Gen-X Was Raised As The 'Work Until Your Funeral' Generation And Now We're Completely Burnt Out
A joke circulating through Gen X is that they feel they will have to work until noon on the day of their funeral. It doesn’t have to be like that.
Gabriella Clare Marino | Unsplash Gen-X has bought into a lie: If we work hard, are loyal to our employer, and save money for retirement, we will be rewarded after forty-plus years of work with retirement.
We will finally be able to retire and do all the things that we have wanted to do. It worked for our parents’ generation, it will work for us. Our parents pushed going to college and getting right into the workforce, with the mantra that you can do all the things when you retire.
Get your education, get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids, consume, and put money away for that golden retirement. This model worked for my parents.
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My dad got a BS, got a job, got married, bought a house, had me, got his master's degree, and put money away for retirement. He was also working for the government so he also had a pension.
My mom stayed at home to raise me. They were living their generation’s dream. And that is the dream they were instilling in us.
A few years before my dad was due to retire he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He underwent surgeries and radiation treatment. He survived and worked five more years before retiring. But that put a strain on his health.
My parents had grand plans to travel for their retirement years. They would RV around the United States and go to Europe. My dad was born in the Netherlands and wanted to go back to visit.
My mom always wanted to visit England. But due to the cancer and radiation treatments, my parents kept waiting for a “better time” to go traveling. You know, once my Dad's health improved. They moved from California to Oregon once my dad retired. They spent a year looking for the right neighborhood to buy a house in.
Once they buy the house, they go traveling right? No, let’s do all the improvements we want on the house, then we can start traveling. They got set in their routines and only did local traveling.
My dad continued to have some health issues. This routine went on for many years. Then my mom was diagnosed with ALS and passed away a year and a half later. She was sixty-six.
So no grand travel for them. They kept pushing it off until their golden retirement. When it was more convenient and the timing was right. Their retirement came but they let other things take precedence over their dreams to travel and then it became too late.
As a member of Gen-X raised by Boomers, I bought into the lie that we should work until noon on the day of our funeral.
I graduated from high school and three weeks later I was at the University for the summer term. No time off, I gotta get that degree.
I went to both a University and a Community College. My major classes at the University and core classes at the Community College. I attended every semester offered for four years, no breaks for me.
I also worked part-time during those four years. I walked with two degrees. I went straight into working for an International Hotel company. And on and on it went.
I did all the things, education, career, marriage, house, and kids, but we were just surviving. Our generation endured recessions, job reductions, outsourcing, you name it, but we kept holding on to the lie.
Why? Because it seemed to be working for our parents. It looked like it had worked for our grandparents. We didn’t see the cracks. We didn’t see how we were slipping further behind.
A few years ago, I started waking up from the lie: what worked for our Baby Boomer parents wasn’t working for us.
I began questioning, am I living my life just to survive because retirement with a pension or “enough” money didn’t look like it was going to happen.
Would we work into our 70s? Or god forbid, into our 80s? The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I don’t want to work for the next twenty years and then be too tired or sick to enjoy it. I want to live my life now.
I'm all for doing something that you love as a job until you die if that is what you want to do. I am not into working until I die because that is the only way I can survive.
From that point, I started living more intentionally. It was, and is, a long and hard process but we reduced our spending on just stuff and began investing in experiences.
We sold our house and moved in with my dad. Now he is not alone, and we can go on adventures together. My husband and I have repositioned our careers, so we have more flexibility to live our lives more in line with travel and experiencing new and different things.
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Breaking away from generational and societal norms and expectations is difficult. The world our parents raised us in no longer exists. We have to change how we play the game.
We grew up with vast technological advances. Everything changed in the 80’s. How we experienced everything changed. Some things were good, others not so much.
Advances in technology were good. Our society becoming reliant on credit cards and material possessions to give us worth, not so much.
Do I wish I had figured this out much sooner? Of course, I do but I’m taking life from where I am. We are positioning our lives so we can live life more on our terms.
Has it been easy? No. We have been questioning everything and working through the answers. We have been living by someone else’s rules and expectations.
We have to break free of those rules and expectations and join a different game. And this new game doesn’t seem to have rules or at least not clearly defined ones. Which in reality is great but when you have lived your whole life by a predetermined game plan, this new freedom is terrifying.
A joke that circulates through Gen-X is they feel they will have to work until noon on the day of their funeral. It doesn’t have to be like that. Break free from the lie and join the scary new game of life.
Laura Marshall is a writer, educator, and avid traveler. Her works have been featured in Fun for Kidz, HomeSchool Magazine, and Medium, among others.