Baby boomers have now 'gobbled up' nearly one-third of America's wealth share

spectratg

spectratg

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Older Americans may be trading in hustling for retirement, but that hasn’t stopped them from getting richer. Baby boomers now hold a record high of the United States’ wealth, Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok noted in a Sunday blog post, citing Federal Reserve data. Compared to 1989, when those over 70 years old held 19% of the wealth in the household sector, older Americans now own 31% of the wealth.

That chunk of change is an outsize share compared to other generations. Baby boomers, who make up about 20% of the U.S. population, hold more than $85 trillion in assets, according to Fed data. By comparison, millennials, who make up about the same percentage of Americans, hold just about $18 trillion, roughly one-fifth that of baby boomers. Older Americans’ financial success is in especially stark comparison to that of Gen Z, a generation with deep skepticism about the economic future, who feel shut out from entry-level jobs amid the rise of AI, with many sinking into credit card debt as they struggle to repay student loans. As of last year, the young generation had only $6 trillion in wealth, despite making up the same percentage of the population as their baby boomer and millennial counterparts.

“The baby [boomer] generation has really gobbled up a huge share of household wealth, so it’s left a lot less for other age cohorts,” Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University, told Fortune
 

A lot if young people in Holland want to emigrate to Spain or something. My nephew wants to move to Portugal. The older people have affordable houses, but they can't even buy 1 with 2 full time jobs, so why stay here. He can work from home for a company in Canada, so it doesn't matter where he lives. I read that Americans go to Holland cause compared to America it's cheaper.

It's very unfair. A 50 year old who hasn't worked a day in his life gets govt money and a govt house and that's not someone who's sick, just lazy and the youth can pay for it with taxes while living with their mom at 30.
 
I hate articles like that which make Boomers read like a monolithic group, which they never were. The one's that hold most of that wealth are a minor minority of Wall Street wealth mongers, their Military Industrial Complex elites, and especially real estate corporations, groups that most of my Counterculture Boomer generation condemn and are the real bad guys.
 
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David777 said:
I hate articles like that which make Boomers read like a monolithic group, which they never were. The one's that hold most of that wealth are a minor minority of Wall Street wealth mongers, their Military Industrial Complex elites, especially those real estate corporations, that most of my Counterculture Boomer generation condemn.
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Yeah I saw some young people on instagram make fun of and get mad at boomers. As if they are all filthy rich and stingy. Do you hate your parents or something? My sis is a boomer. Yes they have a nice house cause he was a manager and she was a doctor. Their sons are not mad at them. They can keep living there, have their own very tiny hang out house in their garden and a room for themselves.

A guy like Ramsey, that's a boomer I understand that they're mad at. Has millions at the expense of renters who have to pay insane much rent. A Canadian company tried that here in Holland, so they changed the laws and let em pay insane much taxes if you don't live in a house, so they left. Move it. Ain't nobody got time for that nonsense.
 
Gobble UP??? Are we now a bunch of brainless turkeys?

How about replacing your starting sentence with this:

“ Wise and thrifty baby boomers have through hard work, frugal living and investing, acquired a huge amount of wealth to spend in their old age for necessary goods and services as well as enjoying their golden years. The excess not spent will be passed down to their children and grandchildren for things like a better domicile, post high school education, etc. “

Add: By the way they did this despite double digit inflation at the start of their working lives and much higher mortgage rates on their early housing.

I think my starting comment is much more accurate and does not invite people into another them vs. us round of warfare.
 
I’m glad I’m not the only one who takes serious offense to the term “gobbled up”.

For the most part, we all worked our a-s-s-e-s off to get what we have today. Some of the younger generations want it all now. They want McMansions and fancy cars without having to work for them and earn them.

If we have a flaw, maybe allowing them to think that’s OK as they were growing up was the flaw because we all wanted better for our children than what we had.

I am so sorry if I offend anybody by the fact that I worked my hind end off and so did my husband to buy this 25 acres and build our retirement farm on it. And we did it without college degrees.

Actually my husband quit school when he was a junior in high school, but he had a genius mentality, was honest, and worked hard at his job.

I made everybody angry because I didn’t go to college. I chose not to go to college because I heard too many stories about how the professors tried to rewire a person’s thinking and I wasn’t about to have that happen. Instead I went to work for General Motors wiring division making more money than I ever would’ve made once I got out of college. I actually had high school dropouts to the left of me and college graduates to the right of me because they couldn’t find a better paying job than GM’s wiring division.

I never turned down overtime and what extra money that brought I put in the credit union.

That’s it for my rant on the term “gobbled up.“
 
We boomers did have advantages that Gen X, Y, and Zs don't have -- specifically, we had cheap housing and access to affordable education. People with a bit of work ethic could go pretty far in our day. In many parts of the country, even someone without higher education could still achieve the American dream by working at a blue collar job and working their way up into management. A degreed engineer, accountant, or other professional could make it into the upper class. Many people -- many of whom are boomers -- made a fortune in real estate in the 21st century because of skyrocketing prices.

So, yeah, boomers do control a great deal of wealth.

Young people today are screwed. Even young professionals are having a hard time because of the high cost of housing, and now AI is eliminating many of those professional jobs. So it's understandable that young people are going to be the ones complaining about boomers having it so good. With the exception of people born into wealthy families, it's tough to make it now.
 
We started out at the bottom in the job market, drove old cars, paid $17,500 for our first house that was 50 years old and needed work.

We worked hard, advanced slowly, paid our "dues". We worked our way up to slightly better cars and houses. We did without and saved money.

