Do you think like a boomer?

I've been trying to come up with a list of boomer traits. When ever I start to think of what they might be I come back to a list of boomer sayings.

Relax
Chill Out, man
Don't be so uptight

What these all say is, "Live for today for tomorrow we die." Which is a true statement however the odds are pretty good that if you woke up today you are going to wake up tomorrow. As you get older the odds get a little worse each day and this trend cannot continue indefinitely but if you are in your 20's or 30's you are going to be waking up tomorrow for at least the next 40 years.

Boomers live their lives like they won't be getting up tomorrow. Run up the charge card. Take the equity out of the house. Hell, don't just take the equity out of the house, take the equity out of the house with a negatively amortizing loan so you can borrow against your future on a monthly basis.

I've even heard boomers say that they are spending all their money now so that when they end up in the nursing home the government will pick up the tab.

Government will fix everything. They want government programs so they steal (oops I mean borrow) from their grandchildren (after all they already bankrupted their kids).

The part that kills me is the same boomers that won't take any financial responsibility feel as though they need to leave the environment in good shape. I guess it is better to hug a tree today then leave a financially viable country to your children and your grandchildren.

That's my rant for now.

If you can think of any other boomer slogans then please leave them bellow. You'll be creating some Quality Time for the other readers.

Boomer women on Sex Tours

This one was sent in by one of our readers (sounds so newspaper like).

It appears if your an old boomer woman and you are a bit randy then you have to go looking elsewhere for a good time.

Remember, boomer men are busy having plastic surgery so they can "compete" with the younger bucks for the girls. While that is occurring the older ladies are feeling a bit ignored.

Never fear, sex tourism is here.

MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - Bethan, 56, lives in southern England on the same street as best friend Allie, 64.

They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls."

Now, the libertarian part of me is chuckling because it is your body do with it what you will. But there is this other problem. In true boomer fashion they don't stop to think about the risks.

Also, the health risks are stark in a country with an AIDS prevalence of 6.9 percent. Although condom use can only be guessed at, Julia Davidson, an academic at Nottingham University who writes on sex tourism, said that in the course of her research she had met women who shunned condoms -- finding them too "businesslike" for their exotic fantasies.

This is nothing new. The mainstream press is just finally picking up on it. Jim Rogers wrote about it in his book Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip. It's a fun book to read. Jim Rogers, a very rich guy drives a car around the world. Anyway, he runs into these types of ladies back in 1999 - 2000.

But back to our story.

For the boomer ladies it the same old thing though:

Experts say some thrive on the social status and financial power that comes from taking much poorer, younger lovers.

"This is what is sold to tourists by tourism companies -- a kind of return to a colonial past, where white women are served, serviced, and pampered by black minions," said Nottinghan University's Davidson.

"LIVE LIKE THE RICH"

That about sums it up. Live like you are rich.

fun - The 80's, you can run....

Ahhhhh the 80's. Boomer posers were everywhere. Try your hand at one thing and if you don't make it scour that image from the face of the earth and try again.

Before he was the Soul Provider this boomer tried his hand at Hair Metal. For those of you who remember this, well, you didn't take enough drugs.

Here's your moment of zen. Michael Bolton, Everybody's Crazy!

It's the Economy Stupid

X-ers. Are you awake? Do you see what is going on around you. Do you live like you should? Are you living within your means? Or are you borrowing money left and right trying to keep it all afloat?

Most of us don't have any choice. We began behind the starting line so we realized that we had to save, cut costs and live a bit more frugally than the generation before us. There are those of us who tried to live the high life and learned (or are learning) pretty quickly that you cannot live that way.

Quite a large number of x-ers (and Ys too) were told to take on massive student loans so that we could get those good paying jobs. To steal from Dr. Phil, "how's that working for you?"

Today's story comes from the NYT. (With a HT to a boomer for this one (I enjoy her blog since she's one of the few boomers who doesn't think like a boomer.))

It appears that people are starting to wake up to the fact that you cannot borrow your way to prosperity.

Here is a clue folks, if you borrow money against your house you don't have more money. You have more debt and now you are going to pay interest on your new found "wealth".

Here's a snippit:

Fran Barbaro has an M.B.A. and a résumé of computer industry jobs with salaries reaching $150,000 a year. She used to have a stock portfolio worth about $1 million. She hung original art on the walls of her three-bedroom house in Boston.

But divorce, illness and motherhood drained her savings. Her home is worth less than she owes, and she owes another $200,000 to credit card companies, banks and tax collectors.

Ms. Barbaro, 50, said she knew she was living beyond her means. But her house demanded work. Her two boys needed after-school programs running $25,000 a year. Medical bills multiplied.

