Baby boomers? To "old" to start over?
My Boomer Tips
I read this article today, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_bs29... the headline was "too old to start over" and I was wondering what the mightly people of YA! thought.
I always joke to my mother about what a useless bunch the baby boomers (her generation) were, how their legacy Crack, AIDS, and such evils as women's lib. Of coarse I was only joking,(i'm female after all.) but this does worry me My mother is in her mid 50's she is hanging on to her job by a thread and her options to get something else are almost non existent these days. She is no were near retirement and she has HEP-C, a new hip, and osteoporosis. She is just among the many of her generation going through this right now.
Is this worrying anyone else? The plight of the baby boomers that is?
Arielle H- don't be upset at my jokes they are sarcastic.
Dottie- my mother didn't raise me. I was raised by her elderly mother, I was raised by the generation before the baby boomers.
Paul N- I totally agree with you! We do reap what we sew. I put myself through college without student loans through hard-very-hard work. I worked 2 jobs 60hours a week and went to school full time, I also helped pay for all of my mom's medical treatments. I also didn't get a single credit card and this year I bought a home before age 25 all of this with no help from my parents.
LOL I meant reap what you sow LOL (sorry i'm breastfeeding, working, and typing all at the same time.)
I wasn’t able to read that article, Yahoo’s message said it was expired.
Your mother’s situation is not unique. Many people in my Baby Boomer generation are no longer able to work and have bad health. Too many of us are without spouses or family who will help with physical or financial needs. Looks like there will be a huge wave of people dependent on government aid to exist. Not every Baby Boomer is in this situation. Several people my age and older are working full time and earning a good living. But a significant number do not have health insurance and are out of work (or soon will be). They don’t have savings accounts large enough to pay their bills for very many months.
Starting over doesn’t mean it will get any better. You ‘start over’ to continue to live. There are no guarantees, other than death and taxes for most of us.
i know u were joking,but excuse me,i had nothing to do with spreading aids, indulging in illicit drugs,etc.useless? i and most of the people i know worked their way thru school,graduated,married,balanced kids and careers.i worked all thru high school and college,and worked hard all my life.ur jokes about being useless are not appreciated,if u had my schedule for a week,u would change ur mind.sorry to hear ur mom is having these problems tho.it is hard to start over.but it is possible.my husband owned his own company for 15 years,it was sucessful for much of its run,then the company died during a recession related slowdown.he went from being a sucessful small business owner with 14 employees,to a security gaurd at less than 1/2 his original rate of income.has it been hard?yes.i was also "downsized" and found another,lower-paying job.its been difficult.but no one should cry for us.life is about rolling with the punches,and my grandparents faced far worse in the gr8 depression.good luck with ur mom.did’nt mean to "yell" at u,but ur "jokes" are so wrong-my generation worked 40 plus hours all our adult lives to support our families,i dont think we are now,or ever have been "useless."
I don’t want to start over, it took me a long time to get to this point. Being happy within your self is important. Satisfied with what you have and all your accomplishments should be enough. The 60′s were my generation. I learned a lot during that era and have brought a lot of it with me in my older years. I am 63. Poppy
I am one of those pathetic creatures. Fortunately, my self-image is much more functional than the image you paint, however teasingly, but hey, it took me a while to learn compassion, too. I have plenty of peers who have given in to their problems.
At 54, I am beginning to think my horrible childhood really was a gift. I had to learn how to be comfortable with limitations just to get out of the starting gate. Now, the aches and pains of aging feel like nothing compared to the little girl I was who routinely ran home crying from "white trash" taunts on the playground. No, I am not as physically adept as I was at 20, and there are plenty of 20 year olds who love to bash my grey hairs, but I have grown the techniques for dealing with limitations. What I have lost in physical prowess, I have gained in experience and knowledge and I still have plenty of energy to use it.
So far as I can tell, it is not a question of age. I still encounter plenty of 20 year olds who are struggling and 70 year olds who live with an insatiable lust for life. It is a question of gumption to overcome whatever obstacles are currently on your plate and all of us have our share.
Now you know you are going step on toes. The 60s were good time but hard time to ,I didn’t believe in Vietnam but my brother was there no choice of his own we did what we could to get through as one said not everybody was on dope and most of those people grew up to be wonderful people and each generation makes there mark out curiosity what has your generation done rape music drive by shootings and you say I didn’t do that just like most of us didn’t do anything we were just born at that time, so your jokes are funny to you because you wernt there and I know one thing I don’t remember Aids or these sexual transmitted diseases that they have now. So give your mom a break she is working every day in her head whats she is doing she raised you all right didn’t she?
