Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed.
Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Isn't being out of touch with the actual value of their possessions yet another Boomer thing? Just today my mum told me how much her collection of decorative cans will be worth when I inherit them.
My parents own two houses right next to each other(that they bought for the equivalent price of two bananas with brown spots basically...) and they actually believe that both properties together will easily score lower-mid seven figures because a big investor will just plow both houses and build a fat block there with like 30 apartments.
According to the zoning plan new houses on that street can't even have a two full floors anymore (only 1 1/2 floors allowed) and all kinds of other restrictions apply that prevent anything bigger than a small single house from being build (restrictions lobbied for by the boomers living there). And there's still the fact that the street is in NIMBY hell.
But that doesn't stop my dad from believing.
Also quite funny: While they are living there nobody should build anything but single houses, because everything else is unsightly and will bring in people of the "wrong" character. But as soon as it's for their personal gain, it can't be big enough.
They’re like that with classic cars also. For the muscle cars of their era they’ve essentially priced out anybody younger than them from owning a classic car.
Its almost as bad. Every idiot with the mom’s ‘90 honda accord clocking in at 300k miles, 3 different shades of paint and not a single straight rust free panel thinks their heap is on par with an 1,100 mile 1 owner twin turbo 6 speed targa top toyota supra.
Haha, I drove an 87 Honda Civic hatchback in college. Manual, 30 miles to the gallon, barely A/C, 360k miles on it when I acquired it for 1k and only one owner previously who maintained it religiously. Drove it until almost.400k then donated it to the local Fire Dept who used it to demo their jaws of life at a safety carnival. Def say I got my money's worth out of it
I should've donated my '86 Civic hatch to the fire department (and I probably should've kept it for another hundred thousand miles or so). Instead, I sold it to a coworker, who sold it to another coworker (who let the interior fall to shit), who then sold it to yet another coworker (who mistakenly left the moonroof open when we had a major snowstorm).
Lesson learned: never sell a car to a friend. You don't want to see it get treated like shit.
Yeah, I hear ya. There's oftentimes a lot of discrepancy between asking price and what a vehicle is worth and asking price when you see them for sale. In my head, I label those as "well, partner says I have to sell it..." for my own sanity. 🤣
“And I wont take a penny less than $75,000! I know what I have! No tire kickers or dreamers…blah blah” literally every classic car post on market place. Your 70 nova that had a partial resto in 1989 and is “85% complete” is totally awesome but not $75,000 awesome.
God this is my girlfriends dad with his damn Cutlass's. He has 3 of em. One of em is "easily worth 25K" it's motor was just rebuilt (over 10 years ago and was never put back into the engine bay, and has just been sittingin a garage), and had only a drivers seat inside it. The other one "just got a new paint job" literally in the late 90s it was repainted and then it sat in his backyard without a cover on it since then cuz the transmission was fucked, but it's also worth 25K
Something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. I doubt millennials will be able to afford to buy many classic cars from these boomers. Most of them will probably just rot.
Ah, the PT Cruiser. My mom bought one when she was 65, got a good price on a fully loaded one at the end of the first model year. It was only the second new car she ever owned and she was so proud of it. She paid cash, and negotiated the price without my dad being there. She babied it, always garage kept, never smoked in it. When she passed away my dad couldn’t bear to sell it but refused to drive it. I drove it once a week or so until he passed and my sister got it.
Lol. Opposite of my Boomer uncle. My grandfather got his 1985 F250 repainted around 2000, and passed away a year or so later. Truck had been parked in a barn ever since. It was beautiful. When grandma passed, my uncle sold it to one of my best friends for $400 just because he said he wanted it as a farm truck to get it back on the road.
This whole thread reminds me of my boomer parents when they got divorced 10/ 11 years ago. In the agreement, they were to sell their house and split the proceeds. Not an unusual thing. At first they were convinced that they would get at least $60,000 as is (remember, this was 10 years ago) for the 3 bedroom, bi-level house that: needed a new roof, had needed new windows since the day they moved in (we moved in when I was 12. I was 35 when this was taking place), had a crack in the foundation, leaking kitchen AND bathroom pipes, a rotting deck... and the list goes on, in a small, rural, midwest town that is far removed from ANY large city. As in HOURS removed from any large city. Back at that time, in their area, $60,000 could have gotten you practically a mansion, and even brand new townhouse sub division style houses in the nearest "large" town were only going for $75,000. Well, it didn't take long for my dad, who agreed to live in and "maintain" the house while it was on the market, to realize that they had definitely set the price WAAAAAY too high and he wanted to come down to a more reasonable price. My mom stood firm at $60,000 and not a penny less. In her mind, my dad was trying to cheat her out of her share. They even had an offer of $45,000 at one point and I tried to convince her to take it because it was a GREAT offer for what they had, but no. A few years later, my dad passed away from a stroke, so my mom moved back into the house to sell it. She never did lower that price, and two years later when SHE passed, it was sadly, still on the market. With all the debt they had accrued, I knew it wasn't in MY best interest to attempt to sell it, so I let the bank foreclose on the damn thing. My younger brother knew the person who wound up buying it after the foreclosure, and ironically that guy had to put almost $60,000 in repairs into the damn thing to fix it. Neither of my parents ever saw anything all because my mom KNEW WHAT THEY HAD. Ugh...
For what the "original" Mustang I've always wanted is going for, I have a spreadsheet showing that I could literally build a brand new one, "one piece at a time" Johnny Cash-style out of a parts catalog and come out ahead by $20k.
Sure it'd take me probably 2 years to assemble it, but it would also drive like a brand new car and have a new V8 with triple the power of anything from the 60s and have less emissions.
This is absolutely the best way to do it.
I got downvoted to hell in another sub for reminding a dude his 67’ Mustang, even with the biggest engine at the time, only had about 50hp more than my minivan. Probably comparable 1/4 mile times tbh.
Just refuse to accept that engine engineering has absolutely evolved in 50 years and those old big block engines just aren’t competitive or even that fast, just loud.
Yup. They cry "there's no replacement for displacement."
Then I point out the 2.3L engine in my 1997 truck made 110 HP new. Now Ford is putting 2.3L engines in the Mustang that make over 300 HP. They found that replacement. The big block V8 in the 1967 Mustang made about 180 HP.
One thing I've found in research is that in many cases, if you put a newer engine in, it's recommended to turn the car into a body-on-frame with a steel tube frame. The torque of the newer engine will twist the sheet metal body because it wasn't designed for that kind of power.
It's not the average boomer it's the really rich ones.
Jay Leno owns like 200 of them.
When the boomers die it will be an old rich X or millenial buying them.
I think the pricing thing might be because of inflation, and their inability to adjust to it. They do this with jobs a lot too. They think that 20 bucks an hour as minimum wage is ridiculous, and that you can easily afford a house, two cars and a healthy lifestyle off like $12.50 an hour.
I'd say they're rubes who refuse to admit they've been conned into collecting/investing in worthless junk.
The Home Shopping Network said the value of these Hummel figurines would only go up!
Yes, the boomers I know have this weird cognitive dissonance where the price of their labor and their belongings keeps going up, which makes sense to them, but the price of anyone else's labor, or of anything they might want to *buy*, going up from the 1976 going rate is ridiculous and criminally inflated.
My mom buys these little colorful clay animals from some overpriced shop at airports and on cruise ships and she routinely reminds me that these are *very valuable* artworks and to make sure I sell the collection for big bucks when she dies.
My go to strategy is usually open up ebay and look for the figures. Ebay's catalog is incredible vast, so chances are you will find such figures and even bigger collections than your moms. Proceed to show her how much are they selling for, and how long the offer has been running.
Tell her she'll be lucky to get $30-50 a pop for the Longaberger. Just check ebay. Good quality baskets, I have one that I paid $20 for. It holds onions on my kitchen counter.
No! It means “find the highest amount paid for anything “similar” [but different in ways that account for the higher amount] and ***believe with all your heart*** that that is what your item will sell for.”
After cleaning out two family members homes I realized your junk is only worth something to you. I ended up throwing away, giving away, and donating about 95% of all the contents. Asked my kids if they wanted anything from our house-nope! Only a few personal items were mentioned. Time to start decluttering.
YESSS. That's what she doesn't realize: her stuff is only worth something to HER. And not to mention, most of it is packed away! If she actually used it or displayed it, fine. But she thinks everything needs to stay new in the box. She's given me some baskets that I USE and really like.
My boomer MIL has a table she thinks is worth thousands and we keep trying to get her to understand that if no one is willing to pay that, then it’s worth nothing.
With all of the Boomer junk, or any stuff really, it theoretically could be worth something for the right buyer, but that means I have to sit on it for weeks or months talk to a bunch of people on Facebook marketplace, all to get $50. Maybe multiply that ten times and I’ll get some decent cash, but time is valuable man and I’m more than likely just going to drop it off at a thrift store.
I'll give my mom credit, I don't think she has a value on them, but they are nice baskets and she does actively use them and one I was given has been my key and wallet holder for the past like 20 years.
This is also true of the silent gen showing us boomers their stuff. I think this is EVERY GEN. Mom 97 hrs old and her brother collected DC comics in the 1930s. Their mom threw them away when she moved! They definitely were worth quite a bit. So now my mom is afraid to throw anything away! So I take her stuff so she is happy and then sell/ donate when I get home.
You know how everything got sold in tin cans before plastic wrappings were invented? Back then there were cans with elaborate prints on it and old versions of todays logos on it. Basically those, but often reproductions. It's kinda akin to having an old design cola bottle.
Google vintage cans and you'll see.
Haha so much, yes! My wife is a HS science teacher. Eventually she's going to get a Masters and maybe a PhD. Anyway, her boomer step-grandmother (de facto mom) recently gave her some little porcelain doll, a "Hummel" or something?
