Boomers Rigged the System... So What Should You Do?

Why is it that boomers were able to buy houses on a single income, but for young people, even saving for a down payment feels impossible? The truth is, boomers built wealth in a system that no longer exists. And the worst part is, after they benefited from it, they changed the rules to make sure that other people, younger people, could not do the same thing. I've spent 20 years helping people understand and take control of their money. In this video, I am pissed I'm going to show you how boomers locked you out of the wealth building opportunities that they themselves had, including pensions, housing policies, and outdated financial advice. And then I'm going to walk you through the exact steps you can take to build wealth today, even in a system that was not designed for you. Now, let me start off by saying this. It's one thing to become successful. I want everyone to become successful. I want you to have millions of dollars. I want you to travel extensively. I want you to be generous with your money and have a fat investment account. Like, picture yourself 30 years from now automatically pulling $10,000 or $20,000 a month from your investments. I want that. But if you are in your 20s, 30s, even your 40s, it is almost impossible to make that happen today. And that's not an accident. It is by design. This is not about young people spending too much on avocado toast. I'm so tired of that. Boomers are the wealthiest generation in America, and that actually makes sense. They're older. They've had time to build their net worth. Remember, I celebrate people who have become financially successful. However, when they became successful, boomers started to systematically pull the ladder up behind them and make it virtually impossible for you to do the same thing. They started with two of the most expensive things you will ever pay for: retirement and housing. Let's talk about it. Many boomers are the beneficiaries of pensions. You know how it went. They worked at a company for a while. Now they get pensions for the rest of their lives. However, pensions aren't really a thing anymore. They're much less common. Companies rarely offer them, including companies owned by boomers. Most young people will never benefit from a pension in their entire lives. Instead, that retirement burden has been shifted to individual employees. Think about it. Your grandpa worked at a tire factory. Maybe he retired at 55, 60, 62 with a pension. You will be lucky if your company matches 3% of your 401(k). Companies systematically shifted that burden of retirement onto people like you and me, but you will never hear boomers acknowledging that. Some of them will enjoy a very fat pension for the rest of their lives, while younger people have essentially no access to a pension ever. And then it gets worse. Housing. Boomers bought houses when the government was explicitly encouraging homeownership, through policies and mortgages that made buying a house affordable. You know this. Many of your parents bought a very pleasant middle-class house on one salary. That's fine. But then what happened next? As soon as they bought houses, these homeowners rigged local city councils and local governments to make it literally impossible to build more houses. Guess what happens when you can't build more houses in virtually every city in America? You limit supply, which as we know from Econ 1, less supply plus higher demand equals higher prices. And that is exactly why housing is so expensive. It's not about BlackRock. It's not about Blackstone. It's not about greedy landlords. It is about a mundane reality that most people don't even know about. It is about your parents and your neighbors, wealthy homeowners who systematically do not allow any more housing to be built around them. I'm talking about duplexes, row houses, triplexes, skyscrapers, all kinds of housing. They simply say it's illegal. And this is true in almost every city in America. Even the press is biased to focus on what older people care about, not younger people. Look at these headlines. They're actually outrageous. When house prices go down, they write about it like it's some catastrophe. The question you should be asking is, bad for whom? If the price of toothpaste goes down, isn't that a good thing? Oh, I see. Journalists meant lower prices are bad for old people, which is their primary constituency, because in America we have a gerontocracy. And so we center older, wealthier homeowners. As they write, if prices go down, it must be bad. You know, you really have to wonder if you're a young person or a person of color or you have a young family, why is it bad if the price of housing goes down? It turns out that what is bad for older people is often great for younger people, especially because older people have a huge percentage of their net worth in their primary residence. And this is where the story shifts from unfair to outright war. And I want to acknowledge not every single boomer got rich on pensions. In fact, a lot of them don't have a pension. Not every single boomer got rich on housing. Okay, fine. In fact, not every single boomer is rich. We all know that. But when you look at how our country prioritizes old people over their children and grandchildren, you see a pattern that started decades ago, and it is simply not fair. What would have been relatively straightforward or easy decades ago is virtually impossible today. To work a normal entry-level job on one income, buy a house, have a car. Sure, the houses were smaller. Sure, the cars weren't as sophisticated, but it is virtually impossible in every city in America to work an entry-level job, even to get promoted on a single income and to buy a house and a car. That is not an accident. That is a policy decision that we have made in America, and it systematically advantages old people. And disadvantages