Does Boomer Money Advice Still Work? Ramit Sethi Reacts to the Internet's Most Out-of-Touch Takes

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Overview

In this video, Ramit Sethi reads a series of posts from X, Reddit, and TikTok where older people explain why younger generations can't afford houses or get ahead. His question is simple: does any of this advice actually work? His answer is mostly no. He argues that much of it hasn't been updated in decades while the economy has changed. But he doesn't simply side with the younger posters. He also tells job seekers some uncomfortable things, and he offers a tactic for arguing with people who only react.

13 min read
0:56

"Nobody Was Due a House": The Housing Argument

The first post is from an X account called Lee in Iowa. The poster says they saved "like crazy" for ten years before buying a first house at a 14.5% interest rate, and says they don't know where "kids" got the idea they were due a house and a new car at college graduation.

Sethi rejects the comparison. He cites a shift in the median age of first-time home buyers from 28 "a couple of decades ago" to 40, and asks whether people "just magically became lazy by a third." His explanation is that home ownership has become historically expensive. A high interest rate on a very cheap house doesn't match today's situation. He says a fair comparison would look at total cost of ownership, the interest rate, and the number of available housing units. He begins to argue that developers now find it worthwhile to build only large houses because building small ones is effectively illegal, then cuts himself off, mocking the poster for being unable to follow.

His larger complaint is about empathy and arithmetic. Someone who saved for ten years, he says, should run a calculator and see that today the median person might save for 25 years and still not afford a house. He also objects to people in their 30s and 40s being called "kids," which he reads as a way of feeling superior. His message to such boomers is that "we're not debating you anymore." People who reached 60, 70, or 80 without building empathy won't be persuaded. Instead, he says, "we are simply going to build more housing over your impotent objections."

Inflation and the Minimum Wage

The next post comes from the subreddit r/BoomersBeingFools. The poster asks why boomers don't understand inflation even though they pay for groceries, gas, and rent like everyone else. The poster describes a boomer who marvels at a $4 Coke, remembering when it cost a nickel, but then says $10 an hour should be plenty because it once supported a house, a car, a wife, and two kids in 1980. The poster says $10 today would be only $2.68 in 1980, and asks whether that boomer would have worked for that. The poster also points out that this generation lived through high inflation in the 1970s.

Sethi's explanation goes beyond boomers. He argues that for most people, "especially in America," the link between money and math is "extremely tenuous." People know personal finance involves math the way he knows his car starts because of engineering: he turns the key, it starts, and he doesn't want a lecture. He then notes that nobody turns a key to start a car anymore, so his own example shows he is living in the past too.

6:05

Frozen in a Formative Moment

That self-correction leads to one of his main ideas. He says every generation, including Gen X and millennials, takes a formative period in life and freezes there. His first example is fashion. He mocks men in their forties still wearing slim-cut pants when the style is now wide-leg, and says he could tell someone's birth year by the hem of their pants. Men in their seventies, he says, wear long, unhemmed pants because that was the style when they were young.

He argues money works the same way. When he asks people how much they would spend on a vacation, they usually don't know, because almost nobody calculates how much of their guilt-free spending should go to travel. Yet they almost always answer $5,000, whether they live in Brooklyn or Ohio, and whether they're going to Yosemite or Italy. Sethi's theory is that $5,000 is what they once spent on a trip in their twenties, and the figure stuck "like a cow getting branded." People fail to adjust to changing numbers, changing fashion, and changing social norms. He links this to older voters, whom he says are often "stuck in the past."

7:56

A $65,000 House Doesn't Cost $125,000 Today

A Reddit post from r/Millennials describes older gym-goers saying they bought a first house for $65,000 and guessing the same house now costs about $125,000. The poster laughed out loud.

Sethi repeats that most people have a very loose connection with numbers. He jokes that the only number many people see all day is a Netflix "top 10" ranking. He recalls teachers insisting students would use algebra someday, and says that, in practice, people use math less and less as they age. A $65,000 house merely doubling over 25 years, even from inflation alone, would be "absolutely absurd," he says. But in his view, people don't understand this and don't care, and the same goes for his audience.

10:30

"A Lot of You Are Not Good at Applying for Jobs"

Here Sethi changes direction. A TikTok creator describes the frustration of a bad job market, where older people treat young applicants as lazy or uncreative while applications are submitted online and screened by AI.

Sethi says he has "something surprising to say": many job seekers are bad at applying for jobs. He speaks as a hiring manager with hiring-manager friends. He says they rarely say this publicly because it isn't politically correct. When he posts a job, he says, about 95% of applicants are eliminated within five minutes. If his posting asks for a video and the applicant doesn't send one, "it's not the economy in that situation. It's you." He suggests that mocking boomers is sometimes easier than looking in the mirror.

He also asks where people would have learned the skill in the first place, and points to his own free material. His advice:

  • A resume should communicate a narrative, not a chronology. If you don't know the narrative of your resume and career, you won't get the job.
  • Applying only "through the front door" of a job website puts you among a million others doing the same thing.
  • If you think you're above networking, or that it won't work because you didn't attend a fancy college, you will end up with average or below-average jobs.

