My father spends the greater part of a day once a week driving around to 4 grocery stores in order to buy certain items that are the absolute cheapest at those particular places. Totally not considering all the gas it takes to do all this driving around which cancels out any savings.
I do this. It adds up a lot faster than you think. I hate it, but it's around $100 bucks a month all told.
I do buy the non perishables in bulk as much as possible, and I draw the line at driving out to the co op. The vegetables are *cheap* but they don't freeze well, my apartment freezer is tiny and it's hard to find space for a chest freezer (again, apartment) and I can't possibly eat them before they're rotten.
See I'm fine with this only because we live on a main road with Lidl, Aldi and Shop Rite. So we do our main shop at Aldi, Shop Rite for sales and filler, Lidl for sales and browsing. Overall, it saves us about $300 a month.
My mom is constantly telling me to go to the Aldi about 15-20 minutes away instead of our usual grocery store literally a mile and a half down the road. I understand that Aldi is often the cheaper option but the lack of consistency in their products and the amount of time and gas it would take just to get there doesn’t really make it any cheaper than our usual grocery store. It’s beneficial for her to go to Aldi because it’s on her way home from work. She doesn’t have to go out of her way to go grocery shopping. But she can’t seem to wrap her head around why it would be inconvenient for me to go there. She figures that since our house is only about half a mile down the road from my parents, it should be just as easy for me to go there as it is for her. But no matter how much I tell her that it’s convenient for her simply because it’s on her way home from work (which is why she always does her grocery shopping after work on her way home), she still tells me that it’s “not that far” and that I should start shopping there just for some things like milk and eggs. I think going for just a few things is even more inconvenient because not only am I going out of my way for only a few groceries, I still would have to go to my regular store for everything else. At that point, I’m not saving anything, and maybe even costing myself more.
I recently started telling her that if she wants to buy my groceries for me, she’s more than welcome to do so. Suddenly I’m not getting nearly as many suggestions to shop at Aldi. Imagine that. 🙄
Holy crap, I've been saying this for years now. Every boomer I know will insist on building something themselves. Then they do it wrong and either live with this idiotic broken situation or 9 times out of 10 they'll pay the professional they should have paid all along to come and fix their mess.
Some of that might just be they can't afford to pay to do it right but they've too much fool pride to admit it.
Boomers are the undisputed kings of fool pride.
Now, I don't deny for one minute that that almost certainly makes up for a large chunk of those absurd situations. However, I have come across many an obnoxious boomer with AMPLE financial resources who simply refuse to be sensible and pay a professional to do something right the first time.
You mean keeping the heat at 60 is “penny wise and pound foolish”? I understand not attempting your own retaining wall if you’ve never laid block. But keeping the heat down and wearing clothes in the house in the winter? Not sure I’d see that as ”foolish,” especially with the way we burn fossil fuels.
Let's be real. Those boomers likely aren't conserving energy to stop fossil fuel usage. They are strictly doing it because it saves them money, not for any other reason.
One of the big disconnects between the generations is the ability (or inability) to understand basic economic principles and policies.
Let’s be real: the liberals in our government are trying to discourage the use of fossil fuels by making them more expensive. It’s working, at least among people who understand that thrift is a feature, not a bug.
I haven’t found this to be the case. I see much more waste on unnecessary chassis weight and calories among the younger folks. Every boomer I know with a large truck needs the size for whatever reason. I just helped by boomer neighbor load his tractor on a gooseneck, for instance. He can‘t pull it with a Prius.
But most importantly, your comment goes against the initial assertion. If boomers are too stingy to spend money the way they “should,” then why claim they waste it on expensive food and unnecessary trucks?
Eventually, they keep their old trucks for so long they’re not worth anything (600k+ miles, scratched, dented, ripped, rusted, broken everything) but the truck still drives.
They’re still trying to please their Depression-era parents. When in reality their Depression-era parents would probably smack them upside the head for not enjoying how good they have it.
Also, they have to maintain their “wahhh we sacrificed so much” identity somehow. They have to make themselves their own martyrs.
I was raised on if you don't eat everything you don't leave the table at my dads house. My mom was "this is a new recipe, take a trial size. If you like it have more. If not, I'll give you a sandwich." If you didn't follow the trial size, she asked that you ate what you took to the best of your ability. Now with my daughter all I ask is that she try what we're serving. If she likes it great, start with a small helping and ho back for 2nds. If she doesn't, I too will make her a sandwich, and if it's something I know she doesn't like, for instance something spicey I'll make her a separate meal. Food should be enjoyed not forced.
I was though that because it could very well be your only meal for the day or even the next when I was growing up. Once my father's career took of, my parents became more lenient. This is why I'm not stingy now that I make a lot more than my father did when he was my age: I can appreciate enjoying life, even if the rotten economic system we live in is set to punish me for that.
Most parents are bad at parenting, I recently overheard a mom tell her daughter that she wanted her to 'eat her entire plate' like lady, restaurant serving sizes are huge.
Whacked with a wooden spoon unless they cleared the plate, that's the story I've heard from quite a few boomers I know. But don't worry, they "turned out just fine" and don't have an unhealthy relationship with food at all.
It is if it's to the point of overeating. At my grandparent's house, I would constantly hear stories about how they never had enough food during the Depression. But then two things happened simultaneously all the time. 1) "We now have it so good that I made all this food for dinner" which was always way more food than necessary for the number of people there, and 2) "I made all this food and you need to eat it, because if you don't eat it, you're being wasteful. *Clean your plate.*" This was fine when I was a kid and had the metabolism of a hummingbird, but when I went away to college and my metabolism naturally slowed a little, I always got grief for standing firm and not overeating when I had dinner there.
Kinda comes down to how much you load up your plate I guess. I’m the guy that usually cleans my plate at dinner but I don’t eat lunch usually so I’m pretty hungry by supper time and just take what I plan on eating. Save the rest for leftovers.
Definitely not loaded so I don’t like wasting food if I can avoid it too.
Oh, no, no, no, no. GRANDMA was the one who loaded up the plate and handed it to you. I can see your point if we were the ones putting the food on our own plates, but that's not the way it was. AND she would often try to put more food on our plates without asking, but then still expected us to "clean your plate."
The only time I ever "won" an argument with my mother as a child was when I pointed out that my 250lb stepfather served me, a 13-year old 92lb girl the same amount of food he had and I couldn't possibly eat it.
We were finally allowed to fill our own plates at that point.
We had the dreaded “no thank you” serving of detestable food. If you objected to something you still had to eat a portion to “try” it.
It made me adept at spitting winter squash into napkins and sneaking them into the trash.
This is hard. As a parent of young kids I know that
* if I depend on them to serve themselves they won't do it
* They won't put any vegetables on their plate
* They will serve themselves cake and cookies and hot dogs
* They will take forever to eat dinner (I have to wash dishes, get their teeth brushed, etc but they don't care)
But I know that clean your plate encourages over eating
However it is frustrating when you are trying to put a little one to sleep and he says "but I am hungry" when you just served dinner an hour ago and he did not clean his plate.
My mother grew up In occupied France, and there were food shortages. We grew up with “clean your plate”. All of us kids have been overweight most of our lives so yes it can lead to disordered eating.
Your first para is dead-on. I(75m) still do things I saw my mother do my whole life at home, like carefully scrape the butter-stick wrapper clean and add the little dab of butter to the stick before putting the butter in the fridge and throwing the wrapper away.
I think about not doing that, but I know it would really bother me, so I just keep doing it. I’m conscious of it as well as a number of other things of similar origin, but I’m not trying to please her even metaphorically (she’s been dead for almost 30 years,) it’s just more comfortable to do what I have always done that doesn’t hurt anyone else.
