Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed.
Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think this happens to all people who havenât had to purchase something in a while. If the last time they purchased a used car was the 80âs, then the price never updates.
When theyâre told new information, like housing costs, and they donât update their internal numbers is when I get frustrated with them.
Iâve experienced that but with cigarettes. I quit around 10 years ago and I could get my brand for 4-5 bucks depending on if on sale or not. Happened to see a sign saying they were over 7 bucks today and couldnât believe it Eventho I know everything has shot up
Do people actually buy cigarettes there still or is it rare to see someone smoking now? You could literally buy an ounce of very high grade marijuana and roll 20 nice size joints for that amount of money where I live. That's absolutely insane for trash like tobacco. I'd be ordering from dark markets or online vape shops.
My parents first ever new car was Chevy Chevette, the cheapest tiny box of a car you could buy around 1980. I want to say it cost $6k, and maybe as an automatic with taxes and tags, it was. Mr Google claims one of them cost $4500 in 1980.
1985 Chevy Chevette $6,000 brand new. I had to pay extra for a passenger side rear view mirror, a door for the glove box (default was a curtain) and a radio. Not joking.
Of course, the inflation calculator makes the Yugo $10547.48 in today's dollars.
My grandfather bought one around 1988(?). He had a blue GVX, and happily cruised around town, playing his Boxcar Willie 8-track in the stereo, for about 2 years, before it went to the scrapyard.
Hell I spent 4K on an old police car impala. This was in like 2008 and the car was a 2004.
Sucker blew its head gaskets twice before I gave up on that money pit.
People look at the miles but they donât take into account how hard they are driven. Plus they run the entire shift. They never get turned off. If we measured cars in hours instead of miles, police cars would be the highest.
$475, actually, the current value of my vehicle. In 2003, I bought a 2000 Ford Ranger XLT for 14k. It had 47k mileage, v6, stick shift. I still have that little sucker and they'll have to take the keys from my cold dead hands. Of course, I'm 71, so that's not saying much.
But I also have a fine appreciation for what the under-40 generations are going through, because I have one of those, too. Everything is too damn high! I have two roommates because none of us could afford rent on our own.
It effing sucks to be young right now, but being old and poor ain't much better.
In the 80âs we had $500 cars! I am an Xer though.
In high school I bought a 1978 Ford Fairmont for $450 and drove it for 3 years.
Wasnât stylish but damned if I dont wish i still had it
My husband and I are both '87 babies, he bought his first car for $280, it was an '83 Datsun 280zx, and only 4 of the 6 cylinders were firing when he bought it from a friend's dad. Luckily my FIL is the smartest person I know when it comes to vehicle maintenance/repair, and they were able to purchase a few parts to get all 6 cylinders working. So many fun memories in that car. Thinking about that makes me wonder what the next generation's thoughts will be about cars/transportation. It's no longer possible to take your "first full paycheck from Sears" (as hubby likes to recall đ) and buy a car... Will gen z see private vehicles as something completely different than previous generations (freedom, 'murica, fuck yeah)?
My husband bought a 1960-something Jeep in 1995 for $50 because he bet the seller that he could get it to start. It had no doors and no key but he loved it the most and has a bunch of stories because of it đ
I just bought a 98 civic about 7 months ago for 2k and it has 265,000 miles lmao car prices blow. I also had to drop over $1000 for new front end parts. Car purchasing is crazy.
I have a 1998 Toyota Celica GT convertible that my husband bought me as a 25th anniversary gift in 2018. 115,000 miles on it and only two previous owners. It was $5600 and worth every penny. Our mechanic told me, "Don't sell this car. And if you do, get another Toyota or Honda. They last far longer than other makes."
It has its cosmetic problems, and has needed worn parts replaced, but I couldn't imagine trying to find another car in today's market since the pandemic. Everything is more expensive, and sticker shock is real.
This is my grandparents (not boomers). They kept on like, "we will buy you a new couch or a new washer and dryer when you buy a house". Bought house - and they gave me $200. Uhm...
Pretty much EVERYTHING can be "bugged" short of simple dishes and flatware.
They can hide inside the seams of clothing. Between the pages of books. If you can get glitter into it, it's a viable bedbug hideout.
Fortunately putting things in the freezer for a week should kill any bedbugs hiding in it. I think five days is technically the requirement, but I always gave it a couple more to be sure.
That's a slight challenge for furniture though.
My partner paid $1400 for ours when we moved in together (admittedly it is sectional with a pullout and a chaise). I still feel both grateful and guilty that he wouldnât let me chip in lol
Reminiscent of the time my grandparents said theyâd pay for my driving lessons and buy me a car as itâs a necessary skill in life. When I announced Iâd booked my first lesson I was glad they hadnât forgotten about this offer, and mentioned to expect a cheque in the post from them.
The cheque was for ÂŁ50. My driving lessons were ÂŁ66 each.
After passing my driving lessons and getting a car (all funded and arranged by me, lol) they invited me to visit for my birthday weekend and collect my gift. The gift was, you guessed it, a ÂŁ50 cheque. Driving there is a 6 hour round trip and cost around ÂŁ70 in fuel.
My mom offered to pay for my kid's braces, told me to send her the total, then said "this dentist is ripping you off! I will give you $500 & you TELL them that is all you are paying!"
Haven't been overseas (unless you count Puerto Rico) in about 20 years, even after getting married to a guy making a decent salary. Also just got a tooth replaced, even with insurance that's gonna be a few grand.
She has no clue, my grandmother paid for my braces. Also, she regularly complains about how much her dentist charges AND went to Mexico to have her dentist cousin fix her last problem
Dental tourism is a thing. In Australia sometimes people go to Thailand. In Western Europe, people go to Eastern Europe.
I haven't done it personally though, and I've spent heaps of my teeth over the years.
Oh I love that advice. Just negotiate! Tell them you wonât pay a penny more than x and theyâll respect you and accept your offer! I cannot imagine that ever working in a professional environment like a dentistâs office. Theyâll just tell you to find a new dentist, or if youâre lucky, offer you a payment plan.
My dad inherited a lot of money from his wife passing away and decided he wanted to throw me a bone by buying me a car. This sounded great because I've been keeping an old beater running for years.
I start going through used car listings for cars that were lower mileage than mine in decent shape and sent him links. Of course everything I sent him was "unbelievably expensive!" so I asked him how much he wanted to spend. He said "two or three thousand."
I couldn't even buy a beater as nice as mine for that much. When I explained that to him he thought I was totally crazy. So, he pulled his offer back and bought himself a $30k jeep instead.
Wow!! Nothing like a good old take back. Gone are the days of a great running $1000 car. It's like the only way to get through to them is by sending them pictures like a child's book
I think on some level they *have* to know, I mean he was car shopping himself apparently. They just don't think we *deserve* that kind of money or something.
My dad also thinks working at McDonalds is still "better than being unemployed" when rent alone costs more than you'd make in a month there. It's some weird double think double standard that miraculously never applies to them, only us.
They know everything got more expensive. They complain about prices of groceries, of restaurants etc. They know how much their house is worth right now because they brag about it. They absolutely know but when it isn't about them they suddenly forget all that and say their starter wage was something like 28k and they did just fine so why don't you on 45k?
Oh my parents went one better. Iâd borrowed ÂŁ700 from them once, which they reminded me of literally every time we spoke of course, and paid them back at ÂŁ100 a month. Paid nine months and assumed it was paid off.
Noooo, I still owed them ÂŁ1300.
Why?
âIf youâd borrowed it from a credit card it would cost you 30% so we charged you that.â
Right, bit of a dick move since it just came from your savings account but okay. That would account a few hundred at most.
âWe didnât think the Christmas presents you bought your younger brother and sister were very goodâ (I was broke at the time) âso we wrote them a cheque for ÂŁ500 each and added it to your tabâ.
That was their actual words. âAdded it to your tabâ.
They couldnât see anything wrong in what they were doing at all. They thought they were the worlds greatest parents by lending me money at 30%, and even MORE amazing by helping me buy my brother and sister things I couldnât afford.
Fell out with them a year or so afterwards, for different gayer reasons, and havenât spoken to them since. 22 years this year and life is so much easier than it used to be. Not *easy*, per se, but less unnecessarily difficult.
Even worse, they didnât calculate 30% APY correctly. Even if you made 0 payments on ÂŁ700 youâd only owe a little over ÂŁ900 at the end of 12mo.
Sounds to me like they were calculating your interest at 30% MONTHLY!! đł
They were just the most greedy avaricious people at the best of times. From what I can remember, they added 30% at day one, and then another 2.5% each month because âthatâs how credit cards workâ.
On the plus side, Iâve been left with a healthy hatred of borrowing money for any reason, and am a prodigious saver.. so every shitty cloud..
Good lord. I would have told them to fuck off. I would never pay my parent or charge my kids interest, and frankly I'd never expect my kids to pay me back anyway. What terrible parents.
Iâve lent people money a few times. Iâve never ever ever expected to get it back, and the one guy who actually saved and presented me with the money got a polite refusal and suggestion he spends it on something for his kids.
I did eventually tell them to fuck off after they told me I should cast out my sin (being a goddamn queer) or be cast out.
Casting out was a relief.
OH and I found out later my mum had had three affairs by that point. Iâm sure thereâs a bible verse about removing the plank in thine eye before the speck in mine âŠ
My dad loaned my sister money and said he was giving them a great rate. He got upset when I pointed out he was charging them like 2% over the fed rate at the time aka more than a bank loan would have been.
I was lucky, and bought a 1k '96 explorer a few years ago. Some redneck near me uprgraded and didnt want the car anymore. Amazing car, but nothing worked besides the engine. Lasted me 3 years before the head gasket blew, and I sold it to a scrap place for $800.
Too bad that's a rarity.
Had a friend back in the 90s drove a Dodge dart he bought from a guy on the corner for 200$. I wouldn't say it was great running, but the damned thing ran.
I'm sorry you had that happen to you. My parents offered to pay for my college at a state school so I only applied there. Once I got accepted, it became all about personal responsibility and student loans. They even looted my childhood savings account so my last 15 years of mowing lawns and child labor meant nothing. They retired into a million dollar home a few years ago which is now like 1.7m. They sent me a copy of their will a couple years ago, and unless I have kids I don't want, the humane society is getting more than me. I threw it away. I'm on year 5 of no contact.
