal living while in the renting phase, despite the many tradeoffs. I just think it's excessively risky to buy a house with people you haven't lived with long enough to know whether you make good roommates, because I know from hard experience that friends occasionally do but far more often don't. Both this issue and the issue of people eventually moving out to live with a partner become exponentially more of a headache to resolve if you own part of the house rather than renting.
posted by randomnity at 8:26 AM on March 17, 2023
I'm kinda confused about the pick on you part since I don't disagree with any of this, and am actually strongly in favour of communal living while in the renting phase, despite the many tradeoffs. I just think it's excessively risky to buy a house with people you haven't lived with long enough to know whether you make good roommates, because I know from hard experience that friends occasionally do but far more often don't. Both this issue and the issue of people eventually moving out to live with a partner become exponentially more of a headache to resolve if you own part of the house rather than renting.
posted by randomnity at 8:26 AM on March 17, 2023
Buying a multifamily with friends (which I think is what was originally being discussed) essentially makes you a very small co-op. (Nobody think I am arguing it's a magic bullet here. Just that "own single-family home or rent" is not always a necessary choice.)
posted by praemunire at 8:34 AM on March 17, 2023
posted by praemunire at 8:34 AM on March 17, 2023
So many house meetings, so much talking, and negotiating, and trying to arrange chores, and dealing with interpersonal drama.
I will say that some of this stuff gets easier as you get older. The difference between my last shared living situation (in my mid-30s) and the ones a decade earlier, just because we were all grown-ups at that point...Also, we tend to not reckon the interpersonal drama with partners and kids as part of the cost of single-family living, but of course they are, especially if you couldn't afford the place on a single salary!
I'm not trying to oversell this, because I currently live on my own, and have for a decade, and don't crave a return to roommates (though I'd consider buying a multifamily with someone(s) in the right circumstances). Nor am I saying "hey, what's the problem, why not just be more austere to meet the ridiculous demands of late capitalism?" But single-family home ownership as a baseline expectation for adults has always been kind of absurd, and it's become increasingly unclear that it's environmentally unsustainable. We need to reframe. It's too bad it's out of necessity, and that the burden is falling so much more heavily on younger people.
posted by praemunire at 8:40 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I will say that some of this stuff gets easier as you get older. The difference between my last shared living situation (in my mid-30s) and the ones a decade earlier, just because we were all grown-ups at that point...Also, we tend to not reckon the interpersonal drama with partners and kids as part of the cost of single-family living, but of course they are, especially if you couldn't afford the place on a single salary!
I'm not trying to oversell this, because I currently live on my own, and have for a decade, and don't crave a return to roommates (though I'd consider buying a multifamily with someone(s) in the right circumstances). Nor am I saying "hey, what's the problem, why not just be more austere to meet the ridiculous demands of late capitalism?" But single-family home ownership as a baseline expectation for adults has always been kind of absurd, and it's become increasingly unclear that it's environmentally unsustainable. We need to reframe. It's too bad it's out of necessity, and that the burden is falling so much more heavily on younger people.
posted by praemunire at 8:40 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
But single-family home ownership as a baseline expectation for adults has always been kind of absurd, and it's become increasingly unclear that it's environmentally unsustainable.
My biggest concern with the idea of multi-family ownership is: I'm not clear how multi-family ownership would be any easier, given that the biggest obstacle most people have is having enough of a down payment saved up. If you're one of a bunch of people trying to go in on a shared building, you'd have to be buying a big enough building, and that means a higher down payment and that means you're a group of people who still don't collectively have enough money and you're back where you started anyway.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:53 AM on March 17, 2023
My biggest concern with the idea of multi-family ownership is: I'm not clear how multi-family ownership would be any easier, given that the biggest obstacle most people have is having enough of a down payment saved up. If you're one of a bunch of people trying to go in on a shared building, you'd have to be buying a big enough building, and that means a higher down payment and that means you're a group of people who still don't collectively have enough money and you're back where you started anyway.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:53 AM on March 17, 2023
I just think it's excessively risky to buy a house with people you haven't lived with long enough to know whether you make good roommates, because I know from hard experience that friends occasionally do but far more often don't.
I have not lived in an official CoHousing (as opposed to Co-op, as opposed to communal) living situation. But I have done a little research. I know that the original concept (which started in Denmark) views "buying with friends" with serious skepticism. For all the reasons already mentioned here. So apparently you start by filling in a detailed questionnaire as to what you actually want, your background, your various peeves etc. You are then matched often as not with total strangers who seem to fit with your particular jigsaw. So effectively, they're matching you not with potential best-friends-forever but ideal neighbours ... for you.
Another key feature of CoHousing is that everybody gets their own defined space. Often this means a standalone dwelling. At the very least, it means you get your own lockable front door, washroom, small kitchen (at least) -- your own discrete living space. What gets shared are things like recreation areas, gardens, social areas, maybe kitchens (certainly if you want all the devices and features and space), and infrastructure stuff like water, heat. In many regards, it's a combination of Co-op and condo with a some underlying planning in terms of effecting a functional community.
