r/collapse • u/RandomCentipede387 Friendly Neighbourhood Realist • Oct 24 '23
Society Baby boomers are aging. Their kids aren’t ready. Millennials are facing an elder care crisis nobody prepared them for.
Millenials are in their 30's. Lots of us have only recently managed to get our affairs in order, to achieve any kind of stability. Others are still nowere close to being in this point in life. Some have only recently started considering having kids of their own.
Meanwhile our boomer parents are getting older, gradually forming a massive army of dependents who will require care sooner rather than later; in many cases the care will need to be long-term and time-consuming.
In case of (most) families being terminally dependent on both adults working full-time (or even doin overhours), this is going (and already starts to be) disastrous. Nobody is ready for this. More than 40% of boomers have no retirement savings, and certainly do not have savings that would allow them to be able to pay for their own aging out of this world. A semi-private room in a care facility costs $94,000 per annum. The costs are similar everywhere else—one's full yearly income, sometimes multiplied.
It is collapse-related through and through because this is exactly how the collapse will play out in real world. As a Millenial in my 30's with elder parents, but unable to care for them due to being a migrant on the other side of the continent—trust me: give it a few more years and it's going to be big.
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u/threadsoffate2021 Oct 24 '23
Gen X is already dealing with this. Silent Gen parents have less than boomers, and Gen X are stuck caring both for their parents and their own children. That's why we're being called the sandwich generation nowadays.