One Awesome thing. (Awesome in the true sense of the word, not like ‘surfing is awesome’).

One Awesome thing about the next 20 years is that the transfer of assets from the Baby Boomers to their offspring will be the SINGLE GREATEST TRANSFER OF WEALTH IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY.

Let that sink in for a second.

Smile, this is a testament to the greatness of our American society and its unparalleled success story. It’s kind of neat.

A lot of people are going to have their lives changed by the injection of liquid capital. Catapulting them out of debt and amassing the kind of financial security most could only dream of.

This post is not about those stories.

This post is about the other side of sifting through Baby Boomer “Assets”. The bad kind.

At some point in post WWII America, housewives got tricked. Social pressure and insidious marketing campaigns warped their desires. They ‘needed’ to have the right equipment to host a fancy dinner party. Failure to acquire these accoutrements was tantamount to admitting you were not yet middle class.

I don’t know how often these fancy dinner parties ever really happened, but their specters haunt the attics and basements of every person born before 1970 that I know.

You could not have a proper wedding for decades without getting the accustomed China set and Crystal stemware. Where is all that finery today? Collecting dust. Waiting for your heirs to sift through and repack because they don’t know what to do with it either.

I’ll just sell it on EBAY. Good luck with that chum!

Nobody wants to spend much money on this stuff. Cruise around the market for awhile typing in various items you remember from your grandma’s corner cabinet. You will quickly find the ‘old timey bling’ market has been long since flooded.

Add to this list the hardly precious figurines, limited edition commemorative plates, nick knacks, things that don’t even have names anymore. All taking up space. All have to be dealt with when you begin the daunting task of unwinding a Pack Rat’s Empire of Porcelain and Ceramic.

I am not even sure I could tell you what to collect if you feel a deep need to collect something, coins maybe. Almost anything else might fall out of favor. The future is moving in directions we can not see.

Let us Hope the rising tide of Minimalism and anti-Materialist sentiment will cut down on the amount of clutter filling up the dark places of our homesteads.

Nobody Wants Your Wedding China

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