You do get to know your neighbours.
posted by philip-random at 8:58 AM on March 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
I have not lived in an official CoHousing (as opposed to Co-op, as opposed to communal) living situation. But I have done a little research. I know that the original concept (which started in Denmark) views "buying with friends" with serious skepticism. For all the reasons already mentioned here. So apparently you start by filling in a detailed questionnaire as to what you actually want, your background, your various peeves etc. You are then matched often as not with total strangers who seem to fit with your particular jigsaw. So effectively, they're matching you not with potential best-friends-forever but ideal neighbours ... for you.
Another key feature of CoHousing is that everybody gets their own defined space. Often this means a standalone dwelling. At the very least, it means you get your own lockable front door, washroom, small kitchen (at least) -- your own discrete living space. What gets shared are things like recreation areas, gardens, social areas, maybe kitchens (certainly if you want all the devices and features and space), and infrastructure stuff like water, heat. In many regards, it's a combination of Co-op and condo with a some underlying planning in terms of effecting a functional community.
You do get to know your neighbours.
posted by philip-random at 8:58 AM on March 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
"But single-family home ownership as a baseline expectation for adults has always been kind of absurd, and it's become increasingly unclear that it's environmentally unsustainable."
This is one of the things I've been wondering about. Single family home ownership is our "chicken in every pot" and despite encouragement towards urban living, there's little to no interrogation of this as a middle class entitlement that seems inherently contrary to climate goals. When thinking about this, do more people see it as owning a condo than I'm assuming based on personal life experience and region?
posted by Selena777 at 9:24 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is one of the things I've been wondering about. Single family home ownership is our "chicken in every pot" and despite encouragement towards urban living, there's little to no interrogation of this as a middle class entitlement that seems inherently contrary to climate goals. When thinking about this, do more people see it as owning a condo than I'm assuming based on personal life experience and region?
posted by Selena777 at 9:24 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Our Vietnam. 110,000 dead.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 9:35 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 9:35 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
The mostly likely way our working life ends is not retirement, its "deaths of dispair" suicide, murdered by s.o., alcohol and drug abuse
And the thing is, even if only a relatively small percentage of people go this way, it harms all of society. When there are homeless encampments everywhere, housed people can either try to help (which is in itself difficult to do successfully except in the mere "here are some socks" way), choose to ignore what is happening (deadening their feelings and normal human responses) or be forced to ignore what is happened because they are prevented from doing anything about it and have to get through life somehow. It is a massive, corrupting moral injury to all of society when we create these terrible situations.
When there are unhoused people living in the mud and rain around you, too, it heightens social distinctions one way or another - you either feel snobbily sure that it will never happen to you (true or not), you feel fear that it could happen to you and it haunts your days or you know that it could happen to you and no one would give a shit.
I say this on here a lot but what happens to unhoused people is so, so cruel - if you are in an encampment, especially in bad weather, and you see people struggling in the mud and the rain, people who are obviously very sick, shellshocked looking young people who were probably kicked out of family housing, women who are doing the worst and most dangerous forms of street sex work, all of whom are barely able to keep the mud at bay...it is horrible, horrible, and there is very, very little that individuals can do because this is all caused by the state, the police and the banks. You can give people food and socks and medication but you can't give them a goddamn house when they wouldn't need the food, socks and medication if they just had a door they could lock.
posted by Frowner at 9:38 AM on March 17, 2023 [21 favorites]
And the thing is, even if only a relatively small percentage of people go this way, it harms all of society. When there are homeless encampments everywhere, housed people can either try to help (which is in itself difficult to do successfully except in the mere "here are some socks" way), choose to ignore what is happening (deadening their feelings and normal human responses) or be forced to ignore what is happened because they are prevented from doing anything about it and have to get through life somehow. It is a massive, corrupting moral injury to all of society when we create these terrible situations.
When there are unhoused people living in the mud and rain around you, too, it heightens social distinctions one way or another - you either feel snobbily sure that it will never happen to you (true or not), you feel fear that it could happen to you and it haunts your days or you know that it could happen to you and no one would give a shit.
I say this on here a lot but what happens to unhoused people is so, so cruel - if you are in an encampment, especially in bad weather, and you see people struggling in the mud and the rain, people who are obviously very sick, shellshocked looking young people who were probably kicked out of family housing, women who are doing the worst and most dangerous forms of street sex work, all of whom are barely able to keep the mud at bay...it is horrible, horrible, and there is very, very little that individuals can do because this is all caused by the state, the police and the banks. You can give people food and socks and medication but you can't give them a goddamn house when they wouldn't need the food, socks and medication if they just had a door they could lock.
posted by Frowner at 9:38 AM on March 17, 2023 [21 favorites]
If anybody else tried to inflict as much violence on US citizens as the US routinely does all by itself, the US would bomb them to shit.
posted by flabdablet at 9:47 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 9:47 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
"Buy a house...and also sell it if you have to, you will pay back debt with that sale if necessary" sounds about as plausible these days as me building a ship and landing on Mars.