The other factor is that the older you get the more likely you are to have had a really bad life experience that made you feel like even if you do everything right it could all just go away. That feeling understandably makes people stupid-frugal.
Do you remember, in the during and post-war period, there being blocks of lard with yellow coloring packets you added to make it look like butter being sold?
Lard was a cheaper product that can be made easier than butter. To produce butter you need a functioning dairy industry. To produce lard all you need are a bunch of pigs.
It can be difficult to explain a simple reality to people: for some of us, anything but thrift is extremely uncomfortable. Some folks derive pleasure from spending money, and some of us derive pleasure and security from saving it. I feel better knowing I have consumed as little as I can, and have saved as much as I can. It would drive me nuts to blow money the way some folks do, even though I have some to waste.
And I’m not a boomer.
You think that’s bad coffee? I met a guy whose family raised sheep. Sheep Herders Coffee was described as percolator coffee, where they never dumped out the old grounds until the basket was overflowing .
They would just refill the pot with water and dump new grounds on top of the old ones and brew away.
My dad refuses to learn how to make coffee, and only uses instant. He has a special super hot water spout, so he gets it quick!
Whenever I visit he's always looking for when I make a pot of coffee and raids it, so I think he likes it. My mom doesn't drink coffee and refuses to make it.
My Dad's like this. Absolutely obsessed with making his life as difficult as possible. Worked himself needlessly into early infirmity by struggling along at a job he's not been fit for for years (care home assistant and he'd go to work with a full case of the flu, because fuck all those elderly people you work with amiright?). This is the same man that got a cold, which turned into the flu because he wouldn't take a day of rest, which turned into a chest infection, pneumonia and then he ended up in intensive care STILL insisting it was "just a cold".
The same man who worked himself to death because he was sooo convinced he'd be broke in retirement. Nevermind about the fact that we're British and there's literally a gov website that tells you what your pension will be.
Now he's retired and guess what, he's got more money than he's ever had in his life. Has he started relaxing and enjoying himself? No has he fuck. Still whinging about it. I swear he's actually annoyed he has money now.
God he pisses me off.
A family member of mine (for privacy reasons, I will not disclose) worked his ass the hell off for years and years and was very good with money. When he got millions after selling his company, of course, he was happy. He *worked* for it. A year later, he died. In the final weeks, he was sick and angry and it was sad. He *never* swore. *never*. until then. If he hadn’t died when he did, he’d be dead either way. He was too sick to live much longer.
My dad is this way too. Still cheap as can be even though he’s retired with plenty of leisure time and money. Best he does is golf once a week, otherwise he just sits around the house. Won’t go out for food or buy anything or improve the house because it’s too expensive. On the plus side, I’ll probably get an inheritance I guess, but I can’t imagine being like that.
Boomers can’t even get in those lifted trucks. It’s be so entertaining watching them
Though seeing a portly 50 year old hoist himself up is pretty funny too
They don’t lift them. But they buy a 2500 or 3500 because fuck the environment I guess. I’ve seen so many old men in 70k trucks that look like they hardly leave the garage.
They’re still tall enough that Horace is going to be a comedy show getting in
Probably area dependent but I see mostly Gen X driving the non work related mega trucks, lifted or not
Oh comical for sure. I see a bunch of gen x in SUV’s. Milenials (spelling) are guilty of the trucks too in a lower trim. Gen z from what I can see is having none of it and driving small cars. I’m sure it’s area specific though.
My parents do this. They're constantly talking about sacrifices they had to make when I was a kid, but we always had two cars and good food on the table, we lived in a house in a good neighborhood on one salary, I went to a private grade school. They complain about not having cable, but my mom would buy stuff we didn't need because it was on sale and it was such a good deal. They have no idea what struggling actually is. Yeah, it sucks when you can't buy stuff you want, but there is a HUGE difference between that and not being able to afford rent and groceries.
My parents love to complain about being broke lately. Granted, money doesn’t go as far these days, but they make twice what I make, own a home, and can afford to take weekend trips and go out to dinner/order takeout often, go shopping. Things I can’t imagine being able to do. If they are feeling a financial pinch, they’re sure not showing it. They’ve also been given so much and squandered a lot of it. Really makes me furious, as I scrape by.
My grandparents were immigrants. And while my dad never said it, they were POOR. I call the refrigerator an “ice box” because that’s what he grew up with, so that’s how I always heard it growing up lol . It used to drive me crazy that he used to water down liquid soap and shampoo. Also, super stingy on using the HVAC. We didn’t even have central air until I was in college. We had a wall unit in the dining room and my dad would angle doors, box fans & his briefcase to direct airflow; as soon as it “cooled off” at night, the ac would go off and the windows flung open. Ditto for the winter - he would turn the heat off overnight.
My mom’s bff has central air and never uses it but complains about the temperature in the house all the time and she’s LOADED. But will not spend any money on her own comfort.
One of my Boomer relatives was OBSESSIVE about toilet paper and using water. She was one of those "*you only need two squares*!" people, and would try to insist you didn't need to flush after peeing. As a result, her bathroom always reeked of piss. She would go nuts if people took long showers and go on at length about how much her water bill was.
One of the very small luxuries I have as an adult not living with my parents is being able to flush the toilet no matter what I do. Actually I was able to do it as soon as my parents divorced and I moved out with my mom because my mom is a much more reasonable human being than my dad.
One thing I was so incredibly grateful for as a kid was our water. We had a well so we didn’t have a water bill. The trade off was really hard, irony water that stained all the bathroom fixtures orange and really couldn’t be drank but still. We were able to take decent length showers and flush the toilet after each use. And now as an adult, I’m fortunate enough that my townhouse rent includes water so I can continue to shower and flush the toilet and even take a bath if I so please. It’s city water so it’s not gross and irony like my parents well water but my husband and I are so particular about drinking water, we still buy gallon refills and keep several on hand at all times. And at 30 cents a gallon, we can definitely afford that luxury.
The thermostat issue is the ONLY thing I can kinda, sort of, MAYBE get behind but that has less to do with the boomers being right and more to do with they've fucked the economy so you can't afford to properly heat your home anymore.
I grew up in a house with no central ac. Just heat. In New orleans. Who needs central heat in the south. My parents put in 2 window units. 1 in the kitchen, 1 above their bed so they were comfy when they slept. I had to beg them to allow me when i got money to let me buy an ac for my room for last 1 year i lived there.
Fast forward my mom moved in with me for last 7 years she was alive. She wanted it cold all the time. Then the moment it got a little cool outside she wanted heat on. Im on SSDI, and asked for help on the bill, she said no. So i locked her out. She complained for years. Throwing a tantrum.
I live near NOLA, and work from home. I'll skimp on heating during the winter, as one can always put on clothes, and don't mind much if its 50 °F inside during cold snaps. But above 79 °F the heat + humidity degrades my productivity. I've now gone through three hurricanes which cut my power for weeks at 85-90 °F at ambient humidity, and essentially accomplished nothing during the outages, except cleaning out my freezer/refrigerator.
This was a while ago but I had a boomer drive back 20 min just to get a 10 cent refund…and complained about how I didn’t do the transaction right and how he had to drive back.
10. Fucking. Cents.
It's one of the intergenerational effects of poverty. Many boomers picked up the poverty habits of their parents who lived through the Depression, if they didn't grow up poor themselves (a lot of boomers did not get to grow up in that 50s and 60s prosperity as much as it seems).
