My outstanding case for why your financial woes aren't my fault

Thursday, 9 March 2017

Allow me to sit back with my wine and cheese (which you can't afford if you want to buy a house) and tell you a thing or two about my generation.

OPINION: Listen up millennials, I am a baby boomer who can teach you many things, as you work your butt off to a) pay off your student loan b) save for overpriced housing c) pay tax to give we post-war babies a comfortable retirement.

I can see how you might blame me and my peers for adding to your financial woes, feel free, but I am about to plead ignorance, and you will swiftly see I can mount an outstanding case.

First, blame Adolf Hitler and his war-mongering buddies. I didn't ask to be born when I was. Nor did I demand couples who survived World War II have kids in rapid succession to help them restore normal life as the gunfire and nuclear clouds died away.

I had one parent who'd seen things he didn't want to see and another who suffered through rationing and fears of Japanese invasion. That was an Edmonds recipe for negativity.

Now, you youngsters are getting criticised for not grafting away, for feeling entitled. Weird. If we boomers are famous for anything it is for frolicking through the era of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll in our tie-dyed t-shirts.

Even Adolf Hitler has a portion of the blame for the current state of NZ.

We protested against Vietnam, we surfed, we went to rock festivals, got covered in mud, used rustic toilets, and some of us inhaled.

Forward planning, say what? We thought why bother to invest in the future when there might not be one, with a nuclear arms race, a Cold War with missiles pointed in all directions, with the handsome and charismatic US President John F Kennedy shot dead in Dallas, and the Vietnam War wiping out our generation?

The baby boomer generation spent their years protesting Vietnam, not worrying about the future.

We were the grasshoppers frolicking in the sunshine, while the ants stored food for winter, so it's come as some surprise to be now held up as an example to a younger generation by BNZ chief economist Tony Alexander.

If I were as smart as he portrays my generation, I might have, in the 1970s, bought my great uncle's beachfront cabin on Waiheke Island. My father talked me out of it, saying the ferry trip to work in Auckland was too onerous and it would be a foolish purchase. That's $3 million gone right there.

Prime Minister Bill English announcing the retirement age will increase to 67 in 20 years time.

If I were a canny investor, serving as an example to others, I might still have the modest Sandringham and Mt Eden homes now worth more than $1 million on the Auckland market. But I don't. My inability to see nearly 30 years into the future has been a failing.

Boomers are not alone in this lack of economic vision. My grandfather passed up the chance to buy much of what is now Taupo, when it was rough rural land. He could have snapped up Te Rapa, as green grass on the northern outskirts of Hamilton, now it's a massive shopping and industrial complex.

So, Boomer Advice No 1 - try to think long-term.

Tony Alexander got one thing right. Sacrifices have to be made to get into the housing market. When I bought my first Wellington house, it was an utter dump.

So much of a dump that drinking water from its taps caused days of vomiting. So much of a dump a strong southerly whipped away sheets of roofing iron, so that water got into the ceiling causing the lining to slump, soaking the wiring and blowing out the electrics.

Yes, millennials, you can learn from me. I'm the guy who did my own plumbing and painted his whole house.

Boomer Advice No 2 - Don't connect the hot water piping to the toilet in your 20 per cent a year mortgaged-up hovel; ensure scaffolding is attached so it doesn't flip you several feet into the garden.

And don't place a window frame on a chair while you're searching for a nail, it could get blown over and smash on your head, with a nice shards of glass and blood effect.

Oh yeah, and don't set fire to the house with a gas torch when you're burning the old paint off.

All this I have done for you, so that you may learn without repeating my mistakes. Coughing up for my super seems a fair trade. No need to say thanks.

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