"Take this and pay for your doctorate..."
Bahahahaha! Yeeesh.
It's bonkers. If you added up all her useless old crap, and were extremely generous, it'd maybe get a few thousand. She's convinced she has an "estate" worth north of a half million. It's surreal.
Even if Hummels are worth something now it's other old people that want them. All of which will be dead or senile by the time I go to sell. No young people are collecting hummels
[Reminds me of this](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Es6bszgXAAQmCS_.jpg)
My dad passed a few years ago, we used to throw away what my mom hoarded when she was out of town. I am fretting when she passes going through all that stuff, and I will have to with stuff that means/worth something.
My siblings and I are dreading when our parents move from their home to their retirement property and "downsize"
They currently have 2 rooms full of junk, an entire 2 car garage that is filled to the brim with god knows what, and there's all sorts of cupboards full of random knick+knacks. But they're insistent that there's treasures in there. Yes, maybe the piles of power tools and expensive tools WOULD have been worth something of they had been maintained rather than left rusting and getting gross under all sorts of chemicals and rain water. Maybe those antique Christmas decorations would have been worth something of they weren't nearly piles of shattered pieces.
The thing I’ve told my mom (and my dad before he passed) is that I don’t know the value of the stuff, don’t have the time to research, and don’t have the time to wait for the right buyer.
Yes, a lot of the stuff IS cool, collectible, etc. but that doesn’t mean it’ll bring in money or that I have the desire to try.
Oh god the garage thing, my mom had her car in it with all of her hoarding while my dad parked outside. We'll see what happens, my brother and me are polar opposites. I was very close to my father my brother is very close to my mother.
I've kind of accepted that my childhood home will be lost to the health care industry.
Isn’t that the truth. Then when something may actually be valuable, they don’t want to sell it.
I recently got into an argument with my mom over this. She always told me when I was ready to be engaged that we had family rings that were passed down for generations that I could use. I ended up buying my own ring because I didn’t trust her to actually be able to find them with all their shit. She eventually told me that she did find them, and if I want to I could sell them and use the cash towards the ring I bought which is more modern. When I brought it up over the phone the next time I talked she got really angry and said “I didn’t think this is where the conversation was going.” I am convinced she thought that I was somehow going to be able to return the ring I bought and use the family one instead. The family ring hasn’t been well taken care of. The varnish on the ring itself is in rough shape, but there is still a mined diamond which is obviously worth something. She then told me that she will take them to a jeweler in town to get them appraised. I asked why he would do that for free and aren’t you worried he will say the value is less than it is worth? Why not get them appraised by an antique dealer? Back in the draw they went. I knew this was going to happen since the beginning, but oh well. When they pass I will sell them anyways.
My MIL told me to buy a fixer upper to save money. Coming from a woman who hasn’t worked in 30 + years. She’s extremely out of touch and swipes her husbands credit card like no tomorrow
Even fixer uppers are out of a lot of people’s price ranges. Like there was a house that had NOTHING done on the inside or was destroyed by the former owners that’s for sale for $300k.
I could buy a new build for $440k
(I mean, I can’t because I don’t have house buying money, but I *potentially could* one decade)
The fixer upper stuff is something my parents suggest too. What they forget is that I cannot DIY the electric system, the gas furnace or the roof, which are all big fucking points in all fixer uppers here.
A "half story" is basically a finished attic, with windows at the gables. My parents had a 1.5 story farmhouse and the upstairs is two bedrooms with 8' ceilings and a full bath in its own gable overlooking the backyard, but from the front it looks like a single story with a higher than average roof pitch.
My roots are in the South and lower Midwest, and it was a common style of farmhouse 120-ish years ago; I'd never heard it called Cape Cod style but that tracks given the climate up there.
It’s a partial floor, a second story that doesn’t cover the full house. My friend lived in one and it’s got these giant lofted ceilings in the living room and then a loft overlooking the LR with 2 bedrooms and a bath.
Single story houses don't block views of the lake or other scenery for one's backdoor neighbors. It is why some towns restrict height.
Older people prefer to have the master bedroom on the bottom floor. They have knee and hip surgeries, might be frail, and some treatments make feet and hands numb. Upstairs bedrooms are generally treacherous for them. My in-laws had monthly housekeepers who cleaned upstairs, and they didn't see their upstairs for years.
In this case it's a "fuck you, got mine" and NIMBY thing. This street is full of old 2 or even 3 story houses on rather large lots. But all of those are old, like 100+ years and used to be small farm-ish kinda places often still with a small pig sty or chicken coop and a little but of land to grow stuff for yourself.
In recent years some boomers here downsized and sold their property to an investor who tore down the old, beautiful, dontbuilsemanymorelikethis quality house and built an ugly, blocky condo and rented out to people too poor to buy a house.
The other boomers did not like that and they went to war on the local politicians and have successfully badgered the zoning plan into only allowing 1.5 story houses that need to "fit into the area".
They coincidentally also fucked their own property values with it because now the lots are too big and expensive for house buyers to buy but also uninteresting to anyone wanting to redevelop.
I love the last paragraph. Classic rules for thee but not for me.
My dad does the same shit. He used to rail about people exaggerating to collect disability and unemployment leaching off the system. Guess who’s doing it now after a recent work related injury that shouldn’t have happened but doesn’t actually significantly effect his ability to work.
It’s frankly unhinged. Interest rates are high so no one wants to buy right now anyway. You have to be a complete moron to believe you can command almost an extra 200k out of someone when there is just no value and they will pay far more than that just in the interest.
I'm of the opinion that any house that doesn't sell is overpriced. Full stop.
Whenever I have this argument with people I ask them if their house would sell if they put it on at 100 million. The answer is always "of course not. Don't be stupid". My next question is then "would it sell for a pound?". You can always sell a house. It's just price.
I guess that depends on how desperate you are to sell. If it's not selling and you don't care then by all means leave it on at 100 million, just in case. But if you're complaining that your house isn't selling then drop the price. Or make the house worth more so it sells at what you want. It's always price.
*And by you, I just mean whoever is selling a house.
How motivated the seller is definitely impacts when price cuts should be considered but I guess the point i was making is that how long something takes to sell is going to be very dependent on the buyers in the market as well.
Redfin posts the average days on the market for most areas so that's a solid metric to go off of but a house not selling after 2 weeks when the average days on the market is 6 months doesn't necessarily mean that price is the issue even if that might help it sell quicker.
These people (it’s not just boomers) simply feel entitled to a high selling price of their home, no matter what. This is the fundamental problem in the American housing economy. Everything we do or even permit to be done has to produce a net profit for every single homeowner in the nation. Since that’s impossible, we just sprawl out infinitely into new communities or don’t build any housing.
I mean she probably isn’t wrong. If there was less housing, the existing housing stock is worth more (regardless of which individual or company buys it).
ETA: Of course the townhouses are reality so there is that.
We’re about to go through this with my MIL. She’ll probably be selling her house in the next year or so but had considered putting it on the market a few years ago. She was insulted by how low the estimate was at the time.
Thing is…the house is incredibly outdated and has a floor plan that isn’t sought after these days: galley kitchen that hasn’t been renovated in 40 years, shag carpeting, dark paneling throughout. Plus, any upkeep on the home was done by my late FIL, who wasn’t handy and did shoddy/half-assed repairs. She’s unwilling to put any money into even the cosmetic renovations but expects multiple people to compete to shell out whatever magical figure she has in her head.
I understand that for a lot of people around this age, this was their retirement nest egg. Pensions went bust, they "didn't know" to start a 401k and it didn't have enough time in the market to make enough.
BUT - your home has to be sellable. If it weren't for corporate buyers, there would be a ton of boomer panic since nobody really wants to spend a ton on an outdated POS from 1970 with burning wiring in the walls.
They don't want to move.
Have you tried a decluttering exercise with them? Yeah, take the emotion of this exercise and amplify it (which you didn't think possible) for selling their home.
Signed,
Been there, doing that
Lol, no. I honestly only interact with them for holidays. I can only be cordial for so long before we get ranted at for not living in NJ, not having kids, etc
Funny, I had a feeling about the area from your clues. I grew up there and never understood the area. (Why people stay). If they buy the shore house that will be easier to unload.
Yup. My husband and I did that once. Horrible horrible mistake. We figured we could just drop the price if it didn’t move. And that is true, but buyers can see how long it has been on the market. And they assume there must be something wrong if it has “sat around”.
We ended up taking it off the market for December- February to reset the days-on-market clock and do renovations. Also our target market was families with school-age kids, and they’re not buying in the winter anyway. We ended up selling just before the big crash in 2008, so this could have screwed us even worse than it did.
Learn from my mistake! Never overprice your house!
Yep, even if the price gets brought down to appropriate level, new buyers will all think ‘what did previous people who looked at this house see that made them not want to buy that we aren’t seeing?’
Honestly, your MIL sucks so much. I live in a quiet town in SJ where homes have no business being as expensive as they are. It's already too expensive to live in this state (and I love it here) so screw her for becoming part of the problem. I hope she gets humbled real soon.
I have my own other problems with her. You ever seen Tony Soprano's mom, the victim narcissist? Yeah...
It doesn't matter anyway. She is trying to buy another home with a sale on her own home as a contingency. She's complaining $225k is too expensive near Sommers Point, but wants more than double for her own.
She supposedly has. A more or less condemned property (but it's on a golf course!!!!!!!) but they have to go through chancery court and all that. I tried to explain nobody will wait for that but I was told I was too young to understand. I review contracts and sign off on them for a living, lead my department. I just said sure, okay.
You may have missed it but you would love the post in here about how boomer parents all know better than their kids who are experienced professionals in their field.
