12mo ago

The 'wealth transfer' from boomers won't save Gen X and millennials

www.nbcnews.com The 'wealth transfer' from boomers won't save Gen X and millennials

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.

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.

116 comments

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.
- 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.
  
  for those curious but lazy, married with children was started filming in 1987 and supposed to take place in schaumberg illinois, so historically those homes were 4x less expensive than today.
  https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=historical+home+value+Schaumburg+Il+in+1987
  
  Glad to see everyone in the family was counted
  
  They made a point of representing Al as a half broke loser with a 30 year old car tho. You too can live like that if you leave the city

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.
- GenX here as well. My mother died horribly of cancer when I was 13 and my father left about two weeks after her death and I was legally transferred to the State's custody.
  I've been told I'm "lucky" in that I'll never have to shoulder my parent's debt. So, you other people don't know how lucky it was to be an orphan! But no really, a finical planner literally indicated to me that, THAT was a positive. And somehow that's really colored my opinion on where we are as a society.
  
  What do you mean by shoulder your parent's debt? Do you live somewhere that debts can transfer to children?

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.
  
  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.
  
  Regulations are inefficiencies, because corporations with profit motive will of course make good decisions for everyone

Gen X here. I do not expect any inheritance at all.
And how much of this "fascination" with generational wealth transfer is actually companies salivating over potential profits?
- Elder millenial here. I expect no inheritance from my mom or grandparents and no social security. I'm one of the lucky ones though. My dad died ten years ago and left me just enough to make a down payment on a house.
  The moral of the story is, give your parents cigarettes and hope the cancer kills them quick before the bills can pile up.
  
  Don't believe the social security scare tactics. It's always been a shell game. It isn't some pile of money that runs out if we don't pay into it. It is just another line item. Short of voting for it to die, it will be there.
  
  They summoned a new inheritance tax over here, they sold it to us in the shape of: to get more taxes from the rich.
  But those idiots don't run around giving away money, they hand out businesses and stocks to their family or other assets.
  So who are once again ending up paying even more money? Hmm? Yeah that's right, if my dad manages to have some money left the goddamn tax criminals will gobble that up even though i probably need it to pay for his funeral.
- Chances are, corporations are already plotting how to get the boomers to spend as much as possible before they pass away.
  
  Shopping network and other 24/7 buy-over-the-phone television programming has already filched billions away from the silent generation by taking advantage of their cognitive decline. They just need to figure out what sticks with the Boomers now.
- Same. Everyone I know who has boomer relatives doesn't expect to get any inheritance. That goes for my wife and I as well. I don't really mind personally. I've made a concerted effort to be self-sufficient and have never banked on getting a dime of inheritance. But I feel like too many in the media are setting a dangerous cultural trend where many people will falsely expect to get money.
  
  Yeah I was disowned and my wife’s parents have made it clear nobody gets much
  
  I don't get how we blame the media for reporting on unprecedented things that economists are talking about. If someone thinks they are getting an inheritance because they heard boomers have a lot of money as a group, then that stupidity is on them, not on the media.

The top 1% of American earners now own more wealth than the entire middle class
- Oh no, my milkshake!

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.
  
  It's absolutely going to be most of them. Modern medical care isn't worried about quality of life at end of life, and because we don't have healthy conversations around death in the USA, the kids will probably be desperate to keep mom and dad hooked up to machines until they're literally fucking braindead.

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.

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.

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.
- They paid off a mortgage, they had something to pass on.
- 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 removed at.

No transfer for me. My boomer dad already sold our family's property to slumlords

Then they find out that a parent put a reverse mortgage on the family home...

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.

I'm just about 40, my parents are in their early 60's. When they pass on, I'm most likely already hitting retirement age myself. I don't need extra cash when I'm old.
- Oh, you will. When my grandmother had to rely on Medicare and the shitty insurance she got through retirement her healthcare cleaned out her bank account and most of her retirement
  
  Luckily I live in a country with universal healthcare.
- I'm 27 with parents who just turned 70. Idk where that plays to this, but you are much closer to your parent's age.

One of my mothers boomer quotes , "I'm going to spend my kids inheritance". She did too. She is now 84 and needs to sell and borrow. Good thing I believed her when she started saying this in 1988.

for many, health care costs will claim the bulk of that wealth.
They system was designed that way. Save for retirement so corporate healthcare can get it.

I'm fully aware my parents will die and leave me nothing, unless they leave me their debts. I have no children to burden.
- I don't have kids because the world is already significantly worse than when I was a kid, and the dissolution of the ecosystem that sustains our species is only increasing.
- At least you don't have to accept the succession if they're worth less than the amount of debt they have.
- what little there was left to me i never got--older sibling responsible for distributing it only 'distributed' my share into their bank account.

Thankfully, I've never imagined gaining anything from my mom when she passes some day. Thankfully her parents set up a trust so she isn't homeless, but when she finally gives in to assisted living, those bills will eat whatever is left.
She's always like, "but I'm leaving you the house!"
The house is full of worthless collectibles and smells terrible after decades of floods and cats. If she got hit by a bus tomorrow I'd probably sell it to one of those seedy We Buy Ugly Houses companies.

Oh neat, so our robust free market economy that is more meritocritous than anywhere else on earth is actually a giant sham, better hope you have rich parents!
All that stuff your parents told you your whole life about working hard studying hard and you'd be guaranteed to make it? Oops, they were wrong, now help them figure out how to access their Hulu account, again. What? You've barely eaten? Ah, pff, builds character!
If someone figures out a way to actually set up a business that soylent greens the boomers, I'll figure out how to do some exquisite cooking recipes with it.

Our father locked up our property in legal hell to protect it from his evil siblings. But now we can do much of anything with it LOL other than keep paying taxes. That's generational debt lol.
Actually it's probably really smart because if you sell to slumlords, you are giving up your real wealth. Just let the properties gain momentum. One day for your kids to fight about. Just have 1 kid problem solved. But if he dies? Ok have two kids. Send one to the monstery or the convent. But what if they marry poor....hmm arrange marriages! What if they don't like that? ....teach them racism from the early moments in life....oh shit, this sounds like we are destined to recycle ♻️ hilter and his narzis. Yah maybe sell the house and go back to being poor. That's how we did it!

Eat the rich

I'm shocked.
- Well, hopefully not that shocked.

My parents have a ranch house, 3 adult kids and medical issues. Assuming they don't go to a home and have to sell their house to afford it, my brother is going to need it a lot more than I do. Similar in laws. It would be the same for in law grandparents but they happened to be the type that will die before seeking help. It'll probably get us sued by disgruntled family in inheritance disputes anyways.
We're on our own.

This is hilarious. They're gonna spend all their money clinging to life. The future they made by raping the future. and they won't even just leave!

My mother passed recently and was the caregiver for my father who has Parkinson’s and can’t live alone. My parents managed to save some money but not enough to afford him moving to an assisted living facility but has too much to qualify for Medicaid. There won’t be enough money to care for him let alone any sort of inheritance. Fucking system is so fucking broken.

Only things I expect to inherit from boomers is a fucked up ecological sauna, do-nothing political system, and more taxes.

There's a reason why no other country in the world imitates the US healthcare insurance system. Sucks everyone dry as soon as they get sick.

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