you. Because of the decisions our government has made, young working people are subsidizing the very generation that blocked them from building wealth on their own. Guys, I don't have a problem with the young generation subsidizing the older generation. That's how it works. That's how Social Security works. But how can that be fair when the older generation continues accumulating their wealth to the detriment of younger people. Wouldn't a better solution be, hey, older people get subsidized by younger people? That's how it's always been. That's okay. But younger people have a chance to be able to build their own wealth, have a chance to be able to have affordable housing, to have better jobs. Nope, can't do that because it's illegal to build housing in every city in America. Now, this is why voting is so important, especially for young progressive voices who want to focus not just on older people, but also on young people. So even though we can acknowledge the unfairness of these policies, we're watching this video to know what we can do about it. Here's a question for you. Are you maxing out your retirement accounts? Are you earning as much as you possibly can in your current job? I see people miss this opportunity all the time. It's really easy to become resentful of what is going on politically, and I understand it, trust me. But we also have to focus on what we can control. For example, your income is one of the key tools to build wealth. Yes, I want you to invest. Yes, I want you to save for emergencies. But first, I want you to make sure you are getting every dollar available to you. That could mean learning the skill of negotiating your salary. Maybe it means starting to look for a new job that pays you more, or starting a side business to bring in an extra $1,000 a month. I'm focusing on earning more because I want you to have enough money that you can get around the roadblocks that boomers have put in your way. Now, obviously, that is not sustainable for millions and millions of young people. We need structural change. But for you watching this video right now, I want you to know strategies that you can use to increase your earnings and get ahead. Older people might have gotten lucky. You have to be smart. It's not just the housing market that's stacked against you. It's the media, politicians, the financial system itself, all designed to protect boomers again, which I don't mind, at your expense, which I very much mind. Now, a lot of us want to do better for our children. 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Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com/ramitsethi or click the link in the description below. Again, that's meetfabric.com/ramitsethi. Now, boomers might have had pensions and cheaper houses, but if you want to get ahead today, you really need to understand this next part. As you know, Americans are having fewer babies, and since we are adding fewer Americans through immigration, we have naturally become a nation of older people. Hell, in my neighborhood, it damn near looks like a geriatric facility. Do you know why? Because older people bought their houses here in the '70s, rigged those housing laws to make it illegal to build more housing, and now no young people can afford to live near me. Especially in expensive cities, you will often rarely see kids. These older people sat on their houses. They grew and grew in value thanks to virtually every city in America implementing NIMBY laws to make it illegal to build multifamily housing. That means young people are nowhere to be found. This is truly a class war because when an entire country begins aging, bad stuff happens. You need younger people. They work jobs. They provide resources for older people, including Social Security. You cannot have an entire country that looks like people eating at Cracker Barrel. But you know what's going on? When a country starts aging, it naturally starts to focus on who has the power. Countries predictably focus overwhelming amounts of resources on older people because they're the ones with the votes, the money, and the power. And think about how that's playing out. We're talking about passing laws against high-density housing. Many boomers would rather have a swimming pool than an affordable housing development where their own children could live. And politicians know this because many of them are boomers themselves. This actually blows my mind. Look at the average age of politicians. In fact, recently 3 Democrats died while in office. Politicians can't understand your lifestyle, including things like DoorDash and TikTok, because many of them were literally born over 75 years ago. And this is how you get multimillionaires telling you to cut back on coffee while wearing a $6,000 suit. It's no wonder young people don't trust their advice. And that skepticism opens the door to scammers and creeps who sell young people get-rich-quick schemes that ultimately bleed them dry even more. Basically, DraftKings is not going to make you rich. You know what could make you rich? Being able to afford housing like boomers did. Being able to have affordable health care coverage. Perhaps even having a fat retirement account subsidized by your employer like boomers did. But instead, we have Bitcoin bros specifically preying on young people, specifically young men, and 70-year-old American politicians catering to their own generation while screwing anyone younger than them. They don't care that legalizing online gambling goes hand in hand with higher rates of bankruptcy and lower credit scores. They don't care that the sea level is rising and hurricanes are getting worse. Many of them, especially Republican politicians, deny climate change even exists. And according to them, who cares? They won't be alive to see the effects. And there's even more out-of-touch advice from the people you see talking about money