As the Baby Boomer generation born between the years 1946 to 1964 retires or passes away, some Millennials who dominate the workforce are feeling let down. In some severe cases, when a Boomer passes away, sometimes their millennial children are overlooked in a will or, there has not been any estate planning done at all.
According to a representative of Florida Probate, a Boca Raton probate litigation firm, all types of legal disputes can emerge after a family member – like a parent – suddenly passes away. The disputes can lead to surviving family members having to fight it out in court to get what they perceive as “theirs”.
Florida Probate explains to Digital Journal that if a surviving child believes she or he is being denied money and property, the offspring will probably then seek to hire a lawyer who can represent their interests in a court of law.
The situations of Boomer parents passing away and leaving their Millennial children with little or nothing is exacerbated by the macroeconomic questions pertaining to the generational wealth gap.
According to a recent report by Business Insider, Millennials presently represent the largest workforce in the U.S. But they are also said to be the least wealthy. As noted by Bloomberg, the generation born between 1980 and 1995 control only 4.6 percent or what amounts to about $5.2 trillion of U.S. wealth.
On the other hand, Boomers are said to be ten times richer. They control an astonishing $60 trillion of overall U.S. wealth. This also represents twice the $28.5 trillion of U.S. wealth that Gen Xers born in 1965 to 1979 hold.
According to the Pew Research Center, there are presently about 56 million Millennials in the workforce compared to 41 million Boomers. Yet, the Boomers control almost all the wealth. The wealth gap is said to be partially due to the fact that Boomers are older which means they have had more time to accumulate wealth. Millennials have yet to reach their peak earning years and te youngest Millennials are still earning only entry level salaries.
However, as Business Insider states that, as historical trends indicate, such a major wealth gap between Boomers and Millennials is atypical. Government data suggests that when Boomers were of the Millennial age back in 1989, they possessed 21.3 percent of U.S. wealth which is four times the 4.6 percent that today’s Millennials have acquired.
Millennials Are behind when it comes to wealth
U.S. government data also concludes that younger people are behind financially. Wealth for those 55 and older is said to have gone up, while wealth for those younger than 55 has diminished.
For Boomers 70 and up, wealth has increased, but not as dramatically as it has for those Boomers and Gen Xers in the 55 to 69 age group. The data proves that Boomers are outpacing what is sometimes called the “Silent Gen” in wealth accumulation as many of them begin their retirement years.
At the same time, wealth for persons aged 40 to 54, and for people under 40, has decreased over time. This indicates that Gen Xers and Millennials are not keeping up with Boomers as they move into new age brackets.
The findings are said to underscore reports compiled in 2019 that revealed the Millennial-Boomer wealth gap. A New American think tank report discovered that Millennials earn 20 percent less than Boomers earned at the same age. A MagnifyMoney fed data study illustrated that a $600,000 gap exists between the average net worth of Boomers and Millennials back when the latter were of millennial age.
The great affordability crisis
The generational gap between Boomers and Millennials is said to be largely the result of what an additional Business Insider piece calls “The Great American Affordability Crisis.” What this indicates is that Millennials are struggling financially to meet the demands of rising living costs such as energy, housing, food, vehicles, student-loan debt, inflation, and rising taxes due to massive government entitlement programs.
The COVID-19 pandemic also proved challenging to Millennials while many were either furloughed from their jobs or found that their jobs no longer existed. While recent job numbers indicate people are going back to work at low paying or gig jobs in order to put food on the table, the potential for recession and a bleak economic outlook for the next two years will only widen the generational wealth gap between Boomers and Millennials.
