I hear that Boomers give terrible financial advice to their children. I am now a little old lady with a 401(k), a house, and no debt, so clearly I have a lot of terrible advice to impart. Here is my advice.

• Be privileged, and be White if at all possible.
• Drop out of college and become an alcoholic in your early twenties. Stop drinking. Never drink again.
• Make some truly terrible educational decisions.
• Never acquire a permanent full time job on purpose. No, get hired from temporary positions when your temporary employer realizes you are not a serial killer.
• Be willing to live in areas that will never, ever become gentrified. Make friends with your neighbors.
• Marry another sober alcoholic. Figure out early that marriage is a terrible financial plan.
• Have one kid. What the heck. But stop there.
• Realize in your thirties that you do not make enough money to support a kid, and that your spouse keeps quitting jobs at random and has no savings.
• Get a graduate degree or two for free, at an elite university, because expensive universities leak money in some very weird ways.
• Get a job in your new field by testing well, and walk out of it three days after it starts because you are incompetent.
• Take yet another temporary, part time job in your new field, and work on a year-to-year contract for the next twenty five years. But they have a 401K plan, plus health insurance. Put more than the minimum in your 401K.
• Never go into any kind of debt. Pay all debt off with more than the minimum payment, doggedly, for years. Panic. Do not touch your 401K.
• Have a mother with enough money and property that she can cash it all in on a senior residence when she gets a terrible long-term neurological disease and you are the local caretaker. Do not take your indigent father in with you when he becomes ill. Let another, kinder sibling do that.
• Your mother gives you her horrible old house when she moves. This is key. It would cost three times its sale price to make that house livable for anyone with common sense, and you do not have common sense or the skills to fix it. But now you have a house. Property is one of the most important elements of privilege, along with education and being White.
• Your husband gets laid off and goes into business for himself, and now you’re both really poor.
• You are so poor that you don’t have to pay much for the college your kid gets into, because of financial aid.
• Sell the awful house to some deluded person and move into a more solid house in a sketchy area of a local city. Make friends with your new neighbors. Your local drug dealers are basically the Neighborhood Watch, and if you talk to them, they will look out for you.
• Suddenly realize, in your late fifties, that now you are not exactly poor any more.
• Now that you are not poor, pay it forward. Buy your kid a decrepit row house in a sketchy area not far away from you, so that they have a place to live. Let your husband believe it is an investment property.
• Make sure your husband doesn’t get terminal cancer until he has Social Security and Medicare. Remember that hospice is your friend at the end, and that Medicare will pay for most of it.
• Presto! You are old. Your house is paid off now, you never touched your 401(k), and you know how to live on what Social Security gives you because instant ramen with a beaten egg and a tablespoon of parsley is a balanced meal. Get rid of your car and your life insurance payments. Hang on to the long-term care insurance you lucked into. Have Medicare and a supplemental health insurance policy (not Medicare Advantage, dear God, no). Take the city bus everywhere and be friendly with people who are very different from you. Use the hell out of senior citizen discounts. For instance, your neighborhood did gentrify in spite of your best efforts, but now you’re old enough to qualify for a senior citizen discount on your taxes.
• Continue to worry, because eventually you will get really old and you will eat up that 401K, but at least your only child already has a house and is pretty fond of you.

To summarize: Be White, privileged, and educated. Have a lot of luck. Get someone to give you a house. Never get into any debt you can avoid. Get a retirement savings account and put money into it. Be willing to eat a lot of instant ramen. Live at a time when stuff is cheap, and when there isn’t a lot of stuff you have to own. Don’t ever think you got any of it because you deserve it, and don’t be a paranoid jerk to anyone.

There you go.

Actually, people do ask me for financial advice, and the first thing I say is yeah, put a little bit of money in savings, as soon as you can, no matter how little, and avoid debt. Also, avoid crypto, franchises, NFTs, multi-level marketing opportunities, and anything that promises a huge return. If you want money to fall out of the sky, buy one lottery ticket. You won’t win, but at least you’re not losing all the little bit of money you do have.