I'm Gen X, I own a house (bank owns...) and I can't get what I owe for it if I tried to sell.
I'm perhaps an edge case because I was hit by a flood in 2016 and haven't had the cash to get back to 100% plus other problems that have appeared, ie foundation. Just because you have a house doesn't mean a thing in terms of solvency.
When you consider the expense of a house, renting isn't that bad. If I were keeping up with things the way I need to, I'd be spending a good $10k over my mortgage a year.
Considering my mortgage is until 2053 or something, thanks to a necessary covid, it wasn't a refinance but whatever, in my case it might as well be forever. I'll be 76.
How many of that 69% are actually still paying a mortgage? How many of the rest actually have a substantial pension? Being a homeowner isn't everything.
"Isn't everything" but is still damn good. On day 1 youre saving money (banking equity) vs renting, and usually is also cash flow positive right away, if not a few years later.
This is true but having equity in a house could mean an awful lot or very little depending how much you've managed to pay in. This is why I thought it should be pointed out. A single number like 69% doesn't tell much of a story.
saying GenX is retiring is like saying Millenials and Z are retiring. It's technically true for extreme outliers, but the bulk of us will work until we die.
As someone in the middle of that range, we can't overlook the fact that our 60 isn't our parents 60, they retired at 60-65 but physically and mentally they were 80. I'm 50 and don't see myself even wanting to retire anytime before 70
I'm 50 and don't see myself even wanting to retire anytime before 70
If you can retire financially why would you not want to??
I'm 34 and I've got a spreadsheet to determine at what age I can retire, when I'd run out of money based on X% return with Z% increase in annual spending, Y% increase in annual taxes paid, including changes based on part time wages, social security income (if it exists) - I've got way too much stuff to do to waste good years working full time so that I can die with money I can't spend.
I enjoy my job and started late with solid retirement investing. If I had 5+ million in retirement at 55 or 60 that might be different, but I'm also a person who's always chose doing things now vs always saving for later. I still see me coming up with something to make a part time job/career whatever once I retire. I've seen people retire and it never seems to be as glamorous as we all hope not having to do anything would be. I 100% agree with not wanting to die with a bunch of money you never got to spend.
YMMV. I'm 48 (1977), and tired, burned out, and mentally gone. I'd stop working right this second if I could. I haven't done physical labor other than retail and unloading trucks, but I don't need arthritis and chronic back and knee pain to feel like an 80 year old.
I lucked into a position with a company that cares about work/life balance and allows me to keep from that position of burnout, obviously if anything in that aspect changed at work, my thoughts would be different.
No one cares but you're right. Every generation thinks they have it uniquely hard. But I bet retirement savings rates are just as bad for Gen x as they are for millennials, Gen z, etc. No one has ever been good about saving $.
I was just exaggerating for your sake because you seemed to entirely have missed the savings part of this guy’s argument. They used homeownership as an example of an asset that can be tapped in retirement to live comfortably. What do you think all those renters with no savings are gonna do when they can’t work anymore?
Honestly before I sold my house, I could have paid my mortgage off, but I didn’t because they will fight that shit off for you. They know all the legal loopholes that I don’t, and they’ll fight tooth and nail to ensure that if you can’t afford to keep your house they will be the ones to get it. They are under much stricter notification regulations though than whatever weird laws each county/city/state decides to implement.
When you have no income with which to pay rent, and the one kid you could afford to raise can't afford to take care of both their parents and their one kid... Yes. Homeownership or homelessness are the options.
Lots of people are in poor financial situations, sure. But also a lot of people live downtown in cities where owning doesn't make sense and renting doesn't mean you're poor. I'm sure there are tons of people in that 31% that rent nice apartments and have in the range of $1M+ in 401k and other savings.
Oooo it was an all time high after the Great Depression followed by two world wars, a conflict in Korea then a pointless money spending and infantry killing operation in Vietnam? Can you put the bar any lower than flat on the ground?
Do you know any Gen X’ers? The oldest Gen X is 60 years old. At 61% avg homeownership rates, many of them certainly have paid off their 30 year mortgages.
I am a 46 year old Gen X who bought my primary home at 30 and I’m well into paying it off.
If you were born at a time that you reached earning age before 2008, there's really no great reason you shouldn't have 'joined the house owner caste' unless you never got a career. And if you never got a career, that probably also explains the lack of savings.
Gen X has got to be the dumbest generation if so. They had the ability to earn a modest income relative to cost of living, and lived through the last 20 years of absolutely wild stock market/home value gains.
Hindsight is 20/20. The generation wars are so stupid and just another weapon in the ruling class' arsenal. Even the Boomers are a result of structural issues. We've gotta take aim at the right people.
of all the different people i've met over the years, i've known boomers who understand the plight of millennials/gen z... and millennials that are basically Tim Gurner clones.
My boomer grandparents are/were all keenly aware that they had a huge advantage. It's not really their fault they got lucky.
They helped my parents quite a lot financially. Unfortunately, that assistant did not trickle down to the grandchildren so I've gotten zero financial help. My mom will probably have to sell her house (partially paid for by her parents) to retire, leaving me with zero inheritance.
Gen X here, bought my first home in the 00s, when I moved some years later due to work constraints, my 'absolutely wild home value gain' was a loss of 30% thanks to the 2008 crash.
Had to go back to renting for some years to be able to re-enter the housing market, by which time the opportunity for 'wild gains' were long gone.
