[Pops]

Here is a chart showing the personal savings rate from the fifties to today, from, where else, Calculated Risk:

BIGGER

You'll notice that about the time Boomers were all into the child-bearing years the savings rate went to pot. I was surprised to find that credit balances haven't been being paid down as much as they are being defaulted on.I'm not sure that has anything to do with this chart, but no matter.

What happened to Boomers, were we just spoiled? Our grandparents and many of our parents remembered the hard times and were frugal.

My parents didn't teach me to save though - they were the worst money managers! My stepdad always got the bills paid, but my mom made the checks bounce like superballs! This was back before "instant Credit" but they'd go to this little savings and loan (Town and Country Finance) when they needed a "new" car or whatever - no telling what the rate was...

My dad would have had a CalPERS retirement and social security and my mom has some SSI but they didn't have a penny saved more than that, well, they did have a paid off, rotten-floored house. Neither made it past 67 years though, bless 'em, so I guess they played that one right!

There have only been a couple of times in my adult life that I didn't owe on either a store account, a car or a card - there is really no telling how much I've paid to not need to save. Though I have a few thou in an IRA somewhere the only reason I have any assets at all is because I always bought the worst house on the block and sold it for a little profit due to sweat equity.


So who taught you how to manage your money?

[Cloud9]

If the truth be known we were self absorbed. I was too busy with my job and family to pay attention to government. We were spoiled by our parents who came through the great depression and conditioned to believe the good times would last forever. Now that we are coming to the end of our days, we are discovering that the easy going back slapping politicians we hired stole us blind.

[Cid_Yama]

It wasn't the boomers, it was the post boomers, the ones who can't remember a time when they didn't have a television. Those children were targeted by advertisers on Saturday mornings, instilling the consumer mentality.

I believe the dividing line was GI Joe, the first doll for boys. Pre-GI Joe kids played outside and didn't watch a lot of televison. the GI Joe generation were raised entirely on television.

If the boomers did anything wrong, it was not recognizing the threat and tossing that TV out the window.

[Sixstrings]

It wasn't the boomers, it was the post boomers, the ones who can't remember a time when they didn't have a television. Those children were targeted by advertisers on Saturday mornings, instilling the consumer mentality.

I think you're right Cid.. we take TV for granted, but when I stop and think about it I really believe it's had a negative effect on society. If there were no TV, people would get the heck out of the house and make the real community around them a more engaging place. They'd take more walks, socialize more in public, support public live entertainment, etc. Getting together with people builds community, staring at flickering images does not.

And then there's the Internet and all the obsessions from Facebook to games to doomer forums. I remember some study that said a majority of families eat dinner separately, each chowing down in front of their own particular electronic screen. They don't even watch TV together anymore.

But it is what it is, the horse has left the barn on this one.. and our communities are fractured because of it.

As for self-obsessed yuppie baby boomers, weren't these folks boomers?

[Ludi]

I learned to manage money by watching my parents blow theirs. They were close to bankruptcy a couple times and almost always lived just beyond their means. I became terrified of debt. Now my dad at age 80 is becoming prudent with his money. He is very fortunate to have a couple different pensions and owns two houses free and clear thanks to selling his big-ass house just at the right moment. He is likely to live into his 90s so I sure hope he can manage his funds well enough to provide for his old age. Otherwise he'll have to move into our cheap-ass house with us.

[efarmer]

Tried to buy happiness instead of making our own. Started out watching the box, seeing what we needed to buy to be happy, ended up borrowing to buy to be happy, and many moved on to becoming convinced that they could watch the video screen, bet on someone else who did something somewhere, and then buy happiness with the results. Consuminvestor Boomersaurus Rex.
Hey somebody tell them Chinese people their money is the same crap as their firecrackers, you light it off, and ratatatatatatatatatatatatatattatatat, all you have left is smoke and empty beer cans.

Wanting something for nothing is an old issue, we toyed with making it so complex in it's implementation that it became so baffling and complex we thought we had beat thermodynamics and had us a little party.

