I’m 40 and I feel every bit of this. 😭
That’s cause this is a 10 year old post and things have not improved since then.
35-45, such a weird fucking age.
Yuuuuuuuuup same here. #feelsoldman
I’m 39 for a few more months and was hoping a complete transformation happened day one of being forty. Guess not.
If you count the left knee suddenly making cracking sounds on the stairs as a transformation, then, kinda?
Oooh don’t mention the left knee. Mine always felt out of alignment so if my legs are crossed I have to uncross-crack my knee to put it back in place.
It’s gotten worse as I got older. Now it hurts too!
Hah, losers with your left knee problems…
I have right knee problems…
I’ll just crouch for 30 seconds trying to keep my heel on the ground when I get out of bed in the morning. Seems to like everything up before starting the day.
Por que no los dos?
the 25-35 year olds have $5000?? that’s better than I expected
That was the hyperbole part of the post
Uh im 45 and this tracks. Guess we’re 31 different flavors of fucked
Yeah why in the FUCK do people keep insisting Gen x has more than 5k in retirement. We don’t. I don’t. Don’t really know anyone who does.
I’m also seeing a shitton of homeless boomers. Maybe the youngins’ rage ought to be pointed at the 1%, irrespective of an age demographic.
I mean, don’t get us wrong. We are WAAAAAAY pissed off at the 1% shitlords… but we are also WAAAAAAAAY pissed off at the people that just let shit get this bad just in time for us to enter the “real world.” Ya’ll watched this happen and, for the most part, did nothing to stop/fix it. Some of you even elected shitheads that accelerated the issues, all while telling us, “No child left behind,” “You can do ANYTHING you want!” “Work hard, and you will be ok! You’ll have a house and a car or two, and be able to retire! Just work hard!” “Going into the military is all honor! You’re helping/protecting your country!” Yeah, no, the military in many countries is only interested in protecting foreign investments. I respect anyone willing to go to war to save their people. But fuck the government(s) that lie and then send young men and women off to die for fucking oil. “The government has your best interests at heart!” Riiiiight is that why they are trying to make it so that if a young woman gets fucking raped and has a nonviable pregnancy come of it, her only choices are risk near certain death or become a felon? Sure. Naw. Ya’ll coulda stopped this train before it was going supersonic, but you didn’t. THAT is why we are so FUCKING pissed off at the generations before us.
Ok, but I’ve also been saying that for aeons too. Longer than you’ve been drawing breath, if I may make, perchance, a bold assertion.
None of my peers (at least the ones I choose to associate with) have every said anything to me like what you’re suggesting. Anyone who ever has is a taking head with an agenda as see thru as saran wrap.
“The government has your best interests at heart!”
I was 18 during the APEC protests. I came of age distrusting these lying, evil, craven mfers. It’s imprinted. No one’s ever gonna convince me or even a notable fraction of my peers of that one. Granted: context is king, I am Canadian, and geopolitics varies from place to place.
I’m 100% behind the energy in your rage but focus it on the right demographic. It’s not when you were born. It’s what you’ve done since showing up.
You’d be surprised at where your allies are.
I love the rocket mortgage ad telling you that you should refinance your house in order to afford groceries.
Same but 42.
And for your information it’s $5,796.41
I have some AMC shares. To the moooooooooooo-
I have some GME laying around somewhere. Are we still mortal enemies?
No bro. Apes together strong
cries in dumbass
Must be really old, as Gen X I wouldn’t dare tell you to refi with these rates. it’s not 2017 anymore. I couldn’t afford a house if I had to buy one now.
Im feeling very called out rn
At 24 I can’t afford rent within an hour drive of my workplace. Average rent is $2700/mo (distribution is bimodal really, $2500ish and $3000ish). I could barely afford that if I was making twice what I do now
I pay $800. Even if I move for a $10k raise, I’ll lose more than that paying rent somewhere where there are jobs.
Where do you live? I am in MD and there are plenty of places that are under $1500 for a 1 bedroom. Still expensive, but nowhere near the number you are talking about.
I’m betting Canada.
Considering the cheapest place I could find in my hometown even 15 years ago was a room in somebody’s house with “occasional kitchen access” for $1k a month, this could easily be just about anywhere outside of the rural US.