Eventually we reached the time when we could afford some small luxuries....a boat, a camper, modest vacations.

We didn't consider that we should have it right away....we worked for it slowly.

I refuse to apologize for what we boomers have and have worked for.
 
Sheesh! You Boomers sure are a sensitive bunch! The point of the original posting was that younger generations are at a financial disadvantage, not an indictment of Boomers (although "gobbled up" could have been better stated, but, hey, I was just quoting a professor of economics.) I was simply pointing out an accurate statistic, not trying to foster an "us versus them" argument.
 
When asked what was the greatest invention of mankind, Albert Einstein replied "compound interest". (At least that's what I read on the internet so it must be true.)

If those young folks take their $6 trillion, and don't invest another dime, after 40 years at 7%, they will have about $90 trillion. Without adding any new monies. Compound interest.
 
@Spectrag, I wonder the same thing about how economics/finances will work out for today's younger generation.

But the idea of today's boomers gobbling up a third of the wealth poses another question, one I don't know the answer to. There was a previous North American baby boom historians say started in 1920. So they'd have been potentially in a similar role more or less around 1999. I wonder how much wealth they'd gobbled up by then?

The PWBB was deemed tohave a span from 1946-1964, maybe the earlier one had a shorter span.
 
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spectratg said:
Sheesh! You Boomers sure are a sensitive bunch! The point of the original posting was that younger generations are at a financial disadvantage, not an indictment of Boomers (although "gobbled up" could have been better stated, but, hey, I was just quoting a professor of economics.) I was simply pointing out an accurate statistic, not trying to foster an "us versus them" argument.
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I don’t think that it’s any surprise that younger generations are at a financial disadvantage.

I was certainly at a financial disadvantage to my parents and grandparents generations until I hit my 40s, things started to gradually go my way with a bit of old fashioned scrimping, saving, and investing.

IMO, it’s still about managing our expectations, balancing needs vs wants, having realistic goals and priorities, careful management, and patience.
 
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Aunt Bea said:
I don’t think that it’s any surprise that younger generations are at a financial disadvantage.

I was certainly at a financial disadvantage to my parents and grandparents generations until I hit my 40s, things started to gradually go my way with a bit of old fashioned scrimping, saving, and investing.

IMO, it’s still about managing our expectations, balancing needs vs wants, having realistic goals and priorities, careful management, and patience.
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Now it's crazy though. I rent a 1 bedroom apartment with my 3 teens in Holland and I'm so happy with it. Got it after we divorced. Now people who divorce here good luck. They're just as bad off as the young people. There are no houses except when you're very rich. My sister said 50 percent of young people want to leave Holland. It's not: oh spoiled princess wants a house with 3 bedrooms, but more like: mom or dad with kids doesn't want to keep living in mom's basement. And with 2 full time incomes it's even hard to get a house. We're spoiled here. It was always normal for moms to work part time. My male colleagues also work part time to spend time with the kids.
 
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The warning signs of economic collapse in the 1920s, which led to the Great Depression, were primarily characterized by excessive speculation and credit expansion, growing wealth inequality, overvaluation of assets, and a decline in key economic sectors. A significant concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich, combined with tax cuts that favored the wealthy and financial deregulation, exacerbated economic inequality, Sound familiar?
 
Boomers did not stop or restrain the increasing power of capital over labor and in fact are determined to keep tilting the scales towards capital so they can maintain and grow their wealth to extraordinary heights even though the vast majority were labor themselves, in lock step w the billionaires.

The key was not muddling w social security and medicare to keep the most prolific voters "fat and happy" so they ignored/ignore the fact that what was once a perfectly normal thing like owning a home, or renting an affordable apartment or getting educated w/out mountains of debt is now out of reach.
 
Dr.Colosso said:
A lot if young people in Holland want to emigrate to Spain or something. My nephew wants to move to Portugal. The older people have affordable houses, but they can't even buy 1 with 2 full time jobs, so why stay here. He can work from home for a company in Canada, so it doesn't matter where he lives. I read that Americans go to Holland cause compared to America it's cheaper.

It's very unfair. A 50 year old who hasn't worked a day in his life gets govt money and a govt house and that's not someone who's sick, just lazy and the youth can pay for it with taxes while living with their mom at 30.
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Where is this happening? Holland, Spain, Portugal?
 
Imogene said:
I’m glad I’m not the only one who takes serious offense to the term “gobbled up”.
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Yeah, I don't understand how you can gobble up wealth as though it's finite, old people got the lion's share of it, and they're hording it. Wealthy people spend far more than people who aren't wealthy, recirculating their wealth, supporting businesses and industries, and keeping factories open. They make investments that help various industries grow and support various types of research. People make money off of the wealthy.

Moreover, most of them pay their children's college and university tuition, and many pay their grandchildren's tuition, creating a professional labor force, civil servants, entrepreneurs, etc.

Phrases like "Boomers gobbled up wealth" is the kind of hyperbole that discourages young people. I don't have much problem with the guy who said it, aside from his apparent lack of insight, I take issue with the person who wrote an article that highlighted what he said.
 
JBR said:
There was a previous North American baby boom historians say started in 1920. So they'd have been potentially in a similar role more or less around 1999. I wonder how much wealth they'd gobbled up by then?
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My parents and in-laws were born between 1922-27 and all died in their 90s, from 2014 -19. They had paid-off houses and other assets that they passed down to their children.

All of their offspring are now in our 70s and likewise have mortgage-free homes and other assets that will be passed down to their children. The process is known as generational wealth.

In twenty years people will be wringing their hands at the disproportionate amount of wealth held by Millennials.
 

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