this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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There's a famous Agatha Christie quote where she mentions that when she was young, she never imagined she'd be rich enough to own an automobile or poor enough to not have servants in her house. At some point, the affordability of one shot way past the other.
In my lifetime, I've seen huge cost increases in housing, and huge cost decreases in most technological products. When I was a kid, the normal TV size was something like 20 inches, and cost more than a month's rent for a typical apartment. In 1990, the average rent was $447, according to this. I found a Sears catalog from 1989 with a 25 inch TV selling for $549, and a 20 inch TV for $318. It would be hard to convince someone from 1990 that one day the cheapest, shittiest apartments in the poorest neighborhoods would rent for more than a 60-inch TV per month. Or that the typical ambulance ride costs something like a month's salary of a factory worker.
That's the real problem with old people's sense of money. The human tendency is to assume that all products cost the same multiple of those products prices in their early adulthood, so the luxury products of their youth remain the luxury products of today. These old people are stuck in some kind of Agatha Christie style of cost comparison, without the self awareness, and thinking that someone who owns a cell phone should be able to afford to buy a single family detached house, or couldn't possibly be bankrupted by a single Emergency Room visit.
I totally agree with you that this is true, but I think it’s more a problem with reactionary thinking than anything else. The way I see it, the type of thinking that leads to reactionary comments is individualistic solutions to social and economic problems because you’re not allowed to question affordability.
People of all ages pull this shit. I can’t count how many times some millennial on reddit made unwanted suggestions for a poor person’s budgeting or grocery purchases. It is obviously difficult for older folks to understand things they’re not experiencing, but I don’t think that’s the primary issue.
Ask any traitor lunatic under 40 what to do about high prices, they’ll tell you exactly.
I definitely see this a lot. Any time someone complains about the unaffordability of life you get a swarm of people prying into their personal details desperately trying to figure out how that person's situation is their own fault.
Exactly. I never want to hear from someone making >$300,000 that I should be eating lentils all week.
Please stop blaming “old people”. It’s a divide and conquer tactic. I have grown children that are struggling with housing costs, and I absolutely understand why. Because greedy wealthy people/corporations are buying up all the property. If “old people” are pulling the avocado toast argument—they’re probably wealthy. Young wealthy people use the same argument. Something to think about regarding TVs. They were expensive back in the day, but they lasted 30+ years. ✌️ ☮️
I'm not "blaming" anyone. I'm pointing out the mechanism that causes a portion of old people to be out of touch on these things. They rely on their own experiences to draw inferences that don't actually apply to others.
"That’s the real problem with old people’s sense of money”. That is blaming old people.
"Blame" means to attribute for some negative result. There's no assigning fault here, just an observation, and an explanation behind that observation.
If I said "Bob is a fucking idiot," that's not blaming Bob for anything.
So yeah, I stand by my explanation behind the observation in OP's screenshot: that people tend to draw on past experiences even when those experiences are no longer as relevant, or are even actively misleading. And that the phenomenon I describe (that not all prices inflate at the same rate or preserve the same ratios to each other) exacerbates the problem.
OK. I’m seeing “the real problem with old people”. So, de facto, there’s a problem with old people.
The topic of the original posted screenshot is about inter-generational financial advice. I'm pointing out the need for intellectual humility when talking to a younger generation, by identifying a specific cognitive bias that tends to trip people up. And because this particular bias forms through experience, it tends to apply more to people with longer experience (that is, people who are older).
I thought my original comment wasn't judgmental, and didn't even purport to claim that all (or most) old people actually fall victim to the bias, to where they're acting upon that bias. I'm just pointing out that it's something to look out for, and to keep in mind, if you're ever in the position to be giving younger generations financial advice.
Coming in here and trying to defend old people against an imagined attack is, frankly, off topic and not particularly helpful.
It is absolutely OK to assign accurate blame and this basic misunderstanding absolutely afflicts people who aren't rich. The kind of person who bought their house when it's cheap and thinks the $2000 they pay in property taxes per year are murderous whilst ignoring the fact that folks around them are paying $2000 a month in rent.
I don’t know where you live, but property taxes are sky rocketing as well. And, thanks to global warming, house insurance is also sky rocketing. A lot of people who own their home are facing difficulties. There are communities in British Columbia where insurance companies refuse to offer fire coverage. There are communities in British Columbia where insurance companies refuse to offer flood insurance. These same insurance companies used to. You know why they won’t now?? Because the Oligarchs own the insurance companies, and they know what’s coming.