About those retirement plans 📉

Generation X, we’ve got a retirement problem. A recent survey showed that a whopping 56% of us have less than $100,000 saved for retirement … and some of us haven’t saved anything at all. This is troublesome since the senior members of our generation are on a bullet train to retirement age and it doesn’t sound like, as a group, we’re too confident about being prepared financially for our golden years.

There is some good news, however. It looks like we’ve got $29.6 TRILLION dollars of inheritance headed our way. That’ll buy a lot of Bartles & Jaymes. 🥂

Also in today’s issue:

• 🥤 Gen Z is having some “dark” fun with a Gen X icon

• 💵 Five possible changes to the way we save for retirement

• 📚 AI is wreaking havoc over at Amazon

One Gen X Thing 🤘

TikTok has come for Grimace. Our favorite purple icon — let’s face it, Grimace was down with the kids way before Barney — has become the victim of the dreaded “TikTok trend.” This trend sees Gen Zers, our offspring, heading to their local McDonald’s to try the limited run Grimace Shake, a purple-hued concoction of indeterminate flavor (as relayed to us by our resident Gen Z trend reporter).

Once the shake is in hand and a sip has been taken, the video makers fall to the ground in dramatic fashion, seemingly passed out with remnants of the Grimace shake pouring out of their mouths. Some take things even further by pretending to have suffered great bodily harm at the hands of Grimace before concluding their videos with a peppy “Happy birthday, Grimace!”

Forbes called the trend “gruesome,” but reports “that use the hashtags #grimace and #grimaceshake have 745 million and 632 million combined views, respectively.” Sonic the Hedgehog joined in the fun.

This renewed interest in Grimace got us thinking about his origin story. Did you know that the character was originally introduced in the 1970s as “Evil Grimace”? He was a mean-looking, four-armed blob who scared kids and stole their milkshakes. That’s how we rolled back then — we took our Happy Meals with a side of sheer terror.

After some consideration, though, the marketing team at McDonald’s concluded that scaring your customer’s might lead to them not returning, so they gave Grimace a makeover and turned him into the lovable, somewhat dim-witted character of our youth.

The Hamburglar was unavailable for comment.

Pre-tirement 🌴

> While we work on fattening up our IRAs and 401ks, there are some retirement savings changes that could be headed our way after the passage of the Secure 2.0 Act. Changes that could take affect as soon as 2024: a raise in the age for required minimum distributions from retirement accounts and high earners having to use Roth IRAs for catch-up contributions. Stay on top of this.

> We may be lagging in saving for retirement, but Gen X is also doing a decent job at paying off our debt. A study shows that our generation cut our debt by 3% between 2021 and 2023. More good news: most of that debt is made up of outstanding balances on our mortgages, which could be considered “good debt,” particularly with the overall trend of rising house values.

> Speaking of home prices, this handy chart from Visual Capitalist shows the ups and downs of the housing market since 1971. We’ve seen a lot of peaks and valleys in our lifetimes, and the big question is what will happen in the wake of the most recent spike?

> To answer the question above, we may be looking at biggest housing market correction since just after World War II. Housing supplies are low, mortgage interest rates are high and people don’t want to make big changes in this challenging economy, so a sizable drop in prices seems inevitable (and has been happening for a while now in many U.S. markets).

Even a massive market correction won’t bring average housing prices down to pre-pandemic levels, which is great if you currently have a mortgage, not-so-great if you’re looking to buy.

*****

BONUS STORY: All the states that don’t tax Social Security.

AI for Xers 🤖

> Let’s face it, Gen X: AI is here to stay and we need to learn more about it. LinkedIn, together with Microsoft, is offering a handy-dandy free course called: Career Essentials in Generative AI. It’s worth a look.

> AI is disrupting things over Amazon … and possibly not in a good way. Apparently, the young adult romance bestseller list was dominated earlier this week by AI-generated “nonsense” books. Some consider this spamming and worry that AI will take away money from actual authors.

> AI is also changing the way information is served to us on Facebook and Instagram. Meta breaks down how AI affects the algorithm that controls what we see on our feeds.

*****

BONUS STORY: This Is What AI Thinks People From Each of the 50 U.S. States Look Like

And the Rest 🥥

• This original Princess Leia dress was expected to fetch more than $2 million at auction. It didn’t.

• Costco follows Netflix’s lead, starts cracking down on membership sharing.

• Check your pantries for sriracha sauce — there’s a shortage and people are paying big bucks to get their hands on bottles of the fiery goodness.

• Your chance to get your hands on Princess Diana’s infamous “black sheep” sweater is here!

• The real Happy Gilmore is heading to college — and Adam Sandler couldn’t be happier.

• So many Gen X legends made guest appearances on The X Files back in the day.

• Dana Carvey and David Spade have some thoughts about Dr. Fauci.

• Some sad Gen X news: Teresa Taylor, drummer of the underground punk band Butthole Surfers, has died at age 60. She also appeared in the 1991 classic, “Slackers.”

Tasty Memes and Memories 💾

Weekly Ear Worm👂🪱

Nothing evokes the dog days of summer quite like Nick Gilder’s 1978 banger, “Hot Child in the City.” The song was actually released in October of that year, but it oozes steamy summer days and tastes of Maybelline’s Kissing Potion roll-on lip gloss.

You Make the Call 🤔

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We see you, Generation X!