People Are Sharing Just How Out Of Touch Their Boomer Parents Are
Some people get set in their ways as they get older and even become closed-minded. In fact, some become not only very closed-minded but also completely detached from the reality everyone else is living through.
And it was those extreme cases that Reddit user Letsdothis_333 was interested in when they recently asked, "How out of touch are your boomer parents?"
The thread got over 2K comments from Gen X'ers and millennials whose boomer parents really have no idea of what it's like for them. Below are the top and best responses, along with the OP who started it off with their own story:
1."I (31F) have been struggling financially since my divorce and my mom said I should sell my car and get one for $3K. I told her $3K vehicles need a lot of money in repairs, so what would be the point? I pay less than $250 a month for my car, and she thinks I could save by selling it and buying a super cheap used car. There is no such thing as a cheap used car."
"They watch the news so I know they know what the world is like currently. Do they just not accept that times have changed? They also don't understand why I can't buy a house for $50K as a single woman. I sent my dad a house listing one day, it was a mobile home with part of the flooring missing on 1.5 acres, and it was listed for $325K. A home in a neighborhood is going for $400-to-500k for a 'starter home.' Then she says well get a roommate. Umm, hello, I still need that down payment and to qualify. What will it take to open their eyes?"
2."I own a car dealership and constantly deal with boomers coming in and getting a shitty attitude because they think that they can offer $3,000 cash on a $7,000 car and I'm going to jump at it. They always say the same thing, I need a car that's less than 10 years old with under 100,000 miles for $3,000. I tell them that they need a time machine."
3."My mom offered to pay for my kid's braces. Told me to send her the total, then said, 'This dentist is ripping you off! I will give you $500, and you TELL them that is all you are paying!'"
4."My dad inherited a lot of money from his wife's passing and decided he wanted to throw me a bone by buying me a car. This sounded great because I've been keeping an old beater running for years. I started going through used car listings for cars with lower mileage than mine in decent shape and sent him links."
"Of course, everything I sent him was 'unbelievably expensive!' So, I asked him how much he wanted to spend. He said, 'Two or three thousand.' I couldn't even buy a beater as nice as mine for that much. When I explained that to him he thought I was totally ridiculous. So, he pulled his offer back and bought himself a $30K Jeep instead."
5."My mother berated me for being an idiot for paying more than $400/mo for rent on my first apartment in a major city. No, I didn't miss a zero. This woman seriously thought that rent isn't more than $400/mo without roommates."
"I refused to tell her the exact number because it's none of her damn business, but she looked up my neighborhood and told me yet again how stupid I am, that I'm throwing money away on rent, and that I'm basically paying a mortgage on a $400,000 home. There are no $400,000 homes in my city. You can get into a one-bedroom condo for around $600,000. That's not even taking into account interest rates and the down payment. Boomers are f*cking delusional."
6."I live in California, and my mom lives in the Midwest. She told me she heard on the news that Happy Meals cost $25 in California. I had to pull up my local McDonald's app menu and show her that it wasn’t even close."
7."My mother offered to buy me new kitchen appliances when I moved into my new house. She gave me $500 for a stove, dishwasher, and fridge."
8."My dad had a great strategy to help me buy a house. He figured that if I listened to him, I might even be able to buy a nicer house, one that was like $100,000. When I showed him actual house prices, he started going on about how if I had listened to him a few years ago, before prices went up, everything would have been fine. No amount of historical data would convince him that the houses he was looking at hadn't cost $100,000 for a very long time."
9."My dad gave me a $75 Kroger gift card and said, 'That should cover you for a month or two.' Sir?????"
10."I literally told my dad that food inflation this summer really hit us hard, and child care was rough; he talked about how we need to live a different lifestyle that we can afford. We don’t eat out, we don’t travel, we mostly stopped drinking or buying weed. What the f*** kind of lifestyle did he think we were living?"
11."My boomer MIL says she can't afford the flights to come see her only grandchild more than once or twice a year. Then she laments about how she wishes she saw him more. We recently discovered she's spending more per month on 'all-natural dog food' than what a flight would cost."