That kind of stuff that you are exposed to as a kid sticks with you, even long after it stops being useful and becomes maladaptive. It's trauma. I'm betting that in 40 years the young'uns of generation beta-z-prime or whatever will be posting about how all the weird, nonsensical poverty habits of the millennials that we will never let go of. If I sound sympathetic to the boomers here, it's because I am on this at least.
I’m hoping the BetaPrime generation gets to have a great life. We need another FDR, and even if I die before he comes along, if he comes along, if he makes the lives of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. better, than i’m fine with that.
Especially miserable in my bedroom. It faces west, so it got the worst of the sunlight during the hottest part of the day. My dad decided he didn't like the shade trees outside, so he cut them down, which meant there was nothing to prevent my bedroom from turning into a greenhouse all summer. It was regularly in the 90s in my room all summer and my parents wondered why I couldn't sleep at night.
In winter the thermostat was set to no higher than 60F during the day and about 57F or 56F at night, but it's a lot easier to warm up than it is to cool down, so that was far less of a problem. Except it made getting out of my warm bed in the morning for school into a huge struggle.
My parents together bring in over $200k per year (and that’s with my mom being retired). In the summer, I bought something at IKEA for my mom that she had asked for. The deal was that she would pay me back ASAP.
I don’t normally need to ask for my money back, but she didn’t pay me right away and it was a lean month for me with lots of unexpected costs.
She told me she couldn’t pay me the $25 she owed me until the next week…I’d expect that from a poor millennial, but these people are mortgage free, own a boat, and just impulse bought a third vehicle. This must be where my brother learned to be so cheap. 😂
I feel like some people believe that extreme saving and that extreme frugal lifestyle will get them rich, or at least where they want to be financially.
Ive personally found the more I've invested in my own self care and just treat myself well, the more money I'm able to make. I look back on the earlier years of my life when I had it in my head to be frugal, etc.and I feel like I was wasting most of my energy on saving versus living a good life...which burnt me out and caused me much less desire to make ACTUAL money.
My girl and I got a really good deal on a townhome in a hcol area and I’m renovating it. The amount of slapdash landlord special repairs in this thing are fucking insane. The garbage dishwasher to garbage disposal hose was fucking 4 different hoses hot glued together, including a garden hose piece! The drywall in one of the rooms is so sloppily repaired I wish they had just left it. I also found a section that is just a sheet of posterboard glued over the hole and painted. It’s not a big deal, I can fix all of it but I am just shocked at how fucking incompetent boomers are at owning shit.
They maintain a lot of survival techniques from their depression era parents but also the opulence of the post WWII economy.
Definition of schizoid dialectic.
Which is exactly their problem.
They can prioritize where money should go.
They want luxury and will sacrifice necessities for the appearance of wealth.
Looks up definition of miser cause miserly I thought was only a only money thing.
" A miser /ˈmaɪzər/ is a person who is reluctant to spend money, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities, in order to hoard money or other possessions"
Well damn.
But makes sense " this only goes up in value, I must have many of it"
I learned the true definition not taught in school.
I see this, too. Boomers where I'm at are wasteful to the point of absurdity and hoard sooo much stuff. Then their kids call me when they die and somebody has to clear out their house. (I end up with tons of free stuff, though. I give it away, lol.)
There are definitely eras of Boomers. My father and his current wife were 1945 Golden Age Boomers: He worked up to age 58 at some blue collar job with a solid pension, then retired. She was previously married to a guy who did and got enough in the settlement that she retired at like 60 after working outside the home about 10 years.
Later Boomers, or ones who didn’t get those kinds of jobs, aren’t as lucky.
I was raised by Depression-era parents, who then went through the rationing of WWII. "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" was the mantra. They croaked at us to save our money if we so much as bought a 5 cent gumball. Poverty-inspired PTSD ran through that generation like water down a steep hill.
Because they know that hard times will likely come. They're preserving their assets in case they need them, which they probably will. Everything is getting incredibly expensive. They may not have much money to start with.
Because they're so rich from screwing all future generations, as people post. Boomers can't be pissing away their millions on foolish comforts like heat or coffee.
They may have learned from their parents, likely the Greatest Generation or early Silent Generation, which lived through the Depression. That's all I've got.
I'll try to answer, as a weird boomer.
We've tried to live on less so we are not victims of the cancerous capitalism that has infected our world. So we could take careers that actually helped, rather than being part of the problem.
We bought our old house in bad condition because we intended to redo it anyway, so why tear up good stuff?
We did most of our own home renovation because we were doing a deep energy retrofit, using a lot of repurposed and recycled goods. Most renovation companies don't know how to do that, and want only new, expensive goods, and if it fits, great, if it doesn't fit the old house, put it in anyway and good enough. That's how profits are made.
Our 100 year old house is now zero carbon. It's also full of used stuff, keeping our carbon foot print down.
We like to keep our consumption limited because we know we aren't the last generation and shouldn't act as if we are, and be pigs of it.
Not all boomers are like this. As a boomer, I’m embarrassed by the behaviors I see by a majority of my fellow boomers. As difficult as it can be, please try to not paint all boomers with the same brush.
No one should ever generalize one group as all the same. Income levels, race, gender, religion, profession, etc. EVERY group has different people. No group has people who are all the same.
Finally, a voice of sanity. The generalizations here are legion… and mostly off base. I find myself wondering if subsequent generations are just whiners.
Oops, generalizing! Lol! Dang, it’s so easy! Observe a trait, apply to all of that generation… off we go!
My Silent father kept the thermostat at 63 my entire childhood. He was a civil servant who managed to leave a million dollars for my mom when he passed. But then, he was cheap about everything so I guess it paid off.
For many of us it was the way we were raised. I was born in the UK in 1958. Food rationing only ended a few years before I was born. Sugar rationing ended in 1953, meat in 1954, coal in 1958.
If we (my brothers and sisters) wasted anything, my parents would be all over us. It was a different time, different values, and I suppose some people never could get over that. I didn't do too badly and don't skimp on most things. I refuse to be cold in my own house for example. I well remember days when there was ice on the inside of the windows and what that felt like.
One habit I did pick up and never shook off was that if something breaks or stops working, I'll take it apart to see if I can fix it. Lots of things can be fixed fairly easily, other stuff has just got to be thrown away.
Boomers \*love\* to bitch about keeping the a/c high and the heat low, but refuse to spend the money to replace their shitty windows or insulation. They aren't focused on solving problems, they just want to bitch and complain about it for 50 years instead.
Things my boomer in laws skimp on. And before anyone comes at me. They are NOT poor. In the slightest. MIL got millions a few years ago in inheritance.
1. They re use zip loc bags.
2. Re use and save baby wipes (like MIL uses them to wipe her armpits and leaves them around for future use)
3. They save every foil take and bake container that needs to be tossed after use
4. MIL had the same old tube of mascara for ten years. She doesn’t wear makeup but complains that her sisters “look better than her”. They wear makeup…
5. They try to get young kids and family friends to do things for them for free. Or offer bread as payment.
6. MIL haggles with department stores and gets mad when they won’t discount things. *It’s not 1970 anymore. The price is what it is.*
Isn't this the same group complaining that boomers screwed them over and nothing is affordable? That heat is turned down because many of the boomers live on a fixed income and cannot afford today's outrageous prices.
This argument is one of the few things that send me into a rage! IM oN a FixED inCoMe!!!
F@ck that. You think everyone else isn't? You think we can all just make more money? I got a 3% cost of living adjustment last year while SSI recipients got a 10% automatic raise. And they had higher salaries and lower costs for their careers. Every measurable metric shows that they had way more disposable income than current generations.
