Does Boomer Money Advice Still Work? Ramit Sethi Reacts to the Internet's Most Out-of-Touch Takes
I Will Teach You To Be RichIn 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.
"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.
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."
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
$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.
One of my favorite genres on the internet is a boomer explaining why you can't afford a house. They bought their first house for $80,000. College cost less than a used Honda, or many of them didn't even go to college. And somehow they've concluded that your problem is DoorDash.
Now, frankly, I love hearing these comments. I don't know why I have a mental problem. I can't stop reading them. And once you start reading them too, you're going to see that a lot of their financial advice has not been updated in decades.
The economy has changed, but their advice has remained exactly the same. So today I went looking for the most out of touch boomer money advice that I could find. And I want to answer one question. Does any of this stuff actually work? Let's find out.
Lee in Iowa says, "Boomer here. I bought my first house after 10 years of saving like crazy and the interest was 14.5%. I don't know where kids got the idea that they were due a house and new car at college graduation, but that's not how it ever was."
All right, listen, Lee, you fake-ass account on Twitter. First of all, the median age of first-time home buyers has jumped from age 28 a couple of decades ago to age 40. What do you think? That people just magically became lazy by a third? No, that's not how it works. Home ownership became historically expensive. The fact that your house had a 14.5% interest rate and it cost approximately three jelly beans to buy does not really prove comparable to what's going on today.
If you factor in how much a house costs and the interest rate, you look at total cost of ownership as well as the available housing units because it only now makes sense for developers to build huge McMansions because it's also illegal to build small... I know I lost you. You can't even keep up with what I'm talking about. You just want to be angry and you want to call people in their 30s and 40s kids because it makes you feel superior.
Rather than developing empathy and saying, "Holy... Have I actually run a calculator? Do I even remember how to calculate basic fractions?" No, but if I could in this hypothetical environment, wow, I might realize things are way more expensive and the fact that I saved for 10 years, the median person could save for 25 years and still not be able to buy a house. You don't get that because you don't care to want to get that.
My message to all these boomers is we're not debating you anymore. We're not going to try to convince you to be empathetic. You got to be 60, 70, 80 years old without building empathy. Okay, fine. You want it your way? Fine. We don't care to entertain your delusions anymore. We are simply going to build more housing over your impotent objections.
When it comes to this advice, I noticed that people spend a lot of time worrying about tiny financial decisions. Meanwhile, the big decisions, the ones that move the needle, often get ignored. I see this all the time with business owners. They're focused on saving a few bucks here and there, but they often have no proactive tax strategy. That's a mistake that will cost business owners more than any coffee ever will.
That is why I partnered with Gelt, the sponsor of this video. Gelt is a modern CPA firm that specializes in high-income earners and business owners year-round, not just during tax season. Here's what makes them different. They have a proactive tax plan tied to your goals, cash flow, and P&L, guidance on credits, deductions, and entity setup to optimize your structure, and a clean modern platform that keeps everything organized and on track.
If you are making multiple six figures or you are running a business and you don't have a proactive tax strategy, you might be overpaying. That's not a $3 problem. That is a $30,000-plus problem. If you want to see what a real tax strategy looks like, visit joingelt.com/ramit to schedule your consultation today. That's join, G-E-L-T, dot com slash Ramit. And you can also scan the QR code on screen or click the link in the description below.
Okay. My team pulled this one from a subreddit called Boomers Being Fools. I didn't even know this exists, but I already love this subreddit.
"Why don't boomers understand the concept of inflation? They buy groceries, pay bills, buy gas, and pay rent, just like millennials do. They must see the prices of these things going up and up, and yet they're firmly against raising the minimum wage, despite millennials and Gen Z being far more educated. A boomer will be like, '$4 for a Coke? I remember when it was a nickel.' Yet they'll quickly forget about that whole exchange when people say they can't make rent on $10 an hour.
"The same boomer will be like, 'What? $10 an hour not good enough for you? Back in my day, it was a damn good wage. I had to run a house, a car, feed a wife, and two kids on that in 1980. You must be terrible with money. Stop being so entitled.' Okay, but we don't live in your day anymore, and $10 today would only be $2.68 in 1980. Would you have worked for that? Also, didn't they live through hyperinflation in the 70s? And they must notice their bills going up. I don't get how they don't get inflation. If it's not willful ignorance, it's dementia."
Okay, let me explain why boomers do not get this. And it's actually all people, especially in America. You must understand that for the vast majority of people, when it comes to money and math, the connection between the two for the average person is extremely tenuous. They understand, yes, personal finance involves some sort of math in the same way that I understand that my car turns on because of engineering.
