Iâve never been told Iâve put my socks on the wrong way
Is this your retort when the Millenial says âOK, Boomerâ?
Itâs sort of an ironic twist that many of todayâs boomers were 1960âs street protestors yelling âGet Out of Our Wayâ at the âEstablishmentâ, & " 1,2,3 what are we fightin for?
donât ask me i donât give a dam, the next stop is Vietnam" all while dodging another police clubbing.
My Generation by âThe Whoâ
People try to put us d-down
Just because we get around
Things they do look awful c-c-cold
I hope I die before I get old
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
Why donât you all f-fade away
And donât try to dig what we all s-s-say
Iâm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation
Iâm just talkinâ 'bout my g-g-g-generation
If he uses his left foot for the gas and his right foot for the clutch, Iâm afraid to ask what he uses for the brake!
I hafta say that I never was in a protest march. There was just
one that I remember on campus where one of the pastors led a group downtown but that was it. I had work to do and it would have been a long walk. I never really thought I missed anything. Now that I think about it though, I canât remember ever getting a hair cut. I know I must have but canât for the life of me figure out where I would have gone. My dad did make me get one once but I agreed I needed one. Yeah probably us is the reason things are screwed up now. Bunch of whiners that knew everything there was to know.
Just got done detailing my car. Me and Bob (Dylan that is) so Iâm a little nostalgic. Clay, compound, polish, glaze, and finally wax. Looks nice but gonna rain tomorrow. Makes a man outta ya.
Just give them an old school fold up paper road map instead of a voice program a GPS.
Yeah as Dickenâs said 100 years ago, âIt was the best of times and the worst of timesâ combining optimism and pessimism with wisdom and stupidity, sometimes within the same 15 minutes:slightly_smiling_face:
Maybe the âimpossible goalsâ werenât reached but progress was made even on the small things, like cars that no longer roll over, catch fire in a minor collision or brakes that completely fail w/o warning.
And one of the larger changes was brought home to me when my daughter was looking at colleges and rejected an Ivy for some silly reason. In response I mentioned that, "In my day it wouldnât have even been a question because back then women were excluded from most of the all male Ivys and at the rest of the schools a woman allowed in Engineering was practically unheard of ". (She looked at me like Iâd just grown another head).
I donât think the Boomers are âthe reason things are screwed up nowâ, itâs simply a new set of expectations and problems and thankfully thereâs a new group with higher expectations and the motivation to demand better.
Yeah, I miss my old Chevy but that new Hyundai is quite a car.
From 1966 to 1976 the financial rules for Americans were drastically changed and we all know who makes the rules and who pays the taxes donât we.
Actually it was JFK that started changing the financial rules. As people started to accept them, they pushed even further. JFK changed margin buying from 10% to 50%. It had been 10% since shortly after the Depression. Prior to that, margin buying was whatever the market would bare, often up to 90%. He also was the first to lower the tax rate for the highest earners.
The 90% marginal tax rate did seem a little excessive. Would even Huey P Long have proposed that heavy a load on anyone? Of course Huey wanted to limit one persons wealth to $5million by taking all above that.
Smart girl. One thing that changed financially was the advent of the general use credit cards. As the song says, I think this was the downfall of many good men. I know mortgage rates were pretty high in comparison to today but I just canât recall if the low down payment was prevalent then. In 75 the down payment they wanted was 50%. Hard to get in trouble with that. Still the 125% cash out deals didnât come till later.
Regarding credit cards, theyâre great if you have the maturity to live withing your means but personally I think thereâs a special place in hell reserved for âlooseâ card issuers with outrageous late fees and interest to take advantage of poor quality borrowers and college students. I believe the scripture quote is, âThou shall not set a stumbling block before the blindâ which includes both those groups.
Mortgage interest rates during the post Vietnam Stagflation reached well into the teens, the standard down payment was 20%, the mortgage could not be more than 25%-33% of your income and the application included a stern lecture from the aged, motherly lender at the S&L about responsibility.
(Thatâs the kinda thing you donât get today on the Net and I never missed a payment)
On the âSmart girlâ, I appreciate the compliment but it was more a matter of âgood old work and driveâ than any ability. That includes passing your driving test in a stick shift, doing your own oil changes, changing tires, gaping plugs, Sweetheart of Sigma Chi and graduating Engineering in 4 years when 1/2 your cohort at an Elite college switched to âeasierâ majors.
Provide the opportunity and youâll be amazed at the results.
When we got our first mortgage in 1976, the S&L guy advised me to go with a 25 year instead of a 30 year. He explained how much interest would be saved and hardly had any impact on the payments. Sure we knew him and went to our church but I think he advised everyone the same. Then at the bank, the last thing the VP asked when getting a car loan was âcan you afford it?â.
When I taught my daughter how to drive in 2000, I didnât bother to teach her how to drive a stick since I felt sheâd never have to do so. My assumption proved correct as now (20 years later), sheâs never even ridden in a car with a stick. I believe that today, knowing how to drive a stick is as relevant as knowing the correct technique for starting a car with a hand crank.
Unless you have to rent a car in Europe. We borrowed the only stick in the Buick dealerâs lot and went out to an empty lot for the wife to learn how to drive.
Quite a few millenials will find themselves confused when they recognize that no matter how hard they struggle to get ahead for every 2 steps forward they take the ground will shift three steps to the rear. The gap between mean and mode will continue to widen leaving them slipping back on the steep incline.
Why?
My niece and her husband, both millennials, each received masters degrees, own 2 cars, a home and combined, and Iâd guess make mid 6 figures combined working in the southeast. Both with business degrees. One with student loans from a middle class family, the other from a fairly wealthy family with no student loans.
Well thatâs 2 but that âquite a fewâ others is substantial.
But why? What is missing?