Freedom 85

I have a friend in her late 80s who has a four bedroom house in Sault Ste. Marie full of lovely antiques that nobody wants.

Including her own three adult children who don't live in Sault Ste. Marie.

And when my own mother sold her four bedroom house in Sault Ste. Marie, where none of her four adult children lived anymore - ouch, baby. What a bath she took.

I was not surprised. She liked travel more than home maintenance. 

I read alarming articles - at least the authors of them are alarmed - about Millennials not being able to afford home ownership. To which I say, if it's that big a deal that they can't then why aren't our governments regulating against foreign ownership and fly-by-night rentals?

Of course, maybe even if Millennials could afford home ownership (they can't) they wouldn't want to be tied down to it and would continue to rent. And maybe they aren't all that interested in getting married and having kids either, and so don't feel the need for the four bedroom suburban house they grew up in that their parents still own because downsizing means acknowledging your age.

I'm telling you, being sixty is a tough one. As my mother would say, sure, it's better than the alternative but aging ain't for sissies.

Yes, that's right. She didn't give a shit if what came out of her mouth was politically incorrect or not because she wasn't on Twitter and so couldn't get banned from it.

And given the facts of climate change wouldn't it be better if we ALL lived in apartments near our places of employment (or at least the hustle and bustle of people still working) so that we could stop buying cars and the government could finally declare CBC an ad-free zone for the safety of seniors susceptible to unnecessary health insurance purchases and reverse mortgage traps.

I don't know but it seems to me that we need to get our story straight because the last thing we need is Millennials living like boomers and GenXers and then nobody being around to clean out the clutter of their houses when they head off to where they won't be needing any of it.