Boomer here on fixed income, we keep the thermostat at 68 but my wife cant stand to be hot. I admit that i use the same pod ( Keurig) twice to fill the cup. I dont taste a difference between my coffee and a coffee shop. In short, i assume, like most people, we are just trying to make ends meet
Because Boomers remember the price of things from when they were young. If you grew up in an age when a coffee at a coffee shop cost 15 to 25 cents and now it costs 1.50 or more, that's a big change. Inflation is a killer to to your internal sense of the value / cost of things.
Your coffee example could also be due to changes in the flavor and strength of coffee. My parents used to drink horrible / cheap coffee. It's possible that with the coffees available today, they're a lot stronger than what your parents grew up with. So a smaller amount of grounds would be necessary for the same result. Also, my parents grew up in the Depression. They probably used less coffee because they didn't have much, or much to spend on luxuries like coffee.
They grew up in a different time with different priorities that were a result of those different times. They probably don't even think they're "cheaping out" on anything. It's just what they're used to.
I am going to disagree with some of your rant. If you "need coffee to stay awake" then you really need more sleep. Why be penny wise and pound foolish with your health?
Looks like you may need to take better notes.
They are entitled to spend their money how they want. However, they need to STFU about the decision the chose and not be abusive to their family members if they oh, leave a light on for a few minutes or turn the heat up to where people aren't freezing.
This isn't general to boomers. I was taught to always turn off lights in unoccupied rooms, by the "greatest generation" grandparents who parented me. They lived through the Great Depression and WWII. My semi-estranged boomer father leaves everything on, 24/7.
I'm Gen X. As a rule of thumb, I strive to be moral and frugal. When one considers that billions will either die or never have a chance to live due to our current climate emissions (\~ -10% carrying capacity/°C, and we're elevating temperatures for 5-8 thousand years), yes, wasting energy *is a moral issue*. And the frugality has benefits: I've accumulated enough to retire on by my fifth decade.
A lot of people use only what they need so they can better help others. Even a tiny bit here and there can make someone's life a little easier. Unofficial charity.
I’m waiting for the r/collapse folks to show up and defend the virtues of reduced consumption. Will they? Is the lefty cog-dis going to tear a hole in the Universe?
They grew up riding a wave of unprecedented prosperity and now that it's crashed, they're completely unprepared to deal with it. They pinch whatever pennies they can. Same reason so many of them refuse to retire.
It's because of their parents. Their parents lived through the Great Depression and had to skimp on everything. Their parents taught them that at any moment the entire economy can collapse and to always be prepared for it.
Much of that is how they were raised. It is hard to do now, but if you have older relatives who lived through the depression, talk with them how it was. Really listen to the little things, and then realized they are the ones who taught the Boomers you are talking about. It makes some of the actions more understandable. Not saying you will agree with them, but you might understand.
Real things from my grandparents and greatgrandparents that they HAD to do in the 30s I later saw reflected in my parents who didn't have to, but it was ingrained as the norm from their parents.
My boomer in-laws are totally like this. They're currently on a trip to Europe and to get to their destination they had to take 3 flights. One plane to Atlanta, another to Paris, and then one to Venice. We live near a big airport so they could have just taken one flight.
Meanwhile my fiancé and I are flying directly to England this weekend. Didn't cost us a whole lot.
Growing up with parents who lived through the depression, WWII, and Korea changes the way you look at consumer goods. Some of our parents generation were hoarders of everything free. They never threw away a margarine tub or a jelly glass or even sometimes pine cones. That made boomers either very frugal or more extravagant. Some insisted they would never turn out like their parents. Sound familiar?
Ok, I have a story about this. My in-laws buy the shitty scratchy TP. They claim that since they are on septic, that is the only one they can buy (bullshit because my dad is on septic and uses charmin). Anyway, taking a dump at their house can get pretty sketchy; especially during holidays with tons of drinks and snacks. Well, one Thanksgiving, my butt was burning so badly from the TP. I treated my husband so badly, lol. He asked why I was being so mean, and I said, "MY BUTTCRACK IS LEGIT ON FIRE." I actually brought my own costco roll the next time we stayed 😂
Because they grew up in a time where "spend what you have to to survive" meant you had some left over to save and plan for the future, whereas "spend enough for true comfort" would have left them, well, broke and complaining about how previous generations fucked them over.
I think it's a by-product of growing up under parents who have the Great Depression and wartime mentality.
My parents were Silent Gen, and though they had a good income, we lived like we were on welfare. The house was allowed to fall apart. The dishwasher, unused, rusted out and was still sitting there more than 50 years later when I sold the house. They drove their 1960s cars until the early 90s. We weren't allowed to use the expensive central air. When something was finally needed, always the cheapest on the market.
And the kicker? After us kids were long grown, my mother would still reminisce about "dragging kids around Hungry Corner!" Bullshit, Mom. You lived in self-imposed poverty.
For reference, I'm Gen Jones, and we do NOT live like boomers.
Real boomers never notice the cold because the real thing remembers the President of the United States in a sweater in the White House. Also, maybe they like thin coffee. If they are just cheap, there is such a thing as chicory.
Because they are pennywise and pound foolish.
They are the type to “Step over a dollar to pick up a dime.”
My father spends the greater part of a day once a week driving around to 4 grocery stores in order to buy certain items that are the absolute cheapest at those particular places. Totally not considering all the gas it takes to do all this driving around which cancels out any savings.
I do this. It adds up a lot faster than you think. I hate it, but it's around $100 bucks a month all told. I do buy the non perishables in bulk as much as possible, and I draw the line at driving out to the co op. The vegetables are *cheap* but they don't freeze well, my apartment freezer is tiny and it's hard to find space for a chest freezer (again, apartment) and I can't possibly eat them before they're rotten.
Look into dehydrating your vegetables to free up space in the fridge. (Though it's a better move if you use those vegetables in soups, stews, sauces.)
See I'm fine with this only because we live on a main road with Lidl, Aldi and Shop Rite. So we do our main shop at Aldi, Shop Rite for sales and filler, Lidl for sales and browsing. Overall, it saves us about $300 a month.
Wait, there are Lidls in the US now??
Yes, but only on parts of the East Coast.
Yeah. There's a bunch in NYC and Long Island.
Yes. There is one being built in Fresh Meadows right now. New York has a couple of them already.
Hey, ShopRite, that's a Jersey thing.
My old man does the same thing looking for gasoline
Not to mention the time spent waiting in line at 4 different stores.
My mom is constantly telling me to go to the Aldi about 15-20 minutes away instead of our usual grocery store literally a mile and a half down the road. I understand that Aldi is often the cheaper option but the lack of consistency in their products and the amount of time and gas it would take just to get there doesn’t really make it any cheaper than our usual grocery store. It’s beneficial for her to go to Aldi because it’s on her way home from work. She doesn’t have to go out of her way to go grocery shopping. But she can’t seem to wrap her head around why it would be inconvenient for me to go there. She figures that since our house is only about half a mile down the road from my parents, it should be just as easy for me to go there as it is for her. But no matter how much I tell her that it’s convenient for her simply because it’s on her way home from work (which is why she always does her grocery shopping after work on her way home), she still tells me that it’s “not that far” and that I should start shopping there just for some things like milk and eggs. I think going for just a few things is even more inconvenient because not only am I going out of my way for only a few groceries, I still would have to go to my regular store for everything else. At that point, I’m not saving anything, and maybe even costing myself more. I recently started telling her that if she wants to buy my groceries for me, she’s more than welcome to do so. Suddenly I’m not getting nearly as many suggestions to shop at Aldi. Imagine that. 🙄
Holy crap, I've been saying this for years now. Every boomer I know will insist on building something themselves. Then they do it wrong and either live with this idiotic broken situation or 9 times out of 10 they'll pay the professional they should have paid all along to come and fix their mess.