Moving a lot when renting sucks if that's your situation. But having a house in no way sounds stable to me. Everyone I know who has one has endless issues, debt, worry. I prefer the free and clear plan of being able to move.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:48 AM on March 17, 2023
Moving a lot when renting sucks if that's your situation. But having a house in no way sounds stable to me. Everyone I know who has one has endless issues, debt, worry. I prefer the free and clear plan of being able to move.
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:48 AM on March 17, 2023
Homeownership is burden-filled. The burden of debt and debt payments. The burden of maintenance and repairs. The burden of lacking the flexibility to move at a moment's whim. There can be many joys in owning and fixing one's own home, but renting--especially in areas with beautiful, well-equipped and appointed rental housing--should be looked at as a possible alternative based on your life goals.
Absolutely. To sum up:
- Home ownership comes with greater security, but also greater burdens.
- Renting comes with greater freedom, but also less stability.
Whether you prefer one or the other is a personal and subjective thing.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:13 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Absolutely. To sum up:
- Home ownership comes with greater security, but also greater burdens.
- Renting comes with greater freedom, but also less stability.
Whether you prefer one or the other is a personal and subjective thing.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:13 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Renting being mostly longish fixed term tenancies where I live, the flexibility is pretty limited too. You can just as happily end up having to pay two rents for months as having to pay a mortgage and a rent.
posted by Dysk at 10:15 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 10:15 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Renting comes with greater freedom, but also less stability.
Doesn't have to be this way, at least not to the extent generally accepted in the U.S. I have a rent-stabilized apartment. There are only a handful of reasons my landlord could compel me to move out, none of which are likely to apply any time soon. Now landlords, being landlords, do tend to try to game those rules, but let's stipulate for effective enforcement along with a reasonable legal regime.
posted by praemunire at 10:24 AM on March 17, 2023
Doesn't have to be this way, at least not to the extent generally accepted in the U.S. I have a rent-stabilized apartment. There are only a handful of reasons my landlord could compel me to move out, none of which are likely to apply any time soon. Now landlords, being landlords, do tend to try to game those rules, but let's stipulate for effective enforcement along with a reasonable legal regime.
posted by praemunire at 10:24 AM on March 17, 2023
The median millenial is as poor as the lowest 10th decile boomer.
There has always been an overweighting of wealth in favor of the older generations. Like Gen X, millennials are behind in the catching-up process, which is a problem that will be partially remedied by wealth transfer at death (wouldn't be surprised if millennials end up leapfrogging Gen X in the next 10-15 years, actually). I think millennials have gotten a raw deal, but that statistic without context is somewhat misleading.
posted by praemunire at 10:27 AM on March 17, 2023
There has always been an overweighting of wealth in favor of the older generations. Like Gen X, millennials are behind in the catching-up process, which is a problem that will be partially remedied by wealth transfer at death (wouldn't be surprised if millennials end up leapfrogging Gen X in the next 10-15 years, actually). I think millennials have gotten a raw deal, but that statistic without context is somewhat misleading.
posted by praemunire at 10:27 AM on March 17, 2023
I'm not clear how multi-family ownership would be any easier, given that the biggest obstacle most people have is having enough of a down payment saved up.
Prices, and thus down payments, aren't linear to bedrooms, though (the same way the rent for a 2-bed isn't double the rent for a comparable 1-bed). That's why single families will buy multifamily housing--to cover much of the mortgage on the whole place by renting out the other unit(s). Don't get me wrong, though, this is definitely not the one weird trick that will solve the housing crisis.
posted by praemunire at 10:31 AM on March 17, 2023
Prices, and thus down payments, aren't linear to bedrooms, though (the same way the rent for a 2-bed isn't double the rent for a comparable 1-bed). That's why single families will buy multifamily housing--to cover much of the mortgage on the whole place by renting out the other unit(s). Don't get me wrong, though, this is definitely not the one weird trick that will solve the housing crisis.
posted by praemunire at 10:31 AM on March 17, 2023
renting--especially in areas with beautiful, well-equipped and appointed rental housing--should be looked at as a possible alternative
Where I live flipped from abundant, though mostly shabby, affordable rental housing to one of the worst markets in the US in, I dunno, a decade? Less?
posted by clew at 10:37 AM on March 17, 2023
Where I live flipped from abundant, though mostly shabby, affordable rental housing to one of the worst markets in the US in, I dunno, a decade? Less?
posted by clew at 10:37 AM on March 17, 2023
Mod note: One comment deleted. Let's avoid doomsdaying.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 10:45 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 10:45 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
partially remedied by wealth transfer at death
As Gary Stevenson (linked upthread) points out, though, we're currently in a period of completely unprecedented wealth inequality, meaning that real estate as well as every other productive asset on the planet is currently being transferred into the hands of the wealthiest families at a completely unprecedented rate. Chances are that most of those wealth transfers at death will accrue to a very small coterie of inheritors, all of whom belong to the families where most of the wealth already is.