That's about as far as it goes. I turn the key, it turns on, done. I don't need to understand it anymore. And in fact, if you try to lecture me, I'm not interested. Okay. That's how it works. In fact, even my example of turning the key doesn't even make sense because nobody turns the key anymore. I'm living in the past like these boomers.
These boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, you do the same thing too. We take a formative moment in our life and we freeze in time. You ever seen some guy who's in his forties and he's still wearing slim-cut pants? It's like, you look horrible. Nobody wears that anymore. It's wide-leg. I could tell the year you were born by the hem in your pants, but they won't stop. They are frozen in time based on their formative period.
So for a millennial, they grew up and they really developed their fashion sense, such as it is, in the 2010s. And that is what they know. That's why you see these guys who are in their seventies, they have really long pants. They won't hem them properly because that was the style back then.
It's the same thing for money. When I ask people, "How much would you spend on a vacation?" First of all, they never know. Nobody sits down and carefully calculates how much of my guilt-free spending should I allocate. They don't do that. They go, "$5,000." It's always the same number. $5,000 whether they live in Brooklyn or Ohio, $5,000 whether they're going to Yosemite or Italy. Where did this magic number come from? I'll tell you, because $5,000 in their twenties is what they once spent on a trip. And now, like a cow getting branded, it's frozen in their psyche.
We do not adjust to numbers changing around us. We do not adjust to fashion changing around us. We struggle to adjust to social norms changing around us. That's why when you look at the political voting of older people versus younger people, you will often see older people stuck in the past.
Let's look at the next thing. "Our parents are still out of touch. This topic is like hitting a dead horse, but I just need to rant. Backstory, I work out at the gym with people who are our parents' age and of the boomer generation. I overheard them saying, 'We bought our first house for $65,000. I'm sure kids these days are only paying $125,000 for that same house.' When they said that, I burst out laughing. How are they so out of touch? It drives me nuts."
You need to understand that most people have an extremely loose connection with numbers. The only number the average person sees on a given day is when they use their remote to switch and they go, "Oh, top Netflix hit number three." That's pretty much it. So all those teachers that were trying to do their best back when you were in middle school saying, "Hey, you really need to learn algebra. Let's talk about rotating conic sections and Calculus AB." Whoa, who the f*** am I kidding? Y'all didn't go to Calculus AB. Let's be real. They were trying to say you're going to use this. Not anymore.
All right. And as you age, you're using it less and less. $65,000, 25 years later, to only double to $125,000, or just based on inflation, would be absolutely absurd. They don't get it and they don't care. And neither do you because nobody uses numbers. What am I doing on this stupid channel?
Where's my lid? I'm never going to find this lid. Look, this is a fountain pen. This thing is gone now. I don't even know where my lid is.
Yeah, it's fun to make fun of bad advice online, but I actually want you to take control of your money. For me, the worst thing in the world would be you watching video after video of why things aren't fair. And 20 years from now, you are stuck in the same financial position as you are today. I want you to have money so you can travel, so that you can go to the grocery store and not have to look at prices, so that you can live your rich life.
That is why we created a new program called Road to $100K. For most people, reaching their first $100,000 invested is the moment that money starts to feel different. Notice how you're feeling right now. "$100,000. Yeah, right. Must be nice. Maybe someday." No, we're going to make a plan right now. You are going to know exactly the month and year that you're going to have $100,000 invested. And you're going to have a personalized path to get there even sooner.
You'll also get access to live coaching and a community of people who are working toward the exact same goal. So watching videos is great, but I want you to take control of your own money with a real plan. If you want to join Road to $100K, scan the QR code on screen or click the link below to learn about Road to $100K.
All right, I want to see what's next. "I have to constantly remind myself that the job market is in balls. But I think the most frustrating part about it is how older people just act like we're lazy. And obviously this is a common conversation, but I'm talking about the way that they think we are just not trying or not being creative enough. I don't know if they fully understand it's not even just the fact that we're only applying online now. They're using AI to read."
All right, hold on. I have something surprising to say, which is a lot of you are not good at applying for jobs. In fact, you're horrible. I have seen it because I'm a hiring manager and I have a lot of hiring manager friends. We all just don't really say this publicly because it's not that politically correct. But when I put a job posting out and I get replies, 95% of them get eliminated in five minutes. When I ask on a job application, "Hey, please send a video," and you don't send a video, you're not getting hired and it's not the economy in that situation. It's you.