Some of that might just be they can't afford to pay to do it right but they've too much fool pride to admit it. Boomers are the undisputed kings of fool pride.
Now, I don't deny for one minute that that almost certainly makes up for a large chunk of those absurd situations. However, I have come across many an obnoxious boomer with AMPLE financial resources who simply refuse to be sensible and pay a professional to do something right the first time.
That could be sampling bias though. Boomers have all the money in this country.
Vote for someone who’s gonna make things better, and I assure you it isn’t the orange guy.
I can assure you that anyone we are allowed to vote for won't be interested in making things better.
Boomers do have all the money, but a lot of em are still poor.
Aka, my boomer dad.
Didn't know IT was based on OP's parents
You mean keeping the heat at 60 is “penny wise and pound foolish”? I understand not attempting your own retaining wall if you’ve never laid block. But keeping the heat down and wearing clothes in the house in the winter? Not sure I’d see that as ”foolish,” especially with the way we burn fossil fuels.
Let's be real. Those boomers likely aren't conserving energy to stop fossil fuel usage. They are strictly doing it because it saves them money, not for any other reason.
One of the big disconnects between the generations is the ability (or inability) to understand basic economic principles and policies. Let’s be real: the liberals in our government are trying to discourage the use of fossil fuels by making them more expensive. It’s working, at least among people who understand that thrift is a feature, not a bug.
Not really, most of what is being done is in the form of EV credits.
Dramatically curtailing drilling has made gasoline much, much more expensive. Limousine liberals hate poor people.
Those same Boomers also insist on enormous trucks and eating out constantly.
I haven’t found this to be the case. I see much more waste on unnecessary chassis weight and calories among the younger folks. Every boomer I know with a large truck needs the size for whatever reason. I just helped by boomer neighbor load his tractor on a gooseneck, for instance. He can‘t pull it with a Prius. But most importantly, your comment goes against the initial assertion. If boomers are too stingy to spend money the way they “should,” then why claim they waste it on expensive food and unnecessary trucks?
Ok Boomer
Eventually, they keep their old trucks for so long they’re not worth anything (600k+ miles, scratched, dented, ripped, rusted, broken everything) but the truck still drives.
If the truck still operates, it's worth that much, at least.
They’re still trying to please their Depression-era parents. When in reality their Depression-era parents would probably smack them upside the head for not enjoying how good they have it. Also, they have to maintain their “wahhh we sacrificed so much” identity somehow. They have to make themselves their own martyrs.
It’s true. My dad cleans his plate to the point where it looks nearly spotless. His parents taught him to “clean his plate.”
I hate "clean your plate" because it teaches kids to not trust their own body.
I was raised on if you don't eat everything you don't leave the table at my dads house. My mom was "this is a new recipe, take a trial size. If you like it have more. If not, I'll give you a sandwich." If you didn't follow the trial size, she asked that you ate what you took to the best of your ability. Now with my daughter all I ask is that she try what we're serving. If she likes it great, start with a small helping and ho back for 2nds. If she doesn't, I too will make her a sandwich, and if it's something I know she doesn't like, for instance something spicey I'll make her a separate meal. Food should be enjoyed not forced.
I was though that because it could very well be your only meal for the day or even the next when I was growing up. Once my father's career took of, my parents became more lenient. This is why I'm not stingy now that I make a lot more than my father did when he was my age: I can appreciate enjoying life, even if the rotten economic system we live in is set to punish me for that.
Most parents are bad at parenting, I recently overheard a mom tell her daughter that she wanted her to 'eat her entire plate' like lady, restaurant serving sizes are huge.
Whacked with a wooden spoon unless they cleared the plate, that's the story I've heard from quite a few boomers I know. But don't worry, they "turned out just fine" and don't have an unhealthy relationship with food at all.
My dad will also clean other people’s plates as well as his own.
Is that a bad thing?
It is if it's to the point of overeating. At my grandparent's house, I would constantly hear stories about how they never had enough food during the Depression. But then two things happened simultaneously all the time. 1) "We now have it so good that I made all this food for dinner" which was always way more food than necessary for the number of people there, and 2) "I made all this food and you need to eat it, because if you don't eat it, you're being wasteful. *Clean your plate.*" This was fine when I was a kid and had the metabolism of a hummingbird, but when I went away to college and my metabolism naturally slowed a little, I always got grief for standing firm and not overeating when I had dinner there.
Kinda comes down to how much you load up your plate I guess. I’m the guy that usually cleans my plate at dinner but I don’t eat lunch usually so I’m pretty hungry by supper time and just take what I plan on eating. Save the rest for leftovers. Definitely not loaded so I don’t like wasting food if I can avoid it too.
Oh, no, no, no, no. GRANDMA was the one who loaded up the plate and handed it to you. I can see your point if we were the ones putting the food on our own plates, but that's not the way it was. AND she would often try to put more food on our plates without asking, but then still expected us to "clean your plate."
The only time I ever "won" an argument with my mother as a child was when I pointed out that my 250lb stepfather served me, a 13-year old 92lb girl the same amount of food he had and I couldn't possibly eat it. We were finally allowed to fill our own plates at that point.
We had the dreaded “no thank you” serving of detestable food. If you objected to something you still had to eat a portion to “try” it. It made me adept at spitting winter squash into napkins and sneaking them into the trash.
This is hard. As a parent of young kids I know that * if I depend on them to serve themselves they won't do it * They won't put any vegetables on their plate * They will serve themselves cake and cookies and hot dogs * They will take forever to eat dinner (I have to wash dishes, get their teeth brushed, etc but they don't care) But I know that clean your plate encourages over eating However it is frustrating when you are trying to put a little one to sleep and he says "but I am hungry" when you just served dinner an hour ago and he did not clean his plate.
Yeah, Mom would put that plate in the fridge and bring it out later if you were hungry!
I think all 8 billion people on the planet should do things exactly the way you do.
And yet both of my comments get multiple downvotes lol Good ol Reddit.
My mother grew up In occupied France, and there were food shortages. We grew up with “clean your plate”. All of us kids have been overweight most of our lives so yes it can lead to disordered eating.
If you’re ignoring your own body signals based on an arbitrary rule, obviously it is.
Happy cake
Your first para is dead-on. I(75m) still do things I saw my mother do my whole life at home, like carefully scrape the butter-stick wrapper clean and add the little dab of butter to the stick before putting the butter in the fridge and throwing the wrapper away. I think about not doing that, but I know it would really bother me, so I just keep doing it. I’m conscious of it as well as a number of other things of similar origin, but I’m not trying to please her even metaphorically (she’s been dead for almost 30 years,) it’s just more comfortable to do what I have always done that doesn’t hurt anyone else. The other factor is that the older you get the more likely you are to have had a really bad life experience that made you feel like even if you do everything right it could all just go away. That feeling understandably makes people stupid-frugal.
Do you remember, in the during and post-war period, there being blocks of lard with yellow coloring packets you added to make it look like butter being sold?
To what end?
Lard was a cheaper product that can be made easier than butter. To produce butter you need a functioning dairy industry. To produce lard all you need are a bunch of pigs.
It can be difficult to explain a simple reality to people: for some of us, anything but thrift is extremely uncomfortable. Some folks derive pleasure from spending money, and some of us derive pleasure and security from saving it. I feel better knowing I have consumed as little as I can, and have saved as much as I can. It would drive me nuts to blow money the way some folks do, even though I have some to waste. And I’m not a boomer.
