Posted on 04/16/2012 3:15:52 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
As kids, they sat on gas lines in the backs of their parents’ cars. As young adults, they saw the stock market crash, and when it finally came time to settle down, they bought a house at the peak of the housing bubble and then were faced with the worst economy since the Great Depression. It’s no shock that Generation X — those born from 1965 to 1981 — may get short changed in their golden years.
Though they’ve watched parents and grandparents nestled with pensions, Social Security and strong economic growth, these are no longer guarantees. On the other hand, longer life spans with more medical bills and greater need for cash are the reality for many.
Gen X is the first generation to deal with the fact that the models of American retirement are changing — and its members are flustered. The generation once called “slackers” has been true to form with retirement planning.
“Gen X is a transition generation,” says Carol O’Rourke, a certified financial planner and Executive Director for the Coalition for Debtor Education in New York City. “Gen Xers were young during the tech bubble, and when they came of age, housing was a lot more expensive. With all the talk about whether Social Security is going to survive, there is a sense of not having something to look forward to.”
According to a 2012 Insured Retirement Institute , IRI, report, only one-third of Gen Xers are "very confident" about having enough money to live comfortably during retirement, cover their medical expenses, and pay for their children’s higher education.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
I was born in 60 I don’t see me being able to retire at all
I don’t care if a Red diaper doper babyboomer named Barack Obama takes early retirement, but I surely want to see him FIRED from office this November.
I have a strong feeling that the generation X’ers have seen this coming from so far away that they adapt to changing circumstances.
To start with, the baby boomers got suckered into believing that they would get out of LBJ’s “Great Society” what they paid into it, or at least those who followed them would do what the boomers did, which would support the boomers.
However, as soon as the government got their money, it not only spent it on other things, but spent even more, going into debt.
So truthfully, the cupboard has long been bare, or rather, filled to overflowing with IOUs. But government was even sneakier and greedier. So for many years now, the generation X’ers don’t even get started without huge debts, the government exploiting them first.
So the generation X’ers will be lucky to just feed themselves, much less pay retirement luxury for the boomers. And the instant the “float” money runs out, and it will, it’s going to be “sorry boomers, but nobody is going to give you a dime.”
And boomers will stomp their aged feet and curse, but that is not going to get blood from a turnip. Meanwhile, the generation X’ers will be quietly building up their own, *non-monetary* semi-retirement.
Carefully squirreling away what the government would take if it could. And while they won’t have a luxurious retirement, they calculate they won’t have to work, either, mostly because they know their isn’t going to be any work for them anyway.
The government figures it will get out of this by offering easy suicide to the boomers, figuring that since they’ve already been fooled several times, might as well fool them out of the picture entirely.
“As for the point of the article, I’ll be working to 70 or 75, even with as good planning as I can do.”
—
I retired at 62 and wish I had waited until 70,as my mother did.
Money isn’t the reason,but work is something I missed after about 6 months.
TIIFIIIWII
Well, as one of the more responsible members of this generation (born 1978), let me take a little exception to your statement. The article points out rightly that quite a few of the factors that have screwed Gen Xers over are completely outside of our control. It’s easy to blame people for running up credit card debt, buying houses they can’t afford, not saving, etc, but even people in this generation who avoided all of that, like myself, are still probably never going to be able to retire in any kind of comfort. It doesn’t matter how you run the numbers, most people living nowadays are going to have a standard of living lower than their parents, and it doesn’t look like that will improve anytime soon.
If you think Gen’Xers are undisciplined, get to know people born after 1990. Were screwed..
“If you think Gen’Xers are undisciplined, get to know people born after 1990. Were screwed..”
Oh you mean the folks who make up the bulk of our military? Yeah they’re definetly not doing our country any favors - rolls eyes -
There is a reason I ride a motorcycle to work. Not just to save money and aggravation. It is to have some part of my life that isn't total drudgery. I've had to live apart from my family (separated by 925 miles) to earn enough money to keep the household solvent. That has been going on since June 2009 with 3 trips home for a visit each year...a week in the home that I pay dearly too keep.
I’m Gen-X, and I plan on going out the way my Revolutionary War ancestors did: with a rifle in my hand.
“The best plan is to work until you die.”
I’m working with a contract employee who appears to be in his late 80’s. He had to come out of retirement. He moved from California to Florida for a temporary job. Every step looks painful. I so much do not want to be him, but I’m 58 and every company I’ve worked for has gone belly-up or laid me off before I made the retirment criteria.
No. The ones that are on food stamps, welfare, get free day care, bus passes, Medicaid, and don’t stop laying in bed making babies. If Obama had a generation, it would look like this.
“I have no debt”
Sorry, but you have about 15 Trillion worth not including your local debt.
Were all in the same boat. It sucks to be responsible in your own life and have others load this debt misery onto us...
My dad worked at the Exxon Baton Rouge Refinery when I was a teen. Every evening he would take out a 5 gallon can from the back of his pickup and pour it into my car. It was a gas burner and I was a leadfooted road princess.
I had an interesting experience talking to a 19 year old college student, discussing Dave Ramsey, debt and student debt. My husband and I quoted him on the difference between a vocation and an advocation (job versus calling).
No one had given her the advice to pick a job she liked and was good at, instead of studying what she “loved” and expecting to get paid well for it.
Her father was grateful we discussed it with her, because she didn’t listen to him while expecting him to pay for tuition.
If we just keep her from going thousands of dollars into debt for a useless degree, we’ve done our good deed for the week.
I’m Gen X, and I agree that there is a degree of entitlement in the group. Gen Y was just given a bigger dollop.
It’s the “I have a degree, pay me well” along with “you disagree with me, it’s hate speech” or “you’re critical, you’re mean or racist”.
But many of the expectations of the pension / high pay / job security of our parents have been dashed in our working lives, along with falling wages, greater debt and horrific cultural whiplash (eunuch for Miss Canada, for example).
bump
Not nearly as much as the boomers did.
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