In NY / LI in an industrial park so anything cheaper than about around 2k is a bedroom with no kitchen, no w/d, or some kind of chop shop tenement housing with 20 bedrooms packed into a normal two story house. Anything listed as cheaper, especially on sites like Craigslist is just scammers who want your SSN and illegally high “application fees” before you even see the place, or they’re excluding some deal breaker details (e.g. nowhere to do laundry, no kitchen, roommates, what utilities are included, etc).
I could live around an hour by car away but then I’d also need a car + insurance etc. Funnily enough the lack of a car doesn’t really affect my options because of how large of a black hole in cheap housing there is out here. It wouldv also negate the cost savings. The streets are not walkable or bikable - it’s all 4+ lane highways, so certain places aren’t an option. Currently I take a train+bus+walk but I’m at the whims of those underfunded systems, which have proven unreliable.
Damn, I wish I had $5k at 22 years old.
I’m 34 with a full time paying job while my wife has 2 jobs. We don’t even have 1k between checking and savings after all the bills have been paid. We’re one broken bone or ER trip away from a disaster. No need to worry though. I’ve heard the economy is doing FANTASTIC.
No they are the 25-35 year old with 5k
Oh my bad. I misread it.
If your tasty casserole is similar to the boomer macaroni, that’s a you problem. Learn to cook better.
Similarly if your savings account is netting you cents a year. Learn to invest. 5000 is an ok start if you’re still young.
Edit: Like the comment below says, I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s not meant as an insult but as advice.
I didn’t open an account myself until actually relatively recently and I’m in my 40s now. I come from a working class background. No one in my family ever invested and it never occurred to me that it was an option. I wish I’d started 10 or 20 years ago.
Common consumer savings accounts at major banks like Wells Fargo are useless and pathetic compared to what they were. You could get almost 8% in the 1980s. It’s in the decimals for the vast majority of consumer accounts at the balances 95% of the people have. 0.25% isn’t uncommon, and neither is 0.01%.
You might be able to get ~5% on a high yield savings account if you can find one that doesn’t have too many restrictions. A decent CMA at a brokerage will probably get somewhere between 2-5%, and many of them operate just like regular checking with debit carts and the like.
Sure, the Big Banks are convenient with ATMs everywhere and all that, but thanks to the vast majority of transactions being electronic, that convenience matters less and less every day.
E: people are sharing banks they know of with good rates, check them out or your local credit union. Stay away from Big Consumer Banking. Their rates are junk.
Interest rates for savings are heading back up. There’s two separate credit unions near me with 5% interest on checking accounts and a couple online banks offering a 2-3% on savings with little requirements. CDs still suck though, some have rates in the 5%+ range, but generally require 20-50k minimum balance, which is absurd.
Wealthfront checking account has 0 restrictions and pays 5% APY. Same day withdrawals. No minimums. No fees. 8M FDIC insurance. So does SoFi. Ally…
I don’t know why you were downvoted, it’s true. This isn’t like a bootstraps judgement thing, this is just good advice- high yield savings accounts now are like 4% interest, so that’s $200 / yr on that $5k.
When i got my first job, there was this older guy, Brad. older than the rest of us shithead teens i mean, like 25. He was pretty cool, but he had braces, which was unusual for someone his age.
The cinema we cleaned was in a fancier part of town. Brad and i were actually the only couple of dudes from the other side of the tracks. Not poor, right? But not fancy.
Anyway one day one of the other kids we worked with, a fancy chick called Kelly asked him
how come he had braces so late in life?
well, my family couldn’t afford it.
Haha silly, wdym?
she said. continued
That’s what insurance is for!
Depends on how much you need to draw into that 5k. Liquidity is pretty important too, and you don’t want to have to worry about short sales.
I mean yeah but if you need it for your day to day it’s not really savings. It’s tough out there no doubt of course.
Life has no meaning, just do your best to enjoy it
This isn’t about “finding meaning in life”, it’s about dealing with a crap hand that was dealt before we even sat at the table. Yes, the ideal approach is to make the best of it, but every step of even doing that is made harder every year and that sucks.
Don’t fight for a better tomorrow. Just keep your head down and hope to come out the other side in decent enough shape to die.
you’re right- it was all just a joke to start with, wasn’t it
Haha. Ow. ʘ‿ʘ
25 year olds aren’t millennials
Considering this post is like 7 years old, yes they where.
Every holiday at home feels like this….
spoiler, the insecurities extend well into your forties