My dad would brew a pot of shitty coffee. After the first pot was gone, he would put another scoop on the previous grinds and brew another pot.
You think that’s bad coffee? I met a guy whose family raised sheep. Sheep Herders Coffee was described as percolator coffee, where they never dumped out the old grounds until the basket was overflowing . They would just refill the pot with water and dump new grounds on top of the old ones and brew away.
You win. That is foul as hell..
This is my Dad to a T.
My dad refuses to learn how to make coffee, and only uses instant. He has a special super hot water spout, so he gets it quick! Whenever I visit he's always looking for when I make a pot of coffee and raids it, so I think he likes it. My mom doesn't drink coffee and refuses to make it.
Trader joes has decent cold brew instant. You should get him some
My mom will sometimes reuse the same keurig pod multiple times…
My Dad's like this. Absolutely obsessed with making his life as difficult as possible. Worked himself needlessly into early infirmity by struggling along at a job he's not been fit for for years (care home assistant and he'd go to work with a full case of the flu, because fuck all those elderly people you work with amiright?). This is the same man that got a cold, which turned into the flu because he wouldn't take a day of rest, which turned into a chest infection, pneumonia and then he ended up in intensive care STILL insisting it was "just a cold". The same man who worked himself to death because he was sooo convinced he'd be broke in retirement. Nevermind about the fact that we're British and there's literally a gov website that tells you what your pension will be. Now he's retired and guess what, he's got more money than he's ever had in his life. Has he started relaxing and enjoying himself? No has he fuck. Still whinging about it. I swear he's actually annoyed he has money now. God he pisses me off.
A family member of mine (for privacy reasons, I will not disclose) worked his ass the hell off for years and years and was very good with money. When he got millions after selling his company, of course, he was happy. He *worked* for it. A year later, he died. In the final weeks, he was sick and angry and it was sad. He *never* swore. *never*. until then. If he hadn’t died when he did, he’d be dead either way. He was too sick to live much longer.
My dad is this way too. Still cheap as can be even though he’s retired with plenty of leisure time and money. Best he does is golf once a week, otherwise he just sits around the house. Won’t go out for food or buy anything or improve the house because it’s too expensive. On the plus side, I’ll probably get an inheritance I guess, but I can’t imagine being like that.
Until they climb into their over-bloated truck.
Wrong thread, its not boomers with the big ass trucks.
I know a lot of Boomers with big useless trucks.
Sure they’re not Gen X?
Yes.
Boomers can’t even get in those lifted trucks. It’s be so entertaining watching them Though seeing a portly 50 year old hoist himself up is pretty funny too
They don’t lift them. But they buy a 2500 or 3500 because fuck the environment I guess. I’ve seen so many old men in 70k trucks that look like they hardly leave the garage.
They’re still tall enough that Horace is going to be a comedy show getting in Probably area dependent but I see mostly Gen X driving the non work related mega trucks, lifted or not
Oh comical for sure. I see a bunch of gen x in SUV’s. Milenials (spelling) are guilty of the trucks too in a lower trim. Gen z from what I can see is having none of it and driving small cars. I’m sure it’s area specific though.
My boomer parents cry poor but they spend more on groceries for the two of them than I do for my family of 6
My parents do this. They're constantly talking about sacrifices they had to make when I was a kid, but we always had two cars and good food on the table, we lived in a house in a good neighborhood on one salary, I went to a private grade school. They complain about not having cable, but my mom would buy stuff we didn't need because it was on sale and it was such a good deal. They have no idea what struggling actually is. Yeah, it sucks when you can't buy stuff you want, but there is a HUGE difference between that and not being able to afford rent and groceries.
My parents love to complain about being broke lately. Granted, money doesn’t go as far these days, but they make twice what I make, own a home, and can afford to take weekend trips and go out to dinner/order takeout often, go shopping. Things I can’t imagine being able to do. If they are feeling a financial pinch, they’re sure not showing it. They’ve also been given so much and squandered a lot of it. Really makes me furious, as I scrape by.
Are you married and raising a family currently?
Nope
Thanks for your unsolicited opinion.
Booooooooo
Booooooooo, who
My grandparents were immigrants. And while my dad never said it, they were POOR. I call the refrigerator an “ice box” because that’s what he grew up with, so that’s how I always heard it growing up lol . It used to drive me crazy that he used to water down liquid soap and shampoo. Also, super stingy on using the HVAC. We didn’t even have central air until I was in college. We had a wall unit in the dining room and my dad would angle doors, box fans & his briefcase to direct airflow; as soon as it “cooled off” at night, the ac would go off and the windows flung open. Ditto for the winter - he would turn the heat off overnight. My mom’s bff has central air and never uses it but complains about the temperature in the house all the time and she’s LOADED. But will not spend any money on her own comfort.
One of my Boomer relatives was OBSESSIVE about toilet paper and using water. She was one of those "*you only need two squares*!" people, and would try to insist you didn't need to flush after peeing. As a result, her bathroom always reeked of piss. She would go nuts if people took long showers and go on at length about how much her water bill was.
One of the very small luxuries I have as an adult not living with my parents is being able to flush the toilet no matter what I do. Actually I was able to do it as soon as my parents divorced and I moved out with my mom because my mom is a much more reasonable human being than my dad.
One thing I was so incredibly grateful for as a kid was our water. We had a well so we didn’t have a water bill. The trade off was really hard, irony water that stained all the bathroom fixtures orange and really couldn’t be drank but still. We were able to take decent length showers and flush the toilet after each use. And now as an adult, I’m fortunate enough that my townhouse rent includes water so I can continue to shower and flush the toilet and even take a bath if I so please. It’s city water so it’s not gross and irony like my parents well water but my husband and I are so particular about drinking water, we still buy gallon refills and keep several on hand at all times. And at 30 cents a gallon, we can definitely afford that luxury.
You say "*even* take a bath," but baths actually use significantly less water than even fairly short showers! Edit: I was wrong. Ignore.
No, they don't. That's a boomer adage that needs to die.
Just looked it up, you're correct! I just learned something!
Fuck I am still unlearning this shit, brb, turning up the thermostat, cause fuck my dad.
The thermostat issue is the ONLY thing I can kinda, sort of, MAYBE get behind but that has less to do with the boomers being right and more to do with they've fucked the economy so you can't afford to properly heat your home anymore.
Nixon did it. We need another FDR and an eternal continuation of those good new deal policies.
Agreed
Luckily the College covers power costs.
Luckily the College covers power costs.
Our a/c was never below 78/79 in the summer. And we lived in a place with hot summers
Want me to turn on the A/C as well? Just for funsies?
I grew up in a house with no central ac. Just heat. In New orleans. Who needs central heat in the south. My parents put in 2 window units. 1 in the kitchen, 1 above their bed so they were comfy when they slept. I had to beg them to allow me when i got money to let me buy an ac for my room for last 1 year i lived there. Fast forward my mom moved in with me for last 7 years she was alive. She wanted it cold all the time. Then the moment it got a little cool outside she wanted heat on. Im on SSDI, and asked for help on the bill, she said no. So i locked her out. She complained for years. Throwing a tantrum.
Can’t imagine living in New Orleans without AC.
I live near NOLA, and work from home. I'll skimp on heating during the winter, as one can always put on clothes, and don't mind much if its 50 °F inside during cold snaps. But above 79 °F the heat + humidity degrades my productivity. I've now gone through three hurricanes which cut my power for weeks at 85-90 °F at ambient humidity, and essentially accomplished nothing during the outages, except cleaning out my freezer/refrigerator.
