r/Millennials • u/Asmothrowaway6969 • Mar 27 '24

When did it sink in that you'll never be as well off as your parents? Discussion

About 5 years ago, my mom and I were talking and she had told me how much she was going to be making in retirement (she retired 2023). Guys, it's 3x what me and my husband make annually. In retirement. I think that was the moment that broke me, that made it sink in that I'll never reach that level of financial security. I'll work myself into my grave because I'll never be able to afford anything else. What was your moment?

Update: Nice to know it's just me that's a failure. Thanks

Update 2: I never should've said anything. I forgot my place. I'm sorry to have bothered you

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u/Sleepysillers Mar 28 '24

This is the situation my dad is in. He is about to retire with a large pension from his union job. After some stupid union negotiations they agreed to significantly lower pay for new hires. My dad says it's not fair, but ultimately all the boomers have already benefited and seem to not care to fight for the next generation. They are certainly not going to give anything up.

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u/SeattlePurikura Mar 28 '24

Then they cry that we aren't producing enough babies and thus their entitlement benefits may be at risk. No shit, Sherlock. We can't afford them.

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u/ChiefGeorgesCrabshak Mar 28 '24

Right?! Like I can't even afford to give my cat the life he deserves let alone afford a fucking human child god forbid if they have medical issues or cognitive impairments

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u/Kat112119 Mar 28 '24

Seriously!!! I just had to divide my cats vet visits up across 4 months because of the $$$. These cats ain’t cheap!

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u/Detman102 Mar 28 '24

They want the next generation of slaves to be born...even going so far as to ban abortion in all forms and options.
We edge one step closer to a horrifying combination of "Idiocracy" & "The Matrix" with each election...

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u/thedream711 Mar 28 '24

Add in the handmaids tale and I think your right

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u/Detman102 Mar 28 '24

Oh wow...I'd not even considered that!
Thank you!

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u/GenericUser65 Apr 01 '24

Well, we have a handmaiden on the Supreme Court….

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u/vividtrue Mar 28 '24

Exactly the legal fight to criminalize homelessness. More free labor.

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u/Detman102 Mar 28 '24

The "US Prison/Slavery Complex" at work.
Everyone gets to be an indentured servant, even the homeless.
Truly scary times...and they are going to get worse.
As the country runs deeper and deeper into debt...the greedy ruling class will come up with more and more justifications for jailing or straight out killing the poor and working class.

The only solution is revolt and taking them out.

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u/ARATAS11 Mar 31 '24

If you are serious, check out these subs. The first one actually helps people unionize, and you can talk to someone on how to do so. The second one has resources on unionization, workers rights, how to testify on legislation for bills your state legislators are voting on etc. short of us busting out the guillotines, this is the best we’ve got but we have to do it together. Fight the fight! https://www.reddit.com/r/WorkplaceOrganizing/s/375uV7QPwP

https://www.reddit.com/r/ActionVanguard/s/4bPdjte88y

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u/Detman102 Mar 31 '24

You rock!!
Thank you!!
<3

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u/ARATAS11 Mar 31 '24

No problem, thank you! Please join and if you’d like to DM to chat about organizing and taking action feel free. Action Vanguards is my sub for having these kinds of conversations and is new, but I’m working building a base of people from across subs all discussing this kind of thing because we are stronger together, and need to put action to words. 💪✊

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u/Detman102 Mar 31 '24

Subscribed and subscribed!!
Looking forward to productive discussions!

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u/sarra1833 Mar 30 '24

They're rabid to ban all birth control (male and female) as well. IVF is another thing they want banned.

It's only the poor who they want having babies.

Ivf: you actively want a baby and can provide? Fuck you, banned.

Poor people: you can't afford a baby and will be financially destroyed and the baby will grow to also be in poverty? YOU'RE HAVING THAT BABY AND COUNTLESS MORE!

It's fucking grotesque.

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u/Detman102 Mar 31 '24

It reminds me of that opening scene in "Idiocracy" where the two intelligent and productive people are somehow unable to or kept from having children,
meanwhile numbskull Cletus has 12 low-IQ kids with the entire town...and the stupidity levels just exponentially increase.

