Counting Chickens
Slackonomics “is full of interesting mini-arguments, including an entertaining takedown of Ethan Watters’s Urban Tribes …” Publishers Weekly, May 26, 2008
I have to admit rather enjoying the fact that the Publisher’s Weekly reviewer noted my dissection of Urban Tribes, a pseudo-sociology trend book that tries to argue that Generation X is not settling down and getting married because “friends are the new family.” One of the more unsubstantiated reasons he attributes to Generation X never “growing up” is because we have a lot of disposable income and, what’s more, “In the long run, most of us knew we had an ace in the hole. Many of us were in line to be the beneficiaries of the largest transfer of wealth that had ever taken place from one generation to the next.”
There was plenty of evidence this wasn’t true when he wrote it and more evidence keeps coming. An article in today’s Times is titled, “8 Reasons You Should Not Expect an Inheritance.” You can read it and weep for yourself, but here is one point worth highlighting: A 2004 survey “noted that 21 percent of people born after 1964 thought they would inherit some money someday. After all, most of them [meaning us Gen Xers] still have living parents or grandparents. But with each passing year, the pressures on the nest eggs of those older people will only grow. The truly rich will be fine, as they usually are. But a lot of other people, even retirees with net worths well into the seven figures, could end up spending every dime before they die.”
I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that the new economy and the old safety net system are seriously out of whack. Pensions, Medicare and Social Security? Please. As the article points out, those are reasons two and three not to expect an inheritance in the first place.
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[...] concluded a recent post about how Gen X should not be expecting an inheritance with this: “I don’t know what the [...]