I’m Gen-X and we usually get dumped in with the Boomers here in the US. However, ours was the first generation to get fucked. Like all those golden pensions of yesteryear dried up and disappeared as soon as we began entering the job force. So those a little older than us are kickin’ back enjoying 70% of their retirement pay or whatever, often with health insurance (as opposed to Medicare), and we’re stuck with shitty 401Ks that yield not only less assets but less secured assets because you can easily go through your entire benefits before you die, as opposed to the pension system. And, of course, our retirement today doesn’t typically come with any auxiliary benefits such as healthcare. Plus most of us are simultaneously assisting our elderly surviving parents and adult children simultaneously!
Plus most of us are assisting our elderly surviving parents
I keep seeing this with people I know, including my spouse and myself. We have spent our entire marriage so far taking care of old family members. Why us? Because my wife is literally the only competent person anyone in her family knows. And she’s very caring and compassionate.
Or she was. None of the elderly people we have supported have been nice or easy to care for. My wife got tired of feeling used. We have decided that we are no longer an unpaid skilled nursing service and therefore we are the most heartless people to have ever existed. It has not been popular but there aren’t yet laws demanding we take care of them.
My family, on the other hand, is more organized and generally heathier. But i have still explained to my parents that they had better have a plan, because we aren’t it.
And I wonder, how many other genx and millenials have made this same decision? How many will sleep on the Boomer-only bench?
I’m Gen-X and we usually get dumped in with the Boomers here in the US. However, ours was the first generation to get fucked. Like all those golden pensions of yesteryear dried up and disappeared as soon as we began entering the job force. So those a little older than us are kickin’ back enjoying 70% of their retirement pay or whatever, often with health insurance (as opposed to Medicare), and we’re stuck with shitty 401Ks that yield not only less assets but less secured assets because you can easily go through your entire benefits before you die, as opposed to the pension system. And, of course, our retirement today doesn’t typically come with any auxiliary benefits such as healthcare. Plus most of us are simultaneously assisting our elderly surviving parents and adult children simultaneously!
I keep seeing this with people I know, including my spouse and myself. We have spent our entire marriage so far taking care of old family members. Why us? Because my wife is literally the only competent person anyone in her family knows. And she’s very caring and compassionate.
Or she was. None of the elderly people we have supported have been nice or easy to care for. My wife got tired of feeling used. We have decided that we are no longer an unpaid skilled nursing service and therefore we are the most heartless people to have ever existed. It has not been popular but there aren’t yet laws demanding we take care of them.
My family, on the other hand, is more organized and generally heathier. But i have still explained to my parents that they had better have a plan, because we aren’t it.
And I wonder, how many other genx and millenials have made this same decision? How many will sleep on the Boomer-only bench?