No BLLSHT, but I've already accepted that if I want to retire at a reasonable age I'll have to move to another country (as long as they have surf, I'll be a-okay). This decade has become a lost fucking cause. The market has ended where it began. I've made no interest on what I've invested in and no one I know has, either (believe it or not I, and my buds, have our shit together, for the most part). Wonder if they have retirement communities in Somalia?For those of us unfortunate enough to be in our 30s and 40s, the outlook is overwhelmingly dismal. Shackled to huge mortgages we have neither the option of fleeing a country which saw GDP plunge 7.1% in 2009 or of scraping by until retirement. Overwhelmingly we are employed in the private sector and so, in addition to staring at the ceiling each night worrying about negative equity andthe looming flurry of tax increases, we fret whether we'll be in a job next
month (with unemployment tipping 14%, our paranoia is justified).
And now, the final insult. As we woke the morning after Black Thursday to survey the smoking crater that is the economy, it was with the knowledge that it is we who will be made to pay for the venality and corruption of a business and political class almost exclusively drawn from the ranks of the generation ahead of us (I know of nobody my age who has ever voted for the party of cronyism and patronage, Fianna Fail, while all our parents did so religiously).
Don't listen to these financial people, just buy a ski mask and revolver and hit up 1 convenient store a week for a little extra scratch. BOOM! Mortgage payment taken care of.Traditionally people have accumulated wealth over their lifetime, becoming richer over time as they saved, invested, paid down debt — growing their nest eggs, acquiring full ownership of their homes, and securing the years of service needed for a nice monthly pension. From a financial perspective, life got better with age.
For most Gen Xers however, this trend has been temporarily reversed, where their finances have likely gotten worse over the last 10 years due to the mortgage crisis, a stock market that has shown no growth, companies terminating pensions and passing on more health care costs to employees, job losses, furloughs, and pay cuts, not to mention increasing costs of college tuition for their children. Many Gen Xers are actually financially worse off than when they graduated college, something that was almost unheard of in previous generations.
The boomers are like a generation of MC Hammers. They had money, notoriety, life by the balls and then they just fucked it all up. So I'm finding comedy that The Atlantic thinks the biggest fuckups have a clue as how to clean up their mess.Self-absorbed, self-indulged, and self-loathing, the Baby Boom generation at last has the chance to step out of the so-called Greatest Generation’s historical shadow. Boomers may not have the opportunity to save the world, as their predecessors did, but they can still redeem themselves by saving the American economy from the fiscal mess that they, and their fathers and mothers, are leaving behind.
Don’t bother me kid. Gen X began surfing the Internet when you were just a batch of vanilla tadpoles in your dad’s testicles.WHAT is it with today's baby boomers and Generation X and their scepticism of the phenomenon that is the internet - as though it is some kind of extraterrestrial creature that has arrived uninvited in their world with a view to taking their place as the central source of information for their children, or Gen Y as we have come to know them?
In the future money won't mean a damn thing anyway (that doesn't mean I'm going to share what I have). I know several couples who have not yet started saving for retirement. They share much in common. All in their 30s, with children and mortgages, they are just managing their household expenses and their debt loads. Saving for the future is something that they know should do, but try not to think about.
Many now in their 30s and 40s are facing financial challenges, with the experience of two recessions, relatively high debt loads and fewer company pension plans to rely on in retirement. The majority of us will move from job to job, as career roles at companies that offer defined benefit pension plans quickly disappear.
I've already accepted that no one in particular will be held accountable for this shit. There'll be a congressional investigation and they'll spread the blame around to enough people so no one has to take the full hit. This is just further proof that many people don't deserve to live long lives. So far only sheens have reached into some coastal waters, and the oil's slow progress despite an uncapped seafloor gusher has given crews and volunteers time to lay boom in front of shorelines. That effort was stymied by choppy seas into the weekend, but officials were optimistic Tuesday as the sun came out and winds eased.
Coast Guard spokesman David Mosley said Tuesday that rig operator BP LPC would continue trying to cap the leak and authorities hoped to dump chemicals from an airplane to help break up the sheen.
The uncertainty has been trying for people who live along a swath of the Gulf from Louisiana to Florida. The undersea well has been spewing 200,000 gallons a day since an April 20 explosion aboard the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 workers.
Tonight in regards to him getting tossed out of his job because a baby boomer wanted it.(CBS) Conan O'Brien refutes NBC's contention that "The Tonight Show" he briefly hosted was losing money and also says the six months he had the show were not long enough to declare it a failure with viewers.