I was born in 1940 so I do not consider myself a baby boomer. In the sixties the hippies claimed to have an answer for all of societies ills. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. I could not understand how or why the hippies dealt with life as they did and I would have no part of what I thought was foolishness. Everyone reaps what they have sown and that is the way things should be. Today I am happy that I worked hard and lived a simple life in a work-a-day world. I was raised that way and my parents council has proved to be best.
If you were born between 1946 – 1964 your a baby boomer. Being born in 57 I’m on the tail end of it. I start over every morning I wake up, even tho sometimes I don’t want too.
Anyone can start over. But the older you are ( 50+ ) the harder it is. And the truth of the matter is most employers don’t want anyone that is 50+ years of age. So your options are very few at best.
our current president is a baby boomer.whether u approve or dont approve of him is immaterial.the fact is,he worked to get to the position he’s in.call that useless?
Plight of the baby boomers? No such thing exist. My generation is doing just great. Your situation is not typical. I also resent even a joking association with crack, which is indeed the drug of YOUR generation. There are many more of my generation that are doing fine. However, I would guess you wont fine them here. They probably have better things to do.
i work 40 hours a week-im in no "plight’ and im on here because im off today!i can relax,so here i am on "y.a." y not ??????!!!!!!!!!!!
Too old to start over ? I think not ! At 60, I’m a typical baby-boomer, and believe me I’ve worked and studied at my profession so that I have a secure job and no financial worries. I look after my health and have , so far, kept in good shape. I can assure you that crack is nothing to do with my generation, and AIDS is a disease, not something invented by anyone. Women’s Lib gave half of the population the possibility of equality – something wrong with that ? I’m not sure which Boomers you are referring to – you make us sound like a bunch of clapped-out refugees from the Swinging Sixties, but I can assure you that most of us are definitely NOT !
No never-but I’m not sure I comprehend what the term starting over covers. Too old is never an option. We humans are absolutely capable of doing whatever we set our minds to do. None of the stated baby-boomer labels in the question apply to me or my lifestyle or those near and dear to me. I hope what I know to be true about some folks using the premise of a joke as a free pass to insult does not apply here in this question..One thing about us baby-boomers : we have an open mind but we’re not dorks.
I don’t really understand baby boomers. I know people think that baby boomers do so much but they are just people too. The baby boomers are old but they will survive if their children will help them, if not then we will have a lot of people living off of the government.
I know for a lot of us baby boomers who have invested a lot of our adult lives getting to where we are, starting over would be a huge step backward–like falling off a cliff and having to crawl your way back up with a whole bunch of youngsters who are physically younger and more energetic (and less cynical). I’m holding onto my job because I’ve accrued certain benefits over the years that I’ve worked here and to have to start from scratch would not good UNLESS THE NEW JOB COULD OFFER ME SOMETHING–and I don’t see that happening. I’m also within viewing distance of retirement (that is, if I put on tunnel vision and just keep that goal as my aim since I’ve already worked almost 40 years and don’t want to think about having to work another 20 years just to make ends meet) and being bumped down to newbie levels again….would not make waking up in the morning something to look forward to. Yes, we have a whole lot of slackers in my generation, as with any generation (including my parents’–they just didn’t have the widespread network back then so no one knew about it) but I think your generation is going to be worse because there are too many who are undereducated and think that life is going to be easy to slide by on handouts and I don’t think things are going to be that liberal in times to come. There just isn’t going to be that financial cushion anymore (Soc. Sec. and "welfare" and all those things). And with so many businesses failing and more and more people unemployed, it’s going to be hard to employ all these people–there are so many more people alive now then there was back in the Great Depression. Too many of the middle class kids have been raised with every materialistic pacificer handed to them by their parents who feel guilty for not being better parents (or something), the parents feel they have to work longer hours to be able to afford all the latest and greatest so they spend less time with the family; kids grow up thinking everything is going to handed to them and are going to be in for a huge shock when they find out mom&dad aren’t leaving them much to inherit (cause we’re having to pay for our own healthcare out of pocket after we retire, because we had to help support our own aging parents, because we overextended ourselves buying cars and a huge house in a "good" neighborhood, sending the kids to good schools and buying them everything under the sun, going on vacations and what ever else).