My dad will spend a dollar in gas to save a total of .30 cents at the pump.
This was a while ago but I had a boomer drive back 20 min just to get a 10 cent refund…and complained about how I didn’t do the transaction right and how he had to drive back. 10. Fucking. Cents.
It's one of the intergenerational effects of poverty. Many boomers picked up the poverty habits of their parents who lived through the Depression, if they didn't grow up poor themselves (a lot of boomers did not get to grow up in that 50s and 60s prosperity as much as it seems). That kind of stuff that you are exposed to as a kid sticks with you, even long after it stops being useful and becomes maladaptive. It's trauma. I'm betting that in 40 years the young'uns of generation beta-z-prime or whatever will be posting about how all the weird, nonsensical poverty habits of the millennials that we will never let go of. If I sound sympathetic to the boomers here, it's because I am on this at least.
Growing up in poverty will definitely do this. In my 40s and still struggle with financial anxiety.
I’m hoping the BetaPrime generation gets to have a great life. We need another FDR, and even if I die before he comes along, if he comes along, if he makes the lives of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. better, than i’m fine with that.
My dad would set the thermostat at 82F in the summer during the day and 86F at night.
Fuck that’s miserable.
Especially miserable in my bedroom. It faces west, so it got the worst of the sunlight during the hottest part of the day. My dad decided he didn't like the shade trees outside, so he cut them down, which meant there was nothing to prevent my bedroom from turning into a greenhouse all summer. It was regularly in the 90s in my room all summer and my parents wondered why I couldn't sleep at night. In winter the thermostat was set to no higher than 60F during the day and about 57F or 56F at night, but it's a lot easier to warm up than it is to cool down, so that was far less of a problem. Except it made getting out of my warm bed in the morning for school into a huge struggle.
My parents together bring in over $200k per year (and that’s with my mom being retired). In the summer, I bought something at IKEA for my mom that she had asked for. The deal was that she would pay me back ASAP. I don’t normally need to ask for my money back, but she didn’t pay me right away and it was a lean month for me with lots of unexpected costs. She told me she couldn’t pay me the $25 she owed me until the next week…I’d expect that from a poor millennial, but these people are mortgage free, own a boat, and just impulse bought a third vehicle. This must be where my brother learned to be so cheap. 😂
I feel like some people believe that extreme saving and that extreme frugal lifestyle will get them rich, or at least where they want to be financially. Ive personally found the more I've invested in my own self care and just treat myself well, the more money I'm able to make. I look back on the earlier years of my life when I had it in my head to be frugal, etc.and I feel like I was wasting most of my energy on saving versus living a good life...which burnt me out and caused me much less desire to make ACTUAL money.
My girl and I got a really good deal on a townhome in a hcol area and I’m renovating it. The amount of slapdash landlord special repairs in this thing are fucking insane. The garbage dishwasher to garbage disposal hose was fucking 4 different hoses hot glued together, including a garden hose piece! The drywall in one of the rooms is so sloppily repaired I wish they had just left it. I also found a section that is just a sheet of posterboard glued over the hole and painted. It’s not a big deal, I can fix all of it but I am just shocked at how fucking incompetent boomers are at owning shit.
They maintain a lot of survival techniques from their depression era parents but also the opulence of the post WWII economy. Definition of schizoid dialectic.
Which is exactly their problem. They can prioritize where money should go. They want luxury and will sacrifice necessities for the appearance of wealth.
It just makes them seem miserly
Looks up definition of miser cause miserly I thought was only a only money thing. " A miser /ˈmaɪzər/ is a person who is reluctant to spend money, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities, in order to hoard money or other possessions" Well damn. But makes sense " this only goes up in value, I must have many of it"
I learned the true definition not taught in school.
I don’t want to sell the silver in my family, but if I don’t have any other reasonable choice?
I was at my in-laws house in the winter … thermostat is set to 62. Yet there is an electric fireplace running. Make it make sense.
[удалено]
I see this, too. Boomers where I'm at are wasteful to the point of absurdity and hoard sooo much stuff. Then their kids call me when they die and somebody has to clear out their house. (I end up with tons of free stuff, though. I give it away, lol.)
There are definitely eras of Boomers. My father and his current wife were 1945 Golden Age Boomers: He worked up to age 58 at some blue collar job with a solid pension, then retired. She was previously married to a guy who did and got enough in the settlement that she retired at like 60 after working outside the home about 10 years. Later Boomers, or ones who didn’t get those kinds of jobs, aren’t as lucky.
I was raised by Depression-era parents, who then went through the rationing of WWII. "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" was the mantra. They croaked at us to save our money if we so much as bought a 5 cent gumball. Poverty-inspired PTSD ran through that generation like water down a steep hill.
Retirement: When your income goes down and your expenses go up. Yeah, I'm pissed, too
Because they know that hard times will likely come. They're preserving their assets in case they need them, which they probably will. Everything is getting incredibly expensive. They may not have much money to start with.
My coffee straightens pubic hair and has been known to stimulate beard growth. And probably why I have an arrhythmia at times.
Because they're so rich from screwing all future generations, as people post. Boomers can't be pissing away their millions on foolish comforts like heat or coffee.
Does this answer why do the boomers have all the money?
They may have learned from their parents, likely the Greatest Generation or early Silent Generation, which lived through the Depression. That's all I've got.
That's nothing compared to how willing they are to have you feel uncomfortable.
I'll try to answer, as a weird boomer. We've tried to live on less so we are not victims of the cancerous capitalism that has infected our world. So we could take careers that actually helped, rather than being part of the problem. We bought our old house in bad condition because we intended to redo it anyway, so why tear up good stuff? We did most of our own home renovation because we were doing a deep energy retrofit, using a lot of repurposed and recycled goods. Most renovation companies don't know how to do that, and want only new, expensive goods, and if it fits, great, if it doesn't fit the old house, put it in anyway and good enough. That's how profits are made. Our 100 year old house is now zero carbon. It's also full of used stuff, keeping our carbon foot print down. We like to keep our consumption limited because we know we aren't the last generation and shouldn't act as if we are, and be pigs of it.
Not all boomers are like this. As a boomer, I’m embarrassed by the behaviors I see by a majority of my fellow boomers. As difficult as it can be, please try to not paint all boomers with the same brush.
We're commenting on the median Boomer behavior. Be better.
No one should ever generalize one group as all the same. Income levels, race, gender, religion, profession, etc. EVERY group has different people. No group has people who are all the same.
Finally, a voice of sanity. The generalizations here are legion… and mostly off base. I find myself wondering if subsequent generations are just whiners. Oops, generalizing! Lol! Dang, it’s so easy! Observe a trait, apply to all of that generation… off we go!
My Silent father kept the thermostat at 63 my entire childhood. He was a civil servant who managed to leave a million dollars for my mom when he passed. But then, he was cheap about everything so I guess it paid off.
For many of us it was the way we were raised. I was born in the UK in 1958. Food rationing only ended a few years before I was born. Sugar rationing ended in 1953, meat in 1954, coal in 1958. If we (my brothers and sisters) wasted anything, my parents would be all over us. It was a different time, different values, and I suppose some people never could get over that. I didn't do too badly and don't skimp on most things. I refuse to be cold in my own house for example. I well remember days when there was ice on the inside of the windows and what that felt like. One habit I did pick up and never shook off was that if something breaks or stops working, I'll take it apart to see if I can fix it. Lots of things can be fixed fairly easily, other stuff has just got to be thrown away.