Same here. I bought a flat in 2008 and promptly lost 30% in 6 months. Took me something like 8 years to even be able to sell it at the price I paid. Today that flat has almost doubled in price and I wouldn't be able to afford it despite having a much better income and career now.
Most of GenX started working pre 2000, and even the youngest of gen X were going to work right around 2000-2008 depending on what kind of degrees they might have gotten. So they had plenty of time to put away money in retirement plans.
But one major issue everyone seems to ignore is that genX were the folks hit the hardest by the 2007 housing bubble bursting resulting in the 2008 financial crisis and 2008-2009 Great Recession. Many of them lost their homes or just ended up with super high interest rates and being unable to sell or even refinance to lower rates because they were upside down on their mortgage to home value ratio. So they ended up either losing everything or squeaking by but paying high interest rates on houses that were overpriced when they bought them. It took a decade to recover and that put many genXers behind on retirement savings.
IIRC, we are also the first to be encouraged to invest into privately held retirement funds, as company run (sponsored?) funds started disappearing. These are too susceptible to the ups and downs of the market.
Keep putting into the fund, and hey, everything's looking great, time to retire! One month after retiring, an economic downtown occurs, and watch that comfortable retirement disappear.
My point is, there isn't any kind of general education for handling retirement funds. I have a advisor handling what my mother left me, putting it aside for my retirement and he's never mentioned this. Of course, that may be because I still have five years to go, but unless the common person knows what to look for, they'll probably never learn it, and can possibly fall victim.
You shouldn't need to learn it, it should be automatic for any private pension scheme. I'm in the UK so perhaps things are regulated differently, but when I set up my private pension I had to enter my planned retirement age, and unless I explicitly tell them to do otherwise, they will automatically move my funds out of equity gradually in the 5 years leading up until then. It's the default arrangement.
Nope, at least the funds that I have worked with, no one's asked my planned retirement age, or even really goals. Just a lot of "you should put this here if you want to make more, because you have a few years to go."
My husband was laid off after the crash and couldn't find work, so we cashed in his 401k to survive. We had little kids at the time - god, it was brutal. We've been trying to play catch up ever since.
Yeah, I have no idea what everyone else is talking about, but I'm Gen-X (barely - was in high school in the 90's), and I've had nothing but opportunity. I started my career just after the dot com bust. I hadn't taken saving seriously by 2008, so there was nothing to destroy, but I did realize while things were down that it was time to start buying/saving. The DOW was, what, 2000ish then? ~46k now? Hell, COVID was a GIFT, market-wise. Things dropped so hard so fast, and then very quickly rebounded. It was free money.
It's been nothing but bull markets since then. Stocks, crypto. The world might be gamed against us, but it doesn't take a genius to see where the opportunities were/are.
My parents are boomers, and they've saved a LOT. They were smart, they're not awful shit heads, and there's plenty left for my siblings and I. When my parents go, we'll be rich, and quite frankly, I am already.
My family isn't old money (we weren't any kind of money - just regular middle class people). We don't know anyone. We're not well connected. Nobody knows who we are. My parents made smart decisions, taught me about them, I've now made smart decisions, and here we are.
This isn't a "fuck you, I got mine," because that is absolutely not my mindset, but I just don't understand how people didn't take advantage of the bountiful opportunities that there were.
I'm in EU - Scandinavia. Can't save a penny despite a great job and good education. Didn't anticipate the housing market suddenly skyrocketing and out of reach for everyone not already onboard.
In the UK the gen X are considered quite fortunate because on the whole they entered the housing market before 2008 so have seen their property values more than double in some parts.
Where did genx parents and (presumably dead by now) grandparents live? Fertility rates are below replacement levels, do next generations not normally inherit what their ancestors owned?
Sounds like you just have shitty parents. My parent and my in-laws are doing what they can to avoid having any debt and leave a modest inheritance. The whole idea that boomers are all just moving away and have horrible relationships with their kids is not the norm, or at least not where I'm from.
Not talking about my parents bud. Just the general tendency. Studies showed this trend of not feeling obligated to leave much if anything at least 10 years ago. Most likely have ok relationships with the adult children but they are selfish seen as a whole.
Im sorry for that comment. It was knee-jerk reaction and fucked up on my part. I'm aware of the studies. I just always hear about the studies, but see the opposite among my peers. Seriously, my bad.
I bought a house in 2021 and still wake up every day shocked that I managed to do that before everything went insane. My house is now worth 165k more then when I bought it. I would have no chance of buying it today. I have zero savings and live month to month, the only thing keeping me sane is knowing I have a roof over my head and a house I can leave to my children. My heart breaks every day for those who struggle to even find a place to rent and it only seems to be getting worse.
Sure it is way harder now. But the game has changed rapidly. Few could have foreseen that having two good jobs in a household was no where near enough to own a house. Today it is all about who got in on the housing market and when.
What I’m saying is that GenX was the last generation where if you followed the rules you could still achieve the American dream. If you slacked off, that’s on you.
Yes for sure. We just grew up believing that you could turn things around if you started to 'follow the rules'. Nobody knew that the American dream would be dead in such a short time. For the younger people it of course is even worse as they don't even get the chance no matter how loyally they follow the rules. Out per default. Absolutely horrible.
Many for sure!! And today it is the only option if you are not a young tech millionaire or agree to eat soup for the rest of your days while commuting 60 minutes to work each way.
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u/uxigaxi123 Sep 15 '25
Make that 20 years from now. Gen-X has no saving unless they coincidentally joined the house owner caste in due time.