Since the Second World War, it has been a core belief in this country that each new generation would do better than the preceding one. Now, the pattern has broken. “We now have a generation that believes it’s doing worse than the generation before it,” said Mr. Graves, president of Ekos Research Associates. “The belief in progress that we have in Canada is in terrible disarray, if not shattered.”
Baby boomers are parents and grandparents, but not all of them are brimming with empathy for young adults who complain about how hard it is to succeed in today’s economy. So let’s talk money. Boomers, who’s going to buy your house when you’re done with it? Who are the taxpayers of the future who will help pay for your health care and the Old Age Security you get to collect at age 65 (while everyone else waits to 67)? Face it, boomers. You need those young people to deliver.
To start saving for a down payment, you first should have paid off your student debts. To do that, you need a job that pays a fair bit more than you need to live on. The job also has to offer the potential for pay increases ahead. Without the benefit of a rising salary over the long term, paying the bills as a home and parent becomes ever more stressful. Worst case, Generation Y’s revenge on the boomers turns out to be a home-buying strike.
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D - yup. My best case scenario (barring a Jack and the beanstalk moment) is to pay off a house at SEVENTY TWO. Allowing me a statistical c. decade to enjoy it before I die of old age!
Ruth Pennebaker's biological clock roared back to life at age 49. Her daughter left for college, and suddenly she was noticing babies everywhere - on Facebook, in the park. After that, it only got worse. "I was practically stalking babies in the supermarket," says Ms. Pennebaker, an author and columnist living in Texas.
Her "grandparent hunger," as she called it, made no sense: Her two children were both busy with university studies and didn't have steady partners. Yet, she'd watch her quirky and curious university professor husband and see ideal grandpa material. Bald-headed babies that reminded her of her own children were particularly attractive. "I swear it was something hormonal," she says.
(D - yeah, my mother was exactly like that at 49. With a few twists and turns, such as the IT bubble bursting before my sis graduated, there is a good chance she'd have NO grandkids at all today.)
Egg freezing technology has in recent years improved in leaps and bounds and many women reaching the 35 year old milestone have begun to consider the treatment as a solution.
Women approaching their mid-thirties who aren't ready to have children are not the only ones worrying about their reproductive futures.
Reports from fertility centres around the country are showing the increase of parental contribution as adult women opt to freeze their eggs.
For many would-be-grandparents, helping to cover the cost of the expensive oocyte cryopreservation is both an investment in their daughters' futures and in their own as well.
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D - and all of this can be linked back to the following basic economic factors:
1) real estate generation cycle (result of Boomer policies - as was the USA real estate crisis),
2) post-Boomer neglect of post-secondary funding / hiking of tuition rates
3) increased severity of student loan repayment terms (result of Boomer frivolous bankruptcies / high 70s interest rate,
4) now, Boomer-induced crash of stock markets and USA real estate market.
D - if they don't get grand-kids, it is due to how their generation's policies impacted their children.
D - heck, I've had near-40 galpals literally crying in their drinks over kids. One, with an MBA in biz and high- power career actually expressed envy at the 'knocked up' higher school 'losers' they used to look down on!
Though thinking about it, she could pay enough women in India to act as surrogate mothers to start her own hockey team.
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