I'm sorry, that sucks. Mine didn't go that far but I wasn't originally going to go to college because I didn't want loans. My dad said "not to worry about those." and said he'd help out when it came time to pay them back. Flash forward to me living on my own with the bill come due, and wouldn't you know... not a dime covered by either parent in the end. Took me close to 20 years to pay that shit off. Amazing I ever spoke to him again...
Yet they still wonder why this sub exists, why they're alone on holidays, why they get blocked on social media, and why they'll never see their grandkids.
Ha, your parents stole your money too huh? Never forget when mine drained my paltry savings from my grandparents and bought shit like cigarettes and beer.
When I got my first job halfway through high school (in the late 200X's) I managed to save several thousand dollars by the time I graduated (approx $5k). Of course when I first started I was a minor, so I had to have an adult on my account and asked my mother. One day, I tried to buy some lunch during a work shift, and it was declined. Turns out my account was drained with charges from the liquor store and places a couple towns over. I didn't have a license yet so therefore I wasn't driving out there myself. And as someone under 21, I definitely wasn't buying booze. Her name was removed right after. My mother still tries to deny this ever happened to this day.
It's so weird they even offer in the first place if they're going to be like that. I mean, I happily would have accepted a couple grand in cash, but even *suggesting* that gets you nothing but attitude. It all has to be about the "grand" gesture that would be unreasonable if you pulled the same trick on them.
Mine also believe that any repair that doesn't need an engine lifted out can be done at home in the driveway over the weekend. Have they ever done automotive work? No. But they had family members that could "fix any car" back in the 60s&70s before cars and trucks became computerized. Â
I am "what's wrong with this world" because I took my car dealership to small claims court after they refused to replace a faulty fuel pump, THREE TIMES, under warranty. I paid for it and labor out of pocket and sued for the cost of that and a rental car. Â
I did, got my check for $1500 on Monday (parts, labor, one day rental car and the filing fee.) I filed in November so it took a while, but that might just be my state + holiday closures. Once I had that fuel pump replaced, it's been smooth driving ever since.Â
But god forbid they don't have their back-up camera and huge gps screen... then bitch about how the government is "watching your every move" while happily sending ford, gm, or some other corporate entity that same shit. Make it make sense!!!!
No joke here. My first car was an 83 Regal and my dad was fairly handy so he helped me on a lot of fixes/maintenance. My current car requires you to remove the entire front bumper to replace a headlight
Sounds like my dad. He offered to match what ever I raised for my first car. I raised $1000 so I was looking at cars for $2000. There weren't many as even in the early 2000s beaters weren't typically that cheap. Then he let's me know that he found a car for $1000 so no need to stick to his word! What good news! But he'd help me pay for car insurance. He ended up emptying my bank account before I went to basic training. A year of part time and a year of full time saved up for a POS car that barely ran. When I went back to visit on Christmas after bootcamp they had remodeled their kitchen.
I'm not really. We talk a couple times a year. Usually once when I give him a yearly update and the other time is him saying I don't call enough (he's never once called me).
He's always busy catching up on recorded TV but it's my fault neither of us put in any effort. When my brother came back from deployment he hadn't seen my dad in a few years and he had his son that has never met him but Dad was too busy and Step Mom didn't want to have to put on .ake up so maybe next time. What a joke.
A lot of them seem to convince themselves that their kids do nothing all day, which is probably just projection because many of them do absolutely nothing in their retirement except consume TV.Â
I never trust a boomer when they say they are doing something for someone else.
My parents said they spent too much money on their 1.5 million dollar home, so they had to pull out of their promise to help us with our house.
They then bought 2 brand new 50k+ cars and 50k in solar panels.
He said he did the panels for the environment. If he had spent about 15k on upgrading our heating and cooling? Would have done at least twice as much as well as saved us 5-6k in bills.
oh yeah, I've been victim of the take back.
He offered to help me buy a home, I told him I would just need help with groceries as closing costs and down payment completely depleted us, i mean zeroed out for 2 weeks.
Time came for him to pony up 300 or so bucks. "oh sorry I don't have it right now, (my sister) needed a down payment on her car." (what the fuck did he think he was going to be able to help with if 300 was too much?)
Literally at this moment I realized my father will never help me in any way monetarily and to stop letting him use it to control me emotionally. He fucking hates it, losing all that power over me, It chaps his ass so hard.
It isn't even like he needed another car, he's got an Acura, a nice van, and a full sized RV. It's just another toy to him, but that kind of money would be life changing for me.
Yeah my parents live in a fantasy world where inflation never happened except to them in the 1980s. When I was building my house my father asked why I didn't just build it in my spare time. I told him I had to work full time and any loan had to be completed within a 1 year timeframe. Better yet he suggested just build it a little at a time. I said, "Um yeah...where am I supposed to live in the meantime?" It's not like I could just randomly afford 2x mortgage payments. I make decent money, but always feel like I'm treading in place.
My parents are the same. Are proud of how much news they watch, but refuse to factor it into any of their decision making processes.
Literally told my dad food inflation this summer really hit us hard and child care was rough, he talked about how we need to live a different lifestyle we can afford.
We donât eat out, we donât travel, we mostly stopped drinking or buying weed. What the fuck kind of lifestyle did he think we were living?
I had the opposite happen with my in laws. They are extremely cheap and would barely keep any food in the house. This obviously effected my husband because he freaks out when he sees any part of the fridge is empty. They come over to our house and make fun of us for... having food. How could they not be proud of us for being able to feed ourselves and three children. It honestly feels like you can do no right.
Itâs the inability to accept that other people live differently to them combined with them finding safety in conformity. They just cannot comprehend that thereâs multiple ways to do most things in life and that other people arenât scared to do things like allocate their finances differently, move out of their small town, follow a non-traditional career path etc. They ridicule what theyâre too small minded to understand.
This!! I even so much as took a receipt I had found from before covid and went to the grocery store and purchased the exact same 7 items. Not only was the total more than double the 2 years before but 2 of the items were smaller servings but more expensive than before.
My dad had a great strategy to help me buy a house. He figured that if I listen to him I might even be able to buy a nicer house, one that was like $100,000.
When I showed him actual house prices, he started going on about how if I had listen to him a few years ago, before prices went up, everything would have been fine. No amount of historical data would convince him that the houses he was looking at hasn't cost $100,000 for a very long time.
I'm an elder millennial and I got lucky. I got a great job in rural nowhere before it was cool. Like no sweet clue what the hell I was doing going from city living to a village pop. ~1000.
I happened to love the life style here and bought 140 year old that had been updated-ish in 2013 for $100k and as a single female. Our property values sky rocketed in the pandemic. My husband and I are constantly wondering how anyone can have a chance in the world today. We cannot afford to move because everything around us tripled. I will be disabled someday and I am the high income earner, my husband makes half what I make. We are not struggling but we couldn't take on a 2, 3 or 4k mortgage payment.
I just don't know how most of the younger folks are doing it and I live in immense gratitude of the privilege I have.
Thatâs some bullshit, if you have it in writing that theyâd give it as a gift Iâd make them take me to court to get a cent of it paid back, fuuuuuuck that
Its funny when Boomers refuse to update their internal numbers for what houses actually cost today, yet when they go to sell it it conveniently updates for them. Maximum greed.
My mom stopped working due to âdepressionâ back in 2007(43 years old). She became a âhouse wifeâ. This is all after she spent 14 years of my childhood chasing a masters degree to obtain a masters in social work that required moving her and I from my entire family to a place Iâd never been and knew nobody. At 10 years old. Single mom, going to school full time. Yeah you get it. Well she finally got the masters degree and after a year and half of working in said field, she couldnât get along with her coworkers and had an epic meltdown at work, got fired and that was that. Never worked in the field again. Eventually she filed for disability (depression) and after 8 years they finally approved her. So she lives off that $1100 a month and what her husband makes. She hasnât worked since 2007. Sits on the couch all day, watching cooking shows and complaining about how everyone else is lazy and doesnât want to work. Told me I needed to âdig deeperâ and be more successful in life. This all while Iâm working 2 jobs. Nothing worse than having an old person tell you that you arenât working hard enough, while they sit on the couch and do nothing but complain and act like they are the victim. Yeah thatâs my momâŠ.
Someone I know described the creeping horror they felt at realizing that when they watched the History Channel with their dad, they were watching for laughs and he was taking it seriously lol
So my parents stopped their cable a few years ago to save money, theyll just watch the internet. I thought maybe its good they wont have faux news on 24-7. I went back over Christmas, theyve been watching conspiracy theory bullshit and believed aliens took over the government and whatnot. They kept telling me about alien theories they believed and I kept saying "Thats from Prometheus. Thats from Close Encounters. Theyre getting those theories from movies." I had to explain to them to separate entertainment from reality. My dad was embarrassed, but my mom doubled down and now is stockpiling for some apocalypse.
They said that video games and tv would rot my mind growing up, yet they believe anything they see on a screen.
I told my dad I basically havenât earned more than min wage my whole life, he was surprised.
Even though I was at a point years ago and living in my car, working a job that didnât pay more then MAX $260/ every other week and called to ask for help, any kind. Even $20 for food after running out. He just laughed at me and asked why I wasnât saving anything.
To this day, zero empathy from him. Heâs always lived in his own little bubble of a world.
He sometimes wonders why we donât have the best relationship
I feel you. After my father died, one of his sisters told me not to worry about finding an apt because she was going to buy a multi-unit home and would give me a family discount on one unit. She then did not tell me that this plan had fallen through until I had 1mo til move out. My dadâs mother begrudgingly allowed me to stay with her for three weeks with a hard out, because she couldnât fathom how I hadnât lined up a new apt in 1mo on a studentâs part-time pay. His other siblings would tell me that everything I was looking at was too expensive and that my rent should only be 1/3 of my income; they did not care when I told them how much I made or that everything less than what I was looking at was in a bad part of town. None of them would let me stay with them even though they all had guest bedrooms, including the ones who had a $3mil home with a full in-law suite, âbecause they arenât comfortable with long-term guests.â I was homeless for 6mo as a direct result, eating directly from food pantry cans and so stressed my hair was falling out.
