Boomers Had it Easier

Do you agree? Did Boomers have it easier? Dave says you probably won’t agree if you’re a Boomer!

Watch the full podcast episode with Rob Carrick out now on all platforms.

This clip is from Episode #3 of the podcast with Rob Carrick talking about how personal finance in Canada has changed over the last three decades.

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My wife and I had our boys, you know, 27, 30 years ago. It was like buying a house, “Don’t you think we’re ready to have kids?” “Okay, let’s have kids.” You know, when we, when we decided to buy our first house in Toronto it was, “Should we buy a house?” Well, and I, I didn’t really want to, but my wife said we should. And everybody in the family said we should. So we did. We took six months and saved the down payment and then we bought a house. You know, the simple life of the, of the early 90s. and I think a lot of boomers do not understand this unless they have kids of that age.

Well, crazy. Like first off, when you said, “We took six months and saved for the down payment,” there’s a lot of people who now want to come through our screen and punch both of us in the head because it takes years to save a proper down payment now.

We had it easier. I have no problem admitting that. Way easier. Yeah, I know interest rates were really high, but they spent 30 years coming down after that. You know what? My wife and I never renewed a mortgage for a higher interest rate.

Couldn’t agree with you more. How about the people out there—often baby boomers, people our age, who say, “Oh, it’s always been difficult. It was hard when we started out too and kids are traveling so much.” Just look at the cost of a home relative to income or the percentage of your income that has to be spent on the home, including, by the way, rising property taxes, rising insurance, greater than inflation-rate paces. I don’t know how people can make the argument that it’s it’s easier now or the same now, it’s not.