There is still some time, might be easier, can't pretend that stuff is going to make us happy. But we could figure out what to do, how to be to ourselves and each other, and pass off something useful to the next group of folks of value. Real value, lie those Depression folks passed onto us before we got really smart about being dumb.

We aren't the first set of chumps to get their ass kicked by the illusion of materialism. But the other chumps just showed a little skin or said a dirty word or something, we are the ones who made it into a porno movie and all became stars. Deep Gloat, that was my favorite.

If someone else can figure out how to maintain millions of plastic huts and navigate them with petrochemicals and then wire them so people can be jealous of people thousands of miles away they will never really meet, bring them on. We have a lot of vacancies right now and we can make them some killer deals.

[Plantagenet]

The boomers started out not trusting anyone over 30 and wound up trusting the wrong politicians, lawyers, bankers, real estate agents, stockbrokers, and other smiling people in nice suits.

[Cid_Yama]

The Yuppies were post-boomers. There was a clear political demarcation. Boomers were left and yuppies were Reagan Republicans.

[Cid_Yama]

If your father is 80, he was pre-boomer. He would have been 20 in 1950. His generation were McCarthy or Eisenhower Republicans, The see the USA in your Chevrolet crowd. The better life through chemistry crowd, reveling in the wonders of a new age of shiney new labor saving appliances.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I've thought and read about this a fair amount, as the long term trends fascinate me.

After the folks who grew up experiencing the great depression, the following generations seemed to get less and less concerned about debt.

I suspect people's attitudes about money, as far as what they were taught, was largely luck -- like what genes you get or whether you were beaten or nurtured as a child.

So the depression era parents, like mine, saved EVERYTHING. It will take me many hours of labor to sift through the stuff mine stored and throw most of it out. My dad actually saved chunks of RUSTY PIPE -- never know - you might be able to use it some day. I found a can of food my mom had saved in the pantry that was dated 1960 last week. They only lived in the house 48 years, so apparently that was moved from the previous house. (My sister figures a local Cracker Barrel might like the styling for their store display, as it was candy and the can still seems fine!)

The follow-on generations, starting with the boomers, seemed to do two things. First, they forgot about tough economic times. (Since the oldest boomers were young enough not to remember shortages from WW II, perhaps they never experienced tough economic times, relatively speaking). Second, there seems to be a guilt thing going -- they feel compelled to ensure their kids have lots of stuff and don't have to save and scrimp.

According to a fascinating book, "The Millionaire Next Door", this gift giving to adult children seems to have the opposite of the intended effect -- the more economic gifts adult children receive, the less they save and build up their net worth. Given the way things have gone since it was published around 1990 and they bemoaned American economic largesse -- it would seem to be right.

The parallel I noticed which they documented was first generation immigrants to the US. These folks live like paupers and work like fiends -- saving a ton and becoming millionaires in droves (relative to native born Americans) by owning/growing small businesses.

This economic vitality lasts precisely ONE generation. By the time their kids, born in America and spared from the hard work and economic hardship their parents endure -- apparently become typical fat lazy Americans and have no assets like the typical nth generation immigrant the "average" American is.

I suspect we'll never learn. If this economic mess goes for over a decade and people actually suffer (aside from the unemployed, I don't think there's actually that much suffering so far -- given the rate people eat out, shop at the malls, buy fancy new cars, travel, etc. etc. All kinds of articles point out that once people have cut back for a year or so they can't stand it and feel justified/entitled to spend foolishly again (like that's all life is about, apparently).

So America, good luck with that. And as a bonus, filling houses with status symbols wrecks the planet much more quickly...

[Outcast_Searcher]

I HATE marketing (which I see as 99% lies, so I can't fathom why people pay any attention to it UNLESS they specifically need something and need to do product research). Even so, Consumer Reports and their ilk would seem to be MUCH better sources than marketing.