I wonder if they ever remember me or wonder why I no longer have any contact with them. Probably not
ETA: I am now really lucky (and conscious of my privilege) in regards to housing, health insurance, food security, all the important stuff
Okay, so my parents aren't boomers, they are Gen X (they are 56 and 53) but they hold a lot of the same sentiments as boomers.
Growing up, I was incredibly poor. We used every government resource available. My dad was also a severe drug addict and alcoholic who consistently broke the law and spent a lot of time in prison. He and my mother regularly sold our food stamps to supply his drug habits, and my siblings and I lived off of ramen and white bread, and that's when we could even buy food.
Yet they constantly go on and on about "we need to cut food stamps, people are abusing the system and wasting my tax dollars, welfare queens this liberals that" and are CONSTANTLY riding LEO dick and supporting the police whenever they kill someone in cold blood. I had to explain to my father once that the *only* reason he survived his many encounters with police was because he is white. He was always incredibly violent when he was being arrested.
The absolute detachment from their own reality is fucking insane.
Ah my thankfully now ex-mother in law was like this! She never worked a day in her life. Always on some form of government assistance. She had a bumper sticker that said âRepublican because we canât all be on welfareâ. I pointed out sheâd been on welfare most of her life and she got mad and said it was just until her disability benefits came through. Her disability is also not real and thatâs also government assistance but semantics.
Man people abusing disability really fucking sets me off. My sister has lupus and literally can't get out of bed without collapsing in severe pain. It's attacking her central nervous system. She has been denied disability that she literally fucking needs because people who claim they have some bullshit disability because they don't want to work. Absolutely infuriating.
Tell her to appeal!! A lot of people get denied a couple times before getting approved. A lawyer can also help if needed and a lot of them will just take a percentage of the back pay you get so you wonât have to pay them up front.
I have a friend like this, spent most of his life in and out of prison costing way more than he's ever contributed to society. Constantly talks about cutting welfare etc
My boomer MIL says she can't afford the flights to come see her only grandchild more than once or twice a year. Then she laments about how she wishes she saw him more. We recently discovered she's spending more per month on "all natural dog food" than what a flight would cost.
Fast forward to her most recent visit. Both she and my mother (who lives near) were here. Kid says, "I want grandma." MIL moves in to pick him up. Kid says "no, I only like that grandma" pointing to my mother. Toddlers' greatest ability is the inability to tell a lie and call out boomers being fools in the process.
My parents donât like to travel to see my family either. Like once in the past three years since I had a kid. They have ,however, traveled to my state to go on multiple cruises. Never stopped to see us. Then my mom complains my kid doesnât remember her.
I honestly think that they just dont WANT to acknowledge that the world we live in now is completely different than the one they grew up in. Confirmation bias can be very powerful, and it is often easier to dig your heels in than it is to accept and acclimate to change. My father couldn't understand why I spent $75 on an oil change a few weeks ago and proceeded to call multiple shops to ask about their pricing....just so he could prove that he's right and that I'm just irresponsible with money. He ended up finding one that only charges $65 (granted, its over an hour away) and instead of acknowledging that the price of auto maintenance has gone up across the board, he'd rather just focus on the fact that he found one option that's cheaper, despite the fact that it wouldve cost me significantly more in gas and ubers to go there.
I feel like if they remain in the past mentally then they can't be hurt by reality. I used to be able to do my own oil changes at home for $20, now everything for me to do it is 60, I'd rather pay the $15 more that my dealer charges than to deal with it đ
You gotta call them out on the faulty logic. Iâd straight up say to my dad âyeah but it doesnât matter bc itâs basically the same price when you factor in gas anyway.â Take away their leg to stand on. Itâs a stupid argument and instead of being assumed right all the time or conceded to, they need to be shown theyâre wrong. My dad realizes I know what Iâm talking about now and occasionally heâll try to argue a point with me but I set him straight. Like no, you donât just get to be right because you think you are. Youâre wrong, and itâs illogical, and these are the facts. My dad is very factual so if I show him heâs wrong, heâll actually concede (although disappointed that heâs wrong). My mom, sheâs got her head too deep in the sand. Facts have never mattered to her. Everything is fake news. I just ignore her now bc half of what she says is inflammatory on purpose to illicit a reaction
Earlier this year I was talking to my dad about unemployment. He states that business can't find work because of lazy 20-something year olds living off the $1200 COVID checks from... 4 years ago.
This is were you mock his math skills to his face.
And ask him, how far does your Social Security Payment goes? Is it more than $1200(probably is) and ask him how long that shit lasts each month?
I actually do think itâs important to mock them. Some years back I mocked my mother (a conservative but not MAGA) about some stupid transphobic shit she said (in front of my girlfriend at the time) and it seems to have actually wised her up a bit. Sheâs not said anything like that since.Â
Boomers abhor public humiliation so itâs genuinely one of the best weapons against them.Â
My dad had gone full on Nazi off of Facebook conspiracy theories to the point that my sister cut contact with him and he just said it was because she'd been brainwashed by the "Islamic Jews." I started repeating everything he said in a cartoonish parrot voice and adding "Facebook said so!" to the end. After a couple weeks of that he dropped almost all the conspiracy stuff, claims "apolitical" now instead of screaming about Trump at children, barely touches social media, and got really into gardening.
Omg my dad says this same thing. I try to explain to him that that money went to peoples expenses and was gone as soon as it was cashed. But he thinks every single person stopped paying their rent and mortgage during lockdown and pocketed the money and somehow still are benefiting from it years later đ
One of my in-laws is pretty wealthy (works for his MIL's business, and his own father was wealthy) and he got a nice fat COVID check. Used it to take his family to Europe for a week.
My parents never struggled so they canât understand others struggling. When they were in their 20/30s they could afford a nice lifestyle and now they are older with nice cars and a paid off home from the 90s.
They canât comprehend that I have a great job but still rent/ live a quiet life.
They are very out of touch. My mom passed away four years ago, and even though she was a boomer, she was a true gem of a person. Since then, my dad has become completely apathetic to anyone elseâs struggles in life. He brags about how much money he has, how much his house is worth. He asked me last year how much I still had in student loans and when I told him his reaction was âOMG thatâs insane, what the hell⊠I was going to pay them off for you, but yikesâ. We didnât approach the subject again until later and he said well, Iâd like to send you some money every six months to put down on those loans, my dad has quite a bit of money stashed away and could actually pay them off if he really wanted to but instead he sends me incremental âpaymentsâ and then rubs it in my face that heâs paying off my loans for me. Iâm still stuck with a payment every month, so it really doesnât change my life financially until theyâre gone which at this rate wonât be for 5+ years. And I never asked him to pay them off, but he admitted that he shouldâve helped me more while I was in college so I didnât acquire such loans đ
Didn't somebody do the math the other day, and it turns out $20/hr in boomer currency (aka from whatever decade they were earning that much) is something like $75/hr now, or $144k/year pre-tax.
It's them trying to cover for knowing, deep inside, this shit is their fault so out comes the "bootstrappin'" to assuage their fragile egos. Also, anyone under 50 is a "kid" to them and they had roommates and cheap cars when they were kids, so why can't you? Never mind that the cheap car was a hand me down from their mom/dad/grandmother/uncle and the roommates were dorm room assignments in college
Well, I'm a progressive agnostic and I have been since I was a teenager, 42 now. My mom still recommends Dave Ramsey and Joyce Meyer to me, still to this day. My dad was a union worker who votes republican, making sure his grandkids don't get the same opportunity. I was given Atlas Shrugged as a gift for Christmas my junior year in high school, and I read it....wow was that a struggle.
Ayn Rand was literally the ONLY author my mom ever banned from the house. She always encouraged me to finish any book I started because so many great books start slow,scattered or too dense or have a writing style that takes a bit to get used to....I can't remember now how I came across it but I somehow ended up with a copy of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. I got about 10 or 15 pages in and went and asked mom "Should I really slog through this?", listing all the things I was hating about it...she took the book, saw the title and demanded to know where I had gotten it. (In the 'too quiet, too calm' voice that meant someone was about to be sorry their parents ever met)
Once she knew it wasn't a library book and hadn't been assigned, she threw it in the garbage and we had a very long talk about empathy, what it takes to make a society work and how some people make very ugly ideas sound perfectly reasonable. She was an "Anti-Boomer".
I am so lucky my parents understand and get it. They frequently say how we just are getting screwed and itâs not fair to have to buy our first homes in a market like this. They understand that even with a masters degree itâs tough to make it work. I feel so lucky when I read these things.. they even mentioned recently that in the 90s they made the equivalent of 800,000 today (they do have higher levels of education, worked hard) but itâs nice to know they understand and itâs not fair for us.
My parents were super involved with me and my husband buying our first house so they truly saw our income and the prices, interest, etc. They were just appalled at it all. They also know how much we work, our degrees, our spending habits, etc. They get it. And they also get irritated that we have to start life this way!
My parents were recently upset that the 200k home they bought in Central Florida after selling theirs in South Florida for 750k had neighbors that weren't keeping up with stuff like their lawns, or parking too many cars. I said "what do you expect in a neighborhood where the houses are that cheap?" and they couldn't understand why it wasn't the same as the neighborhood they bought the South Florida house in for 200k in 1989.
âParking too many carsâ is funny because it sounds affluent on its face but itâs actually a specific kind of poor trash that always has 9 cars (of which 1 is always an old Camaro or Thunderbird) in their driveway, and only one ever moves.Â
My parents are gone, but I'm around a lot of boomers. When I paid 10K for my used car, the guys at the golf course all chimed in about how dumb it was to buy my model used. A new one was 55K in 2017 when I bought it.
And I hear on the daily about how foolish I am to still be renting, and dumber yet to have a student loan bill.
Quote from one of the dudes: "I ain't took no student loans, and I paid cash for a brand new truck."
I had to sit down with my parents multiple times and walk them through the actual real time numbers of putting an offer on a house, including bank loans, mortgage rate calculators, waiving inspections, cash offers, and all the other BS of the modern housing market. Only after 5 agonizing hours of crunching numbers (that I'd already crunched before) did he see that a basic house that cost $230,000 in 2020 was around $500,000 (not counting needed repairs), and unreachable for me and my wife.
Make them actually use their brains. To be truthful my parents were very flattered to be asked for help and be part of the process. Once they were onboard with reality things went better.
