So yeah title says it all, currently around 8 months into a new hospital position and I’ve been extending my feelers out and doing job apps and got back invites to the start of preliminary interviews for some other jobs (mainly cuss there is likely going to be no significant pay raises for all us new hires until 2 years out so fuck that).
Bring this up to parents though and they have the weirdest attitude as though I’m betraying my company as well as shooting myself in the foot even though if I got some of these positions I’m interviewing for I’d see a huge pay bump and really good benefits (one of them is a state gig and has a damned good pension plan with only 5 years to be vested fully).
I honestly believe the “not knowing how much housing costs” thing is the worst boomer trait of them all. Anyone can look up house prices at any time, there’s no excuse for thinking that you can get affordable housing because “I did when I was your age” or whatever bullshit.
Nah, they know. Plenty of boomers know their house is worth a shit ton of money now. They just refuse to accept that their kids have to pay that much. It’s cognitive dissonance.
I bought my house for $20 and a dog I didn’t want anymore, now I’m selling it for $4,000,000.
JUST DO THAT.
That’s my point. They know, but they refuse to accept it. They think that even though their house is worth 20x what they paid for it, somehow there must be more affordable options. The alternative is accepting that things are, in fact, harder for young people than it was for them, and that’s the boomer red line.
And good luck trying to get them to admit that their kids have it harder than them. Because if that’s the case, then they can’t feel like warriors that powered through impossible odds anymore.
That’s what I mean by “boomer red line.” The one thing they can never bend on is the idea that they had it just as bad, if not worse, than young people today. If they did, their entire identity would unravel.
I’ll give them credit for the 70s at least, complete shitter of a decade. But when things have sucked since the 2000s, the least they can do is give up their tough guy crown.
It doesn’t help. I had countless arguments with boomers telling me I need to buy somewhere because renting is wasted money. (Omg really? Here I was giving a landlord the best part of a grand a month for a mouldy room in a house made of cardboard because I love the freedom of it. (Idk about that last part but apparently some people see renting as choosing to be free. As if you aren’t contractually bound to pay the landlord for the term whether you stay or leave, but I digress.))
Then I would tell them the house prices and they would say, well that’s affordable, what’s the problem? The problem, mf, is that it seems affordable to you because you already own a fucking house worth the same amount so you are just imagining swapping one house for another rather than trying to buy one with not only zero monies in the bank but negative tens of thousands against your credit score, not to mention that your house might be worth an eye watering amount today but you bought it when they gave them away in raffles.
Feels good to get that off my chest, thanks.
And that’s exactly why I think it’s the worst boomer trait. Some things are hard to compare between now and then, but every form of housing is so vastly more expensive by any measure that to argue otherwise is psychotic. And yet.