Woman Brilliantly Breaks Down Why Gen-Zers Who Work Full-Time Still Can’t Afford What Boomers Could
mizunokozuki | pixels Are Boomers out of touch and ignorant of the struggles that younger generations are facing?
One woman definitely thinks so. Andra Berghoff is on a mission to defend Gen-Z and their work ethic, and she's using hard numbers to prove it.
Woman breaks down why Gen-Zers who work full-time still can't afford what Boomers could:
In a detailed TikTok, Andra Berghoff, a Gen-Zer, gave viewers a breakdown of her monthly spending costs. Using her paycheck, she factored in rent, gas prices, essentials, and her medication. Left with a whopping $84, she then factored in how much money she would have to set aside for retirement. It left her $953 in the red.
Since hard numbers don't lie, Berghoff decided to include a follow-up video and detailed the average living expenses of a Boomer in their 20s and 30s.
Andra used her finances and applied those numbers to the spending and budgets of the 1970s and 1980s. The results were shocking. She would instead be left with $720 — or, with inflation, $2,682.75 — which is a lot of “throwaway cash.”
“My Boomer mom just told me 'we want too much for our age,'” one commenter shared. “Meanwhile, when she was my age, she had 2 homes and a BMW.” Berghoff explained that ‘hard work isn’t enough anymore’ in response to Boomers' criticisms.
Expenses for Baby Boomers were much different than Gen-Z, as so much has changed
Advancements in technology mean new jobs have been created, and with that, the flexibility to work from home. Unfortunately, this feeds into the argument that the younger generations have it easier due to innovation.
But the downside to those changes is that the cost of living for Boomers in their 20s and 30s was vastly different from the cost of living for Gen-Zers. And that means, it doesn't matter how hard you work because there is no way to save.
Nowadays, it is difficult to own your own home, and apartments aren’t even an affordable alternative. When wages remain stagnant, but the cost of living continues to increase, options are limited. Berghoff stressed, ‘It’s not that we’re not working hard, it’s that we don’t have any hope or money.’
It’s not enough to work hard. It's hard to be optimistic about working in this current climate when "Gen-Z and Millennials are unable to build up savings, buy what they want, or even enjoy themselves in the present moment because the world is so expensive." It has made a major impact on their mental health, with Gen-Zers reportedly struggling with their mental health more than previous generations.
When the economy is designed to benefit the rich and create a larger gap between classes, the odds are stacked against Gen-Z
Milles Studio / Unsplash+
And it doesn't help that the middle class is shrinking due to the widening income gap. According to the Pew Research Center, “In 1970, adults in middle-income households accounted for 62% of aggregate income, a share that fell to 42% in 2020,” but the upper-income households rose from 29% in 1970 to 50% in 2020.
Strangely, there are still Boomers who argue that the generations after them have it easier when the world that we live in is completely different. There’s no way that Boomers aren’t aware of the major changes in the cost of living.
There are many Gen-Zers who have Boomer parents. So, you would think those parents are aware of the differences in salary and cost of living today versus 50 years ago. Even the cost of higher education has increased. It’s not simple to get a job with a college degree when the payoff is a minimum-wage job that doesn’t make enough money to pay your monthly student loan.
The cost of college in the 1970s also doubled in the 2020s, with the average public college tuition for young adults in 1971-1972 being $10,000, while the cost of public college tuition in 2021-2022 was $24,600.
Boomers had it easier than the younger generations, regardless of how hard they worked, and that was because of the state of the economy. The only way that Boomers could truly understand the privilege they had was to live their life as a Gen-Zer or Millennial for a while. If they did, their attitude would no doubt change.
Amani Semper is a writer for the YourTango Entertainment & News team. She focuses on pop culture and human interest topics.