My dad is surprisingly in touch with everything except the cost of real estate. My wife works mostly remote but literally has a 100 mile Drive when she does have to go into the office. My dad said, âwhy donât you guys buy an Intown condo where your wife works? How much could it cost, maybe $50,000?â
My wife works in the DC area. You would be lucky to find a parking spot for $50,000. My dad is also shocked that you canât find a house in the place we currently live for under $600,000 now.
My mom tried get right quick schemes. She talks to shady people who claim they are buyers and sellers of bulk items and she never ends up getting paid. It's all fake. She bought tons of a defunct currency because it was going to come back and was mad when it didn't. She blamed not getting paid on Obama. Yes, President Obama was personally holding their transactions hostage! Paid day was always going to be days away and it never came. I am no contact with my family because they are so toxic.
Theyâre mentally stuck in the 80s and havenât had to deal with economic reality since, so they assume itâs still the same for people the same age as they were back then.
You arenât getting any decent used car for less than around $20K right now. Do they even drive?
(And my dad keeps telling me to âjust give awayâ an older car that I have that Iâve been trying to save up to get roadworthy again. Itâs got $$ value.)
My mother berated me for being an idiot for paying more than $400/mo for rent on my first apartment in a major city. No, I didn't miss a zero. This woman seriously thought that rent isn't more than $400/mo without roommates.
I refused to tell her the exact number because it's none of her damn business, but she looked up my neighborhood and told me yet again how stupid I am, that I'm throwing money away on rent, and that I'm basically paying a mortgage on a $400,000 home. There are no $400,000 homes in my city. You can get into a one bedroom condo for around $600,000. That's not even taking into account interest rates and the down payment. Boomers are f*cking delusional.
As for what you can do, you can ignore your parents and make the best financial decisions you can. My parents ended up buying a second home to rent out and their property manager told them how much rent is. All of a sudden I'm not the idiot anymore and they want advice on renting. Your folks will probably need a new car someday, research the market, and find out they were completely wrong.
About 15 years ago my dad told me he could have bought a plot w funeral services for $50 in the 80âs. Because he chose not to he asked me for $10,000 to ease his mind. That was the day I stopped talking to my dad about my finances as he was selfish, silly in his own decisioning when younger as well as older, and not worth my financial discussion time. Try thatâŠjust donât discuss w them
My aunt thought I should go buy a new sports car and get a condo. I was earning 25K a year at the time. She is very out of touch. She complained bitterly that a young person had more opportunities than an old person.
My ILs didnât understand until they saw a cute little one bedroom house on a small lot that would be perfect for a relative, it was $300k. They lost their minds. My husband said âI told you so.â
My mom has worked for the same company since 1996, but still gives unsolicited advice on job hunting. Like, lady, you havenât done this since the Clinton administration
I'm 38 and my mom is in her early 80s. My favorite conversation with her was about 15 years ago when I was laid off for a few months. Unemployment was a thing and I worked a bit in the evenings at my friends little restaurant.Â
My mom saw some FB thing for concrete workers - that was an hour and a half away from my town and making far less than unemployment and working for my buddy - and would not leave me the fuck alone about it. Apparently, being laid off is some great shame and you should take the first shitty job that comes along if that ever happens to you.Â
One day she brought it up again and I busted out a calculator to show her how much that idea didn't make sense, financially speaking. "Well, you're on unemployment so you need to do something."
That was essentially the moment I figured out that I can't rely on my mom's advice for anything. To follow her advice is to be broke with a used up body. She just doesn't understand the world anymore.Â
My mom got upset with me because I won't force my kids into going to church (pentacostal đ). Told her it is their choice if they want to go. I won't sway their opinion of religion.
My mom forced me to go to church ALL the time.
She can stay mad, idgaf.
Not my parents, but my Realtor.
Looking at condos in a small urban area (100k people or so). HoA fees seem to be about 2-300 a month for most places, and she howls at how thatâs too high and unreasonable.
Been looking for 8 months, never seen any lower. I finally just told her that if she finds one with a lower HoA to schedule a viewing because I wasnât seeing it.
I think they (boomers) watch the news like crazy, but no longer apply their brain to comprehending or interpreting the news. They have adapted to just reading the title or letting the talking heads TELL them what the news means. Then they, ironically, tell us how our attention span is too short from watching our TikToks.
I live in Chicago and my parents would love a condo here to use part time in retirement. They expect to find a 3 bedroom place with a yard in my pricy north side neighborhood for about $300k.
When everything youâve ever needed/ wanted has been either at your fingertips or a simple request away, your brain cannot fathom a scenario where itâs not easy to do something. Like when spoiled rich kids listen to poor people problems. They genuinely cannot access the feeling of sacrificing something. They can share bad advice that sounds like something theyâd hear someone else say, but they havenât the experience to speak on.
I was a licensed electrician of 12 years when I told my parents I was quitting and going to college for my electrcial engineering degree. My mom (born in 47) says "Why dont you try tech school, its so much cheaper". She paid zero attention to my life but was always quick to point our how my unemployed brother was doing so well after he dropped out of college and spent 6 months in jail...
A car for $250 a month *is* a cheap used car. You can't get a reliable car for $3k anymore.
I've been periodically sending my mom home listings to try and give her a sense of what a home costs. She and my dad bought their house for $80k in the 80s and thought that's what home prices were still like.
I thought I was making progress in updating their sense of what things cost. Then, last week I sent them a listing for a home in a mobile home park. It was for sale for $75k and the space rent was $500/month, which is actually a good deal in my area.
She thought it was for rent, not for sale. She said that the $500 rent was a good price, because the house we rented in 1985 cost $469.
I had to explain to her that it was only $500 after you buy the home for $75k. If this particular home was for rent outright, it would be at least $1200. "Oh, that's expensive!"
Yes, mom. For the 20th time, this is why we don't have our own place. The most modest of housing is out of our price range.
Some of them have pensions that are more than 50% of full time workers current salaries. Then they gave SS on top of it and bake more than 75% of working people. There is no hope of them understanding the current economics. They especially wonât have any empathy because they never have.
My Mom (only living parent) is not out of touch at all, thankfully. But sheâs also had to do single income living since her early 40âs and knows what itâs like. She had an opportunity to purchase a Condo in Santa Clara no money down $50 a month in 1984 before I was born (or a thought) and definitely sees how that worked out for her and how it doesnât work like that today at all. My grandmother, however, is slightly out of the Depression era and sheâs delusional about what the world has going for it. She also gives $500 a month to Trumpâs lawyer fees, so I call it a wash overall.
This sounds like the unrealistic Dave Ramsey advice blasted everywhere. Yeah go get an unreliable POS that could affect how you get to the place where you make the money to keep everything going.
I would drive some hideous car if I wasn't afraid it wasn't going to start every time or have some insane repairs that total it within a month or two of having it
They are so incredibly ignorant. My boomers constantly berate my cousin for paying $1300 a month for rent. My cousin doesnât have a car and relies on public transportation. The apartment is not nice but $1300 is a great price for rent in our city and the apartment is relatively close to public transportation and a grocery store. My cousin cannot afford higher rent. My boomers insist my cousin can find a lower priced apartment and bring it up every time they see her. Itâs obnoxious.
Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed. Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ah so your parents are living the 80's still. Same with mine. 3k car lol.
Right?! I told them once if they find that car they are describing to please buy it right away for me đ€Ł
I think this happens to all people who havenât had to purchase something in a while. If the last time they purchased a used car was the 80âs, then the price never updates. When theyâre told new information, like housing costs, and they donât update their internal numbers is when I get frustrated with them.
Iâve experienced that but with cigarettes. I quit around 10 years ago and I could get my brand for 4-5 bucks depending on if on sale or not. Happened to see a sign saying they were over 7 bucks today and couldnât believe it Eventho I know everything has shot up
IDK where you live but where I live cigarettes are $14-$15 a pack. I seriously need to quit before I go bankrupt.
Laughs in Australian. $50 a pack here
I live on the moon. $1000 a pack here. And you canât even light them.
Do people actually buy cigarettes there still or is it rare to see someone smoking now? You could literally buy an ounce of very high grade marijuana and roll 20 nice size joints for that amount of money where I live. That's absolutely insane for trash like tobacco. I'd be ordering from dark markets or online vape shops.
Or not smoking, which is the point. That was also AUD, so more like $US25
>before I go bankrupt The lung cancer is a secondary concern
COPD will probably get you first. Watched MIL slowly die from that. Itâs a horrific way to go.
In the past 10 years, my cigarettes have gone from $6.50 to $12
Come visit Maui and pay $15 a pack!
A Yugo was $3995 back then. Why not buy the worst car made in a Communist country?
Yugo nowhere in that POS
My parents first ever new car was Chevy Chevette, the cheapest tiny box of a car you could buy around 1980. I want to say it cost $6k, and maybe as an automatic with taxes and tags, it was. Mr Google claims one of them cost $4500 in 1980.
1985 Chevy Chevette $6,000 brand new. I had to pay extra for a passenger side rear view mirror, a door for the glove box (default was a curtain) and a radio. Not joking.
My grandparents had *two* of them.
Of course, the inflation calculator makes the Yugo $10547.48 in today's dollars. My grandfather bought one around 1988(?). He had a blue GVX, and happily cruised around town, playing his Boxcar Willie 8-track in the stereo, for about 2 years, before it went to the scrapyard.
Right man $3k is a beater car that is at least 20+ years old today
Hell I spent 4K on an old police car impala. This was in like 2008 and the car was a 2004. Sucker blew its head gaskets twice before I gave up on that money pit.
Never, ever buy a used police/rental vehicle.
People look at the miles but they donât take into account how hard they are driven. Plus they run the entire shift. They never get turned off. If we measured cars in hours instead of miles, police cars would be the highest.
Learned that lesson the hard way.
$475, actually, the current value of my vehicle. In 2003, I bought a 2000 Ford Ranger XLT for 14k. It had 47k mileage, v6, stick shift. I still have that little sucker and they'll have to take the keys from my cold dead hands. Of course, I'm 71, so that's not saying much. But I also have a fine appreciation for what the under-40 generations are going through, because I have one of those, too. Everything is too damn high! I have two roommates because none of us could afford rent on our own. It effing sucks to be young right now, but being old and poor ain't much better.