12."I live in Chicago, and my parents would love a condo here to use part-time in retirement. They expect to find a three-bedroom place with a yard in my pricey North Side neighborhood for about $300k."
13."I had been a licensed electrician for 12 years when I told my parents I was quitting and going to college for my electrical engineering degree. My mom (born in '47) says, 'Why don't you try tech school, it's so much cheaper.' She paid zero attention to my life but was always quick to point out how my unemployed brother was doing so well after he dropped out of college and spent 6 months in jail."
14."So my parents stopped having cable a few years ago to save money, saying they'll just watch the internet. I thought maybe it's a good 'cause they won't have Faux News on 24-7. I went back over Christmas, and they've been watching conspiracy theory bullshit and believed aliens took over the government and whatnot. They kept telling me about alien theories they believed, and I kept saying, 'That's from Prometheus. That's from Close Encounters.' They're getting those theories from movies."
"I had to explain to them to separate conspiracy theories from reality. My dad was embarrassed, but my mom doubled down and now is stockpiling for some apocalypse. They said that video games and TV would rot my mind growing up, yet they believe anything they see on a screen."
15."Not a parent, but my boomer coworker blames inflation on women being in the workforce. He's saying that to me, a female blue-collar worker. It's infuriating, especially when he says he misses the 'Leave it to Beaver days.'"
16."I just moved and live paycheck to paycheck, and my mom sends me furniture links from West Elm and says, 'These are on sale!!!' And when I tell her one piece is equivalent to an entire paycheck for me and I’d have to forgo groceries for like two weeks to meet my budget if I bought a single ottoman, she gets huffy and says, 'I’m just trying to contribute.'"
17."There is a time disconnect with boomers. They seemed to have blacked out the last 20-plus years and still think it’s the late '90s and early '00s. My boomer father can’t comprehend why we need to send our child to daycare, and my wife can’t stay at home with the kids. I’m like, hello bro, simple math that’s why."
18."Mine hasn't come out of the '90s, always asking why they never see campaign commercials like they used to and why some places don't even take money."
19."My parents haven’t shut up about a $9 hamburger they got at a restaurant. NINE DOLLARS FOR A HAMBURGER! They shared one, of course."
20."I am 42. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis when I was 14. My first incidence with back issues started at 18 and it took until this last year to get diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis. Two years ago, my insurance switched my meds, and I reacted badly to them. I nearly lost all ability to walk, I live in pain, I fatigue easily, and my moods are all over the map."
"My mom still insists that all my problems are caused by my COVID shots and I should go through a lengthy supplement process to rid my body of the mRNA and other poisons from the vaccine. If God or Trump can’t fix it, surely Dr. Mercola can! So that’s how out of touch my parents are."
21."'Just walk in, ask to speak with the manager, then give him a firm handshake, look him square in the eye, and ask for a job. Have your resume ready and call him sir.' Dad, it doesn't even remotely work like that anymore."
22."Well, I'm a progressive agnostic and I have been since I was a teenager (I'm 42 now). My mom still recommends Dave Ramsey and Joyce Meyer to me, still to this day. My dad was a union worker who votes Republican, making sure his grandkids don't get the same opportunity."
23."My mom thinks a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $1,000 and that $20/hr is a 'shitload' of money."
24."My dad is surprisingly in touch with everything except the cost of real estate. My wife works mostly remote, but literally has a 100-mile drive when she does have to go into the office. My dad said, 'Why don’t you guys buy an in-town condo where your wife works? How much could it cost, maybe $50,000?' My wife works in the D.C. area. You would be lucky to find a parking spot for $50,000. My dad is also shocked that you can’t find a house in the place where we currently live for under $600,000."
25."My mom told me her generation solved racism by being empathetic to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."
26."My mom has worked for the same company since 1996, but still gives unsolicited advice on job hunting. Like, lady, you haven’t done this since the Clinton administration."
27.And lastly, "My mother recently called me and asked if I have heard that Trump is running again. The rock she lives under is approximately the size of an Eastern European country."
You can read the original thread on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