on TV and radio, like Dave Ramsey and Kevin O'Leary. Yes, they are multi-multi-millionaires. But think of the advice that they actually give. Dave Ramsey is still recommending 15-year mortgages and these mythical 12% mutual funds that he refuses to name. By the way, was it rice and beans that made Dave Ramsey wealthy? No, of course not. No, he doesn't talk about that, though. Did Kevin O'Leary become worth hundreds of millions of dollars from not spending money on coffee? No, no, no. But instead, he loves to lecture the average American about buying coffee. Buying coffee is not what made these people wealthy. It was their career and their investments. But it's a lot more fun to lecture poor Americans about not buying Rice Krispies. I made a whole video about why you shouldn't be listening to financial gurus who are still recycling personal finance tips from 1978. I think there's a better way to manage your money. It's called the Conscious Spending Plan. I don't spend my days with my nose buried in my phone tracking my bank account in 2-cent increments, and you don't need to either. With the Conscious Spending Plan, you only need to know 4 numbers to take total control of your money. That's it. And once you know these 4 numbers, you will be able to build the rich life you want for tomorrow while spending money guilt-free today. My conscious spending plan is free. I'll link it below. I want you to be so rich that you can laugh in the face of this bad boomer advice. And that starts with you taking control of your spending. You know, it's amazing when I take a look at people's spending and I will see them just invisibly leaking out hundreds of dollars a month eating out. And when I ask them, what is your rich life? They never say, eating 3-hour-old Chipotle. You and I want something bigger in life than just spending money on random commodities. Oh, Tide cleaning pods. So cool. Nobody wants Tide as part of your rich life. What we do want is to know that we have the right systems set up for our money. Am I automatically saving? Am I automatically investing? Do I know what my next step is? And most importantly, are we going to be okay? If that is part of your rich life, then join my money coaching program. You can join at iwt.com/moneycoaching. And one of my favorite parts of this program is the community of other people who understand I Will Teach You to Be Rich just like you do. Sure, we all need a little bit of help. We need accountability. We need to make some friends that understand it's cool to talk about building a rich life. We don't need to be ashamed of it. You will learn all of these things along with Q&A from me and support and step-by-step playbooks in the Money Coaching Program. Join today at iwt.com/moneycoaching. Now, the next thing we're going to talk about, it almost made my head explode. You know, one of the biggest shocks of your life will be talking to a retired boomer and asking them how much money they make. I genuinely think that young people would riot if they actually saw how much money some boomers make from their fat pensions, Social Security payouts, RMDs, while the average young person will never be able to buy a house. The stories of how Americans are severely in debt are rarely broken down by age groups. Turns out there are a lot of wealthy boomers. Again, I have nothing against people, especially older people who have become wealthy through long-term investing and great careers. Fantastic. But remember, many boomers are wealthy because of their house. And why is their house such an important key to this entire concept? Because they bought their house years ago and then they systematically prevented other people from doing the same thing. Many boomers actually make more money per year from their house appreciating than from their salary. That is a major problem. And the government actually incentivizes this. This is not just about boomers being mean people. If you grew up under the same structures that boomers did, you would be doing the same thing. So we should not simply say, boomers, you suck. That's not the case. That's not the point of this video. It is that the structure under which boomers came up is a bad structure. It systematically advantages them, and then they took that and made it disadvantage younger people. You know, the government actually provides certain tax advantages for homeowners. Like in California, there are people who have been living in the same house for decades who are paying a tiny amount of taxes. Meanwhile, their house is worth hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars more. The longer they live there, the more the house is worth. But they are not paying the commensurate amount of taxes. And this is thanks to something called Prop 13, which is a massive giveaway for wealthy homeowners. Guys, I'm telling you this because almost nobody will show you how the structures of keeping older people wealthy work. People will sit around and toss around these dumb phrases like, oh, greedy landlords, BlackRock. That has nothing to do with how it actually works. This boring concept from the '70s is why there is unaffordable housing in California. It is this one specific thing. Meet Steve. He bought a house in California in 1975. That house is now worth $2 million today. You know his annual property tax? $800. Meanwhile, you're paying more than that just for your one-bedroom apartment. This is just one of the many ways in which the government is effectively giving handouts to the wealthiest people in our society. Older people, specifically older homeowners. And if you've read my book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, or you've seen my video on how the housing market often bankrupts Americans, you know that I don't actually think everybody should buy a house.. But if you want to buy a house, if you've done the math, if it's part of your rich life, then