I saw a show which played some ads, such as car ads, from the 50's. I was (stupidly, I must admit) rather surprised. The same insane greedy "show off your new car and make your neighbor jealous" idiocy that pervades marketing today was prevalent, at least with status items like cars, even in the 50's. I had somehow thought that era, having been through the depression and WWII, would have been wiser, more prudent, relatively immune to such marketing. The main difference was that they were even MORE blatantly obvious about this in the 50's ads.

I guess since behavioral economics research demonstrates that we're really just monkeys with the ability to yell at each other, build destructive tools, and do calculus, my being surprised by the pervasiveness (and apparent effectiveness) of such marketing is inexcusable.

I'm reminded of the near-future Philip K. Dick short story where when intelligent aliens from another star come to earth, all they find is man's mechanized society blithely humming along (automated houses, factories, and such) -- unaware that all the humans were gone (having been killed in resource wars with other aliens in our solar system, since they couldn't give up their fancy gadgets/lifestyles).

[Quinny]

There was a recent thread which gave links to videos about how the theories of Freud were used (by his nephew?) to manipulate society. I watched them all and found them fascinating, well worth the effort.

Unfortunately I cannot find the thread - the search on this forum continues to baffle me?!? Something to do with Era of Selfishness ..????

[Cid_Yama]

There is still some confusion as to who the baby boomers were. The term refers to those who were born during the baby boom following WWII. This is considered to be 1945 to no later than 1957 when the number of births declined below levels at the start of the boom.

Many born during WWII, although technically pre-boomers, are considered as part of the boomer generation as nearly all of the musicians who made the 1960's what it was were WWII babies. Most of the legendary performers of the counterculture were born in and around 1943.

This would make the youngest boomer 53 yrs old. Performers like Joni Mitchell and Mick Jagger, born in 1943, are 67 yrs old.(This would have included Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison, had they lived.) David Crosby of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young is 69. Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane is 71.

If that doesn't make you feel old, nothing will.

[Outcast_Searcher]

There is still some confusion as to who the baby boomers were. The term refers to those who were born during the baby boom following WWII. This is considered to be 1945 to no later than 1957 when the number of births declined below levels at the start of the boom.

The length of this depends on who is doing the defining. The Wiki article on the baby boomers cites your 1945 to 1957 era. The graph they use looks like it goes to the late 60's. They then go on to cite the Census Bureau as defining the boomer era from 1946 to 1964 -- this is more like what I think most boomers think of as the boomer period. I was born in 1959 and have always thought of myself as a late boomer -- not a gen Xer or whatever followed. (Consistent with this, I always felt I could see both the older boomers' AND the gen Xers' point of view when workplace age/experience vs. technological competence issues came up. (You need both in a complex organization, IMO).

I think that for the above discussion in the thread, as long as we use the POST WWII era as the start -- the overall generational/economic concepts work OK.

[Cid_Yama]

Like I said, the term refers to those babies born during the increase in the number of births following WWII. The number of births fell below that of the start of the boom in 1957 ending the boom.

If you want to consider yourself part of that culture, that's fine. But the boom ended in 1957.

You were part of that transition period between the leftist generation of the 60s and early to mid 70's, and the decidedly right-wing generation entering colleges in the 1980s.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Like I said, the term refers to those babies born during the increase in the number of births following WWII. The number of births fell below that of the start of the boom in 1957 ending the boom.

If you want to consider yourself part of that culture, that's fine. But the boom ended in 1957.

So are we trying to learn something here, or be pedantic and score points?
(It seems like there is an awful lot of that on this site).

I don't care if I'm called a boomer, a post boomer, or what. I'm just pointing out that there are clearly differing opinions on the definition. The one I cited was the U.S. organization which measures population trends, via the Census.

So, if you want to just say "my definition is right because I say so", go right ahead, but other folks who apparently have more credibility in this area than you or I do (cited below) differ on the population threshold to use as the end of that era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomer

The United States Census Bureau considers a baby boomer to be someone born during the demographic birth boom between 1946 and 1964.[9] The Census Bureau is not involved in defining cultural generations.

