Are you financially better off than your parents were at your age?

[Rain Man]

Simple question, multifaceted answer. Do you think you're better off, worse off, or about the same as your parents were when they were your current age?


Poll coming, and I promise not to tell your parents.

[El Jefe]

I would say probably about the same. My dad owned his own business at my age, and my mom was a Registered Nurse with a BSN. I work for my dad, and my wife is 23 as a registered nurse with a BSN. I think money wise we maybe a bit better, because we are just now expecting our first. We bought a house, my school loans (I have a BBA) are paid in full, we owe 8k on hers, and she has a newer car 2014. Outside of the house, car and 1 student loan, we have no debt.

[Lzen]

My parents got divorced when my dad was around my current age. Before that, even with a 2 income family we weren't doing real well. After that, we were really poor for awhile living with my mom and my dad doing some but not nearly enough in child support.

I feel my kids have it made. We are not rich or even high middle class by any means, but we are doing alright. They have a lot of advantages that I didn't. Both of my boys (19 & 22) seem to be doing okay in their young, independent, financial lives. They both are hard workers and that makes me proud as a parent. My daughter is only 13 so we will see how that goes.

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by El Jefe

Mid 50's is a lot in my area. Where do you live?

Johnson County, KS I'm sure.

[DJ's left nut]

I'm doing well but my mom and step dad were both doing 6 figures in their early 30s (20 years ago that meant something). They may not have quite been there at 33, but I'm pretty sure by 35-36 my mom had started her new job and my step dad had gotten into the mortgage industry at the height of the re-finance craze (so he was doing 250-350K/yr for about 4-5 yrs there).

They bought their house right before the housing market exploded upward in the late 90s so they got a 4K square foot house in an upscale neighborhood in the northland for about $175K and because of those years my step dad had, they had it paid off in about 8 yrs. It's doubled in value and they've not had a mortgage payment in 10+ years.

I'm doing pretty damn well, but ultimately they just timed pretty much everything almost exactly right. My mom retired at 45, went back to school and took something of a 'hobby' job to pass the time in a field she loves. My step dad is in software now and still makes good money. They had the house paid off young, got both kids out of the house by 45 and bought a friggen 56 ft Carver because they didn't have any monthly payments on anything and no kids in the house.

Despite my best efforts they will probably kick my ass financially all the way to the end. The downshot was that they struggled quite a bit for my early years as a young family with 2 kids (and a mid-stream divorce didn't help), but right around the time I went off to school, things pretty well shot out of a cannon for them financially.

[Saul Good]

Originally Posted by El Jefe

Mid 50's is a lot in my area. Where do you live?

Southern Johnson County Kansas. It's nice for a second income, but she'll never make what I do, and she won't ever come close to earning what my mom did at her peak (neither will I, for that matter).

Then again, she makes double what her mom made while raising 4 kids without the help of her deadbeat dad, so it's all relative. The studies I've seen indicate that you need roughly 75k a year to reach optimum happiness. After that, you pretty much have to double your income in order to have it make a significant impact. I think that seems awfully low, but I have certainly reached the point of diminishing returns. An extra $50k a year wouldn't change my day to day life any. I might stay at nicer hotels when I take vacations, and I would certainly retire a little earlier, but it wouldn't have near the impact on my life today that $10k would have had ten or fifteen years ago.

[O.city]

Yeah, at this point. Dad's financial stability hadn't kicked in yet when they were my age. The wife and I are both doing pretty well.

However, when you have some of the bills we have it makes it tougher.

When I'm at his age now? I won't be close to where they are. He made some pretty wise decisions in the communication field so they're pretty well of.

Yet they couldn't football the bill for dental school. Bastards

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

Southern Johnson County Kansas. It's nice for a second income, but she'll never make what I do, and she won't ever come close to earning what my mom did at her peak (neither will I, for that matter).

Then again, she makes double what her mom made while raising 4 kids without the help of her deadbeat dad, so it's all relative. The studies I've seen indicate that you need roughly 75k a year to reach optimum happiness. After that, you pretty much have to double your income in order to have it make a significant impact. I think that seems awfully low, but I have certainly reached the point of diminishing returns. An extra $50k a year wouldn't change my day to day life any. I might stay at nicer hotels when I take vacations, and I would certainly retire a little earlier, but it wouldn't have near the impact on my life today that $10k would have had ten or fifteen years ago.

Yeah, we've hit that point as well. Spoiled first world problems for sure, but my wife just wrapped up her masters and doubled her income. My firm is doing nicely as well - all told we got about a $50K income boost over where we were 2 years ago....no change in lifestyle to speak of. Now we've been able to throw a fair amount of money into savings and we're considering a fairly substantial upgrade in homes, but even that makes me wonder if it's worth the trouble. Do I really need to spend another $250K to add an extra garage and have an open floor plan? I friggen love my 2.75% 15 yr note - do I really feel like swapping that out for 30 yrs at 4.25%? And suddenly my monthly nut would nearly triple and I'd be a lot less free in what I can do. Is that worth the headache? I have a pretty nice home with a good yard in a fine neighborhood...what am I really gaining?