I resent that our system makes it harder for you to do it, especially because it was so easy for them. Rice should not cost you $80 a bag when we know how to make it cheaper. Yet that is what we have basically done with housing. We have taken something that we know how to make inexpensive and we have made it super expensive, primarily to benefit wealthy, old homeowners. What a joke. Those boomers got lucky. But I will point out they took advantage of building wealth easily. Now it's harder these days. There's no doubt about that. But you can also take advantage of opportunities to build wealth whether you own a house or not. I'm all about making your money easy. Agonizing over buying a $3 scone is not what I do, and I don't think it's for you either. Here's a better question to ask. What will happen if you start investing $50 a month or $300 or $500 or $1,000? Investing regularly, especially automatically, is a key to building wealth. That's because of compounding. When you invest money, it compounds, meaning interest earns interest on itself. And when you automate your investments, you don't even have to think about it. Imagine that for a second. You go to the gym, you're texting your friend, you stop off at the at the grocery store to pick up something to eat. And the whole time, automatically, invisibly, you are building wealth in the background. Now, any brokerage will let you set up automatic contributions online. The only time you need to think about it is when you get a raise or you start earning more. And then it's a good time to bump up your investments as well. And I think this is actually one of the antidotes to the rigged system that young people are living in. All right, fine. They're getting richer while they sit in their house watching Matlock. Well, so are you. And you might be thinking, Ramit, this is not fair. Why should I have to work twice as hard for the things that my parents have? Well, I want you to know 3 things. I actually understand why young people feel resentful. I understand why young people are now more open to socialism. And I completely understand why young people are overwhelmingly getting interested in voting for progressive politicians like Mondani in New York. When you don't feel like there is hope for you to be able to earn money, to be able to have affordable housing. When you feel like nothing is in your control, a lot of people actually start to give up and they start to say this capitalism thing is not working. Guys, it's really funny when I talk about some of my political views online. Sometimes people accuse me of being a socialist and I'm like, are you speaking to Ramit Sethi, CEO of a for-profit company where he sells products to customers to make a profit? I don't think that's socialism. Pretty sure I'm a capitalist. I want people to be successful and to make a lot of money. I want you to be successful and make a lot of money, but I resent people in this country who have made a ton of money and then turned around and changed the rules so the next generation cannot do the same thing. Do you understand how easy it would be for me to become one of these old rich multimillionaires who then says, hey, you all need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, stop buying avocados, I detest those people because I know how much luck played a role in me becoming successful. And I also know that if I was simply born to different parents or in a different state or any number of things happened, I would not be in this situation. That's not fair. I don't expect everyone to become a multi-multi-millionaire, but I want you to have a shot at a good life. And I find it incredibly selfish and dangerous that an older generation just continue siphoning wealth for themselves while systematically disadvantaging younger people. It's dangerous because when you have tens of millions of younger people who see no path to ever being able to buy a house or ever being able to start a family, they get pissed. And if you're watching this, I want you to know 3 things. Number 1, I share your frustration. Number 2, it's not fair. And number 3, this is why I am so insistent on you learning how to automatically Save, invest, and design your rich life. Remember, you do not have to live the same kind of life your parents did. You don't have to buy a McMansion in the fucking desert. You can choose where you want to live and how you want to live. You know, although we've talked about how things are tougher financially for young people, there are also opportunities that we have that our parents' generation did not have. We can often work from wherever we want. We can have a flexible schedule. We can earn money online doing things that were not possible 20 or 30 years ago. Now, what makes some of these choices possible is building that wealth automatically, consistently, and strategically. And that's automating your investments. It's earning as much as you can. It's taking control of your money now to build the rich life you want. Remember, you don't have to be perfect, but taking action is always going to move you closer to that rich life than doing nothing. I am never going to leave myself to the mercy of these get-rich-quick scammers, or I'm never going to become a disaffected person who goes, oh, there's no way for me to get ahead. I hate my life and just sit and put my head in the sand. Never. Yes, boomers had pensions. Yes, they had cheaper houses. And yes, they changed the rules to lock you out. It sucks. But you don't need their system to get rich. You can build wealth automatically, even inside of this economy. I'll show you how in the next video. I'm going to break down the exact playbook to skyrocket your net worth in your 20s, 30s, and 40s. It's not about penny jars. It's not skipping coffee. It's the same strategies I've used myself. So click here to turn this broken system into your rich life.