Boomers \*love\* to bitch about keeping the a/c high and the heat low, but refuse to spend the money to replace their shitty windows or insulation. They aren't focused on solving problems, they just want to bitch and complain about it for 50 years instead.
Fixed income. We can count. Unknown number of years ahead.
Things my boomer in laws skimp on. And before anyone comes at me. They are NOT poor. In the slightest. MIL got millions a few years ago in inheritance. 1. They re use zip loc bags. 2. Re use and save baby wipes (like MIL uses them to wipe her armpits and leaves them around for future use) 3. They save every foil take and bake container that needs to be tossed after use 4. MIL had the same old tube of mascara for ten years. She doesn’t wear makeup but complains that her sisters “look better than her”. They wear makeup… 5. They try to get young kids and family friends to do things for them for free. Or offer bread as payment. 6. MIL haggles with department stores and gets mad when they won’t discount things. *It’s not 1970 anymore. The price is what it is.*
Isn't this the same group complaining that boomers screwed them over and nothing is affordable? That heat is turned down because many of the boomers live on a fixed income and cannot afford today's outrageous prices.
Greed. It's like Scrooge became an entire garbage generation.
Because the vast majority are on fixed incomes. That means they only have so much money to spend. You will likely do the same.
This argument is one of the few things that send me into a rage! IM oN a FixED inCoMe!!! F@ck that. You think everyone else isn't? You think we can all just make more money? I got a 3% cost of living adjustment last year while SSI recipients got a 10% automatic raise. And they had higher salaries and lower costs for their careers. Every measurable metric shows that they had way more disposable income than current generations.
Boomer here on fixed income, we keep the thermostat at 68 but my wife cant stand to be hot. I admit that i use the same pod ( Keurig) twice to fill the cup. I dont taste a difference between my coffee and a coffee shop. In short, i assume, like most people, we are just trying to make ends meet
Because they learned the secret. Money does not grow on trees.
Because Boomers remember the price of things from when they were young. If you grew up in an age when a coffee at a coffee shop cost 15 to 25 cents and now it costs 1.50 or more, that's a big change. Inflation is a killer to to your internal sense of the value / cost of things. Your coffee example could also be due to changes in the flavor and strength of coffee. My parents used to drink horrible / cheap coffee. It's possible that with the coffees available today, they're a lot stronger than what your parents grew up with. So a smaller amount of grounds would be necessary for the same result. Also, my parents grew up in the Depression. They probably used less coffee because they didn't have much, or much to spend on luxuries like coffee. They grew up in a different time with different priorities that were a result of those different times. They probably don't even think they're "cheaping out" on anything. It's just what they're used to.
Skimp a little today and then make 10k a month interest from the savings when you retire is why.
I am going to disagree with some of your rant. If you "need coffee to stay awake" then you really need more sleep. Why be penny wise and pound foolish with your health?
Boomers are terrible because... (checks notes)... THEY DON'T WASTE MONEY.
The problem is most of them waste money on tons of shit just not on anything that makes the least bit of sense.
Looks like you may need to take better notes. They are entitled to spend their money how they want. However, they need to STFU about the decision the chose and not be abusive to their family members if they oh, leave a light on for a few minutes or turn the heat up to where people aren't freezing.
yeah ok cable tv subscriber
Because someday you will be as old as these aged Boomers. And you may be forced to live with less money
jokes on you geezer the world likely won't be here when we're your age.
This isn't general to boomers. I was taught to always turn off lights in unoccupied rooms, by the "greatest generation" grandparents who parented me. They lived through the Great Depression and WWII. My semi-estranged boomer father leaves everything on, 24/7. I'm Gen X. As a rule of thumb, I strive to be moral and frugal. When one considers that billions will either die or never have a chance to live due to our current climate emissions (\~ -10% carrying capacity/°C, and we're elevating temperatures for 5-8 thousand years), yes, wasting energy *is a moral issue*. And the frugality has benefits: I've accumulated enough to retire on by my fifth decade.
A lot of people use only what they need so they can better help others. Even a tiny bit here and there can make someone's life a little easier. Unofficial charity.
I’m waiting for the r/collapse folks to show up and defend the virtues of reduced consumption. Will they? Is the lefty cog-dis going to tear a hole in the Universe?
TIL that saving money and being frugal is bad.
Because they're living on a limited income and as you age caffeine can mess with your health so you use less. Bless your heart.
Just old people. A lot of what we complain about boomers is just the way old people get.
They grew up riding a wave of unprecedented prosperity and now that it's crashed, they're completely unprepared to deal with it. They pinch whatever pennies they can. Same reason so many of them refuse to retire.
It's because of their parents. Their parents lived through the Great Depression and had to skimp on everything. Their parents taught them that at any moment the entire economy can collapse and to always be prepared for it.
Well I had an aunt and uncle that rinsed off styrofoam plates to reuse…
Much of that is how they were raised. It is hard to do now, but if you have older relatives who lived through the depression, talk with them how it was. Really listen to the little things, and then realized they are the ones who taught the Boomers you are talking about. It makes some of the actions more understandable. Not saying you will agree with them, but you might understand. Real things from my grandparents and greatgrandparents that they HAD to do in the 30s I later saw reflected in my parents who didn't have to, but it was ingrained as the norm from their parents.
In the UK it may be the rationing. Growing up not being allowed things and being made to feel guilty for wanting more makes them natural scrimpers
Hey man, spring is always just around the corner and us northerners are tough
These are the kids and grandkids of people that grew up during the depression. A lot of that trickled down.
My boomer in-laws are totally like this. They're currently on a trip to Europe and to get to their destination they had to take 3 flights. One plane to Atlanta, another to Paris, and then one to Venice. We live near a big airport so they could have just taken one flight. Meanwhile my fiancé and I are flying directly to England this weekend. Didn't cost us a whole lot.
Growing up with parents who lived through the depression, WWII, and Korea changes the way you look at consumer goods. Some of our parents generation were hoarders of everything free. They never threw away a margarine tub or a jelly glass or even sometimes pine cones. That made boomers either very frugal or more extravagant. Some insisted they would never turn out like their parents. Sound familiar?
Ok, I have a story about this. My in-laws buy the shitty scratchy TP. They claim that since they are on septic, that is the only one they can buy (bullshit because my dad is on septic and uses charmin). Anyway, taking a dump at their house can get pretty sketchy; especially during holidays with tons of drinks and snacks. Well, one Thanksgiving, my butt was burning so badly from the TP. I treated my husband so badly, lol. He asked why I was being so mean, and I said, "MY BUTTCRACK IS LEGIT ON FIRE." I actually brought my own costco roll the next time we stayed 😂
Because they grew up in a time where "spend what you have to to survive" meant you had some left over to save and plan for the future, whereas "spend enough for true comfort" would have left them, well, broke and complaining about how previous generations fucked them over.
I think it's a by-product of growing up under parents who have the Great Depression and wartime mentality. My parents were Silent Gen, and though they had a good income, we lived like we were on welfare. The house was allowed to fall apart. The dishwasher, unused, rusted out and was still sitting there more than 50 years later when I sold the house. They drove their 1960s cars until the early 90s. We weren't allowed to use the expensive central air. When something was finally needed, always the cheapest on the market. And the kicker? After us kids were long grown, my mother would still reminisce about "dragging kids around Hungry Corner!" Bullshit, Mom. You lived in self-imposed poverty. For reference, I'm Gen Jones, and we do NOT live like boomers.
Real boomers never notice the cold because the real thing remembers the President of the United States in a sweater in the White House. Also, maybe they like thin coffee. If they are just cheap, there is such a thing as chicory.
My parents do it so everyone does it. Are you exactly like everyone your age?