A few days ago I had dinner with a friend of mine. Briefly, we spoke about buying real estate. I remarked that even if financing was a non-issue, it is too risky to own property in Clown World. The main reason is that you sink a lot of money into a house or apartment, based on the assumption that the surrounding area will improve or at least remain in a comparable state, but you absolutely cannot make this assumption anymore. You could buy a house in the countryside, only to one day face a small wind farm. Well, government-sponsored scientific studies irrefutably prove that there are absolutely no issues with living next to a wind farm, neither for you nor for all the birds and insects getting murdered by rotors, and the footing of a wind turbine is also apparently completely sustainable. This is just one problem. Another is that the government may just decide to put up a migrant shelter next to you. I have such an example in my extended family: the guy used to live in a small, bucolic village of a few hundred people. This village is not so bucolic anymore because the government thought that this kind of societal insulation is not good for these people. Consequently, they put up a migrant shelter that houses around 200 people in easy walking distance to the village. You can imagine the effect this has on housing prices. Well, officially it has none because nobody is buying houses next to a cultural enrichment center. You just cannot sell your property anymore, and if you say that your quality of life has deteriorated, you are an evil Nazi and deserve to be jailed.

Our boomer parents, however, did not face such problems. They created this mess we are all in, but they do not face the consequences to the same extent. This even affects your personality. For instance, the contrast between my father and me could not be starker. He is magnanimous and jovial, at least outside the home. I am really intense. My parents built a house in the 1970s and, from what I gather, paid it off in ten years, which was the norm back then. Once my father had reached this goal, he basically turned around and ordered a new Mercedes-Benz, straight from the manufacturer. I later learned that he kept a permanent home equity line of credit so that he always had money available in case there was a need for bigger purchases. He was so casual about it that he repeatedly tells the story of the local banker asking him whether he was aware of how much he has to pay in interests. He took care of it, but it is a good example of his nonchalance with regards to money.

Money was not a big issue at home. We were certainly not rich. However, my father’s mindset seems to have been that there is always enough money around for his needs, and that his retirement was taken care off by the government anyway. This was also reflected in his hobby, photography. He had a collection of camera lenses and equipment befitting a semi-professional, and some he never even used. He also liked playing poker for money with some acquaintances. This meant that he occasionally blew hundreds, and sometimes he left with many hundreds more, which he then invariably blew on some nonsense. Note that these are the kind of people who tell you that you are fiscally irresponsible if you buy a cup of coffee-to-go or get an avocado bagel every once in a while. I cannot even blame my father for having been wasteful with money. Put yourself in the shoes of a guy who is in his early to mid 30s, with his house fully paid off and living expenses  not being a big issue at all. Child benefit payments alone easily covered food. With the two biggest expenses taken care off, i.e. housing and sustenance, you may easily ask yourself what you are going to do with all the money, in particular at a time where stock market investing was not easily accessible to the general public.

Perhaps surprisingly, my father views himself as being fiscally prudent. He thinks that fellow boomers who put an excessive amount of money into a antique car have the wrong priorities, considering how little you would drive such a car. He was also aware of the dangers of overconfidence and reckless spending, telling me about people he knew who got into financial difficulties because of, for instance, very expensive home renovations. The boomer life clearly was not without risks, but you had to actively engage in really stupid endeavors, like adding a basement pool, which you could barely afford, or buying a boat without understanding maintenance costs. He also knows boomers who ended up in a rough financial spot after buying a vacation home. Clearly, pretending to be rich if you are not is a really bad idea. However, if you were not entirely stupid as a boomer, you could casually stroll through life. You knew that you would be alright. Of course, the boomer collective did not understand that by behaving in this way, they would create hard times for society. The boomer art of living that used to shape an entire generation is the preserve of a very small group in society nowadays.