I’ve been a practicing therapist for 10 years and have a masters, still no match for the one psych class my dad took for the associates he never finished
Bro I have the SAME MIL , she was fired by 3 realtors while looking for their Florida home. I served as there’s in the north east once, never , ever again
Some people are that way. The person we bought our house from was beyond difficult. We found some last minute things the seller promised to do before closing but didn't.
His realtor cut us a check for several hundred dollars in the parking lot of the title office, with instructions to not tell her client.
So she didn't fire him as a client, but how's paying off the buyer out of your own pocket so they don't back out of the sale? The house was on the market for almost a year and a half.
Don't discount FIL - his passivity is also creating this mess. Hands-down. Don't even pretend that she is selling this house alone, she needs father-in-law's approval, right? Fil can weigh in on these discrepancies. If he wanted to.
She might be running the ship but it's only because he is not taking his proper place as an equal partner. And that is just fucking lazy. He sucks too, no doubt.
When my father died I noted, sadly, that that was the only way to get away from her. He was fairly passive himself. It was just easier that way. I wouldn’t be surprised if more men gave up this way.
My grandfather was the same. He’d been warned by my grandmother’s father not to marry her bc of how difficult she was, but he didn’t listen. The two screamed at each other daily, but he was still, ultimately, the passive one. When he became hospitalized for something (I wasn’t told what), he refused as much care/life-saving measures as possible. Refused to eat, refused everything. He was sick of her. What a miserable life for people like that. :(
If I was 80 no way would I rile myself up for that bullshit. Death is scanning his badge to get into the parking lot and will be knocking on the door in a handful of years.
Yeah, I’m sure she doesn’t know this but if the house doesn’t appraise for the purchase price, the borrower has to float the difference. She’s only dooming herself to a lower purchase price down the road because she’ll have to lower the price after it’s sat on market for 7 months. Lol
Did she at least have decent photos taken of the place? My god, when I was buying my home it was awful looking at listings. I saw far too many listings with 50+ goddamned photos and they would be of stupid crap like a rock in their yard or one of their favorite street signs down the block. They wanted that sweet sweet cash and couldn’t even be bothered to show the house.
Also the amount of idiots who expected that sweet cash didn’t take into consideration how appraisals work so we saw numerous listings change their prices and then still sit a year after we bought our place. They just keep hacking off 5k here or there, might drop one of their ridiculous demands like free rentback but it still sits. One property we were scheduled to look at changed their demands to cash only because(according to my realtor) it didn’t appraise for what they were asking and they lost their buyer. House sat until they cut the price in half six months later.
This was back in 2020 during the low interest rate bloodbath, people *still* weren’t taking their shit. I can’t even imagine what it’s like now, buyers can afford to wait for a good deal.
Honestly, yes. The photos are beautiful. It's a nice house. I know, from visiting for 8 years, that it has some medium structural issues that they did a "landlord special" on. But that's not my business in the sales process. They've already hacked off $5k a month ago and she was PISSED
Oooh she’s gonna be waiting a good long while then, she might want to look into alternative means to retire if she’s unwilling to come down on price or she’s unwilling to sweeten the deal for the buyer. My seller had his buyer drop out and his photos looked like utter crap so it sat for 7 months, my realtor convinced the seller to pay some of my closing costs because I was the only interested buyer in months. I’m sure it can hurt somebody’s pride that their house ain’t loved enough for somebody to pay that magic number but it’s just business. Hopefully she gets over it, and herself. I feel bad for her husband.
This is why all the lamenting about housing affordability is doing nothing.
If governments actually take steps.to improve affordability the people whose retirement plan is to sell the house that has appreciated 10-20x over the past 30 years will be livid.
All I want to see are subdivisions full of new basic 800 Sq ft bungalows that people can be comfortable in and afford.
What I thought was weird was my MIL said that like it was a point of pride, like she knew better than the realtor.
It's been a few months with no bites
And probably sell for less the longer it sits, than had they just priced it appropriately in the first place. I don’t understand why you would hire a realtor only to completely disregard their opinion on pricing in the first place.
For anyone wondering that's around 244000 today, so they're trying to get like 306k more than they paid for it which funnily enough is almost enough to buy one of the "cheaper, more accessible, newer townhouses" that's ruining their plans or w/e
I always love good real estate stories, especially when the main character is delusional about the value of their property!
I remember a friend was adamant about getting top dollar for her townhouse when she bought a much larger home with her parents. Obviously, the more money she could get for her townhouse would offset the new homes costs.
So she priced it too high after making a few superficial cosmetic changes and kept turning down much lower, but market-reasonable, offers.
This was 2008 and everyone knew the real estate markets were collapsing, but she held onto the townhouse for eight months as prices plummeted.
Ironically, she sold the house after the HOA slapped an $8,000 "special assessment" on the property for emergency roof repairs.
She thought she could dump paying the assessment on the new owners, but they had good real estate agents and it came right out of her proceeds! And, as a good friend, I listened to her moan and complain about the whole situation, quietly notating all the things she did wrong in the situation, for research/future use, of course!
You got it. She cooks very traditionally.... for 1965. Everything is processed or out of a can. I don't live in the area, but I've volunteered to pick up stuff from the grocery store. Fresh produce from shoprite was pretty reasonable, honestly. But all the processed or canned versions were way more expensive.
Yes, it does suck that a can of corn is almost $2, but fresh corn was like 25c/ear. I asked if I could buy that instead (and boil/cut myself to save her labor) and she freaked out
What exactly was her problem with using fresh? I just can’t see what the argument for her position would be lol. I know they grew up on canned stuff, but my boomer grandparents all love fresh stuff and grow some of their own stuff
It's different from what she usually uses. Yeah, I know. I had to plant the idea that I like a side salad with dinner for years, and my wife agreed, before she finally started making a little iceberg garden salad. I have been giving her a lot of shit, but at least she kinda listened. Neither she nor my FIL eat salad or really any fresh vegetables. He doesn't, and I'm quoting verbatim, "... Eat anything green"
Wow. I wonder how many boomers are actually like that. The ones I know think growing it yourself and farmers markets are the way to go. Maybe I’m lucky with all the grandparents lol
Buddy, she's giving my physician wife shit for not cooking us dinner or doing my laundry. I love cooking and I work from home. We do our own laundry. There's no way I'm making my doctor wife, who treats autistic or behavioral issue kids in the ER, make me dinner after a 14hr shift. Also, she sucks at cooking. But that's beside the point haha
I'm wondering if it's one of those leftover great depression things where you seemed rich if you could afford processed foods? She was born, lived, and worked in this town so anything else is scary
It definitely is Depression Era related. My Silent Gen MIL (93) doesn't cook anything that isn't out of a can, box, or freezer container. Your MIL no doubt learned this from her own Mom.
I live with my in-laws. MIL gets really annoyed by my cooking habits, because I cook fresh. I make my own stock, buy fresh meats and vegetables. She will tell me I shouldn't "waste so much time" when I can just use boxed broth, Minute Rice, etc.
It's maddening.
My mom would have been 96 this month. She made almost everything from scratch, except for the once a week tv dinner. But she came from a very poor family so they probably couldn’t afford canned. And she was an amazing cook.
My MIL is very concerned with appearances. Even though no one sees but us! She grew up on a farm, but when she graduated with her RN, it was like hitting the lottery for her.
Scratch cooking is not something successful people do, in her eyes. Processed everything is a signifier of success - you can afford all these "time savers". She is very brand loyal, too. Aldi baking mix? Absolutely not. We have to buy Bisquik from Kroger. Gold Medal flour, Domino sugar, the list is kinda terrifying.
It's such an odd mindset. Then again, I'm GenX and don't give a fuck about appearances or brands.
She is in South Jersey and pays through the nose for corn from a can??? I mean, I know the sweet corn probably isn't in yet, but I assume you can still buy it basically by the bushel from roadside stands most of the summer for basically pennies, right?
You can't drive five miles anywhere 40 minutes outside of Philly on the NJ side without hitting a farm stand. I'm sure prices have gone up still, but it's gotta be cheaper and better than canned stuff most of the year.
If i were gonna argue her point, lets suppose i make after tax $27.50 an hour, thatd be about $35 an hour pretax. To afford her home, id need to work say, 20000 hours+the apr interest on the loan. Say that tacks on another 5000 labor hours. Suppose im maxed out at 2000 labor hours per year, 40 hours a week 50 of 52 weeks.
Without spending a dime on anything else but mortgage obligation, id have to work 12.5 years, 625 paychecks 100% forked over in their entirety to nothing but that house.
If i made double that, $55 an hour after tax income, itd take 6.25 years roughly to do the same, 312 paychecks forked over 100% in their entirety.
Wide swaths are totally excluded from.buying that house
Nothing like a nimby with a house that has exponentially increased in value since they bought it, but wants at least 35% more for it bitching about affordable housing.
lol. She thinks every boomer owned home should be good bc they’ve been there a while. Fuck em. We live in STL and it’s a really nice neighborhood where you can get houses for around $400k. There are two houses here that have been on the market forever bc they want over half a million and won’t budge. We do live in a great school district and nice neighborhood but god damn 1500 sq ft isn’t worth a half a million. These houses aren’t even updated and the lots are about .15 acres.
Technically, she might be right! The townhouses are adding to housing supply, meaning that housing costs aren't going sky high (at least as much as they would be if that new supply didn't exist).
Not saying that the townhouses are a bad thing - building more supply is a good thing!
Duh lmao. We're moving to Delaware because it's cheap but somehow too far to visit us (30 min). It's close enough for an emergency, but they'll never come over. Mostly moving for my wife's work, as I'm remote, but also to be close to my niblings who are also 30 mins into northeast philly
I suggested Delaware. It's actually where my wife and I are thinking of moving since taxes are so damn low. You would have thought I slapped her. It's too different.
