Boomers Paying…for everyone

So I imagine I’ll have a few posts where I just judge every generation in order to get it out of my system, so that I can move on to more meaningful observerations…

I just came across this article in the Washington Post and was irked by several things:

“My kids are both moved out, but we’re still providing 50 percent of their financial responsibility for them, just sending money,” said Kim Gillingham, 45, who lives in Glencoe, Pa., with her husband, Randy. The couple, married 26 years, have a 23-year-old daughter and a 20-year-old son.

I would put this financial allocation in the “incapable of tough love” category. I realize it dates me to suggest a phrase like “kids today” but the twenty somethings I’m coming across lately (and even some 30-somethings) still get money from their parents. Excuse me?

When I was 12 and asked for a phone, my Dad said, “If we make it too nice for you, you may never leave.”

When I was twenty, I didn’t have a protien in my fridge unless I got a bonus, or had a date. I didn’t live beyond my means, I paid for things in cash, I didn’t buy new clothes for longer periods. I felt my income. This is part of breaking away and making it on your own. You need to feel your income.

More than half — 55 percent — said that they either “expect to live comfortably” in retirement or will be able to “meet expenses with a little left over,” the study found.

More than half? That’s not so big a number….that means the other half doesn’t feel that way. After financing their kids through their 20s and taking care of their parents in old age, how do you think they will afford their own retirement? Through ethnicity in, and the African American quadrant has $.66 on the dollar to look forward to stretching. Thankfully, I’m not alone in this opinion as this post mentions:

I wouldn’t have guessed that over half of the respondents would have an elderly parent living with them, particularly since only 71% have a living parent. That doesn’t exactly conjure up the image of carefree retirees living it up on their Social Security checks from the government (average monthly benefit = $955).

The average Boomer is assuming responsibility for their kids for too long, and their aging parents, which suggests to me that their head is in the sand about their own economic future and their kids will inherit the problem – just like they did.

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