O'Brien appears in his first interview since being forced from his Tonight Show role in a "60 Minutes" segment to be broadcast this Sunday, May 2, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
I'm back. Happy to see that oil hasn't shown up on my shoreline just yet. Looks like the Louisiana fishermen are the first to get fucked. But hey, at least they're getting employed cleaning up the mess they never created, right?
Way too optimistic for me to take seriously. Bring on the labour shortage, some younger members of the workforce might be thinking.
For years, we've heard about a pending shortage as the demographic powerhouse known as the baby-boomer generation retires. Experts lament the lost economic potential due as jobs go unfilled.
But for members of generation X -- 30-to-45-year-olds, who will essentially be running the show when boomers bow out -- there's a lot of upside to this.
They're saying it's sorta hopeless. Unless you plan on working til you're 85.Gen X has indeed gotten the short end of the retirement stick to date. But they also have more time to keep plugging away at retirement saving, and that gives them a slight edge over younger Boomers. I say slight, because both age cohorts are highly unlikely to be able to match the financial security that the Old Boomers had at age 60 (CRR measures security as assets relative to income.) Gen X would need stocks to deliver an 11 percent annualized gain up through age 60, and young boomers would require a 13.2 percent annualized gain, according to the study’s authors. Neither is exactly plausible, as they are about double what the New Normalists keep telling us is likely.
It's just baseball, I don't give a fuck if a former pitcher may have lied to an asshole Senator.NEW YORK -- Jose Canseco announced Tuesday on Twitter that he had been subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating whether Roger Clemens lied to Congress when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs.
So depressing.Generation X, now entering or into middle age, is starting to find that the economic model mapped out by their predecessors just isn’t working for them. Caught in a ‘perfect storm’, their finances are being buffeted on all fronts.
On the one hand are the costs of taxes, children and elderly parents. These will be siphoning off cash that was earmarked for retirement.
And on the other hand, any savings that have been put into the stock market are back to where they were ten years ago. Another nail in the coffin for retirement plans.
This really isn't a secret. MTV made it clear a decade ago they don't want our viewership even though we're the ones responsible for their success. But since they're assholes about it, based on principles alone, I'll avoid purchasing anything their sponsors pimp. Tidbit from the HRTS rubber-chicken luncheon over in sterile Century City: MTV Networks president Van Toffler reiterated the network's devotion to millennials (a.k.a Generation Y), but also made it clear that Generation X shouldn't let the door hit them on the way out.
"We're pushing Generation X out," Toffler said. "We're slaves to our different audiences, for MTV that's millennials, who are vastly different than Generation X; they're definitely less cynical -- they're more civic minded."
Follow these steps. They'll be on you like groupies on a 80's era Hair Metal Band.(via)
In her case I find it perfectly acceptable to find a rich guy, have him pay off her debt, and divorce him.When Michelle Bisutti, a 41-year-old family practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, finished medical school in 2003, her student-loan debt amounted to roughly $250,000. Since then, it has ballooned to $555,000.
It is the result of her deferring loan payments while she completed her residency, default charges and relentlessly compounding interest rates. Among the charges: a single $53,870 fee for when her loan was turned over to a collection agency.
People that wish to be leaders should never be trusted. And people that choose to follow typically aren't very bright. Labeled Gen X, this age group was expected to claim positions of authority and run the business world when the baby boom generation headed for the exits.
Didn't happen.
At least not yet.
The X-ers, caught between the boomers and the equally big baby boom echo, Generation Y, "continue to be overshadowed in the workplace," said Warren Cinnick, a succession planning expert.
Even your dope dealer wants to see a credit score.A few years ago, a score of 620 or higher was good enough. That increased to 680 in early 2008. Then it jumped to 720 in April last year and 740 in August, says Rodney Anderson, senior managing partner of Plano, Texas-based Rodney Anderson Lending Services.
In the past, any score of 700 or higher would get a double thumbs-up from credit experts. Now, rate adjustments begin kicking in at 740, with every 20-point drop adding another adjustment.
Besides the fun times I personally had, I really don't think I'm going to be looking back at this decade and saying something along the line of "Ghee, I sure do wish miss (insert event) like what happened in 2004".
It's like millions of us share the same biography. Our parents grew up knowing what their careers would look like: stable job, long stints in one or two companies, early retirement. My generation never had a plan, and that has helped us appreciate our successes and cope with our professional missteps and setbacks.
And boy, what setbacks we’ve had. I’ve been laid off four times so far and my resume looks like a toxic waste dump of high-flying publications that fell hard and fast into the great abyss of a media graveyard. It turns out I made a particularly poor choice in careers, but I’m a survivor.
I’ve always had a job and yet I've never had job security. It’s the only reality I know.
