Boomers turn saving money into art form

December 11th, 2008 at 10:55am Linda Grist Cunningham

Three words describe the baby boomer generation: rigid, righteous and reactionary. We get our teeth sunk into some cause, campaign or ideology and we’re as tenacious as a rat terrier.

Born roughly 1946-64, as teenagers and young adults we didn’t like the Vietnam War, so we got it canceled. We didn’t like big business (big anything, for that matter) so we tore it all to shreds. When we arrived in our getting-spending-and-child-rearing years, we got, spent and reared with a vengeance. Kids first was our mantra, right up there with spend every nickel we made (and could borrow) until a couple months ago when our profligate greed finished off Wall Street and all those “big” things.

Which brings us to today and my prediction that we boomers are going to decide that saving money — not spending it — is what everyone ought to be doing. We’re going to go all rigid, righteous and reactionary about it. The out-of-control consumer society we doted on in 1975 and then gorged on for the next three decades, died in October.

Boomers, rather than wallowing aimlessly in the passing of our 401ks, will demand (probably to the point of making laws) that everyone must save. We’ll try for means tests for how many children one can afford. We’ll limit new home construction to one car garages (well, maybe two), but definitely not three or, heaven forbid, more. We’ll demand high-density housing, not McMansions on  sprawling lawns that require riding mowers. Invest in mass transit now because suburbs is going to become a dirty word.

We’ll make it fashionable to drive an old(er) car; downsize possessions (great for garage sales, except no one will be buying more stuff);  wear for-real cheap jeans and not designer ones that just look cheap. We’ll cook and entertain at home, and look askance at those who flaunt their cash in any way. We will demand quality goods and services for reasonable prices — no  show-off stuff. We’ll expect that an impressive portion of our cash be donated to charities that take care of those who can’t take care of themselves — and we will tax ourselves (and you, of course) to make sure government can provide health care, roads and bridges, vocational education, jobs and defense.

We will wear our newly found fiscal conservatism and social responsibility with pride and we will expect everyone else around us to do the same. If you don’t we’ll make a law. We will be rigid, righteous and reactionary about it, too, so don’t even think about questioning how a generation that spent itself into another Great Depression could now be so cautious about its remaining cash.

Boomers are already painting the first brush strokes of this new-found fascination. Give us another year or two, and we’ll be the artful masters of profligate savings. Waste not, want not.

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