Two Very Different Books about Integenerational Wealth

[gwendally]

I've recently finished two books that are very different but I'm going to review them together because they are oddly similar.

The first one I read was "(Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class" by Nan Mooney.  The gist of this book is that people who went to college for degrees in creative writing or art

Comments

[aelf]

My grandmother was the terminator for a trust. Because the trust was written poorly, the heirs got much less than what they would have gotten had the trust been written well (there was a law suit, the hospital that got the bulk of the trust had a LOT of money and a lot of reasons to fight, and eventually the heirs settled for their "paltry" amounts. I learned that I need to consider my intentions when/if I write a trust and be careful about putting hard numbers in

[gwendally]

One of the things you have to know about rich people is that they are neither better nor worse in character than poor people. If they are people who can rationalize behaving badly to please their whims they they do so, whether they're poor or rich. The defect in character that makes people want to drown themselves in a bottle is the same in both sets, for example

[marveen]

Wow. I admit that if I were to inherit half a million, my first impulse would indeed be to buy a house with it.

Of course, my version is to seek out one of the local places going begging at 89,900 and offer them 75 cash, leaving us with quite a bit to invest, etc.

Sidebar: I always wonder at people who live in huge ginormous grand McMansions that cost half a mil or more. The sq. footage is often incredibly large (four thousand square feet? pah, how about twenty-six-thousand?) and then you learn one retired couple live there. I mean, what does one DO with all that space? And what about cleaning all that area? (Once again, my worldview may be warped by growing up in a 900 sqft home and currently living in a 675-ft two-bedroom, but I still shake my head at the architectural excesses.)

[jsl32]

a lot of people live out of 1-2 rooms. in my DINK-heavy area, many people live/work out of their kitchen and one bedroom. And they don't use the kitchen for anything other than holding their local organic takeout empties.

the ones who are stretching to afford use cheap maid services; the ones who aren't use local independent housecleaners, who are happy to charge what the market will bear to keep it all guest-ready.

[kittles]

These books would be funny if they weren't so sad. I can't believe you made it all the way through that first one.

Have you seen Rich Kids of Instagram? I sort of enjoy seeing them be so happy with their money. Except the first thing I noticed was how much alcohol there is everywhere.

[kittles]

Update - saw this article today which ties right back in.

[gwendally]

The social context? As in, "if everyone else were jumping off a cliff"? *That* social context? OMG.

Well.

That did strike a bit close to the bone, as just today I was emailing my daughter about paying her rent this fall. Except, uh, she's diligently working on getting her first degree, working three jobs (two of which are unpaid internships) and if she weren't living off-campus we'd have paid the on-campus room and board. This is actually cheaper.

But, yeah. I'm paying the rent for my 21 year old daughter's apartment ten miles from home because she doesn't want to move back home and commute twenty miles to school. (So she commutes eight miles, but she's on a bus line.)

I'm brand new to having a daughter in her twenties. (Fuck!) So I don't really know how long I'll be paying her rent. My guess is one semester.

[kittles]

I paid my rent with student loans when I was at college. I wish I hadn't. It would've been so much nicer to graduate with no debt. And frankly working more hours instead of my 20 hr/wk part time job would not have hurt my schoolwork - only my social life (which NEEDED being disrupted frankly). But hey, hindsight and all that. Also, my apartment was 250 square feet with $300/month rent, so it was pretty cheap.

On the one hand I'd say you shouldn't have to pay for her rent - but it sounds like you're CHOOSING to. And some of what you're paying for is releasing her partly into the wild but with a safety net. The difference is, I don't think you're taking out loans to do it.

[barking_iguana]

What you're not mentioning is that wit wasn't as HAAARRRDDD for men born in the 1930s and 40s. Society was organized in a way that sought them out, even if they were only half-hearted in seeking themselves, and offered them respected and rewarded roles. And until quite recently, society taught both girls and boys born to families of that class (even the latter ones, whose prents had to work harder or get more lucky to find and maintain lucrative roles) that what happened in the post-WWII expansion was the to be expected.

[gwendally]

I agree that white men born in the United States between 1930 and 1940 have probably the highest standard of living ever enjoyed by a demographic group in the history if the human race.

This.

[marveen]

Both my parents were born in the '30s and, until I had to live with them post-divorce, absolutely refused to believe that it was hard to get a job when one had a college degree (even the paltry two-year version I possess). They kept admonishing me to "get out and pound the pavement" which in the '90s and post-2000 is pretty much bullpuckey.

Once I lived there and they saw my jobsearch activities (applying daily for positions, spending money on printing quality resumes and postage and interview clothes, etc.) go on for three months before I found so much as a part-time minimum-wage position, they began to believe that the world had indeed changed in the last fifty years.

Mind you, my father's a blockhead no matter what the topic, but hey.

Re: This.

[ford_prefect42]

No, it isn't. I have *never* known anyone, not a single person that fained to find a job after a few *weeks* of pounding the pavement. Regardless of their educational attainment. I live in a very depressed area of upstate NY, one in which it is common for people to say "there are no jobs", and yet, my GFs sister, with a high-school diploma from a *looney-bin* obtained a job within weeks of arrival, then crapped all over it, got *another* within 2 weeks, and then quit *that one* within a month. Her drunken violent, uneducated, moronic boyfriends have each (she's currently playing BFpong with 3 of them) gone through multiple jobs, all lost due to lack of attendance. My GF herself has landed jobs at several levels of experience, some temp positions that ended, one a job that she wasn't really qualified for, but she's still working, and consistently finds work within a few days of seriously looking.

I simply do not believe your story. I think that you are deluding yourself.

[gwendally]

Also, the book written in 2008 was answered by Elizabeth Warren with consumer protection to help people not get snookered into bad debt:

http://www.consumerfinance.gov/

[coercedbynutmeg]

I forget, did you ever read The Two-Income Trap?

[gwendally]

Yes, I did. This person writes from Elizabeth Warren's mindset - that people got into debt completely for reasons not their fault - but without her authority or scholarship. This is just a whiny journalist version of the same book, filled with stupid endnotes referencing other journalist's editorials.