So sure, the rising generation always gets the shitty end of the stick, but if we don't get it together to tax our way back out of today's unprecedented inequality, current and future generations are going to end up with the shitty end of a shittier stick than has ever been passed on before, and they're completely correct to be be pissed about that.
posted by flabdablet at 10:49 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
As Gary Stevenson (linked upthread) points out, though, we're currently in a period of completely unprecedented wealth inequality, meaning that real estate as well as every other productive asset on the planet is currently being transferred into the hands of the wealthiest families at a completely unprecedented rate. Chances are that most of those wealth transfers at death will accrue to a very small coterie of inheritors, all of whom belong to the families where most of the wealth already is.
So sure, the rising generation always gets the shitty end of the stick, but if we don't get it together to tax our way back out of today's unprecedented inequality, current and future generations are going to end up with the shitty end of a shittier stick than has ever been passed on before, and they're completely correct to be be pissed about that.
posted by flabdablet at 10:49 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Piketty has a plan and I’m told A Brief History of Equality is pretty readable (don’t know how carefully it goes into possible fixes).
There are of course others but judging by its enemies this is probably a good one.
posted by clew at 11:04 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
There are of course others but judging by its enemies this is probably a good one.
posted by clew at 11:04 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
nothing is ever simple when it comes to money, equity, OWNERSHIP. So go ahead, call me simple for suggesting that the quickest fix to the home ownership issue is to make rental agreements (leases) effectively purchase agreements.
How would this work?
Maybe not immediately but past a certain point, every dollar of rent you pay buys you say ten cents worth of equity (whatever works, whatever figure doesn't end up unduly punishing landlords; ie: still allows them turn a decent profit on their investment over time). So nothing happens very fast, but if you end up being a good tenant, you make your payments, the police don't get called every second Friday etc -- if you end up living somewhere for five or ten or twenty years, you end up at the very least being a co-owner, perhaps even an outright owner. Meanwhile, the landlord has still turned a decent profit ...
And if you have to move for whatever reason (growing family, chasing work etc), you get to take the equity you've accrued with you, maybe apply it to the contract you sign for your next place ... and so on.
This is not my idea; just something I heard someone else talking about years ago ... and it keeps coming back to me. Why is this kind of thing pretty much never discussed?
posted by philip-random at 11:23 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
How would this work?
Maybe not immediately but past a certain point, every dollar of rent you pay buys you say ten cents worth of equity (whatever works, whatever figure doesn't end up unduly punishing landlords; ie: still allows them turn a decent profit on their investment over time). So nothing happens very fast, but if you end up being a good tenant, you make your payments, the police don't get called every second Friday etc -- if you end up living somewhere for five or ten or twenty years, you end up at the very least being a co-owner, perhaps even an outright owner. Meanwhile, the landlord has still turned a decent profit ...
And if you have to move for whatever reason (growing family, chasing work etc), you get to take the equity you've accrued with you, maybe apply it to the contract you sign for your next place ... and so on.
This is not my idea; just something I heard someone else talking about years ago ... and it keeps coming back to me. Why is this kind of thing pretty much never discussed?
posted by philip-random at 11:23 AM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Because regulatory capture by the rentier class.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:24 AM on March 17, 2023
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:24 AM on March 17, 2023
Huh!
When I have X% of the equity am I on the hook for X% of the maintenance and repair costs? How are decisions about those shared? There’s probably some historical precedent (and a bunch of novels about edge cases).
posted by clew at 11:32 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
When I have X% of the equity am I on the hook for X% of the maintenance and repair costs? How are decisions about those shared? There’s probably some historical precedent (and a bunch of novels about edge cases).
posted by clew at 11:32 AM on March 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is not my idea; just something I heard someone else talking about years ago ... and it keeps coming back to me. Why is this kind of thing pretty much never discussed?
It's called "contract for deed," and in practice it's highly predatory. Google that phrase for discussion.
posted by praemunire at 12:28 PM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's called "contract for deed," and in practice it's highly predatory. Google that phrase for discussion.
posted by praemunire at 12:28 PM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
real estate as well as every other productive asset on the planet is currently being transferred into the hands of the wealthiest families at a completely unprecedented rate
I'm talking here about the problem of wealth distribution across generations rather than across society as a whole, which is what's relevant when comparing generations. I certainly don't think it will fix inequality generally.
posted by praemunire at 12:29 PM on March 17, 2023
I'm talking here about the problem of wealth distribution across generations rather than across society as a whole, which is what's relevant when comparing generations. I certainly don't think it will fix inequality generally.
posted by praemunire at 12:29 PM on March 17, 2023
Maybe not immediately but past a certain point, every dollar of rent you pay buys you say ten cents worth of equity (whatever works, whatever figure doesn't end up unduly punishing landlords; ie: still allows them turn a decent profit on their investment over time). So nothing happens very fast, but if you end up being a good tenant, you make your payments, the police don't get called every second Friday etc -- if you end up living somewhere for five or ten or twenty years, you end up at the very least being a co-owner, perhaps even an outright owner. Meanwhile, the landlord has still turned a decent profit ...