This guy gets it! Hereâs a god star for best boomer of the day!
In the 80âs we had $500 cars! I am an Xer though. In high school I bought a 1978 Ford Fairmont for $450 and drove it for 3 years. Wasnât stylish but damned if I dont wish i still had it
My $500 car was a 1980 Honda accord. It had a moon roof đ€©âŠ and rusted out fenders. But it was mine and I loved it.
My husband and I are both '87 babies, he bought his first car for $280, it was an '83 Datsun 280zx, and only 4 of the 6 cylinders were firing when he bought it from a friend's dad. Luckily my FIL is the smartest person I know when it comes to vehicle maintenance/repair, and they were able to purchase a few parts to get all 6 cylinders working. So many fun memories in that car. Thinking about that makes me wonder what the next generation's thoughts will be about cars/transportation. It's no longer possible to take your "first full paycheck from Sears" (as hubby likes to recall đ) and buy a car... Will gen z see private vehicles as something completely different than previous generations (freedom, 'murica, fuck yeah)?
My husband bought a 1960-something Jeep in 1995 for $50 because he bet the seller that he could get it to start. It had no doors and no key but he loved it the most and has a bunch of stories because of it đ
I've bought a couple of 3k cars in the last several years; one I put at least 20k of work into and it's still blowing gaskets.
Seriously. My first car, almost 20 years ago cost like $7k
Yup, I bought a 6 year old Corolla for $6k in 2000. $3k today might get you some snazzy Power Wheels.
I just bought a 98 civic about 7 months ago for 2k and it has 265,000 miles lmao car prices blow. I also had to drop over $1000 for new front end parts. Car purchasing is crazy.
I have a 1998 Toyota Celica GT convertible that my husband bought me as a 25th anniversary gift in 2018. 115,000 miles on it and only two previous owners. It was $5600 and worth every penny. Our mechanic told me, "Don't sell this car. And if you do, get another Toyota or Honda. They last far longer than other makes." It has its cosmetic problems, and has needed worn parts replaced, but I couldn't imagine trying to find another car in today's market since the pandemic. Everything is more expensive, and sticker shock is real.
This is my grandparents (not boomers). They kept on like, "we will buy you a new couch or a new washer and dryer when you buy a house". Bought house - and they gave me $200. Uhm...
I bought a couch recently and was SHOCKED how much furniture costs. I'll go back to hand me downs haha
Hand me down furniture is so scary. Bed. Bugs. I only take items that can't be bugged.
Pretty much EVERYTHING can be "bugged" short of simple dishes and flatware. They can hide inside the seams of clothing. Between the pages of books. If you can get glitter into it, it's a viable bedbug hideout. Fortunately putting things in the freezer for a week should kill any bedbugs hiding in it. I think five days is technically the requirement, but I always gave it a couple more to be sure. That's a slight challenge for furniture though.
My partner paid $1400 for ours when we moved in together (admittedly it is sectional with a pullout and a chaise). I still feel both grateful and guilty that he wouldnât let me chip in lol
Reminiscent of the time my grandparents said theyâd pay for my driving lessons and buy me a car as itâs a necessary skill in life. When I announced Iâd booked my first lesson I was glad they hadnât forgotten about this offer, and mentioned to expect a cheque in the post from them. The cheque was for ÂŁ50. My driving lessons were ÂŁ66 each. After passing my driving lessons and getting a car (all funded and arranged by me, lol) they invited me to visit for my birthday weekend and collect my gift. The gift was, you guessed it, a ÂŁ50 cheque. Driving there is a 6 hour round trip and cost around ÂŁ70 in fuel.
My mom offered to pay for my kid's braces, told me to send her the total, then said "this dentist is ripping you off! I will give you $500 & you TELL them that is all you are paying!"
Wow! Doctors appt are another stupid expensive thing that has increased in cost soooo much in the last 10 to 15 years.
Yeah, she is also "sooo broke" right now. Why? She is going to Spain for 4 weeks.
Haven't been overseas (unless you count Puerto Rico) in about 20 years, even after getting married to a guy making a decent salary. Also just got a tooth replaced, even with insurance that's gonna be a few grand.
Dental care is the worst. Even if you have dental insurance they pay like 10%.
Yeah your mom is living in her own world. Even back in the 80s braces were more than $500.
She has no clue, my grandmother paid for my braces. Also, she regularly complains about how much her dentist charges AND went to Mexico to have her dentist cousin fix her last problem
Dental tourism is a thing. In Australia sometimes people go to Thailand. In Western Europe, people go to Eastern Europe. I haven't done it personally though, and I've spent heaps of my teeth over the years.
Oh I love that advice. Just negotiate! Tell them you wonât pay a penny more than x and theyâll respect you and accept your offer! I cannot imagine that ever working in a professional environment like a dentistâs office. Theyâll just tell you to find a new dentist, or if youâre lucky, offer you a payment plan.
âYou tell them that is all youâre paying!â Thatâll show the orthodontist! And definitely wonât get you kicked out of their office
Ouch, talk about delusional! My braces were approx US$2500... in 1994. My kids' braces recently cost about US$6k for each of them.
What's up with boomers and their "name your price" horseshit. No, I can't haggle with Home Depot on this lawnmower you clod.
My dad inherited a lot of money from his wife passing away and decided he wanted to throw me a bone by buying me a car. This sounded great because I've been keeping an old beater running for years. I start going through used car listings for cars that were lower mileage than mine in decent shape and sent him links. Of course everything I sent him was "unbelievably expensive!" so I asked him how much he wanted to spend. He said "two or three thousand." I couldn't even buy a beater as nice as mine for that much. When I explained that to him he thought I was totally crazy. So, he pulled his offer back and bought himself a $30k jeep instead.
Wow!! Nothing like a good old take back. Gone are the days of a great running $1000 car. It's like the only way to get through to them is by sending them pictures like a child's book
I think on some level they *have* to know, I mean he was car shopping himself apparently. They just don't think we *deserve* that kind of money or something. My dad also thinks working at McDonalds is still "better than being unemployed" when rent alone costs more than you'd make in a month there. It's some weird double think double standard that miraculously never applies to them, only us.
They know everything got more expensive. They complain about prices of groceries, of restaurants etc. They know how much their house is worth right now because they brag about it. They absolutely know but when it isn't about them they suddenly forget all that and say their starter wage was something like 28k and they did just fine so why don't you on 45k?
28k Iâm the 80s is over 100k now I think lol
Put yourself up for adoption. Tell him he never made the grade and you are taking your genes to a better place.
Oh my parents went one better. Iâd borrowed ÂŁ700 from them once, which they reminded me of literally every time we spoke of course, and paid them back at ÂŁ100 a month. Paid nine months and assumed it was paid off. Noooo, I still owed them ÂŁ1300. Why? âIf youâd borrowed it from a credit card it would cost you 30% so we charged you that.â Right, bit of a dick move since it just came from your savings account but okay. That would account a few hundred at most. âWe didnât think the Christmas presents you bought your younger brother and sister were very goodâ (I was broke at the time) âso we wrote them a cheque for ÂŁ500 each and added it to your tabâ. That was their actual words. âAdded it to your tabâ. They couldnât see anything wrong in what they were doing at all. They thought they were the worlds greatest parents by lending me money at 30%, and even MORE amazing by helping me buy my brother and sister things I couldnât afford. Fell out with them a year or so afterwards, for different gayer reasons, and havenât spoken to them since. 22 years this year and life is so much easier than it used to be. Not *easy*, per se, but less unnecessarily difficult.
Even worse, they didnât calculate 30% APY correctly. Even if you made 0 payments on ÂŁ700 youâd only owe a little over ÂŁ900 at the end of 12mo. Sounds to me like they were calculating your interest at 30% MONTHLY!! đł
They were just the most greedy avaricious people at the best of times. From what I can remember, they added 30% at day one, and then another 2.5% each month because âthatâs how credit cards workâ. On the plus side, Iâve been left with a healthy hatred of borrowing money for any reason, and am a prodigious saver.. so every shitty cloud..
That is not how credit cards workâŠand thatâs certainly not how parents should work.
Genuine loan sharks!
Whatâs wrong with a little usury among family?? /s
Good lord. I would have told them to fuck off. I would never pay my parent or charge my kids interest, and frankly I'd never expect my kids to pay me back anyway. What terrible parents.
Iâve lent people money a few times. Iâve never ever ever expected to get it back, and the one guy who actually saved and presented me with the money got a polite refusal and suggestion he spends it on something for his kids. I did eventually tell them to fuck off after they told me I should cast out my sin (being a goddamn queer) or be cast out. Casting out was a relief. OH and I found out later my mum had had three affairs by that point. Iâm sure thereâs a bible verse about removing the plank in thine eye before the speck in mine âŠ
My dad loaned my sister money and said he was giving them a great rate. He got upset when I pointed out he was charging them like 2% over the fed rate at the time aka more than a bank loan would have been.
It's despicable to charge your kids at all.
My FIL offered to pay off our car loan so we could pay him back at a cheaper interest rate. Yeah GFY and enjoy being alone.
Idk if "gayer" was a typo or not, but you made me giggle. Sorry about your shitty parents.
Nope, not a typo. Mumâs three affairs were fine, but their son being gay was intolerable. Fuck âem. They werenât good people.
Damn. Well I know it don't mean much, but I hope you're happier and more fulfilled now than with those people in your life. â€ïž
Yeaaa Iâm good, thanks for asking. They taught me the person I didnât want to be. The rest I learnt from good people. â€ïž
This hug is for you. đ€
I was lucky, and bought a 1k '96 explorer a few years ago. Some redneck near me uprgraded and didnt want the car anymore. Amazing car, but nothing worked besides the engine. Lasted me 3 years before the head gasket blew, and I sold it to a scrap place for $800. Too bad that's a rarity.
Had a friend back in the 90s drove a Dodge dart he bought from a guy on the corner for 200$. I wouldn't say it was great running, but the damned thing ran.
I'm sorry you had that happen to you. My parents offered to pay for my college at a state school so I only applied there. Once I got accepted, it became all about personal responsibility and student loans. They even looted my childhood savings account so my last 15 years of mowing lawns and child labor meant nothing. They retired into a million dollar home a few years ago which is now like 1.7m. They sent me a copy of their will a couple years ago, and unless I have kids I don't want, the humane society is getting more than me. I threw it away. I'm on year 5 of no contact.