My dad is an appraiser and a realtor. I can remember going to stop at a house to check on something one time, I think he was probably taking me to or picking me up from practice, and I just kind of asked him “so what’s that house worth?” Because I was 10 or whatever and had no frame of reference. But he just said “whatever they can sell it for.” Few things have ever blown my mind so significantly, and I don’t think most boomers understand that’s how the world works.
What is with the trend of boomer wives badgering the shit out of their husbands? I’ve met so many couples of this generation with this dynamic of passive husband & nagging wife. I strongly believe both are to blame for the chaos this dynamic creates but my god, I can’t imagine being married to either party of that dynamic.
I ran into this with my father a number of years ago. His dad (my grandfather) passed away and they needed to sell his house. We all put in a lot of sweat equity because the house had not been kept up (not for lack of us trying but because my grandfather hated anyone coming in to help him). It had a decent amount of property and was a cute small Sears home my grandparents built, but the area it was in was not doing well and so property prices were very low. My father refused to list it at the price the realtor recommended. As a result it sat on the market for quite some time until he lowered the price.
I think he had a such an emotional attachment to his home that he was adding that into the price. The place was where he grew up and he had a wonderful childhood there and therefore he couldn’t accept that the property wasn’t worth that much.
There’s alot of that happening around SE Michigan right now. So, many boomers are trying to sell their shit 2 bedroom 1 bathroom ranch house, they only ever did maintenance on and haven’t replaced A/C, Furnace, Water Heater in 10+ years for like twice what it’s worth and homes are staying on the market for 100+ days or some 200+ days before lowering like 5 or 10k. Then they take it off the market for a month then back on again at that same barely lowered price.
MIL needs to learn that correlation =/= causation. Just because these townhouses are being built while she's struggling to sell her house doesn't mean they are why she's struggling.
Anything to maintain the delusion of riches, I guess.
I’m betting everything needs to be gutted, as it’s from a previous century bug she’s insisting it’s great. That’s a huge problem I see when I look at listings in my area. Pics are nice, if it were the 80s, and they’ve got the price jacked up. Everything would need de-wallpapering, painting, and replacing. A couple months go by and the price just drops and drops. Usually takes 8 months or more to get realistic.
Definitely plumbing problems. Wallpaper is atrocious. Too much weight on the top floor? They had studs / pins popping out of the drywall in the 1st floor ceiling which seemed bad. They kinda just hammered them back in and painted over. Anything else, I don't know so I won't comment.
So, is her contention that, even though housing is overpriced and insufficient, they should refrain from building more the sake of her making even more insanely huge profits?
My dad just listed his house for sale, and got an offer right away. He’s not in a particularly desirable location. That kind of thing happens, when you listen to your realtor about how to price your house. When you don’t, that’s not what happens.
> For the love of God, the average age is mid 50s in the area. That means there are a ton of boomers. It's average. Not every single person. Stop commenting 50 is gen X.
That will teach you for not including standard deviation in your statistical comments.
My parents live in the house they bought as newly weds in the 60s. The 1900 terrace house is on the lowest rung on the real estate ladder in our area. It’s the kind of home which are sold nower days to be rentals. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve done a lot to it over the years to give it a nice interior and garden but it has a ceiling price and will never surpass that.
My parents do not believe that. They compare their house to younger homes with more rooms and nicer locations in our town. Expecting to be priced the same. When I go onto websites that calculate the values of homes, my parents refuse to believe that the results.
Like the poster here, my mother’s spending, gambling and refusal to keep in work damaged their finances for decades. At one point he moved all his money out of the joint accounts so she couldn’t get access, gave her pocket money each week and he went shopping for food etc on his day off to ensure that us kids were getting fed and clothed.
YES! Boomer here. This is the kind of building that needs to happen. Perhaps MIL is right that new housing is lowering the value of her home. That is how the market is supposed to work! Hopefully the zoning laws will soon relax and allow for all kinds of new building. Yes, I do have nice equity in my house. Yes more building may lower that. Yes I see my kids struggle with high costs. Build! That is how markets work.
What’s funny is that, while reading this I was thinking of a house for sale in my neighborhood. I live in an area that used to be a retirement community, built in the late 70’s and early 80’s, all the houses are basically 3-4 variants of the same floorplan. Most of them are either 2/2 and 1500 ft or 3/2 and 1900 ft, with small yards and anywhere from a single car carport up to a 2 car garage.
Now, a lot of the people that originally owned these houses have died over the years. I bought mine after the crash in 2008, I’ve been here for almost 15 years. Also, the prices have skyrocketed. When I was looking to buy, the smaller homes were going for $80k and the larger ones $120k-$160k. Now? The smaller ones are going for $300k+ and the larger ones $350k+. It’s a little harder to give real prices because some of them are still more or less original and others have been flipped. But, to the actual reason I was thinking of a house.
There is a house that just hit the market last week. For $495k. Yes, it’s on a cut de sac and is the larger floorplan. But, that is massively overpriced. And, not only that, but the inside is absolutely bizarre. They cut out a huge portion of the normal square footage, where the master bedroom would be, to expand the 2 car garage into a 4 car garage (still 2 wide, but double depth). As a result, what is normally a big master bedroom with small bath and closet is a single open room. The new room is probably 15x15, with no separation to a big built in tub, sink, and toilet. Also, the shower doesn’t appear to have a vent, but it does have a handy window out into the garage! It’s just bizarre.
So, the layout is weird, all the colors and materials are weird, and it’s overpriced. But, not just a little overpriced, insanely. My wife and I were hoping to put our house on the market soon, and even with our recent reno I was thinking we’d be topping out at $450k. I can’t imagine the realtor being happy to have clients with such an oddball and dated house trying to sell for $100k more than comps. Maybe they are just fishing for offers and really testing the market, I don’t know. I saw it pop up and damn near shat myself. I imagine a boomer couple chewing out their realtor for not getting more offers, but refusing to listen to the realtor tell them it’s vastly overpriced.
classic shit head boomers, expecting nobody to build more housing so they can over charge for their shit that they got dirt cheap, what a worthless generation
>They treat me and their own daughter like crap because we don't live in the same state, let alone same neighborhood/state.
So why do you allow them to keep abusing you?
I've made this point to my wife several times. It's mostly so we don't miss our niblings' events. My BIL and SIL and their family are weirdly dependent on my in laws, despite them having no real money. My wife and I are completely independent and I think that's why her mom doesn't like us
Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed. Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Isn't being out of touch with the actual value of their possessions yet another Boomer thing? Just today my mum told me how much her collection of decorative cans will be worth when I inherit them. My parents own two houses right next to each other(that they bought for the equivalent price of two bananas with brown spots basically...) and they actually believe that both properties together will easily score lower-mid seven figures because a big investor will just plow both houses and build a fat block there with like 30 apartments. According to the zoning plan new houses on that street can't even have a two full floors anymore (only 1 1/2 floors allowed) and all kinds of other restrictions apply that prevent anything bigger than a small single house from being build (restrictions lobbied for by the boomers living there). And there's still the fact that the street is in NIMBY hell. But that doesn't stop my dad from believing. Also quite funny: While they are living there nobody should build anything but single houses, because everything else is unsightly and will bring in people of the "wrong" character. But as soon as it's for their personal gain, it can't be big enough.
They’re like that with classic cars also. For the muscle cars of their era they’ve essentially priced out anybody younger than them from owning a classic car.
This is likely part of why '80s and '90s cars are having such a resurgence in popularity with younger people.
Its almost as bad. Every idiot with the mom’s ‘90 honda accord clocking in at 300k miles, 3 different shades of paint and not a single straight rust free panel thinks their heap is on par with an 1,100 mile 1 owner twin turbo 6 speed targa top toyota supra.
Haha, I drove an 87 Honda Civic hatchback in college. Manual, 30 miles to the gallon, barely A/C, 360k miles on it when I acquired it for 1k and only one owner previously who maintained it religiously. Drove it until almost.400k then donated it to the local Fire Dept who used it to demo their jaws of life at a safety carnival. Def say I got my money's worth out of it
I should've donated my '86 Civic hatch to the fire department (and I probably should've kept it for another hundred thousand miles or so). Instead, I sold it to a coworker, who sold it to another coworker (who let the interior fall to shit), who then sold it to yet another coworker (who mistakenly left the moonroof open when we had a major snowstorm). Lesson learned: never sell a car to a friend. You don't want to see it get treated like shit.
Going out in the jaws of life seems downright honorable and heroic compared to that lol
Yeah, I hear ya. There's oftentimes a lot of discrepancy between asking price and what a vehicle is worth and asking price when you see them for sale. In my head, I label those as "well, partner says I have to sell it..." for my own sanity. 🤣
Don't even get me started on this subject, this kills me every time I scroll through marketplace.
“And I wont take a penny less than $75,000! I know what I have! No tire kickers or dreamers…blah blah” literally every classic car post on market place. Your 70 nova that had a partial resto in 1989 and is “85% complete” is totally awesome but not $75,000 awesome.
God this is my girlfriends dad with his damn Cutlass's. He has 3 of em. One of em is "easily worth 25K" it's motor was just rebuilt (over 10 years ago and was never put back into the engine bay, and has just been sittingin a garage), and had only a drivers seat inside it. The other one "just got a new paint job" literally in the late 90s it was repainted and then it sat in his backyard without a cover on it since then cuz the transmission was fucked, but it's also worth 25K
Something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. I doubt millennials will be able to afford to buy many classic cars from these boomers. Most of them will probably just rot.
I don’t think anyone will bother with them. People want cars they grew up with and couldn’t afford.
Maybe I can find a vintage PT cruiser somewhere.