And if you have to move for whatever reason (growing family, chasing work etc), you get to take the equity you've accrued with you, maybe apply it to the contract you sign for your next place ... and so on.
I've long found that idea interesting also.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 5:40 PM on March 17, 2023
And if you have to move for whatever reason (growing family, chasing work etc), you get to take the equity you've accrued with you, maybe apply it to the contract you sign for your next place ... and so on.
I've long found that idea interesting also.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 5:40 PM on March 17, 2023
34 million food insecure americans
24 million americans who have experienced homelessness
0.5 to 5 million homeless any given night.
If experiencing homelessness were an ethnicity, it would be more than asian-american and native american combine and be within 2-3% of african americans. So, yeah, i guess thats "relatively small" but if 50% of americans are one medical or car emergency or layoff or furlough or wage theft away from the edge, it casta a big shadow.
The minimum wage in 1968 adjusted for purchasing power would give you 18- 24ish bucks an hour, which is 38-48 k a year. Thats nearly the median per capita income.
So things are worse now, by a lot. thats before you factor in - climate change crop failure, overconsumption/hypercompetition for resources, the negative effects of the panopticon surveilance state etc
Also, what generational wealth transfer. The boomers i know are very clear they would rather spend it on their parrots and cruises then dare let a lazy gen x-er or millenial inherit anything but smoking ruins. But thats small sample
N=8.
Edit: sources - the internet
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 6:12 PM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
24 million americans who have experienced homelessness
0.5 to 5 million homeless any given night.
If experiencing homelessness were an ethnicity, it would be more than asian-american and native american combine and be within 2-3% of african americans. So, yeah, i guess thats "relatively small" but if 50% of americans are one medical or car emergency or layoff or furlough or wage theft away from the edge, it casta a big shadow.
The minimum wage in 1968 adjusted for purchasing power would give you 18- 24ish bucks an hour, which is 38-48 k a year. Thats nearly the median per capita income.
So things are worse now, by a lot. thats before you factor in - climate change crop failure, overconsumption/hypercompetition for resources, the negative effects of the panopticon surveilance state etc
Also, what generational wealth transfer. The boomers i know are very clear they would rather spend it on their parrots and cruises then dare let a lazy gen x-er or millenial inherit anything but smoking ruins. But thats small sample
N=8.
Edit: sources - the internet
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 6:12 PM on March 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Just to tack onto the co-living thing. Before I got a house I spent 16 years in an artists co-op. Basically the neighborhood started to gentrify and a group of artists got together and bought a building and converted it into studio spaces. When you moved in you bought a share of the building, paid a transfer fee that included equity in that particular space. Then you had monthly expense that were a percentage of that building cost (mortgage, utilities etc). This worked out to being quite a bit less than market rental rates. Purchase rates were way below. For example my 1,800 square foot space cost me $18,000. Across the street a similar size space in condo in an old warehouse is slight over $1m. It was even recently featured in the NYT!
Setting up this type of situation is a bit complicated but not horrible. I actually did the yearly budget almost the entire time I lived there. There is some neighborly drama but nothing like roommates etc.
Just adding some perspective on other options!
posted by misterpatrick at 7:05 PM on March 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
Setting up this type of situation is a bit complicated but not horrible. I actually did the yearly budget almost the entire time I lived there. There is some neighborly drama but nothing like roommates etc.
Just adding some perspective on other options!
posted by misterpatrick at 7:05 PM on March 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
Anecdotal grand theory, where are those homelessness figures from, in particular?
posted by Selena777 at 8:48 PM on March 17, 2023
posted by Selena777 at 8:48 PM on March 17, 2023
There has always been an overweighting of wealth in favor of the older generations. Like Gen X, millennials are behind in the catching-up process, which is a problem that will be partially remedied by wealth transfer at death (wouldn't be surprised if millennials end up leapfrogging Gen X in the next 10-15 years, actually). I think millennials have gotten a raw deal, but that statistic without context is somewhat misleading.
I can't recall the source anymore but I read an article looking at just this. Wealth accumulation by age comparing generations. The average millenial wealth didn't look too bad compared to other generations when graphed. Just slightly worse. Then they removed Mark Zuckerberg and it looked really dire.
posted by srboisvert at 8:52 PM on March 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
I can't recall the source anymore but I read an article looking at just this. Wealth accumulation by age comparing generations. The average millenial wealth didn't look too bad compared to other generations when graphed. Just slightly worse. Then they removed Mark Zuckerberg and it looked really dire.
posted by srboisvert at 8:52 PM on March 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Setting up this type of situation is a bit complicated but not horrible. I actually did the yearly budget almost the entire time I lived there. There is some neighborly drama but nothing like roommates etc.