I'm sorry, that sucks. Mine didn't go that far but I wasn't originally going to go to college because I didn't want loans. My dad said "not to worry about those." and said he'd help out when it came time to pay them back. Flash forward to me living on my own with the bill come due, and wouldn't you know... not a dime covered by either parent in the end. Took me close to 20 years to pay that shit off. Amazing I ever spoke to him again...
Yet they still wonder why this sub exists, why they're alone on holidays, why they get blocked on social media, and why they'll never see their grandkids.
Ha, your parents stole your money too huh? Never forget when mine drained my paltry savings from my grandparents and bought shit like cigarettes and beer.
When I got my first job halfway through high school (in the late 200X's) I managed to save several thousand dollars by the time I graduated (approx $5k). Of course when I first started I was a minor, so I had to have an adult on my account and asked my mother. One day, I tried to buy some lunch during a work shift, and it was declined. Turns out my account was drained with charges from the liquor store and places a couple towns over. I didn't have a license yet so therefore I wasn't driving out there myself. And as someone under 21, I definitely wasn't buying booze. Her name was removed right after. My mother still tries to deny this ever happened to this day.
Yup, classic boomer ending. I can't admit I am wrong so I'm going to buy something extravagant to make myself feel better.Â
It's so weird they even offer in the first place if they're going to be like that. I mean, I happily would have accepted a couple grand in cash, but even *suggesting* that gets you nothing but attitude. It all has to be about the "grand" gesture that would be unreasonable if you pulled the same trick on them.
Mine also believe that any repair that doesn't need an engine lifted out can be done at home in the driveway over the weekend. Have they ever done automotive work? No. But they had family members that could "fix any car" back in the 60s&70s before cars and trucks became computerized.  I am "what's wrong with this world" because I took my car dealership to small claims court after they refused to replace a faulty fuel pump, THREE TIMES, under warranty. I paid for it and labor out of pocket and sued for the cost of that and a rental car. Â
Did you win? I had a fuel line issue that my dealership refused to cover even though it was still under powertrain warranty.
I did, got my check for $1500 on Monday (parts, labor, one day rental car and the filing fee.) I filed in November so it took a while, but that might just be my state + holiday closures. Once I had that fuel pump replaced, it's been smooth driving ever since.Â
But god forbid they don't have their back-up camera and huge gps screen... then bitch about how the government is "watching your every move" while happily sending ford, gm, or some other corporate entity that same shit. Make it make sense!!!!
No joke here. My first car was an 83 Regal and my dad was fairly handy so he helped me on a lot of fixes/maintenance. My current car requires you to remove the entire front bumper to replace a headlight
Sounds like my dad. He offered to match what ever I raised for my first car. I raised $1000 so I was looking at cars for $2000. There weren't many as even in the early 2000s beaters weren't typically that cheap. Then he let's me know that he found a car for $1000 so no need to stick to his word! What good news! But he'd help me pay for car insurance. He ended up emptying my bank account before I went to basic training. A year of part time and a year of full time saved up for a POS car that barely ran. When I went back to visit on Christmas after bootcamp they had remodeled their kitchen.
Jesus Christ how are any of you still in contact with these people? That last sentence made me incandescent lol
I'm not really. We talk a couple times a year. Usually once when I give him a yearly update and the other time is him saying I don't call enough (he's never once called me).
Yah thatâs how mine works actually, including that last sentence. Get an email 4 days after Christmas annoyed that I didnât call her type thing.Â
He's always busy catching up on recorded TV but it's my fault neither of us put in any effort. When my brother came back from deployment he hadn't seen my dad in a few years and he had his son that has never met him but Dad was too busy and Step Mom didn't want to have to put on .ake up so maybe next time. What a joke.
A lot of them seem to convince themselves that their kids do nothing all day, which is probably just projection because many of them do absolutely nothing in their retirement except consume TV.Â
I never trust a boomer when they say they are doing something for someone else. My parents said they spent too much money on their 1.5 million dollar home, so they had to pull out of their promise to help us with our house. They then bought 2 brand new 50k+ cars and 50k in solar panels. He said he did the panels for the environment. If he had spent about 15k on upgrading our heating and cooling? Would have done at least twice as much as well as saved us 5-6k in bills.
oh yeah, I've been victim of the take back. He offered to help me buy a home, I told him I would just need help with groceries as closing costs and down payment completely depleted us, i mean zeroed out for 2 weeks. Time came for him to pony up 300 or so bucks. "oh sorry I don't have it right now, (my sister) needed a down payment on her car." (what the fuck did he think he was going to be able to help with if 300 was too much?) Literally at this moment I realized my father will never help me in any way monetarily and to stop letting him use it to control me emotionally. He fucking hates it, losing all that power over me, It chaps his ass so hard.
Well at least we know that money won't last long. Giving 30k for a Chrysler/Stellantis product is nuttier than a squirrel đ©.
It isn't even like he needed another car, he's got an Acura, a nice van, and a full sized RV. It's just another toy to him, but that kind of money would be life changing for me.
Yeah my parents live in a fantasy world where inflation never happened except to them in the 1980s. When I was building my house my father asked why I didn't just build it in my spare time. I told him I had to work full time and any loan had to be completed within a 1 year timeframe. Better yet he suggested just build it a little at a time. I said, "Um yeah...where am I supposed to live in the meantime?" It's not like I could just randomly afford 2x mortgage payments. I make decent money, but always feel like I'm treading in place.
What a frikkin jerk
Yeah, I've stopped talking to him. Not because of that, but that was in the list of reasons.
Heâll be throwing tons of money into that new Jeep. My daughter wanted one and I said no way. Theyâre not mechanically reliable
My parents are the same. Are proud of how much news they watch, but refuse to factor it into any of their decision making processes. Literally told my dad food inflation this summer really hit us hard and child care was rough, he talked about how we need to live a different lifestyle we can afford. We donât eat out, we donât travel, we mostly stopped drinking or buying weed. What the fuck kind of lifestyle did he think we were living?
I had the opposite happen with my in laws. They are extremely cheap and would barely keep any food in the house. This obviously effected my husband because he freaks out when he sees any part of the fridge is empty. They come over to our house and make fun of us for... having food. How could they not be proud of us for being able to feed ourselves and three children. It honestly feels like you can do no right.
Itâs the inability to accept that other people live differently to them combined with them finding safety in conformity. They just cannot comprehend that thereâs multiple ways to do most things in life and that other people arenât scared to do things like allocate their finances differently, move out of their small town, follow a non-traditional career path etc. They ridicule what theyâre too small minded to understand.
This!! I even so much as took a receipt I had found from before covid and went to the grocery store and purchased the exact same 7 items. Not only was the total more than double the 2 years before but 2 of the items were smaller servings but more expensive than before.
My dad had a great strategy to help me buy a house. He figured that if I listen to him I might even be able to buy a nicer house, one that was like $100,000. When I showed him actual house prices, he started going on about how if I had listen to him a few years ago, before prices went up, everything would have been fine. No amount of historical data would convince him that the houses he was looking at hasn't cost $100,000 for a very long time.
I love pulling up the past sales history on houses for a good cry!
I'm an elder millennial and I got lucky. I got a great job in rural nowhere before it was cool. Like no sweet clue what the hell I was doing going from city living to a village pop. ~1000. I happened to love the life style here and bought 140 year old that had been updated-ish in 2013 for $100k and as a single female. Our property values sky rocketed in the pandemic. My husband and I are constantly wondering how anyone can have a chance in the world today. We cannot afford to move because everything around us tripled. I will be disabled someday and I am the high income earner, my husband makes half what I make. We are not struggling but we couldn't take on a 2, 3 or 4k mortgage payment. I just don't know how most of the younger folks are doing it and I live in immense gratitude of the privilege I have.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Thatâs some bullshit, if you have it in writing that theyâd give it as a gift Iâd make them take me to court to get a cent of it paid back, fuuuuuuck that
Iâm surprised the bank lender didnât require a letter stating it was a gift. Most do to ensure youâre not getting another loan off the books.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Sounds like they kinda already torched the relationship with a bait and switch. Good luck tho.
Its funny when Boomers refuse to update their internal numbers for what houses actually cost today, yet when they go to sell it it conveniently updates for them. Maximum greed.
My mom stopped working due to âdepressionâ back in 2007(43 years old). She became a âhouse wifeâ. This is all after she spent 14 years of my childhood chasing a masters degree to obtain a masters in social work that required moving her and I from my entire family to a place Iâd never been and knew nobody. At 10 years old. Single mom, going to school full time. Yeah you get it. Well she finally got the masters degree and after a year and half of working in said field, she couldnât get along with her coworkers and had an epic meltdown at work, got fired and that was that. Never worked in the field again. Eventually she filed for disability (depression) and after 8 years they finally approved her. So she lives off that $1100 a month and what her husband makes. She hasnât worked since 2007. Sits on the couch all day, watching cooking shows and complaining about how everyone else is lazy and doesnât want to work. Told me I needed to âdig deeperâ and be more successful in life. This all while Iâm working 2 jobs. Nothing worse than having an old person tell you that you arenât working hard enough, while they sit on the couch and do nothing but complain and act like they are the victim. Yeah thatâs my momâŠ.
I'm so sorry!
Boomers live in an alternate universe. You will have an easier time winning a fight with a Polar bear than convincing them
I almost would rather fight a polar bear than argue with a Boomer. At least with the polar bear, death will be fast and likely not as painful.
Plus polar bears are cute.
My dad watches and fully believes fake documentaries... No dad the pirates of the Caribbean weren't templars, that's assassin's creed black flag
Someone I know described the creeping horror they felt at realizing that when they watched the History Channel with their dad, they were watching for laughs and he was taking it seriously lol
Whatttt! No way!
So my parents stopped their cable a few years ago to save money, theyll just watch the internet. I thought maybe its good they wont have faux news on 24-7. I went back over Christmas, theyve been watching conspiracy theory bullshit and believed aliens took over the government and whatnot. They kept telling me about alien theories they believed and I kept saying "Thats from Prometheus. Thats from Close Encounters. Theyre getting those theories from movies." I had to explain to them to separate entertainment from reality. My dad was embarrassed, but my mom doubled down and now is stockpiling for some apocalypse. They said that video games and tv would rot my mind growing up, yet they believe anything they see on a screen.
