Experts say baby boomers will give more than $50 trillion to their heirs. But for many, health care costs will claim the bulk of that wealth.
The story goes that baby boomers are going to give tens of trillions of dollars to their heirs over the next few decades.
The “generational wealth transfer” has become a media fascination, both for its eye-popping size and because it might help younger generations as they face doubts about their financial security.
That shift is already in the works, and will continue for a couple of decades. According to wealth management firm Cerulli Associates, some $53 trillion will be passed down from boomers to their Gen X, millennial and Gen Z heirs, as well as to charities. That includes both gifts during their lifetimes and inheritances afterward.
But the overwhelming cost of health care for older people means most people in those later generations won’t inherit much, even if their elders seem well-off today.
Well, if Gen X and Millennials wanted their own fortunes they should have planned ahead like boomers and been born back when a house cost $7,500.
/sarcasm
Lazy millennials can’t even be born on time.
Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and travel back in time.
Wait. What if these anonymous crypto whale accounts were created by future us shortly after we discovered time travel? We just don’t know we own them yet!
Wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise. I better start learning about time travel
Great Scott!
Watching Married with Children and realizing this dude is working as a store clerk and supporting a family of 5 on that single wage without actually living paycheck to paycheck and then realizing this isn’t a fictional representation of the timeperiod, is really goddamn depresssing.
In less than 40 years the inequality of wealth distribution and the cost of living has changed so drastically that then they could live on one paycheck and now you only get by with a minimum of two.
That’s because the real wealth transfer has been to the billionaires and close to billionaires.
Nothing will fix that short of a cyclical historic repetition of the French Revolution.
100% this. Gentle reminder that Jeff Bezos now has 187 billion dollars. Billion!!
“Let them eat cake,” Bezos calmly sighed before a stray bullet from a sniper drilled him in the forehead, kicking off what would be the bloodiest revolution in US history in the past century.
I’m GenX. I’ve spent my entire life watching the Boomers fuck things up, then having to wade through the debris they leave in their wake.
I’m not expecting that to change now.
Thank you every piece of shit asshole that bucks against the idea of universal healthcare. Fuck you a billion times over. Price gouging out of control capitalist bullshit
That has nothing to do with capitalism. Germany and UK are pretty capitalist (probably more capitalist than US) and yet they either have a functioning private medicine or a completely nationalised one.
Lol “it’s not capitalism, because a nationalized healthcare is capitalism”
The profit motive of capitalist controlled entities is completely capitalism; it’s basically a textbook case of capitalism. Don’t fool yourself by saying the countries with more socialized healthcare are somehow more capitalist to the one that doesn’t.
Wut?
Germany and the UK are demonstrably less capitalist than the US, both because they are social democracies with large, taxpayer-funded social welfare systems, and because their economies are significantly more regulated by both state policies and widespread labor unions.
I disagree.
Based on?
Their feelings ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Shit, more than I was expecting lol.
Replied above.
What an informative and well-argued counterpoint.
There’s rarely a point in arguing with people with crazy ideas like you have here, but ok.
European regulations tend to protect consumers, while American regulations tend to protect monopolies. Consumer protection doesn’t mean less capitalism, it actually promotes healthier competition.
Corporate protection does the opposite - it protects established market players from newcomers.
Regulations are inefficiencies, because corporations with profit motive will of course make good decisions for everyone
They do it all the time.
On a scale from 1 to 10 how delusional are you?
69
Oh no, my milkshake!
lol…. Transfer. I was taken out of my father’s will because told him that Trump was a traitor to his country.
My mom disowned me at 16 (my sister got everything) and my dad left all his money to his 5th wife.
Transfer happened, just not to me or my half-brother.
My parents have their beliefs, but they are good people at heart. I’m trans, leftist, and atheist, going against everything my parents are or believe in and I’m still in the will. And my brother who has recently sort of cut them off after a rough situation with them is still in too.
If we’ll get anything of worth at all? that’s the question. I’ve just always kept it in my head that I’ll never get an inheritance at all, much less anything of value. It’s not worth planning around or thinking about unless you are coming from wealth, and even then, not to the degree you see stories about.
And I’m just not going to compromise on myself or my beliefs in order to keep my name in one.
That is sad. But also trying to blackmail children with not giving them one’s money after one doesn’t need them anymore is even more sad
Yeah. He’s pathetic. As you could guess… we do t talk anymore.
Boy, people like that really do make politics their entire personalities. My dad is the same way. He hasn’t written me out of his will… yet, AFAIK. But he’s going to piss his money away all the same.
Shit. Throw in a few reverse mortgages to pay for Meemaw and Pop pop’s cruise every 6 months, and we won’t even get that generational housing.
There was a segment on NPR recently where they were talking about how many Boomers are selling their houses to pay for medical bills and long-term care, leaving little to nothing for their children.
My Boomer parents had one of those “I’m spending my kids’ inheritance” bumper stickers on one of their RVs and it was no joke. New RVs every couple of years, driving around the country part of each summer, new boats every couple of years, two timeshares, one in Branson, one on the gulf coast FL, two houses, one in the Adirondacks, one outside Orlando, flying back and forth twice a year, a new gold wing every couple of years. They don’t believe they’re rich.
My father worked his whole life as a telephone lineman, retired at 55. My mother worked swing shift in processing at Kodak. Neither started wealthy. My dad had to purchase my grandfather’s farmhouse. My mother didn’t inherit anything. And they didn’t think one second about passing anything down.