Sometimes I think it's easier to poke fun at boomers than to take a hard look in the mirror. You are not good at applying for jobs. Why would you be? Have you ever learned the skill? Have you ever studied my free YouTube videos on how to create a resume that matters? Here's a hint. Nobody cares about your chronology. You thought your resume was just to show your chronology. I don't give a f***. Your resume is meant to communicate a narrative. If you don't know what the narrative of your resume and your career is, you're not getting a job.
If you only apply through the front door, through some website, and you go, "Why is nobody hiring me?" Well, that's because a million other people are doing exactly the same thing and you are just one more in that group. If you think you're above networking or that doesn't work because I didn't go to a fancy college, then you're going to get average or worse than average jobs.
I'm telling you the truth. I created an entire curriculum on this and then I ended up giving away most of the material for free. Have you ever heard of the briefcase technique? Have you ever watched my videos on landing a dream job? They're free. Damn. I just roasted 90% of my audience. Everybody left this video. Oh well. That's why I get to run my business the way I want to. That's a rich life.
Moving on. "Boomer dad can't figure out why I don't buy a home. I showed him my income and we did the math. After rent, car, groceries and insurance, I have zero dollars left over. He said, 'You should get a second job.' I already have two. He then said, 'You're a fool for paying rent. Buy a house.' Okay, I think this is where we started, Dad.
"Then he goes, 'Right out of college I was struggling, so I got an apartment for $150 a month, but I only made $800 a month.' Okay, so your rent was one fifth of your income. That would be like me finding an apartment for $500. 'Well, rent is a lot cheaper than that, so you should be fine.' I showed him the exact apartment he had for $150 is now $2,400. 'You need to get another job.' I told him I have two. 'Then you should get a good union job at a factory like I did and work hard.'"
First of all, extreme props to this person. Now, usually I don't recommend verbally eviscerating your own family, but sometimes it needs to be done. So just freaking block and tackle. This guy came guns blazing, ready to go. Oh, he's going to say this, then I'm going to say this. He's going to say this. I'm going to have the data ready to go. That's how you crush your opponents and sometimes you need to do it. Is this good for healthy relationships with your own family? Absolutely not. Is it extremely entertaining, especially for me? Yes. So I don't know. What's the ethical approach here? Crush your dad? Maybe.
I have discovered something that is the antidote to delusional people online. As you may know, I speak to thousands of MAGAs online. I have a mental defect where I actually enjoy talking to stupid people and I don't have a lot of people like that in my day-to-day life. So when I get to speak to racist people, politically delusional people, barely literate people who are often so extremely bad at logic that I worry sometimes they might forget to breathe when they go to sleep, I decide to have a little fun with them and see, is there anything I could possibly say that might even open their eyes to basic reality?
I've discovered one trick that is an antidote to them spinning off into digression after digression. I simply say, "What would you do instead?" I put the onus on them and I make them tell me, what would you do if you had a magic wand to run the government? And suddenly they actually don't know what to do because their entire existence is merely reacting to what is going on. "That's stupid. That's crazy. I hate immigrants." That's what they say. Okay, you tell me what you would do and you can quickly see within five seconds their entire answer falls apart because it's easy to react like a toddler.
"I don't like carrots." Okay, well, what do you want to make, little toddler? Let them do everything. Watch how quickly they will throw up their hands and just go, "Well, you need to get three jobs." Okay, I appreciate that, and put that on my calendar. Where would I find those jobs? I'd like you to find me the job online right now that will pay the kind of money and calculate it for me. They can't do that.
"Well, back in my day." Well, that's really interesting, Dad, but hang on for a second because we are working on you creating a plan for me and I will agree to do your plan if it makes sense, but please continue. Let's stay out of the past. Let's focus right now. Watch what happens.
This is actually a principle you can use anywhere. If you find yourself in a dynamic where the person is reacting, "I don't like this. I don't like what you planned on our trip. I don't like this food. I don't like, like, like." Hey, I totally understand. We might have different tastes. Maybe I didn't do a good job picking this thing out. Can you take over and tell me what you would do? And that's where you start to have a lot of fun. Try it and let me know what happens in the comments.
Below. Okay, what's next? What's the most out-of-touch piece of life advice a boomer has given you? All right, we're about to run out of tape because I'm going to read this forever.
“Don't worry about being stable. You'll figure it out as you go.” Said by my mother after telling me not having kids because I can't afford it is stupid. For reference, I grew up in poverty. There were quite a few days where we literally didn't have food.
