Stumbled upon this one on NPR today:
Baby Boomers Own Big Houses and It’s Affecting The Housing Crunch.
I’m confused.
Last I heard, we Baby Boomers were the villains because we were selling off our big family homes and using the money to pay cash for smaller homes, thereby “cheating” younger home buyers out of starter-level housing.
Seems like NOW we suck because some of us have decided to stay in our big, under-used houses because economic circumstances are not favorable to trading them in on something smaller. Thereby "cheating" millennials with families out of these larger, family-friendly homes.
To me, this looks more like Boomer-Bashing--one of the most popular social media sports these days--than legitimate journalism. Every bad or even slightly off-kilter thing that happens in American society today is the fault of us evil folks born between 1946 and 1964.
Everything we have, we are hoarding so the millennials can't have it.
Everything we get, we are stealing from those self-same millennials.
Apparently, we should hand over the keys to...everything, so subsequent generations can have our stuff; and then disappear, so our children and our children's children don't have to waste any time or money on keeping us alive.
Look:
Five years ago, we sold our 2200 square foot, four bedroom home, took the money and paid cash for a MUCH smaller place in a city nearer my family. Did it rankle that we paid $40k MORE for this dinky little 50-year-old ranch than we had for our 4-year-old (at the time) beautiful four bedroom home with the 3-car garage 20 years earlier? Yes it did. But the goal was a house with no mortgage in the area we wanted to live in. And that’s what we got. The insane escalating housing market made it LOOK like more of a stupid move than it was.
So I would certainly counsel people my age who CAN trade in the giant empty home the old folks are rattling around in for a mortgage-free, more maintainable single level abode, to do so. Even if it does drive you crazy that you will end up paying WAY more for the downsized dwelling than you did for the big one. That was then...this is now. Deal with it.
Even so, let's face it: In the eyes of American social media, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. So do what will work best for you and f**k everybody else's bullshit.
But, really... Is it too much to ask for a little respect for Baby Boomers? We didn't have it easy, we worked for what we got; over the past thirty years we have watched our lifestyles erode just like everyone else's, due to reaganomics and the false promise of "trickle down." Basically, we have stuff that we got before the backward slide, and you're damned right we're going to hold on to it with both hands. How does this make US responsible for everyone else's suffering?
Maybe the worst mistake we made was teaching our children that they deserved a better life than we had...but somehow, we forgot to pass along that you have to work for your stuff. It doesn't just get handed to you when you believe it's time for you to have it.
And, you know... We might even be inclined to give you some of our stuff, if you treated us like human beings instead of the scourge of your existence.
Shame on NPR for publishing this article. And shame on everybody else for your ageist, entitled attitude toward your parents and grandparents, and their worldly possessions. We don't deserve your vitriol, and we don't owe you unrestricted access to the stuff we worked a lifetime to acquire. Keep in mind: Without us, you wouldn’t even exist.