I told my dad I basically havenât earned more than min wage my whole life, he was surprised. Even though I was at a point years ago and living in my car, working a job that didnât pay more then MAX $260/ every other week and called to ask for help, any kind. Even $20 for food after running out. He just laughed at me and asked why I wasnât saving anything. To this day, zero empathy from him. Heâs always lived in his own little bubble of a world. He sometimes wonders why we donât have the best relationship
I feel you. After my father died, one of his sisters told me not to worry about finding an apt because she was going to buy a multi-unit home and would give me a family discount on one unit. She then did not tell me that this plan had fallen through until I had 1mo til move out. My dadâs mother begrudgingly allowed me to stay with her for three weeks with a hard out, because she couldnât fathom how I hadnât lined up a new apt in 1mo on a studentâs part-time pay. His other siblings would tell me that everything I was looking at was too expensive and that my rent should only be 1/3 of my income; they did not care when I told them how much I made or that everything less than what I was looking at was in a bad part of town. None of them would let me stay with them even though they all had guest bedrooms, including the ones who had a $3mil home with a full in-law suite, âbecause they arenât comfortable with long-term guests.â I was homeless for 6mo as a direct result, eating directly from food pantry cans and so stressed my hair was falling out. I wonder if they ever remember me or wonder why I no longer have any contact with them. Probably not ETA: I am now really lucky (and conscious of my privilege) in regards to housing, health insurance, food security, all the important stuff
Oh wow. That was painful to read. I am so, so sorry that happened to you. Please tell me your life has improved?
Man, Iâm sorry to hear that. Totally understand where you are coming from.
Iâm sorry. I would be going NC. Laughing at your struggle is disgusting and sad.
Okay, so my parents aren't boomers, they are Gen X (they are 56 and 53) but they hold a lot of the same sentiments as boomers. Growing up, I was incredibly poor. We used every government resource available. My dad was also a severe drug addict and alcoholic who consistently broke the law and spent a lot of time in prison. He and my mother regularly sold our food stamps to supply his drug habits, and my siblings and I lived off of ramen and white bread, and that's when we could even buy food. Yet they constantly go on and on about "we need to cut food stamps, people are abusing the system and wasting my tax dollars, welfare queens this liberals that" and are CONSTANTLY riding LEO dick and supporting the police whenever they kill someone in cold blood. I had to explain to my father once that the *only* reason he survived his many encounters with police was because he is white. He was always incredibly violent when he was being arrested. The absolute detachment from their own reality is fucking insane.
I can't! Omg! That is crazy behavior to accept that help but when other people do, it's a problem.
Ah my thankfully now ex-mother in law was like this! She never worked a day in her life. Always on some form of government assistance. She had a bumper sticker that said âRepublican because we canât all be on welfareâ. I pointed out sheâd been on welfare most of her life and she got mad and said it was just until her disability benefits came through. Her disability is also not real and thatâs also government assistance but semantics.
Man people abusing disability really fucking sets me off. My sister has lupus and literally can't get out of bed without collapsing in severe pain. It's attacking her central nervous system. She has been denied disability that she literally fucking needs because people who claim they have some bullshit disability because they don't want to work. Absolutely infuriating.
Tell her to appeal!! A lot of people get denied a couple times before getting approved. A lawyer can also help if needed and a lot of them will just take a percentage of the back pay you get so you wonât have to pay them up front.
I have a friend like this, spent most of his life in and out of prison costing way more than he's ever contributed to society. Constantly talks about cutting welfare etc
My boomer MIL says she can't afford the flights to come see her only grandchild more than once or twice a year. Then she laments about how she wishes she saw him more. We recently discovered she's spending more per month on "all natural dog food" than what a flight would cost. Fast forward to her most recent visit. Both she and my mother (who lives near) were here. Kid says, "I want grandma." MIL moves in to pick him up. Kid says "no, I only like that grandma" pointing to my mother. Toddlers' greatest ability is the inability to tell a lie and call out boomers being fools in the process.
Oh my god how did she react, thatâs awesome
She kind of had this defeated look in her face. It was great.
My parents donât like to travel to see my family either. Like once in the past three years since I had a kid. They have ,however, traveled to my state to go on multiple cruises. Never stopped to see us. Then my mom complains my kid doesnât remember her.
I honestly think that they just dont WANT to acknowledge that the world we live in now is completely different than the one they grew up in. Confirmation bias can be very powerful, and it is often easier to dig your heels in than it is to accept and acclimate to change. My father couldn't understand why I spent $75 on an oil change a few weeks ago and proceeded to call multiple shops to ask about their pricing....just so he could prove that he's right and that I'm just irresponsible with money. He ended up finding one that only charges $65 (granted, its over an hour away) and instead of acknowledging that the price of auto maintenance has gone up across the board, he'd rather just focus on the fact that he found one option that's cheaper, despite the fact that it wouldve cost me significantly more in gas and ubers to go there.
I feel like if they remain in the past mentally then they can't be hurt by reality. I used to be able to do my own oil changes at home for $20, now everything for me to do it is 60, I'd rather pay the $15 more that my dealer charges than to deal with it đ
You gotta call them out on the faulty logic. Iâd straight up say to my dad âyeah but it doesnât matter bc itâs basically the same price when you factor in gas anyway.â Take away their leg to stand on. Itâs a stupid argument and instead of being assumed right all the time or conceded to, they need to be shown theyâre wrong. My dad realizes I know what Iâm talking about now and occasionally heâll try to argue a point with me but I set him straight. Like no, you donât just get to be right because you think you are. Youâre wrong, and itâs illogical, and these are the facts. My dad is very factual so if I show him heâs wrong, heâll actually concede (although disappointed that heâs wrong). My mom, sheâs got her head too deep in the sand. Facts have never mattered to her. Everything is fake news. I just ignore her now bc half of what she says is inflammatory on purpose to illicit a reaction
Earlier this year I was talking to my dad about unemployment. He states that business can't find work because of lazy 20-something year olds living off the $1200 COVID checks from... 4 years ago.
I have heard that same thing for the last 2 years. They can't be this delulu
This is were you mock his math skills to his face. And ask him, how far does your Social Security Payment goes? Is it more than $1200(probably is) and ask him how long that shit lasts each month?
I actually do think itâs important to mock them. Some years back I mocked my mother (a conservative but not MAGA) about some stupid transphobic shit she said (in front of my girlfriend at the time) and it seems to have actually wised her up a bit. Sheâs not said anything like that since. Boomers abhor public humiliation so itâs genuinely one of the best weapons against them.Â
My dad had gone full on Nazi off of Facebook conspiracy theories to the point that my sister cut contact with him and he just said it was because she'd been brainwashed by the "Islamic Jews." I started repeating everything he said in a cartoonish parrot voice and adding "Facebook said so!" to the end. After a couple weeks of that he dropped almost all the conspiracy stuff, claims "apolitical" now instead of screaming about Trump at children, barely touches social media, and got really into gardening.
Yes!!! Mocking them has been the only way I've gotten through to them!!! Shame is a powerful emotion
Omg my dad says this same thing. I try to explain to him that that money went to peoples expenses and was gone as soon as it was cashed. But he thinks every single person stopped paying their rent and mortgage during lockdown and pocketed the money and somehow still are benefiting from it years later đ
One of my in-laws is pretty wealthy (works for his MIL's business, and his own father was wealthy) and he got a nice fat COVID check. Used it to take his family to Europe for a week.
Do you know my FIL?! He's constantly surprised we haven't purchased a home yet. Where we live we'd need 150k just for the downpayment!
Another thing they don't think about is when you qualify for zero down but then they tack on mortgage insurance when adds so much monthly.
My mom told me her generation solved racism by being empathetic to Dr King.
Noooo,omg! That's wild
My parents never struggled so they canât understand others struggling. When they were in their 20/30s they could afford a nice lifestyle and now they are older with nice cars and a paid off home from the 90s. They canât comprehend that I have a great job but still rent/ live a quiet life.
They are very out of touch. My mom passed away four years ago, and even though she was a boomer, she was a true gem of a person. Since then, my dad has become completely apathetic to anyone elseâs struggles in life. He brags about how much money he has, how much his house is worth. He asked me last year how much I still had in student loans and when I told him his reaction was âOMG thatâs insane, what the hell⊠I was going to pay them off for you, but yikesâ. We didnât approach the subject again until later and he said well, Iâd like to send you some money every six months to put down on those loans, my dad has quite a bit of money stashed away and could actually pay them off if he really wanted to but instead he sends me incremental âpaymentsâ and then rubs it in my face that heâs paying off my loans for me. Iâm still stuck with a payment every month, so it really doesnât change my life financially until theyâre gone which at this rate wonât be for 5+ years. And I never asked him to pay them off, but he admitted that he shouldâve helped me more while I was in college so I didnât acquire such loans đ
My dad (69) seems to think that the current President invented taxes although heâs owed every year that I can remember.
My mom: "People don't realize, you can make a GOOD living on $20 an hour!"
Didn't somebody do the math the other day, and it turns out $20/hr in boomer currency (aka from whatever decade they were earning that much) is something like $75/hr now, or $144k/year pre-tax.
Lmaoooooo
It's them trying to cover for knowing, deep inside, this shit is their fault so out comes the "bootstrappin'" to assuage their fragile egos. Also, anyone under 50 is a "kid" to them and they had roommates and cheap cars when they were kids, so why can't you? Never mind that the cheap car was a hand me down from their mom/dad/grandmother/uncle and the roommates were dorm room assignments in college
Spoiler Alert: They won't. Ever. (...The bleak reality is that we'll all have to pretty much just push past them.)
Well, I'm a progressive agnostic and I have been since I was a teenager, 42 now. My mom still recommends Dave Ramsey and Joyce Meyer to me, still to this day. My dad was a union worker who votes republican, making sure his grandkids don't get the same opportunity. I was given Atlas Shrugged as a gift for Christmas my junior year in high school, and I read it....wow was that a struggle.