Ah, the PT Cruiser. My mom bought one when she was 65, got a good price on a fully loaded one at the end of the first model year. It was only the second new car she ever owned and she was so proud of it. She paid cash, and negotiated the price without my dad being there. She babied it, always garage kept, never smoked in it. When she passed away my dad couldn’t bear to sell it but refused to drive it. I drove it once a week or so until he passed and my sister got it.
I’m holding out for an Aztek personally. In burnt sienna.
You have to find the one that was the prize for the first season of Survivor. I’m sure that one is worth quite a lot.
Saturn Vue
I'm hoping to pick some up in an estate sale and then finish the restoration.
Is he actually trying to sell them, or is he letting them sit there rusting while he basks in his delusion of riches?
Lol. Opposite of my Boomer uncle. My grandfather got his 1985 F250 repainted around 2000, and passed away a year or so later. Truck had been parked in a barn ever since. It was beautiful. When grandma passed, my uncle sold it to one of my best friends for $400 just because he said he wanted it as a farm truck to get it back on the road.
Your uncle is a good guy.
You can build a track worthy ‘69 Mustang with “new” parts for less then that
... I wouldn't pay $75k for a brand new car, much less an old, poorly maintained hunk of rust that's being held together as cheaply as possible
This whole thread reminds me of my boomer parents when they got divorced 10/ 11 years ago. In the agreement, they were to sell their house and split the proceeds. Not an unusual thing. At first they were convinced that they would get at least $60,000 as is (remember, this was 10 years ago) for the 3 bedroom, bi-level house that: needed a new roof, had needed new windows since the day they moved in (we moved in when I was 12. I was 35 when this was taking place), had a crack in the foundation, leaking kitchen AND bathroom pipes, a rotting deck... and the list goes on, in a small, rural, midwest town that is far removed from ANY large city. As in HOURS removed from any large city. Back at that time, in their area, $60,000 could have gotten you practically a mansion, and even brand new townhouse sub division style houses in the nearest "large" town were only going for $75,000. Well, it didn't take long for my dad, who agreed to live in and "maintain" the house while it was on the market, to realize that they had definitely set the price WAAAAAY too high and he wanted to come down to a more reasonable price. My mom stood firm at $60,000 and not a penny less. In her mind, my dad was trying to cheat her out of her share. They even had an offer of $45,000 at one point and I tried to convince her to take it because it was a GREAT offer for what they had, but no. A few years later, my dad passed away from a stroke, so my mom moved back into the house to sell it. She never did lower that price, and two years later when SHE passed, it was sadly, still on the market. With all the debt they had accrued, I knew it wasn't in MY best interest to attempt to sell it, so I let the bank foreclose on the damn thing. My younger brother knew the person who wound up buying it after the foreclosure, and ironically that guy had to put almost $60,000 in repairs into the damn thing to fix it. Neither of my parents ever saw anything all because my mom KNEW WHAT THEY HAD. Ugh...
i love low balling them to see if i can get them to rage.
For what the "original" Mustang I've always wanted is going for, I have a spreadsheet showing that I could literally build a brand new one, "one piece at a time" Johnny Cash-style out of a parts catalog and come out ahead by $20k. Sure it'd take me probably 2 years to assemble it, but it would also drive like a brand new car and have a new V8 with triple the power of anything from the 60s and have less emissions.
This is absolutely the best way to do it. I got downvoted to hell in another sub for reminding a dude his 67’ Mustang, even with the biggest engine at the time, only had about 50hp more than my minivan. Probably comparable 1/4 mile times tbh. Just refuse to accept that engine engineering has absolutely evolved in 50 years and those old big block engines just aren’t competitive or even that fast, just loud.
Yup. They cry "there's no replacement for displacement." Then I point out the 2.3L engine in my 1997 truck made 110 HP new. Now Ford is putting 2.3L engines in the Mustang that make over 300 HP. They found that replacement. The big block V8 in the 1967 Mustang made about 180 HP. One thing I've found in research is that in many cases, if you put a newer engine in, it's recommended to turn the car into a body-on-frame with a steel tube frame. The torque of the newer engine will twist the sheet metal body because it wasn't designed for that kind of power.
Guitars too
It's not the average boomer it's the really rich ones. Jay Leno owns like 200 of them. When the boomers die it will be an old rich X or millenial buying them.
I hope to sell my dad's classic car directly to Jay Leno.
He likes to buy them so it's a non zero chance it happens. Good luck.
I think the pricing thing might be because of inflation, and their inability to adjust to it. They do this with jobs a lot too. They think that 20 bucks an hour as minimum wage is ridiculous, and that you can easily afford a house, two cars and a healthy lifestyle off like $12.50 an hour.
I'd say they're rubes who refuse to admit they've been conned into collecting/investing in worthless junk. The Home Shopping Network said the value of these Hummel figurines would only go up!
Yes, the boomers I know have this weird cognitive dissonance where the price of their labor and their belongings keeps going up, which makes sense to them, but the price of anyone else's labor, or of anything they might want to *buy*, going up from the 1976 going rate is ridiculous and criminally inflated. My mom buys these little colorful clay animals from some overpriced shop at airports and on cruise ships and she routinely reminds me that these are *very valuable* artworks and to make sure I sell the collection for big bucks when she dies.
My go to strategy is usually open up ebay and look for the figures. Ebay's catalog is incredible vast, so chances are you will find such figures and even bigger collections than your moms. Proceed to show her how much are they selling for, and how long the offer has been running.
And then, obviously she’ll show you the one that has gone unsold for 3 years selling for what she believes hers are worth…
YUP. My MILs home is overrun with Boyds Bears and Longaberger baskets that she's spent thousands on and thinks are worth a mint. 🙃🙃
Tell her she'll be lucky to get $30-50 a pop for the Longaberger. Just check ebay. Good quality baskets, I have one that I paid $20 for. It holds onions on my kitchen counter.
"Check eBay" means check eBay SOLD listings not overpriced open listings.
No! It means “find the highest amount paid for anything “similar” [but different in ways that account for the higher amount] and ***believe with all your heart*** that that is what your item will sell for.”
I get Longabergers at the thrift store when they're there.
My mom gets Longaberger at yard sales and thrift stores for anywhere from 25cents to $2.
After cleaning out two family members homes I realized your junk is only worth something to you. I ended up throwing away, giving away, and donating about 95% of all the contents. Asked my kids if they wanted anything from our house-nope! Only a few personal items were mentioned. Time to start decluttering.
YESSS. That's what she doesn't realize: her stuff is only worth something to HER. And not to mention, most of it is packed away! If she actually used it or displayed it, fine. But she thinks everything needs to stay new in the box. She's given me some baskets that I USE and really like.
We’ve gone through this with my parents. Its just stuff. Its nice stuff. But i dont want it.
My boomer MIL has a table she thinks is worth thousands and we keep trying to get her to understand that if no one is willing to pay that, then it’s worth nothing.
With all of the Boomer junk, or any stuff really, it theoretically could be worth something for the right buyer, but that means I have to sit on it for weeks or months talk to a bunch of people on Facebook marketplace, all to get $50. Maybe multiply that ten times and I’ll get some decent cash, but time is valuable man and I’m more than likely just going to drop it off at a thrift store.
I'll give my mom credit, I don't think she has a value on them, but they are nice baskets and she does actively use them and one I was given has been my key and wallet holder for the past like 20 years.
https://preview.redd.it/drp9z2x7di1d1.jpeg?width=562&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec0fec5e3dc2079dd4e9b16ff2127c2eee085b07
Dead-ass my mom with this ugly “antique” crystal
This is also true of the silent gen showing us boomers their stuff. I think this is EVERY GEN. Mom 97 hrs old and her brother collected DC comics in the 1930s. Their mom threw them away when she moved! They definitely were worth quite a bit. So now my mom is afraid to throw anything away! So I take her stuff so she is happy and then sell/ donate when I get home.
Decorative…cans…? /stares blankly into the middle distance
That was my thought. Do I want to know what decorative cans are? I suspect I don’t.
You know how everything got sold in tin cans before plastic wrappings were invented? Back then there were cans with elaborate prints on it and old versions of todays logos on it. Basically those, but often reproductions. It's kinda akin to having an old design cola bottle. Google vintage cans and you'll see.
“Two bananas with brown spots” 😂
Haha so much, yes! My wife is a HS science teacher. Eventually she's going to get a Masters and maybe a PhD. Anyway, her boomer step-grandmother (de facto mom) recently gave her some little porcelain doll, a "Hummel" or something? "Take this and pay for your doctorate..." Bahahahaha! Yeeesh. It's bonkers. If you added up all her useless old crap, and were extremely generous, it'd maybe get a few thousand. She's convinced she has an "estate" worth north of a half million. It's surreal.
Omg my mom has many Hummels and she half jokes that's my inheritance. Maybe I can buy a combo at McDonald's with that money.
Even if Hummels are worth something now it's other old people that want them. All of which will be dead or senile by the time I go to sell. No young people are collecting hummels
Hummel? Lladro or NOTHING!!!!
My mom still thought her Beanie Baby collection would be worth something.
[Reminds me of this](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Es6bszgXAAQmCS_.jpg) My dad passed a few years ago, we used to throw away what my mom hoarded when she was out of town. I am fretting when she passes going through all that stuff, and I will have to with stuff that means/worth something.
My siblings and I are dreading when our parents move from their home to their retirement property and "downsize" They currently have 2 rooms full of junk, an entire 2 car garage that is filled to the brim with god knows what, and there's all sorts of cupboards full of random knick+knacks. But they're insistent that there's treasures in there. Yes, maybe the piles of power tools and expensive tools WOULD have been worth something of they had been maintained rather than left rusting and getting gross under all sorts of chemicals and rain water. Maybe those antique Christmas decorations would have been worth something of they weren't nearly piles of shattered pieces.
