My folks qualify as some of the earliest born of the baby boomers. They had good jobs and bought a home in 1980, but it took them a long time to get ahead. While I don't know if they were living paycheck to paycheck, things were certainly tighter when my brothers and I were younger. They had a lot of credit card debt at one point, drove newish cars for most of my upbringing and paid for college for the three of us by borrowing on their home equity.
My Dad liked to have nice things, but he was afraid of losing his investments in the stock market. He basically only put money into money market accounts. Thankfully Northrup also paid him in stock to some degree and after 30 years in aerospace, that's probably the only investment of his that had any appreciable return. After retiring from Northrup and doing his last 8 years with Raytheon, plus having my brothers and I out of the house and out of college and fully independent, he was able to invest much of his Northrup pension while living on his Raytheon salary. He was no longer scared of losing his job, or losing money in the stock market now that no one really depended on his income.
My mom was more willing to invest in more aggressive mutual funds, but she was a university administrator and didn't make nearly as much as he did. In the end, her investments were only 1/4 of his.
They are both in their mid 60s and both recently retired, they drive older cars than they did when I was growing, despite probably being able to afford much newer, no longer carry credit card debt and are about 3 years from paying off the house after numerous refis throughout the 90s and 2000s (probably because they are paying 4-6 times their monthly mortgage in order to expedite it).
They are a classic example of people who had good jobs, but couldn't save anything for the longest time. The combination of my dad's "rehirement" stint with Raytheon and getting better control of their expenses by the early 2000s, is probably the difference between them enjoying retirement and eating cat food in 10 years.
My point of this example is they could have swung to either side of the spectrum. Are they as wealthy as they could have been if they got their spending under control and invested more heavily and aggressively at an earlier age or chose not to pay for 3 college educations? Definitely not. Will their savings, investments and pensions last them if they live into their 90s? I think so and I expect them to continue enjoying their lives well into their 70s. You never know when health issues will creep up on you, but for now they are able bodied and still getting out to see the world (even went to Antarctica) without having to dip heavily into their investments. Their hope is to be able to live off a combination of their pensions, Social Security and only dabble into the interest or dividends on occasion to maintain their standard of living from the past 10 years. Seems like it'll work to me.