He mentions his "briefcase technique" and his videos on landing a dream job, then jokes that he has just "roasted 90% of my audience." Being able to say that, he adds, is part of running his business the way he wants.

12:35

The Dad Who Said "Get a Second Job"

The next Reddit post describes a conversation with a boomer father. The poster showed their father their income. After rent, car, groceries, and insurance, nothing was left over. The father said to get a second job, and the poster replied they already had two. The father called renting foolish and recalled paying $150 a month for an apartment while earning $800 a month right out of college. The poster calculated that this was one-fifth of his income and would equal a $500 apartment today. The father said that sounded fine, so the poster showed him that the same apartment now rents for $2,400. The father replied that the poster should get another job, or a good union factory job, and work hard.

Sethi gives "extreme props" to the poster for arriving with data ready and anticipating each move. He admits that verbally eviscerating your own family isn't good for relationships, but calls it entertaining, and jokingly leaves the ethical question open.

13:52

The Antidote: "What Would You Do Instead?"

This story leads into the tactic Sethi presents as the video's most transferable lesson. He says he talks online with thousands of MAGA supporters and others he describes as politically delusional or bad at logic, partly to see whether anything he says can move them. The trick he has found to stop endless digressions is to ask: what would you do instead? He asks them what they would do if they had a magic wand to run the government. He says they often don't know, because their stance is purely reactive, and that their answers fall apart within about five seconds. He compares this to a toddler who says "I don't like carrots": fine, then what do you want to make?

Applied to the dad, the move is to take the advice seriously and ask for specifics. You need three jobs? Where would I find them? Find one online right now that pays enough and calculate it for me. When the answer turns to "back in my day," Sethi suggests steering back: we're working on your plan for me, and I'll follow it if it makes sense, so let's focus on now.

He says the principle works in any situation where someone only reacts, such as criticizing a trip you planned or the food you chose. Acknowledge that you may have different tastes, or that you may not have chosen well, and ask them to take over and say what they would do. He invites viewers to try it and report back.

16:13

Nostalgia and Rose-Colored Glasses

The next post answers a question about the most out-of-touch life advice a boomer has given. The poster's mother told them not to worry about being stable, that they'd figure it out as they go, after calling their decision not to have kids for financial reasons "stupid." The poster notes they grew up in poverty and sometimes had no food.

Sethi treats this as a problem of nostalgia, and he includes himself. He studied hard for the SAT, and he and his friends prepped seriously to get into good colleges. It was difficult. Looking back now, he catches himself thinking it wasn't so bad and telling his nephews to just get to work. He still thinks hard work and a good college help a lot. But he says that view downplays how big the challenge feels at the time, and that high school pressure is only one of life's hardships, alongside health, financial, and relationship challenges. So he tries to say instead that it was really hard but worth it for him. He wonders whether older people could adopt the same approach when sharing life lessons.

17:51

"Of Course You're 12"

A post says the poster's mother thinks a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco costs $1,000 and that $20 an hour is a lot of money. Sethi recalls a Twitter meme: when you hear something really dumb, remember "of course you're 12." Someone who thinks a pre-prepared Thanksgiving dinner should cost around $17 reasons like a child who thinks birthday cakes appear by magic. He adds that the danger of bad money advice is that people hear it so often they stop questioning it.

18:47

Were Boomers Really More Disciplined?

The last clip is a TikTok arguing that boomers were not more disciplined or more sacrificing than millennials and Gen Z. The creator says a parent in 1975 with crying, hungry kids would have used DoorDash if it had existed, along with the internet, cell phones, iPads, Netflix, and Disney+. The absence of temptation isn't discipline. The creator compares this to Americans in the 1920s through 1940s being thinner because food was less processed and there wasn't a McDonald's on every corner. The creator says younger people also work 40 to 50 hours and overtime or side hustles, while many boomers supported a family on one income in a house they owned by 29.

Sethi agrees and adds a personal story. On a college tour of Stanford with his two nephews, aged 15 and 16, he asked what applying to college is like now. Their answers surprised him. They have phones he describes as engineered to be as addictive as possible, and all their friends are on social media. Staying focused is hard enough for adults. He grants that there are new advantages, such as YouTube for SAT prep, but on balance he believes being an academically focused high schooler is harder now than in his time.

He argues money is the same. DoorDash is a luxury, but it's always present: two clicks and food arrives in 30 minutes. Even having to phone in an order used to be a small barrier. Subscriptions didn't exist in the same form. He concludes that the idea of older people being more disciplined is inaccurate. They lived in a different context, which deserves appreciation, but that doesn't make them better people, and with DoorDash they would have used it too.

21:12

$3 Advice Versus $30,000 Advice

Sethi closes by returning to the classic boomer line: stop buying coffee. The next time someone says it, he wants viewers to ask whether it is "$3 advice or $30,000 advice." In his view, much boomer money advice focuses on tiny decisions while the big ones go untouched. His suggestion for the week is to stop looking for a small thing to cut or feel guilty about, and instead find one thing that could make a large difference.