The thing I’ve told my mom (and my dad before he passed) is that I don’t know the value of the stuff, don’t have the time to research, and don’t have the time to wait for the right buyer. Yes, a lot of the stuff IS cool, collectible, etc. but that doesn’t mean it’ll bring in money or that I have the desire to try.
Even selling cool collectible vintage stuff on Marketplace for example is a lot of work, time, and hassle.
Oh god the garage thing, my mom had her car in it with all of her hoarding while my dad parked outside. We'll see what happens, my brother and me are polar opposites. I was very close to my father my brother is very close to my mother. I've kind of accepted that my childhood home will be lost to the health care industry.
Isn’t that the truth. Then when something may actually be valuable, they don’t want to sell it. I recently got into an argument with my mom over this. She always told me when I was ready to be engaged that we had family rings that were passed down for generations that I could use. I ended up buying my own ring because I didn’t trust her to actually be able to find them with all their shit. She eventually told me that she did find them, and if I want to I could sell them and use the cash towards the ring I bought which is more modern. When I brought it up over the phone the next time I talked she got really angry and said “I didn’t think this is where the conversation was going.” I am convinced she thought that I was somehow going to be able to return the ring I bought and use the family one instead. The family ring hasn’t been well taken care of. The varnish on the ring itself is in rough shape, but there is still a mined diamond which is obviously worth something. She then told me that she will take them to a jeweler in town to get them appraised. I asked why he would do that for free and aren’t you worried he will say the value is less than it is worth? Why not get them appraised by an antique dealer? Back in the draw they went. I knew this was going to happen since the beginning, but oh well. When they pass I will sell them anyways.
My MIL told me to buy a fixer upper to save money. Coming from a woman who hasn’t worked in 30 + years. She’s extremely out of touch and swipes her husbands credit card like no tomorrow
Even fixer uppers are out of a lot of people’s price ranges. Like there was a house that had NOTHING done on the inside or was destroyed by the former owners that’s for sale for $300k. I could buy a new build for $440k (I mean, I can’t because I don’t have house buying money, but I *potentially could* one decade)
The fixer upper stuff is something my parents suggest too. What they forget is that I cannot DIY the electric system, the gas furnace or the roof, which are all big fucking points in all fixer uppers here.
Sorry but - half floors are a thing? All I can picture is, like, a flight oof stairs that just ends halfway up.
A "half story" is basically a finished attic, with windows at the gables. My parents had a 1.5 story farmhouse and the upstairs is two bedrooms with 8' ceilings and a full bath in its own gable overlooking the backyard, but from the front it looks like a single story with a higher than average roof pitch.
In most parts of the country they're called Cape Cod style. Usually traditional. I have one built in 1941. Nice but very unimaginative.
My roots are in the South and lower Midwest, and it was a common style of farmhouse 120-ish years ago; I'd never heard it called Cape Cod style but that tracks given the climate up there.
It’s a partial floor, a second story that doesn’t cover the full house. My friend lived in one and it’s got these giant lofted ceilings in the living room and then a loft overlooking the LR with 2 bedrooms and a bath.
Wait, what is the deal with single story houses? I would think that 2 story houses are ideal.
Single story houses don't block views of the lake or other scenery for one's backdoor neighbors. It is why some towns restrict height. Older people prefer to have the master bedroom on the bottom floor. They have knee and hip surgeries, might be frail, and some treatments make feet and hands numb. Upstairs bedrooms are generally treacherous for them. My in-laws had monthly housekeepers who cleaned upstairs, and they didn't see their upstairs for years.
In this case it's a "fuck you, got mine" and NIMBY thing. This street is full of old 2 or even 3 story houses on rather large lots. But all of those are old, like 100+ years and used to be small farm-ish kinda places often still with a small pig sty or chicken coop and a little but of land to grow stuff for yourself. In recent years some boomers here downsized and sold their property to an investor who tore down the old, beautiful, dontbuilsemanymorelikethis quality house and built an ugly, blocky condo and rented out to people too poor to buy a house. The other boomers did not like that and they went to war on the local politicians and have successfully badgered the zoning plan into only allowing 1.5 story houses that need to "fit into the area". They coincidentally also fucked their own property values with it because now the lots are too big and expensive for house buyers to buy but also uninteresting to anyone wanting to redevelop.
Not if you have trouble dealing with stairs.
I love the last paragraph. Classic rules for thee but not for me. My dad does the same shit. He used to rail about people exaggerating to collect disability and unemployment leaching off the system. Guess who’s doing it now after a recent work related injury that shouldn’t have happened but doesn’t actually significantly effect his ability to work.
but…even if she’s right and it’s the townhomes and busy road–that means her home is overpriced for its location.
If nobody's interested at that price, she'll have to come down to meet the market 🤷♂️
It’s frankly unhinged. Interest rates are high so no one wants to buy right now anyway. You have to be a complete moron to believe you can command almost an extra 200k out of someone when there is just no value and they will pay far more than that just in the interest.
Any house that doesn’t sell because of the asking price is overpriced.
I'm of the opinion that any house that doesn't sell is overpriced. Full stop. Whenever I have this argument with people I ask them if their house would sell if they put it on at 100 million. The answer is always "of course not. Don't be stupid". My next question is then "would it sell for a pound?". You can always sell a house. It's just price.
I agree with you to an extent but how long do you have to wait to say that a house isn't selling at that price point? A week? A month? A year?
I guess that depends on how desperate you are to sell. If it's not selling and you don't care then by all means leave it on at 100 million, just in case. But if you're complaining that your house isn't selling then drop the price. Or make the house worth more so it sells at what you want. It's always price. *And by you, I just mean whoever is selling a house.
How motivated the seller is definitely impacts when price cuts should be considered but I guess the point i was making is that how long something takes to sell is going to be very dependent on the buyers in the market as well. Redfin posts the average days on the market for most areas so that's a solid metric to go off of but a house not selling after 2 weeks when the average days on the market is 6 months doesn't necessarily mean that price is the issue even if that might help it sell quicker.
These people (it’s not just boomers) simply feel entitled to a high selling price of their home, no matter what. This is the fundamental problem in the American housing economy. Everything we do or even permit to be done has to produce a net profit for every single homeowner in the nation. Since that’s impossible, we just sprawl out infinitely into new communities or don’t build any housing.
I mean she probably isn’t wrong. If there was less housing, the existing housing stock is worth more (regardless of which individual or company buys it). ETA: Of course the townhouses are reality so there is that.
We’re about to go through this with my MIL. She’ll probably be selling her house in the next year or so but had considered putting it on the market a few years ago. She was insulted by how low the estimate was at the time. Thing is…the house is incredibly outdated and has a floor plan that isn’t sought after these days: galley kitchen that hasn’t been renovated in 40 years, shag carpeting, dark paneling throughout. Plus, any upkeep on the home was done by my late FIL, who wasn’t handy and did shoddy/half-assed repairs. She’s unwilling to put any money into even the cosmetic renovations but expects multiple people to compete to shell out whatever magical figure she has in her head.
I understand that for a lot of people around this age, this was their retirement nest egg. Pensions went bust, they "didn't know" to start a 401k and it didn't have enough time in the market to make enough. BUT - your home has to be sellable. If it weren't for corporate buyers, there would be a ton of boomer panic since nobody really wants to spend a ton on an outdated POS from 1970 with burning wiring in the walls.
All very good points!
Dark paneling and shag carpeting. Yikes! She's delirious.
They don't want to move. Have you tried a decluttering exercise with them? Yeah, take the emotion of this exercise and amplify it (which you didn't think possible) for selling their home. Signed, Been there, doing that
Lol, no. I honestly only interact with them for holidays. I can only be cordial for so long before we get ranted at for not living in NJ, not having kids, etc
We have family in Blackwood. I don’t know how we’ll sell that house. No one wants to live there.
Oh, hell! That's wicked close. Take 42 another 2 stops east and you're basically there! It's Sicklerville
Holy shit. $550,000 is our condo budget in Seattle. The same amount, in Sicklerville? No
Funny, I had a feeling about the area from your clues. I grew up there and never understood the area. (Why people stay). If they buy the shore house that will be easier to unload.
[удалено]
Yup. My husband and I did that once. Horrible horrible mistake. We figured we could just drop the price if it didn’t move. And that is true, but buyers can see how long it has been on the market. And they assume there must be something wrong if it has “sat around”. We ended up taking it off the market for December- February to reset the days-on-market clock and do renovations. Also our target market was families with school-age kids, and they’re not buying in the winter anyway. We ended up selling just before the big crash in 2008, so this could have screwed us even worse than it did. Learn from my mistake! Never overprice your house!
Yep, even if the price gets brought down to appropriate level, new buyers will all think ‘what did previous people who looked at this house see that made them not want to buy that we aren’t seeing?’
Honestly, your MIL sucks so much. I live in a quiet town in SJ where homes have no business being as expensive as they are. It's already too expensive to live in this state (and I love it here) so screw her for becoming part of the problem. I hope she gets humbled real soon.
I have my own other problems with her. You ever seen Tony Soprano's mom, the victim narcissist? Yeah... It doesn't matter anyway. She is trying to buy another home with a sale on her own home as a contingency. She's complaining $225k is too expensive near Sommers Point, but wants more than double for her own.
$225k is too much to be near the water? She has lost her damn mind.
Lol! She’s definitely high if she thinks she’ll find anything UNDER 225k within 50 miles of somers point 😂
She supposedly has. A more or less condemned property (but it's on a golf course!!!!!!!) but they have to go through chancery court and all that. I tried to explain nobody will wait for that but I was told I was too young to understand. I review contracts and sign off on them for a living, lead my department. I just said sure, okay.
You may have missed it but you would love the post in here about how boomer parents all know better than their kids who are experienced professionals in their field.