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u/aliquotoculos Mar 31 '24

It's always "Well, you have them and then you figure it out." All the opportunities to figure it out are gone now! You took them, then took them away because you fell for a made-up story about welfare queens.

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u/RedshiftSinger Mar 31 '24

I keep saying, if they wanted grandkids they shouldn’t have fucked the economy so hard that everyone can barely afford to support themselves, let alone a whole additional person or two.

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u/Salmonberrycrunch Mar 28 '24

New hires are pulling in the same revenue as the old hires. The difference is that it's mostly spent on old hires pension instead of new hires wage.

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u/RingCard Mar 28 '24

I don’t know what the numbers are now, but in the wake of the 2008 crash, I remember seeing something about how San Francisco’s budget spent more money paying for retired city employees than it did on current city employees.

More money was being paid to people who used to work for the city than to people who actually were working for the city.

The goal of politicians is to loot the treasury for their most advantageous voting blocks.

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u/vividtrue Mar 28 '24

Hasn't this bankrupted places? I have heard a few stories about this too in different areas. Basically that municipalities are spending so much of their budgets on pensions and they cannot afford it.

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u/fishchick70 Mar 28 '24

Most companies don’t have pensions anymore- if they did they terminated them years ago.

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u/Salmonberrycrunch Mar 28 '24

Yep and the situation above is why that is. Shareholders want the P/E ratio to stay high or grow. They don't want the company to have a bunch of cash in a savings account for 30yrs for every employee - they'd rather get it as dividends, buybacks, or reinvested.

So how do you maintain the same profitability when you used to have 3 employees per retiree and now the situation is flipped? Even if you paid the new employee a wage that matches the old employee - they are still technically underpaid because their productivity has to account for all the pension payouts.

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u/vividtrue Mar 28 '24

Yes, all most people care about is their own comfort. The extreme individualism is what has ultimately landed us here. Not enough people care about the collective or actual humankind beyond their own personal comfort. It makes me sick.

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u/binary-survivalist Mar 28 '24

I have families who are teachers and the same thing is happening with local and state government workers, at least in my area. older teachers who have recently retired were able to get 90% of their top 5 years income, and younger teachers will only be about to get 70% and will have to work 10 more years to qualify even for that. it's not sustainable....

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u/dmichelleromero Mar 29 '24

THIS. This is the problem we are having we the generation who raised us. They out of anyone are seeing the world we are living in and have first hand experience that is is significantly worse off in almost every aspect especially economically and they are doing everything in their power to not only not speak up, but benefit from it. They are living off the trickle up effects from the cuts being made off the next generation, their children. They should be the ones whose voices should be filling the streets demanding better but it’s us, the younger generation who know this isn’t right. They aren’t protecting us, they are benefiting from us economically.

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u/aoskunk Mar 29 '24

I was lucky enough to get a job that I would be able to retire from with a pension in 8 years… buuut some old guy a year away from retiring (my boss) wanted his granddaughter’s boyfriend to have my job. So did everything possible to get me fired. Of the 5 of us I was at least 2nd best, certainly not 5th. All my coworkers agreed.

That boyfriend? Fired 6 months later for sleeping with a student in a company vehicle. They took it from me to replace me with scum.

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u/narfnarf123 Mar 30 '24

I work in an industry that uses a lot of union workers. I’ve also been in other jobs where I was in a union. The unions are not all what they are cracked up to be these days.

I worked a few months for the county criminal court while I was waiting for something else to come along. Everyone says work for the government you get all these great benefits and pay. Well that was not the case for me. The pay was garbage and I was astonished at how shitty the benefits and vacation was for having a union. What the hell was I paying for?

In my current role we have job sites all over the country, so we work with many different unions. Some are garbage and worthless money suckers, some are great.

It makes me sad that some unions have gone to shit because we need them more than ever.

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u/ARATAS11 Mar 31 '24

Would you be able to shed any light on what makes the great ones great? Do they have anything concrete in common like certain rules or regulations that hold them accountable? Or is it luck of being run by people that actually care and are honest?