I grew up in a small (~20-unit) tenant-owned, tenant-run, no-equity co-op, incubated by a local church doing housing rehab (bought and renovated the (abandoned) building), assisted in setting up the co-op, eventually sold the building to the co-op). Alternative arrangements are possible. But, uh, can't say we avoided the drama.
posted by praemunire at 11:39 PM on March 17, 2023
I grew up in a small (~20-unit) tenant-owned, tenant-run, no-equity co-op, incubated by a local church doing housing rehab (bought and renovated the (abandoned) building), assisted in setting up the co-op, eventually sold the building to the co-op). Alternative arrangements are possible. But, uh, can't say we avoided the drama.
posted by praemunire at 11:39 PM on March 17, 2023
Maybe not immediately but past a certain point, every dollar of rent you pay buys you say ten cents worth of equity (whatever works, whatever figure doesn't end up unduly punishing landlords; ie: still allows them turn a decent profit on their investment over time). So nothing happens very fast, but if you end up being a good tenant, you make your payments, the police don't get called every second Friday etc -- if you end up living somewhere for five or ten or twenty years, you end up at the very least being a co-owner, perhaps even an outright owner. Meanwhile, the landlord has still turned a decent profit ...
And if you have to move for whatever reason (growing family, chasing work etc), you get to take the equity you've accrued with you, maybe apply it to the contract you sign for your next place ... and so on.
How is that not just an ordinary mortgage?
posted by flabdablet at 12:26 AM on March 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
And if you have to move for whatever reason (growing family, chasing work etc), you get to take the equity you've accrued with you, maybe apply it to the contract you sign for your next place ... and so on.
How is that not just an ordinary mortgage?
posted by flabdablet at 12:26 AM on March 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't really understand what you mean when you say "20 units" - is that twenty separate flats/apartments? Because that doesn't sound like anything unusual to me, just living in a flat. Buying a block of flats is prohibitive here though, even if there are a bunch of you. You'd literally be looking at something in the same order of magnitude as the cost of the same number of homes in any other circumstance. (Which makes sense, buying a single flat is one of the things I'm comparing everything to - it's the most accessible form of buying a home, but it's still way out of reach. To buy a building with 20 flats, you'd have to basically buy twenty flats individually anyway.)
Or is "20 units" of housing co-op more like having 19 housemates, living in halls/on a dorm? Because to my autistic ass, that sounds like I'd honestly rather be sleeping rough.
posted by Dysk at 12:28 AM on March 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Or is "20 units" of housing co-op more like having 19 housemates, living in halls/on a dorm? Because to my autistic ass, that sounds like I'd honestly rather be sleeping rough.
posted by Dysk at 12:28 AM on March 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you don't understand the difference between collectively owning and running your own apartment building and having to write checks to and follow the rules of a random landlord, I'm not sure I can explain it to you. (You also completely skipped over the part where I explained how it was done despite the tenants being mostly low-income, but that's a refinement not worth dwelling on.)
posted by praemunire at 1:03 AM on March 18, 2023
posted by praemunire at 1:03 AM on March 18, 2023
Yeah, I'm not saying it is the same as living in a flat you own in a building you don't, but it's very similar. The way the market works where I am in general, you'd be looking at having to purchase the flats, and the building. That's not cheaper than just buying a flat. Which I would be happy with but is still so far beyond affordable. It's maybe in the reach of large organisations, but my experience is that churches here buy property as investments because they're hurting for money. A few of my friends have had churches as landlords, and they've been as bad as the scummiest capitalist leech, because they need it as a revenue stream.
Like, I'm really glad it worked out for you guys. But it is not a feasible solution in a lot of real estate markets, at least for people already well outside of entry to that market, and that its evidenced by the new-build focus, lack of claims of affordability (instead emphasising "a better way of living") and middle-classness of the housing co-op organisations that do exist here.
posted by Dysk at 1:28 AM on March 18, 2023
Like, I'm really glad it worked out for you guys. But it is not a feasible solution in a lot of real estate markets, at least for people already well outside of entry to that market, and that its evidenced by the new-build focus, lack of claims of affordability (instead emphasising "a better way of living") and middle-classness of the housing co-op organisations that do exist here.
posted by Dysk at 1:28 AM on March 18, 2023
At least if my (lifelong, ongoing) midlife crisis sets me to pursuing younger women.... The internet puts me in contact with 20 somethings that are interested in 40 somethings for kink reasons and not financial. Because I'm surely not going to be impressive with my Chevy Spark and the occasional Olive garden trip.
posted by Jacen at 3:14 AM on March 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Jacen at 3:14 AM on March 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Mod note: One comment against the content policy deleted. Let's avoid calling other member's comments "ignorant".
posted by loup (staff) at 11:53 AM on March 18, 2023
posted by loup (staff) at 11:53 AM on March 18, 2023
you'd be looking at having to purchase the flats, and the building. That's not cheaper than just buying a flat. Which I would be happy with but is still so far beyond affordable. It's maybe in the reach of large organisations
US, not UK, but from working in real estate, one thing that organizations have that individuals (even in groups) don't is in access to financing. Banks will lend companies huge amounts of money to purchase property as an investment because they expect to see a sizeable return on that loan. You'd be surprised at how little real cash some of the organizations that own even very upscale properties actually have, which is generally not the case for owner-occupied mortgages.