“These were simple day-to-day expenses,” she said. “The money was always there.”

Until it wasn’t. Her take-home pay is $5,200 a month, but her debt payments reach $4,400.

Let's do a quick calculation here. $4,400 x 12 = $52,000 a year in debt payments. Let's try to back out of that. Let's say she has a killer mortgage payment of $1,800 a month. No, let's make that $2,000. That leaves $2,200 for unsecured debt. Credit card companies require your minimum payment to be 3% - 5% of the balance. If we go for some sort of average that would give her about $50k in unsecured debt.

That folks is no way to live.

Plus there is another statement up there. Her two boys NEEDED $25,000 in after-school programs?!?!?!? I can't even begin to imagine what that is. What can two kids do after-school that costs that much?

I'll stop there. The take away folks is; debt is not wealth. If you can't pay cash you don't need it.

I'll leave you with this quote from the story.

“Partly because of desire, partly because of optimism, partly because lenders have been free to invent useful borrowing tools that minimized shame and bother,” he added, “I think it will take a great catastrophe, greater than the Great Depression, to wean Americans from their reliance on consumer credit.”

Gen x bloggers

Every once in a while a Gen-x blogger takes a break from whatever they normally write about to question the baby boomer generation.

Who can look on the boomers and not ask themselves, "WTF?". If the boomers were to walk their talk then this world would be a completely different place.

Anyway, this comes from Smokerings and Coffeestains.

Here's your taste:

Baby boomers born in the first half of the Boomer years** seem to have an odd sense of entitlement overall. When they were young, in the 60s, they fought The Establishment in attitude, clothes, music and resistance. Now that they have become The Establishment themselves, they refuse to see that in making the transformation they lost their “cool” factor. They don’t get that they became the very thing they fought so hard against. One example is how the boomer representatives voted in the vote to enter into war with Iraq.

...

This means that my generation must rely on our own savings to retire. But wait, we won’t be able to retire. Baby boomers’ refusal to see their own mortality won’t let us. Because many baby boomers refuse to admit that you can’t put death or aging off forever, many of them haven’t really planned for their care. That means that when we get time to retire we will be working still, to support our parents and our kids, because the job market couldn’t grow as fast as the population did in the 50s, and the people born then refuse to change the way companies work now to accommodate an increased population and a need for more jobs kept here at home.

Go on over and read the rest.

Enjoy.

How can you not be angry?

We are on our second baby boomer president. And by the looks of it we are heading towards are third. It will either be Hilary or Obama. Both boomers.

McCain doesn't stand a chance. The media is cramming that old f##k down our throats weather we want him or not. And personally, I don't want him. He's scary, so it is good that if he is the nominee then he will have is a$$ handed to him.

Anyway, we will end up with our third boomer president. Which makes me wonder how long we can continue on the course we are on.

The problem with, "live for today because tomorrow we die" is that the life of your children goes on. You maybe dead, but they live in the world that you create for them. Something that seems to be missing in all the boomer philosophies. "Take it easy", "Don't be uptight", "Relax". All that boomerness seems to miss the fact that the world will continue on when they are gone.

Boomers are the first generation to not raise the standard of living for themselves or those that come after them. Good work boomers.

This is a piece from Pat Buchanan's website. I find myself agreeing with him more and more as the years go on. I've said before, I don't know if he's mellowed or I've gotten angrier. Maybe some of both. Anyway, here's your take away for today.

It was to be the year of change, of new ideas, a new politics.

Yet, as of today, it appears the Republican Party will be led into the future by a Beltway favorite of the media and Washington insider who has spent the last quarter of a century on Capitol Hill.

And the Democratic Party appears about to build a bridge to the past by nominating the spouse of the last Democratic president who has herself been a Washington insider for almost 20 years.

With two-thirds of the nation saying the country is on the wrong course, the two parties are offering candidates both of whom played major roles in setting that course. And neither probable nominee has advanced ideas to deal with the crises America faces, nor even shown any great awareness that the country is in crisis.

...

As economist Robert Reich writes, the real wages of working men have not risen in 30 years. Families maintained their standard of living three ways. Wives went to work. The men began to work longer hours than in almost any other developed nation. The family’s equity in its home was then borrowed to sustain consumption.

Now, with the middle class tapped out, the home equity used up or declining, and mortgage, auto and credit card debt turning rotten, the U.S. government is going abroad to borrow 1 percent of GDP to hand out in checks in May to get consumers buying again to prevent a recession.

What kind of long-term solution is this?

How can a government as deep in debt as this one, going deeper every day, with the Social Security-Medicare crisis looming, continue to borrow to fight wars, finance foreign aid and defend nations that refuse to make the sacrifices to defend themselves?