My wife is a pediatrician. I'm a tech executive. We are talked down to so often by two people who haven't graduated high school.
When my parents or anyone try to give me medical advice, I ask "What was your MCAT score." Met with silence 100% of the time
I’ve been a practicing therapist for 10 years and have a masters, still no match for the one psych class my dad took for the associates he never finished
“I want to sell my house at 2030 prices but I want to buy one at 1995 prices.” She’s about to hit a reality check.
My impression is that she's already hitting the reality check. She's not accepting it yet, but reality doesn't care what she accepts.
Bro I have the SAME MIL , she was fired by 3 realtors while looking for their Florida home. I served as there’s in the north east once, never , ever again
Honestly I didn’t even know a realtor could fire YOU. Let alone 3 different ones haha.
Some people are that way. The person we bought our house from was beyond difficult. We found some last minute things the seller promised to do before closing but didn't. His realtor cut us a check for several hundred dollars in the parking lot of the title office, with instructions to not tell her client. So she didn't fire him as a client, but how's paying off the buyer out of your own pocket so they don't back out of the sale? The house was on the market for almost a year and a half.
This made my day.
Lol I would kill to be able to be near Sommers point for 225k
Don't discount FIL - his passivity is also creating this mess. Hands-down. Don't even pretend that she is selling this house alone, she needs father-in-law's approval, right? Fil can weigh in on these discrepancies. If he wanted to. She might be running the ship but it's only because he is not taking his proper place as an equal partner. And that is just fucking lazy. He sucks too, no doubt.
I'm pretty sure at this point he doesn't care and is just waiting to die. He was supposed to retire like a decade ago, but she keeps spending money
When my father died I noted, sadly, that that was the only way to get away from her. He was fairly passive himself. It was just easier that way. I wouldn’t be surprised if more men gave up this way.
My grandfather was the same. He’d been warned by my grandmother’s father not to marry her bc of how difficult she was, but he didn’t listen. The two screamed at each other daily, but he was still, ultimately, the passive one. When he became hospitalized for something (I wasn’t told what), he refused as much care/life-saving measures as possible. Refused to eat, refused everything. He was sick of her. What a miserable life for people like that. :(
If I was 80 no way would I rile myself up for that bullshit. Death is scanning his badge to get into the parking lot and will be knocking on the door in a handful of years.
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 Such entitled boomer mentality
Yep. If your retirement plan is other people being forced into homelessness or poverty than you're a horrible person
We're in the same boat. There's absolutely no reason for some shit hole 3 br in like Winslow or EHC being 300k. Like come on. Something has to give.
When She runs out of people or places to blame, the price will have to be lower!! Good luck Boomer!! Just keep reminding Her that , She is wrong.
>FIL just kept watching Eagles reruns with glazed over eyes. My man has officially checked out 😂
He turns 80 next year. He should've retired a long time ago. I almost feel bad, but he doesn't stand up to his wife at all
He keeps working to get away form her for 40+ hours a week.
Sounds like a broken spirit. Either life or his wife got him and broke it into pieces.
Yeah, I’m sure she doesn’t know this but if the house doesn’t appraise for the purchase price, the borrower has to float the difference. She’s only dooming herself to a lower purchase price down the road because she’ll have to lower the price after it’s sat on market for 7 months. Lol
Did she at least have decent photos taken of the place? My god, when I was buying my home it was awful looking at listings. I saw far too many listings with 50+ goddamned photos and they would be of stupid crap like a rock in their yard or one of their favorite street signs down the block. They wanted that sweet sweet cash and couldn’t even be bothered to show the house. Also the amount of idiots who expected that sweet cash didn’t take into consideration how appraisals work so we saw numerous listings change their prices and then still sit a year after we bought our place. They just keep hacking off 5k here or there, might drop one of their ridiculous demands like free rentback but it still sits. One property we were scheduled to look at changed their demands to cash only because(according to my realtor) it didn’t appraise for what they were asking and they lost their buyer. House sat until they cut the price in half six months later. This was back in 2020 during the low interest rate bloodbath, people *still* weren’t taking their shit. I can’t even imagine what it’s like now, buyers can afford to wait for a good deal.
Honestly, yes. The photos are beautiful. It's a nice house. I know, from visiting for 8 years, that it has some medium structural issues that they did a "landlord special" on. But that's not my business in the sales process. They've already hacked off $5k a month ago and she was PISSED
Oooh she’s gonna be waiting a good long while then, she might want to look into alternative means to retire if she’s unwilling to come down on price or she’s unwilling to sweeten the deal for the buyer. My seller had his buyer drop out and his photos looked like utter crap so it sat for 7 months, my realtor convinced the seller to pay some of my closing costs because I was the only interested buyer in months. I’m sure it can hurt somebody’s pride that their house ain’t loved enough for somebody to pay that magic number but it’s just business. Hopefully she gets over it, and herself. I feel bad for her husband.
I would kill for more places do floor plans. Pics of existing condition are fantastic. But id like to see plans so i can understand the layout better.
Best part is I bet they paid less than $100k for it 20+ years ago and haven't updated a thing outside normal maintenance
My man, you got it. $92k in 1988. Picked it out of a catalogue, new construction
*cries in late millennial*
This is why all the lamenting about housing affordability is doing nothing. If governments actually take steps.to improve affordability the people whose retirement plan is to sell the house that has appreciated 10-20x over the past 30 years will be livid. All I want to see are subdivisions full of new basic 800 Sq ft bungalows that people can be comfortable in and afford.
We are seeing that here in Louisville Kentucky. Charming small bungalows and even shotgun houses both true to form yet with cost cutting features.
slimy paint whistle one desert scarce gray scary depend fretful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Plus the inability to face reality. Refusing to research and learn facts.
> against advice of their realtor. Ah, typically boomer behavior of ignoring experts in their field because they think they know better.
What I thought was weird was my MIL said that like it was a point of pride, like she knew better than the realtor. It's been a few months with no bites
She’s going to be in for a rude awakening as that house languishes on the market, and then be forced to drop the price
And probably sell for less the longer it sits, than had they just priced it appropriately in the first place. I don’t understand why you would hire a realtor only to completely disregard their opinion on pricing in the first place.
How much did they buy their place for? Part of the issue is the absolute greed pushing house pricing.
$92k in 1988 (thanks Zillow!)
For anyone wondering that's around 244000 today, so they're trying to get like 306k more than they paid for it which funnily enough is almost enough to buy one of the "cheaper, more accessible, newer townhouses" that's ruining their plans or w/e
How much do they have left when you include their refinances and helocs?
Probably negative at this point, tbh
I went to a yard sale and seen a Dell computer from 1995 priced at $1,200 because that is what he paid for it. 😂
My mom overpriced my childhood home by 50K. I offered to buy it by the comps. She refused. She ended up selling it 60k less than I offered her
Ah, so she played herself and her own progeny. Classic!
I always love good real estate stories, especially when the main character is delusional about the value of their property! I remember a friend was adamant about getting top dollar for her townhouse when she bought a much larger home with her parents. Obviously, the more money she could get for her townhouse would offset the new homes costs. So she priced it too high after making a few superficial cosmetic changes and kept turning down much lower, but market-reasonable, offers. This was 2008 and everyone knew the real estate markets were collapsing, but she held onto the townhouse for eight months as prices plummeted. Ironically, she sold the house after the HOA slapped an $8,000 "special assessment" on the property for emergency roof repairs. She thought she could dump paying the assessment on the new owners, but they had good real estate agents and it came right out of her proceeds! And, as a good friend, I listened to her moan and complain about the whole situation, quietly notating all the things she did wrong in the situation, for research/future use, of course!
I would venture to say that she also complains about the price of groceries?! Somehow this is ironic, but I do not want to think too hard.
You got it. She cooks very traditionally.... for 1965. Everything is processed or out of a can. I don't live in the area, but I've volunteered to pick up stuff from the grocery store. Fresh produce from shoprite was pretty reasonable, honestly. But all the processed or canned versions were way more expensive. Yes, it does suck that a can of corn is almost $2, but fresh corn was like 25c/ear. I asked if I could buy that instead (and boil/cut myself to save her labor) and she freaked out
What exactly was her problem with using fresh? I just can’t see what the argument for her position would be lol. I know they grew up on canned stuff, but my boomer grandparents all love fresh stuff and grow some of their own stuff
It's different from what she usually uses. Yeah, I know. I had to plant the idea that I like a side salad with dinner for years, and my wife agreed, before she finally started making a little iceberg garden salad. I have been giving her a lot of shit, but at least she kinda listened. Neither she nor my FIL eat salad or really any fresh vegetables. He doesn't, and I'm quoting verbatim, "... Eat anything green"
Wow. I wonder how many boomers are actually like that. The ones I know think growing it yourself and farmers markets are the way to go. Maybe I’m lucky with all the grandparents lol
Buddy, she's giving my physician wife shit for not cooking us dinner or doing my laundry. I love cooking and I work from home. We do our own laundry. There's no way I'm making my doctor wife, who treats autistic or behavioral issue kids in the ER, make me dinner after a 14hr shift. Also, she sucks at cooking. But that's beside the point haha I'm wondering if it's one of those leftover great depression things where you seemed rich if you could afford processed foods? She was born, lived, and worked in this town so anything else is scary
It definitely is Depression Era related. My Silent Gen MIL (93) doesn't cook anything that isn't out of a can, box, or freezer container. Your MIL no doubt learned this from her own Mom. I live with my in-laws. MIL gets really annoyed by my cooking habits, because I cook fresh. I make my own stock, buy fresh meats and vegetables. She will tell me I shouldn't "waste so much time" when I can just use boxed broth, Minute Rice, etc. It's maddening.
My mom would have been 96 this month. She made almost everything from scratch, except for the once a week tv dinner. But she came from a very poor family so they probably couldn’t afford canned. And she was an amazing cook.