Nostalgia is an amazing thing. We often create these rose-colored glasses to look back on our own past. I do it myself. I remember studying for the SAT. Yo, I took that seriously. Okay, I was very academically oriented and so were all of my friends in high school. We dominated this. We prepped. We did all kinds of stuff to get really good and to get into great colleges. And it was hard. I studied my off and yet now when I look back, I go, huh, wasn't so bad. I tell my nephews, get to work.
Yes, it was still hard, but in the grand scheme of life, which can include health challenges, financial challenges, relational challenges, it was hard, but it wasn't everything in life that is hard. While I might be right that, hey, you actually do need to work hard, get to work, and getting into a good college is going to help you a lot. All that is true. It does discount how large that feels to somebody at the time.
So I try to catch myself and instead of maybe telling them, just work, just shut up, just get to work, it's like, hey, when I remember, it was really hard, but in the end it was really worth it for me. And I wonder if some of these folks might be able to adopt that same principle when they are sharing their life lessons.
Let's move on. My mom thinks a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $1,000 and that $20 an hour is a shitload of money. You all remember that thing on Twitter that went around where people basically said, whenever you hear something really dumb, you have to mentally remember, of course you're 12. And that's kind of what's going on here.
Whenever you hear some of these comments about how buying Thanksgiving dinner pre-prepared should cost $17, of course you're 12. A 12-year-old doesn't know anything. Okay, they think things magically fall from the sky. Oh, I woke up and I have a birthday cake here. It was just magically prepared. Santa Claus is still bringing gifts. You're 12.
The scary thing about bad money advice is that we hear it so often, we actually stop questioning it. If you want help to figure out what actually works with your money, hit subscribe. All right, let's look at the next one.
Boomers, you were not more financially disciplined and you did not make more sacrifices than millennials and Gen Zs. In 1975, if you came home from a long day's work and your kids were crying and wanted food, you mean to tell me if DoorDash existed, you wouldn't use it sometimes? Of course you would have. You would have had the internet. You would have had cell phones. You would have had iPads. You would have had Netflix. You would have had Disney Plus. So it doesn't make you disciplined just because these things didn't exist.
I believe people back in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, when Americans were much thinner, saying, well, we were disciplined. No, you weren't. All the food was healthy. It wasn't processed. And there wasn't a McDonald's on every corner tempting you. The temptation's all over the place. So we actually have to be more disciplined. And then when it comes to the sacrifice, you worked 40, 50 hours. We're working 40, 50 hours. You worked overtime. We're working overtime or a side hustle. A lot of you had one person working, supporting a family of two or three in a house that you owned by 29.
This is a great video and a great point. I took my two nephews to Stanford on a college tour. I was asking them, what is it like being 15, 16 years old, applying to colleges? They told me stuff that really blew my mind because I remember being in high school, applying to colleges, and it was hard for sure. It was hard.
They have cell phones, which is engineered to be as addictive as humanly possible. It's hard enough for adults to stay focused on stuff. Now imagine you're a 15-year-old kid and all of your friends are on social media. It gave me such an appreciation for how hard it's got to be. Yeah, of course, there's new stuff. There's YouTube where you can learn more about the SAT and stuff. Fine. But on balance, I think it's way harder to be in high school and to be academically oriented than it was in my time when we did not have those things.
The same is true for money. Having DoorDash now, although yes, it is a luxury, it is ever present. Two clicks and you can have any food delivered to your house in 30 minutes. Even the mere fact that back in the day, you had to pick up the phone and call somebody. That alone is a small barrier, but just imagine how easy it has become to spend money. Subscriptions. They didn't exist back then in the same way they do now.
So I don't think this glamorization that older people were more disciplined is accurate at all. They lived in a completely different time. We should appreciate that they existed in that context, but that does not mean that they were better people. In fact, if they had DoorDash, they would have been using DoorDash just as well as people do today.
Look what I got. Listen, I love all the YouTube viewers, but I'm not going to ruin this freaking beautiful fountain pen just for your entertainment. Buy the best, take care of it.
The next time somebody tells you to stop buying coffee, I want you to ask one question. Is this $3 advice or $30,000 advice? Because a lot of boomer money advice gets focused on tiny decisions when the big ones go untouched. So this week, let me suggest stop looking for a tiny little thing to cut or to feel guilty about. Instead, I want you to look for one thing that could move the needle in a big way.
And if you are tired of hearing the same old money advice over and over, watch this video next. I'll show you seven money rules that might seem completely backwards, but can help you build real wealth.
Article published · Updated