Then again...I can't take it with me either. Like you said, there's a middle ground there where you have a lot more freely spendable money...but not quite enough to make a 'leap' without it really hurting so you don't really want to do it.

It's the snootiest of snooty bullshit. It's just an odd spot to find yourself in. You work hard for promotions, raises, etc... but like you said, once you hit a point, the money doesn't actually make any difference in your lifestyle.

[Bugeater]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

So if we're a typical group of people and we're all self-aware and responding to the poll without bias, all of the hype about younger people falling behind their parents is untrue.

Well to be fair, if compared to my wife's parents we are behind. It's also hard to compare the different eras. For instance, we currently have 7 TVs in our house, and we only had 1 color and 1 small black & white growing up. But that stuff is cheaper now and they last longer so it's not that unusual to have one in the garage or on the back porch, it was unheard of back then.

The retirement thing that some have mentioned is a good point as well, I do believe the baby boomers are going to enjoy far better retirements than any of the subsequent generations. Just because we may be doing equal or slightly better at this point in time, it doesn't mean we are better off overall.

[El Jefe]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

Southern Johnson County Kansas. It's nice for a second income, but she'll never make what I do, and she won't ever come close to earning what my mom did at her peak (neither will I, for that matter).

Then again, she makes double what her mom made while raising 4 kids without the help of her deadbeat dad, so it's all relative. The studies I've seen indicate that you need roughly 75k a year to reach optimum happiness. After that, you pretty much have to double your income in order to have it make a significant impact. I think that seems awfully low, but I have certainly reached the point of diminishing returns. An extra $50k a year wouldn't change my day to day life any. I might stay at nicer hotels when I take vacations, and I would certainly retire a little earlier, but it wouldn't have near the impact on my life today that $10k would have had ten or fifteen years ago.

Wow, that would be crazy to be able to say that. An extra 50k a year and I would feel like Warren Buffet.

[DaFace]

Probably a pretty skewed sample for a question like this. People who are on here are more likely to be white-collar workers who are at jobs where they can surf the internet. People who have low incomes are 1) more likely in labor jobs where they can't be online during the day in the first place and 2) less likely to have time to be on the internet in general if they're far enough down the socioeconomic ladder that they're working multiple jobs (or can't afford internet at home).

[KurtCobain]

Originally Posted by Baconeater

Well to be fair, if compared to my wife's parents we are behind. It's also hard to compare the different eras. For instance, we currently have 7 TVs in our house, and we only had 1 color and 1 small black & white growing up. But that stuff is cheaper now and they last longer so it's not that unusual to have one in the garage or on the back porch, it was unheard of back then.

The retirement thing that some have mentioned is a good point as well, I do believe the baby boomers are going to enjoy far better retirements than any of the subsequent generations. Just because we may be doing equal or slightly better at this point in time, it doesn't mean we are better off overall.

What the **** do you have seven TVs for?

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Yeah, we've hit that point as well. Spoiled first world problems for sure, but my wife just wrapped up her masters and doubled her income. My firm is doing nicely as well - all told we got about a $50K income boost over where we were 2 years ago....no change in lifestyle to speak of. Now we've been able to throw a fair amount of money into savings and we're considering a fairly substantial upgrade in homes, but even that makes me wonder if it's worth the trouble. Do I really need to spend another $250K to add an extra garage and have an open floor plan? I friggen love my 2.75% 15 yr note - do I really feel like swapping that out for 30 yrs at 4.25%? And suddenly my monthly nut would nearly triple and I'd be a lot less free in what I can do. Is that worth the headache? I have a pretty nice home with a good yard in a fine neighborhood...what am I really gaining?

Then again...I can't take it with me either. Like you said, there's a middle ground there where you have a lot more freely spendable money...but not quite enough to make a 'leap' without it really hurting so you don't really want to do it.

It's the snootiest of snooty bullshit. It's just an odd spot to find yourself in. You work hard for promotions, raises, etc... but like you said, once you hit a point, the money doesn't actually make any difference in your lifestyle.

Whenever the wife and I think about buying something expensive these days, I literally say out loud to her, "If we don't spend that $1,000 we can retire a week earlier." That's what I'm all about right now.

[SAUTO]

both my parents were dirt ****ing poor, mom still is, dad has done better financially lately but he still lives in the house he paid 10K for in 1989. so there is a reason.


financially i kick their asses, everyone else in my family's too.


just think they all told me i was a ****ing idiot to want to work on cars,in their minds i should have just taken that warehouse order puller position my pops had a set up after high school...

[SAUTO]

a wise old man once told me that if you do any real estate loan for more than 15 years you are a mother ****ing idiot

[jd1020]

Learned a trade, lost my job in 2009, union shop went out of business the same time, couldn't compete with those guys for a new job, went back to college and I'm still going and broke as ****. Not sure how my parents were doing at my age but I'm going to say they were better off.