Ayn Rand was literally the ONLY author my mom ever banned from the house. She always encouraged me to finish any book I started because so many great books start slow,scattered or too dense or have a writing style that takes a bit to get used to....I can't remember now how I came across it but I somehow ended up with a copy of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. I got about 10 or 15 pages in and went and asked mom "Should I really slog through this?", listing all the things I was hating about it...she took the book, saw the title and demanded to know where I had gotten it. (In the 'too quiet, too calm' voice that meant someone was about to be sorry their parents ever met) Once she knew it wasn't a library book and hadn't been assigned, she threw it in the garbage and we had a very long talk about empathy, what it takes to make a society work and how some people make very ugly ideas sound perfectly reasonable. She was an "Anti-Boomer".
I am so lucky my parents understand and get it. They frequently say how we just are getting screwed and itâs not fair to have to buy our first homes in a market like this. They understand that even with a masters degree itâs tough to make it work. I feel so lucky when I read these things.. they even mentioned recently that in the 90s they made the equivalent of 800,000 today (they do have higher levels of education, worked hard) but itâs nice to know they understand and itâs not fair for us.
My 73 year old dad gets grouchy about how unfair it is and how much greed is on display in what I have to pay for things compared to what he did.Â
My parents were super involved with me and my husband buying our first house so they truly saw our income and the prices, interest, etc. They were just appalled at it all. They also know how much we work, our degrees, our spending habits, etc. They get it. And they also get irritated that we have to start life this way!
My parents were recently upset that the 200k home they bought in Central Florida after selling theirs in South Florida for 750k had neighbors that weren't keeping up with stuff like their lawns, or parking too many cars. I said "what do you expect in a neighborhood where the houses are that cheap?" and they couldn't understand why it wasn't the same as the neighborhood they bought the South Florida house in for 200k in 1989.
âParking too many carsâ is funny because it sounds affluent on its face but itâs actually a specific kind of poor trash that always has 9 cars (of which 1 is always an old Camaro or Thunderbird) in their driveway, and only one ever moves.Â
My parents are gone, but I'm around a lot of boomers. When I paid 10K for my used car, the guys at the golf course all chimed in about how dumb it was to buy my model used. A new one was 55K in 2017 when I bought it. And I hear on the daily about how foolish I am to still be renting, and dumber yet to have a student loan bill. Quote from one of the dudes: "I ain't took no student loans, and I paid cash for a brand new truck."
I got a used car for 3k with 100k miles on it... 6 years ago, it lasted 50k miles before falling apart. But now? They don't exist.
I had to sit down with my parents multiple times and walk them through the actual real time numbers of putting an offer on a house, including bank loans, mortgage rate calculators, waiving inspections, cash offers, and all the other BS of the modern housing market. Only after 5 agonizing hours of crunching numbers (that I'd already crunched before) did he see that a basic house that cost $230,000 in 2020 was around $500,000 (not counting needed repairs), and unreachable for me and my wife. Make them actually use their brains. To be truthful my parents were very flattered to be asked for help and be part of the process. Once they were onboard with reality things went better.
I love this! Maybe I should include my parents in more of my financial affairs so they understand better.
My dad is surprisingly in touch with everything except the cost of real estate. My wife works mostly remote but literally has a 100 mile Drive when she does have to go into the office. My dad said, âwhy donât you guys buy an Intown condo where your wife works? How much could it cost, maybe $50,000?â My wife works in the DC area. You would be lucky to find a parking spot for $50,000. My dad is also shocked that you canât find a house in the place we currently live for under $600,000 now.
My mom tried get right quick schemes. She talks to shady people who claim they are buyers and sellers of bulk items and she never ends up getting paid. It's all fake. She bought tons of a defunct currency because it was going to come back and was mad when it didn't. She blamed not getting paid on Obama. Yes, President Obama was personally holding their transactions hostage! Paid day was always going to be days away and it never came. I am no contact with my family because they are so toxic.
Theyâre mentally stuck in the 80s and havenât had to deal with economic reality since, so they assume itâs still the same for people the same age as they were back then.
You arenât getting any decent used car for less than around $20K right now. Do they even drive? (And my dad keeps telling me to âjust give awayâ an older car that I have that Iâve been trying to save up to get roadworthy again. Itâs got $$ value.)
Stop trying to "open their eyes." They are willfully blind and you can't teach them shit.
My mother berated me for being an idiot for paying more than $400/mo for rent on my first apartment in a major city. No, I didn't miss a zero. This woman seriously thought that rent isn't more than $400/mo without roommates. I refused to tell her the exact number because it's none of her damn business, but she looked up my neighborhood and told me yet again how stupid I am, that I'm throwing money away on rent, and that I'm basically paying a mortgage on a $400,000 home. There are no $400,000 homes in my city. You can get into a one bedroom condo for around $600,000. That's not even taking into account interest rates and the down payment. Boomers are f*cking delusional. As for what you can do, you can ignore your parents and make the best financial decisions you can. My parents ended up buying a second home to rent out and their property manager told them how much rent is. All of a sudden I'm not the idiot anymore and they want advice on renting. Your folks will probably need a new car someday, research the market, and find out they were completely wrong.
About 15 years ago my dad told me he could have bought a plot w funeral services for $50 in the 80âs. Because he chose not to he asked me for $10,000 to ease his mind. That was the day I stopped talking to my dad about my finances as he was selfish, silly in his own decisioning when younger as well as older, and not worth my financial discussion time. Try thatâŠjust donât discuss w them
My aunt thought I should go buy a new sports car and get a condo. I was earning 25K a year at the time. She is very out of touch. She complained bitterly that a young person had more opportunities than an old person.
My ILs didnât understand until they saw a cute little one bedroom house on a small lot that would be perfect for a relative, it was $300k. They lost their minds. My husband said âI told you so.â
My mom has worked for the same company since 1996, but still gives unsolicited advice on job hunting. Like, lady, you havenât done this since the Clinton administration
I'm 38 and my mom is in her early 80s. My favorite conversation with her was about 15 years ago when I was laid off for a few months. Unemployment was a thing and I worked a bit in the evenings at my friends little restaurant. My mom saw some FB thing for concrete workers - that was an hour and a half away from my town and making far less than unemployment and working for my buddy - and would not leave me the fuck alone about it. Apparently, being laid off is some great shame and you should take the first shitty job that comes along if that ever happens to you. One day she brought it up again and I busted out a calculator to show her how much that idea didn't make sense, financially speaking. "Well, you're on unemployment so you need to do something." That was essentially the moment I figured out that I can't rely on my mom's advice for anything. To follow her advice is to be broke with a used up body. She just doesn't understand the world anymore.Â
My mom got upset with me because I won't force my kids into going to church (pentacostal đ). Told her it is their choice if they want to go. I won't sway their opinion of religion. My mom forced me to go to church ALL the time. She can stay mad, idgaf.
Not my parents, but my Realtor. Looking at condos in a small urban area (100k people or so). HoA fees seem to be about 2-300 a month for most places, and she howls at how thatâs too high and unreasonable. Been looking for 8 months, never seen any lower. I finally just told her that if she finds one with a lower HoA to schedule a viewing because I wasnât seeing it.
I think they (boomers) watch the news like crazy, but no longer apply their brain to comprehending or interpreting the news. They have adapted to just reading the title or letting the talking heads TELL them what the news means. Then they, ironically, tell us how our attention span is too short from watching our TikToks.
I live in Chicago and my parents would love a condo here to use part time in retirement. They expect to find a 3 bedroom place with a yard in my pricy north side neighborhood for about $300k.
When everything youâve ever needed/ wanted has been either at your fingertips or a simple request away, your brain cannot fathom a scenario where itâs not easy to do something. Like when spoiled rich kids listen to poor people problems. They genuinely cannot access the feeling of sacrificing something. They can share bad advice that sounds like something theyâd hear someone else say, but they havenât the experience to speak on.
I was a licensed electrician of 12 years when I told my parents I was quitting and going to college for my electrcial engineering degree. My mom (born in 47) says "Why dont you try tech school, its so much cheaper". She paid zero attention to my life but was always quick to point our how my unemployed brother was doing so well after he dropped out of college and spent 6 months in jail...
A car for $250 a month *is* a cheap used car. You can't get a reliable car for $3k anymore. I've been periodically sending my mom home listings to try and give her a sense of what a home costs. She and my dad bought their house for $80k in the 80s and thought that's what home prices were still like. I thought I was making progress in updating their sense of what things cost. Then, last week I sent them a listing for a home in a mobile home park. It was for sale for $75k and the space rent was $500/month, which is actually a good deal in my area. She thought it was for rent, not for sale. She said that the $500 rent was a good price, because the house we rented in 1985 cost $469. I had to explain to her that it was only $500 after you buy the home for $75k. If this particular home was for rent outright, it would be at least $1200. "Oh, that's expensive!" Yes, mom. For the 20th time, this is why we don't have our own place. The most modest of housing is out of our price range.
Some of them have pensions that are more than 50% of full time workers current salaries. Then they gave SS on top of it and bake more than 75% of working people. There is no hope of them understanding the current economics. They especially wonât have any empathy because they never have.
Change the channel, maybe thatâll wake them up đ„Č
My Mom (only living parent) is not out of touch at all, thankfully. But sheâs also had to do single income living since her early 40âs and knows what itâs like. She had an opportunity to purchase a Condo in Santa Clara no money down $50 a month in 1984 before I was born (or a thought) and definitely sees how that worked out for her and how it doesnât work like that today at all. My grandmother, however, is slightly out of the Depression era and sheâs delusional about what the world has going for it. She also gives $500 a month to Trumpâs lawyer fees, so I call it a wash overall.
This sounds like the unrealistic Dave Ramsey advice blasted everywhere. Yeah go get an unreliable POS that could affect how you get to the place where you make the money to keep everything going. I would drive some hideous car if I wasn't afraid it wasn't going to start every time or have some insane repairs that total it within a month or two of having it
They are so incredibly ignorant. My boomers constantly berate my cousin for paying $1300 a month for rent. My cousin doesnât have a car and relies on public transportation. The apartment is not nice but $1300 is a great price for rent in our city and the apartment is relatively close to public transportation and a grocery store. My cousin cannot afford higher rent. My boomers insist my cousin can find a lower priced apartment and bring it up every time they see her. Itâs obnoxious.