(Which, by the way, means don't believe landlords who claim that they have to max rents in order to protect their investment--a bank is probably the main investor, and, unless the landlord is anabsolute idiot starter entrepreneur, they'll have limited personal liability on the investment.)
posted by radiogreentea at 6:00 PM on March 18, 2023
US, not UK, but from working in real estate, one thing that organizations have that individuals (even in groups) don't is in access to financing. Banks will lend companies huge amounts of money to purchase property as an investment because they expect to see a sizeable return on that loan. You'd be surprised at how little real cash some of the organizations that own even very upscale properties actually have, which is generally not the case for owner-occupied mortgages.
(Which, by the way, means don't believe landlords who claim that they have to max rents in order to protect their investment--a bank is probably the main investor, and, unless the landlord is an
posted by radiogreentea at 6:00 PM on March 18, 2023
Hopefully this will sound familiar enough to someone that they can recall more actual details, but I recently read about a house somewhere in California that was built by an architect and his wife. It was designed as a communal living space for them and another couple. The other couple moved out (when they started having children, if I recall correctly) but it worked out because the architect and his wife separated and each lived in their own space. It's part of some public works department now - a park, maybe? My google-fu completely failed me when I went to look for the details I've forgotten.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:43 AM on March 19, 2023
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:43 AM on March 19, 2023
One of the other things about housing coops — are they set up so the first tenants get a full share of property price increases if they sell, or none, or what? There are hard cases both ways.
posted by clew at 9:59 AM on March 19, 2023
posted by clew at 9:59 AM on March 19, 2023
How is that not just an ordinary mortgage?
Because most of the rent is just plain old rent. Only a small portion of it goes toward equity. This may suit some tenants, as well as some landlords, just fine.
If you leave after a year, you only have a very small bit of equity in the property. But it might still be of value. Perhaps you could sell it back to the landlord... or to someone else. Perhaps you could hold onto it, and collect a fraction of the future rent.
The point is that it's a way for people who would otherwise not be able to accumulate any equity in real estate to get a foot in the door.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:13 PM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Because most of the rent is just plain old rent. Only a small portion of it goes toward equity. This may suit some tenants, as well as some landlords, just fine.
If you leave after a year, you only have a very small bit of equity in the property. But it might still be of value. Perhaps you could sell it back to the landlord... or to someone else. Perhaps you could hold onto it, and collect a fraction of the future rent.
The point is that it's a way for people who would otherwise not be able to accumulate any equity in real estate to get a foot in the door.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:13 PM on March 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
If you leave after a year, you only have a very small bit of equity in the property.
If you've only been paying off a mortgage for a year, you likewise only have a very small bit of equity in the property.
It seems to me that what you're proposing amounts to a mortgage where the landlord is the lender rather than a bank, and probably with less administrative hoop-jumping required of the mortgagee when moving in or out of a mortgage.
Isn't something like that already available in Korea? I seem to recall reading about abuses of it fairly recently on MeFi.
posted by flabdablet at 10:30 PM on March 20, 2023
If you've only been paying off a mortgage for a year, you likewise only have a very small bit of equity in the property.
It seems to me that what you're proposing amounts to a mortgage where the landlord is the lender rather than a bank, and probably with less administrative hoop-jumping required of the mortgagee when moving in or out of a mortgage.
Isn't something like that already available in Korea? I seem to recall reading about abuses of it fairly recently on MeFi.
posted by flabdablet at 10:30 PM on March 20, 2023
I am asking ONE MORE TIME, can we all PLEASE drop the "renting is better" vs. "buying is better" infighting????
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:37 AM on March 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:37 AM on March 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
I seem to recall reading about abuses of it fairly recently on MeFi.
You're probably thinking of this thread. I don't think the Korean system of jeonse is quite like what's being discussed above, though -- in jeonse the tenant acts as a lender to the landlord, which creates a different set of abuses.
posted by Not A Thing at 8:25 AM on March 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
You're probably thinking of this thread. I don't think the Korean system of jeonse is quite like what's being discussed above, though -- in jeonse the tenant acts as a lender to the landlord, which creates a different set of abuses.
posted by Not A Thing at 8:25 AM on March 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you've only been paying off a mortgage for a year, you likewise only have a very small bit of equity in the property.
A mortgage is an enormous loan which you use to acquire complete control of the property. You then make payments on the loan to the bank.