Landon Jones, who coined the term "baby boomer" in his book Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, defined the span of the baby-boom generation as extending from 1946 to 1964, when annual births declined below 4,000,000. They have since returned to higher levels in the "echo boom."

William Strauss and Neil Howe label American Baby Boomers 1943 to 1960.[10]

[Cid_Yama]

I don't care if I'm called a boomer, a post boomer, or what.

Well, apparently you do.

It is jokingly said that, whatever year they were born, boomers were coming of age at the same time across the world; so that Britain was undergoing Beatlemania while people in the United States were driving over to Woodstock, organizing against the Vietnam War, or fighting and dying in the same war; boomers in Italy were dressing in mod clothes and "buying the world a Coke"; boomers in India were seeking new philosophical discoveries; American boomers in Canada had just found a new home and escaped the draft; Canadian Boomers were organizing support for Pierre Trudeau. It is precisely because of these experiences that many believe those born in the second half of the birth boom belong to another generation, as events that defined their coming of age have little in common with leading or core boomers.

The boomers found that their music, most notably rock and roll, was another expression of their generational identity. Transistor radios were personal devices that allowed teenagers to listen to The Beatles and The Motown Sound.

In the 1985 study of US generational cohorts by Schuman and Scott, a broad sample of adults was asked, "What world events over the past 50 years were especially important to them?" For the baby boomers the results were:

Baby Boomer cohort #1 (born from circa 1946 to 1955), the young cohort who epitomized the cultural change of the sixties
Memorable events: the Cuban Missile Crisis, assassinations of JFK, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., political unrest, walk on the moon, risk of the draft into the Vietnam War, anti-war protests, social experimentation, sexual freedom, drug experimentation, civil rights movement, environmental movement, women's movement, protests and riots,Woodstock, mainstream rock from the Beatles to Jimi Hendrix
Key characteristics: experimental, individualism, free spirited, social cause oriented

Baby Boomer cohort #2 or Generation Jones (born from circa 1956–1964)
Memorable events: Watergate, Nixon resigns, the Cold War, lowered drinking age in many states 1970-1976 (followed by raising), the oil embargo, raging inflation, gasoline shortages, Jimmy Carter's imposition of registration for the draft, punk or new wave from Deborah Harry and techno pop to Annie Lennox and MTV
Key characteristics: less optimistic, distrust of government, general cynicism

[wisconsin_cur]

After counting the number of boomers that can fit on the tip of a pin, any more conversation on where they went wrong?

[IslandCrow]

After counting the number of boomers that can fit on the tip of a pin....

Does the bride think of you as a little angel or is it just your perception of yourself?

This boomer (cohort #1) did not save a lot...partly because he spent a number of years in low paid development work, having lived in various communities before that. Then when returning to the 'West' he got into the housing market just before he was 40 so 'savings' went into paying off the housing loans. However, he has learnt a lot from his parents who grew up during the depression and faced the hardships of World War II. The elder ones (both 86) still grow a lot of the vegetables they need, and collect fruit on walks. This boomer learnt to make jams and chutneys etc from his mother. Also the elder ones have never being in debt (something I did not follow, but I have tried to be very careful in not living beyond my means).

[ian807]

Boomers went wrong the same way humans have throughout history. They either can't think ahead, or don't care about consequences.

The Mayans, Haitians and Easter Islanders cut down all their trees. The Romans assumed they could expand their empire forever. Sumerians salinated their farmland though over-irrigations. Nobody thought through the long term consequences. If they did, and spoke out, they were silenced by whoever was making a profit on the tree-cutting, militarism, irrigation farming, oil production, sub-prime financing, hedge funds, or whatever activity was making someone a quick buck at the expense of everyone else.

Human societies tend to act like bacteria colonies, not intelligent entities. They react to immediate circumstances well enough, but don't seem to be able to pre-emptively act to prevent disaster. That would require foresight, thought and that currently unpopular activity, a restriction on individual rights (No. You *can't* cut down that tree!) and frankly, a bit of dictatorial direction.

Nine tenths of us will probably die in this century - freedoms intact.