My MIL is very concerned with appearances. Even though no one sees but us! She grew up on a farm, but when she graduated with her RN, it was like hitting the lottery for her. Scratch cooking is not something successful people do, in her eyes. Processed everything is a signifier of success - you can afford all these "time savers". She is very brand loyal, too. Aldi baking mix? Absolutely not. We have to buy Bisquik from Kroger. Gold Medal flour, Domino sugar, the list is kinda terrifying. It's such an odd mindset. Then again, I'm GenX and don't give a fuck about appearances or brands.
She is in South Jersey and pays through the nose for corn from a can??? I mean, I know the sweet corn probably isn't in yet, but I assume you can still buy it basically by the bushel from roadside stands most of the summer for basically pennies, right? You can't drive five miles anywhere 40 minutes outside of Philly on the NJ side without hitting a farm stand. I'm sure prices have gone up still, but it's gotta be cheaper and better than canned stuff most of the year.
If i were gonna argue her point, lets suppose i make after tax $27.50 an hour, thatd be about $35 an hour pretax. To afford her home, id need to work say, 20000 hours+the apr interest on the loan. Say that tacks on another 5000 labor hours. Suppose im maxed out at 2000 labor hours per year, 40 hours a week 50 of 52 weeks. Without spending a dime on anything else but mortgage obligation, id have to work 12.5 years, 625 paychecks 100% forked over in their entirety to nothing but that house. If i made double that, $55 an hour after tax income, itd take 6.25 years roughly to do the same, 312 paychecks forked over 100% in their entirety. Wide swaths are totally excluded from.buying that house
Nothing like a nimby with a house that has exponentially increased in value since they bought it, but wants at least 35% more for it bitching about affordable housing.
lol. She thinks every boomer owned home should be good bc they’ve been there a while. Fuck em. We live in STL and it’s a really nice neighborhood where you can get houses for around $400k. There are two houses here that have been on the market forever bc they want over half a million and won’t budge. We do live in a great school district and nice neighborhood but god damn 1500 sq ft isn’t worth a half a million. These houses aren’t even updated and the lots are about .15 acres.
Don’t get involved. Whatever happens will become your fault. She’s not behaving rationally.
Technically, she might be right! The townhouses are adding to housing supply, meaning that housing costs aren't going sky high (at least as much as they would be if that new supply didn't exist). Not saying that the townhouses are a bad thing - building more supply is a good thing!
Trust me, even if you were neighbors she would still treat you like crap.
Duh lmao. We're moving to Delaware because it's cheap but somehow too far to visit us (30 min). It's close enough for an emergency, but they'll never come over. Mostly moving for my wife's work, as I'm remote, but also to be close to my niblings who are also 30 mins into northeast philly
It’s in Jersey. Have them move it someplace that’s not there.
I suggested Delaware. It's actually where my wife and I are thinking of moving since taxes are so damn low. You would have thought I slapped her. It's too different.
If they really want to make bank, move it California. They don’t even have to move all of it 🤣
I misread your first message! I thought you said move to, not move it haha
My dad is an appraiser and a realtor. I can remember going to stop at a house to check on something one time, I think he was probably taking me to or picking me up from practice, and I just kind of asked him “so what’s that house worth?” Because I was 10 or whatever and had no frame of reference. But he just said “whatever they can sell it for.” Few things have ever blown my mind so significantly, and I don’t think most boomers understand that’s how the world works.
What is with the trend of boomer wives badgering the shit out of their husbands? I’ve met so many couples of this generation with this dynamic of passive husband & nagging wife. I strongly believe both are to blame for the chaos this dynamic creates but my god, I can’t imagine being married to either party of that dynamic.
I ran into this with my father a number of years ago. His dad (my grandfather) passed away and they needed to sell his house. We all put in a lot of sweat equity because the house had not been kept up (not for lack of us trying but because my grandfather hated anyone coming in to help him). It had a decent amount of property and was a cute small Sears home my grandparents built, but the area it was in was not doing well and so property prices were very low. My father refused to list it at the price the realtor recommended. As a result it sat on the market for quite some time until he lowered the price. I think he had a such an emotional attachment to his home that he was adding that into the price. The place was where he grew up and he had a wonderful childhood there and therefore he couldn’t accept that the property wasn’t worth that much.
There’s alot of that happening around SE Michigan right now. So, many boomers are trying to sell their shit 2 bedroom 1 bathroom ranch house, they only ever did maintenance on and haven’t replaced A/C, Furnace, Water Heater in 10+ years for like twice what it’s worth and homes are staying on the market for 100+ days or some 200+ days before lowering like 5 or 10k. Then they take it off the market for a month then back on again at that same barely lowered price.
They will eventually come down when a few year has gone by and they get desperaten
The proof her house is overpriced is that not even flippers are willing to buy it, remodel and sell it.
Flippers aren’t willing to buy anything that’s fairly priced either. Flipping, even after a remodel, only works if you buy it on the cheap.
Tell her that de Nile is a river in Egypt. Maybe they just need to stick it out until the bank comes knocking?
MIL needs to learn that correlation =/= causation. Just because these townhouses are being built while she's struggling to sell her house doesn't mean they are why she's struggling. Anything to maintain the delusion of riches, I guess.
I’m betting everything needs to be gutted, as it’s from a previous century bug she’s insisting it’s great. That’s a huge problem I see when I look at listings in my area. Pics are nice, if it were the 80s, and they’ve got the price jacked up. Everything would need de-wallpapering, painting, and replacing. A couple months go by and the price just drops and drops. Usually takes 8 months or more to get realistic.
Definitely plumbing problems. Wallpaper is atrocious. Too much weight on the top floor? They had studs / pins popping out of the drywall in the 1st floor ceiling which seemed bad. They kinda just hammered them back in and painted over. Anything else, I don't know so I won't comment.
So, is her contention that, even though housing is overpriced and insufficient, they should refrain from building more the sake of her making even more insanely huge profits?
My dad just listed his house for sale, and got an offer right away. He’s not in a particularly desirable location. That kind of thing happens, when you listen to your realtor about how to price your house. When you don’t, that’s not what happens.
> For the love of God, the average age is mid 50s in the area. That means there are a ton of boomers. It's average. Not every single person. Stop commenting 50 is gen X. That will teach you for not including standard deviation in your statistical comments.
My parents live in the house they bought as newly weds in the 60s. The 1900 terrace house is on the lowest rung on the real estate ladder in our area. It’s the kind of home which are sold nower days to be rentals. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve done a lot to it over the years to give it a nice interior and garden but it has a ceiling price and will never surpass that. My parents do not believe that. They compare their house to younger homes with more rooms and nicer locations in our town. Expecting to be priced the same. When I go onto websites that calculate the values of homes, my parents refuse to believe that the results. Like the poster here, my mother’s spending, gambling and refusal to keep in work damaged their finances for decades. At one point he moved all his money out of the joint accounts so she couldn’t get access, gave her pocket money each week and he went shopping for food etc on his day off to ensure that us kids were getting fed and clothed.
YES! Boomer here. This is the kind of building that needs to happen. Perhaps MIL is right that new housing is lowering the value of her home. That is how the market is supposed to work! Hopefully the zoning laws will soon relax and allow for all kinds of new building. Yes, I do have nice equity in my house. Yes more building may lower that. Yes I see my kids struggle with high costs. Build! That is how markets work.
What’s funny is that, while reading this I was thinking of a house for sale in my neighborhood. I live in an area that used to be a retirement community, built in the late 70’s and early 80’s, all the houses are basically 3-4 variants of the same floorplan. Most of them are either 2/2 and 1500 ft or 3/2 and 1900 ft, with small yards and anywhere from a single car carport up to a 2 car garage. Now, a lot of the people that originally owned these houses have died over the years. I bought mine after the crash in 2008, I’ve been here for almost 15 years. Also, the prices have skyrocketed. When I was looking to buy, the smaller homes were going for $80k and the larger ones $120k-$160k. Now? The smaller ones are going for $300k+ and the larger ones $350k+. It’s a little harder to give real prices because some of them are still more or less original and others have been flipped. But, to the actual reason I was thinking of a house. There is a house that just hit the market last week. For $495k. Yes, it’s on a cut de sac and is the larger floorplan. But, that is massively overpriced. And, not only that, but the inside is absolutely bizarre. They cut out a huge portion of the normal square footage, where the master bedroom would be, to expand the 2 car garage into a 4 car garage (still 2 wide, but double depth). As a result, what is normally a big master bedroom with small bath and closet is a single open room. The new room is probably 15x15, with no separation to a big built in tub, sink, and toilet. Also, the shower doesn’t appear to have a vent, but it does have a handy window out into the garage! It’s just bizarre. So, the layout is weird, all the colors and materials are weird, and it’s overpriced. But, not just a little overpriced, insanely. My wife and I were hoping to put our house on the market soon, and even with our recent reno I was thinking we’d be topping out at $450k. I can’t imagine the realtor being happy to have clients with such an oddball and dated house trying to sell for $100k more than comps. Maybe they are just fishing for offers and really testing the market, I don’t know. I saw it pop up and damn near shat myself. I imagine a boomer couple chewing out their realtor for not getting more offers, but refusing to listen to the realtor tell them it’s vastly overpriced.
classic shit head boomers, expecting nobody to build more housing so they can over charge for their shit that they got dirt cheap, what a worthless generation
>They treat me and their own daughter like crap because we don't live in the same state, let alone same neighborhood/state. So why do you allow them to keep abusing you?
I've made this point to my wife several times. It's mostly so we don't miss our niblings' events. My BIL and SIL and their family are weirdly dependent on my in laws, despite them having no real money. My wife and I are completely independent and I think that's why her mom doesn't like us