This renting with equity scheme does not involve a loan at all, and at no point does the tenant have complete control of the property. Only a tiny fraction of each month's payment goes toward equity, instead of 100% of it.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:54 AM on March 21, 2023
A mortgage is an enormous loan which you use to acquire complete control of the property. You then make payments on the loan to the bank.
This renting with equity scheme does not involve a loan at all, and at no point does the tenant have complete control of the property. Only a tiny fraction of each month's payment goes toward equity, instead of 100% of it.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:54 AM on March 21, 2023
Renting is financially safer, for people with not a ton of cash who are unlikely to acquire a lot of cash. Like me. That doesn't make it better. But a lot of folks should really consider whether the goal is to own a house, because for many these days, it isn't a safe goal for future financial security, like it used to be.
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:04 PM on March 21, 2023
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:04 PM on March 21, 2023
I'm much mor concerned with not being a two-month no-fault eviction period away from having to move, again again again, than I am financial security. The ability to choose not to have wall-to-wall carpet. Hell, the ability to actually invest time and money in furniture, rather than making do with whatever old scraps from the charity shop, because it'll be a completely different janky setup in a year or two anyway, and there is no way I can afford to replace furniture that often, especially the extra expenses that involves when you don't have a car. And moving is expensive as well as stressful. I want to live somewhere where I'm even allowed to do meaningful interior decorating, repairs maintenance, never mind having it feel worthwhile on a way out never will when you're two to six months away from leaving at any time. I want to be able to plant vegetables in my garden in spring, and know I will still be there to harvest them in autumn.
I just want the "boring" stability that a midlife crisis is supposed to be a rebellion against. It's something I've not known since I was a literal child.
posted by Dysk at 2:27 PM on March 21, 2023 [7 favorites]
I just want the "boring" stability that a midlife crisis is supposed to be a rebellion against. It's something I've not known since I was a literal child.
posted by Dysk at 2:27 PM on March 21, 2023 [7 favorites]
I'm much mor concerned with not being a two-month no-fault eviction period away from having to move, again again again, than I am financial security.
As someone who has both rented and owned, with much more time spent renting, the uncertainty and insecurity of renting is, for me, the single largest drawback. If we had a regulatory system here that regulated rent increases and provided for long term stability while renting, I doubt I would every have looked at buying. Frankly, I liked renting once I eventually had the income to shift up out of slumlord bad rentals into reasonable quality, reasonably maintained rentals. But where I am living, the choice is between buying (with all its pluses and minuses) and renting with zero protections or stability. And in this town, a lot of former rental properties are now short-term AirBnB's, and lots more are run by slumlords, so the stock of rentals that are both reasonable cost and reasonable quality is tiny.
To the point of the article, about people who are now reaching midlife, the fact is that the absurd increase in housing cost plus regulatory capture means a huge swath of people are stuck, perhaps permanently, in housing situations that never feel settled. It's exhausting to have your housing feel precarious all the time, and to hit mid life and look forward and see that simply continuing.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:01 AM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
As someone who has both rented and owned, with much more time spent renting, the uncertainty and insecurity of renting is, for me, the single largest drawback. If we had a regulatory system here that regulated rent increases and provided for long term stability while renting, I doubt I would every have looked at buying. Frankly, I liked renting once I eventually had the income to shift up out of slumlord bad rentals into reasonable quality, reasonably maintained rentals. But where I am living, the choice is between buying (with all its pluses and minuses) and renting with zero protections or stability. And in this town, a lot of former rental properties are now short-term AirBnB's, and lots more are run by slumlords, so the stock of rentals that are both reasonable cost and reasonable quality is tiny.
To the point of the article, about people who are now reaching midlife, the fact is that the absurd increase in housing cost plus regulatory capture means a huge swath of people are stuck, perhaps permanently, in housing situations that never feel settled. It's exhausting to have your housing feel precarious all the time, and to hit mid life and look forward and see that simply continuing.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:01 AM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
Frankly, I liked renting once I eventually had the income to shift up out of slumlord bad rentals into reasonable quality, reasonably maintained rentals.
Lol I have written here before I think about how I finally had the income to give myself a reasonably high rent budget, only to find that all of the more expensive apartments were also run by slumlords. 2000/month studios where the "luxury" cabinets were falling off the walls; where the subway-tile steam shower bathrooms were full of mold. What the fuck, said I, and resigned myself to a rambling, crumbling half-ass fixer-upper 2-bed on the west side, because at least I could save some money and spread out a bit while filling my lungs with toxins.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:47 AM on March 22, 2023
Lol I have written here before I think about how I finally had the income to give myself a reasonably high rent budget, only to find that all of the more expensive apartments were also run by slumlords. 2000/month studios where the "luxury" cabinets were falling off the walls; where the subway-tile steam shower bathrooms were full of mold. What the fuck, said I, and resigned myself to a rambling, crumbling half-ass fixer-upper 2-bed on the west side, because at least I could save some money and spread out a bit while filling my lungs with toxins.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:47 AM on March 22, 2023
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