Placing the blame on medical costs for the generation as a whole is letting them off the hook, again. Boomers are too selfish to pass anything down anyway.
Union workers with pensions?
Pensions, yes, though my father lost his sometime after he retired. I don’t think the phone company was union, but Kodak likely was. Both parents were anti-union. Both were forced into retirement as Kodak passed on digital photography and phone companies started consolidating.
I’m Gen X with an adult daughter.
I have never received a penny from a deceased family member and have watched too many people getting into nasty fights over the crumbs left by their recently departed loved ones.
It’s become a life priority to leave my daughter a clean estate, with no debt encumbrance, and no possibility for any other person to get at it.
At present, if I were to take my leave from this mortal coil today, she would net roughly $300k.
Part of my plan is to get everything out of my estate and into her hands before healthcare takes it all. Fuck them.
The irony here is that she won’t need it. She’s done well for herself. I anticipate that when it’s my turn to shake hands with the devil, she’ll more likely than not use the proceeds for some charitable pursuit.
The point is that I want her to make that choice rather than giving some doctor his semi-annual Ferrari that he’ll drive for six months then dispose of.
I know two people now who’ve had their father leave everything to a new spouse of a few years (the biological mother had passed away in both cases already) thinking the new spouse will take care of his children with it.
One set of children didn’t fight it, and the other is considering fighting it as it’s recent.
One spouse didn’t help the children and one is acting like she won’t.
So thank you for ensuring your daughter will be taken care of.
Kick ass. I’m gen x with 2 young kids and this is pretty much my plan.
Gen X as well, and never expected an inheritance. That just seems so wrong to be looking forward to a loved one passing. When my Mom brought it up, my brothers and I each said individually that her savings are for her, not to leave us.
My teens may be too young to think in those terms but their best bet is for me to kick off now while they’re in college and I have huge life insurance to cover that. I’ve never talked in terms of leaving an inheritance and am certainly more worried about how to afford living out my retired years
Yep. Same here. That said, both of my parents are already deceased, and I don’t have anything to show for it, which is fine, since I never expected anything in the first place.
I’m going to try to do better for my daughter.
Even ignoring the health care costs, the transfer isn’t going to save anything. The vast majority of wealth is concentrated in a small number of families, so only those few will benefit anyway. It was never a generational problem, it was always a problem of wealth concentration among the rich.
deleted by creator
My mom was a boomer and died when I was a young adult.
Because she was wildly irresponsible with money, as many boomers were in the early internet days, and because of cancer, the only asset really left after she died was the house, which my step dad sold because they were upside down on it after the bubble burst. He didn’t really come out ahead on it.
I was left with nothing but her stuff to sell off. I made about $4k total on it, and it took months on eBay to even get that.
I hope it’s better for others, but I rather expect it won’t be unless they are already pretty well off -and- make a point to preserve as much as they can, which most won’t because “I earned it I’m going to spend it as I see fit”. (Which, you know, totally fair, but doesn’t help if you are banking on inheritance)
I want to sympathize with this since about the only asset worth anything from my boomer father when he died was what remained of good savings after selling his house.
The short version is that he got Alzheimer’s, and we were forced to put him into a care facility. We sold off his house and dumped the money into a trust account so his power of attorney could use it for his needs (mainly paying for equipment and everything with regards to his failing health and the long term care facility). He was pretty smart with money but when the remainder of the funds from his house being sold were divided among his direct descendants, we were looking at 30-40k each.
My brother and I went in on a house together with the money and after the down payment, there wasn’t much left, and now we each have about $2300 a month in mortgage payments instead of rent. Predictably, the house needs some pretty serious work, and we’ve been trying to tackle what we can on our own. The only real benefit we got from all this is that in 25 years or so, we won’t have to pay the mortgage anymore, and the mortgage won’t really increase over time; so we’re kind of fixed in terms of rent increases.
We’re considering this our “forever home” because we don’t really want to move again and because we’re going to do everything we can to make it ours. It has enough space to do that though some areas need a lot of work to get them where we want them.
It’s just sad that his entire life of working and earning money and saving, being the penny pincher he was, only amounted to around $150k. Three siblings and lawyers fees later and we have to pool our inheritance to make enough cash to put a down payment on a house.
There’s a lot of other contributing factors, which I won’t get into here, but that’s just so sad to me.
I think a LOT of people underestimate the boomer “It’s my money I do what I want” mentality.
These days, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more boomers leaving their cash to republican campaigns and shit instead of their shit kids who moved away.
I grew up poor so wealth transfer wasn’t really a phrase spoken at our house. I always thought inheritances were just plot points on tv or for the rich to maintain their power.
Lol yeah, we always joked about inheriting debt!
The wealth the Boomers amassed decades ago was good enough to pay off a mortgage and pay for their retirement. It didn’t include passing anything to the next generation. The money itself became borderline worthless because their “Greed is good” and “I’ve got mine. Fuck you” mindset quite literally destroyed the world. The economy is just as fucked as the planet.
what a stupid attitude to have. Boomers did not get anything more than they deserved. You should be asking for the same. It should not be a race to the bottom. The rich are getting richer at your expense: work out who you should be bitching at.
No transfer for me. My boomer dad already sold our family’s property to slumlords
It’s kind of ridiculous how rich people get everyone riled up about estate taxes that will barely impact them, if at all. It will impact the rich though, extensively if they’re not careful with their arrangements.
Then they find out that a parent put a reverse mortgage on the family home…
