CNN Poll: Are you better off than your parents?

[frazzled]

6. In what sense, Charlie?

No, really, honestly. There are other ways to be better or worse of than one's parents besides economically. Perhaps your parents enjoyed a 60-year marriage of bliss, and you are divorced. Perhaps your parents lived a simple life but were happier about that than you are about your rat-race life. Etc.

To answer for me. Am I better off economically than my parents? I feel probably about the same, though it's hard to compare across time frames. Our income is higher than what my father ever earned, probably even with adjustments for era. But the cost of living is higher for everything: housing, food, things that didn't exist then that are deemed essential now (like computers). We have more debt for sure: when I went to college (a private institution) the tuition was $3,000 per year, which was expensive then (though I had an academic scholarship--something that simply doesn't exist today). You can imagine what we had to kick in to send our kids to similar good colleges. My parents were very frugal and saved; we are not so good at it.

We have had probably a more "interesting" life than my parents because of the world in which we work (the arts) and the things it has entailed (foreign travel, meeting interesting and sometimes famous people). But on the other hand, we've had a less rich extended family life--having been geographically separated from siblings and other family. We've had to move a lot; they've stayed in the same city their whole married life.

One thing I'll say my parents had better: they had better kids! Especially, me of course. I was an angel. Just kidding, I gave them plenty of worry; but my parents, now aged 95 and 86 think they have the best children and grandchildren on earth; that they are the luckiest people on earth to have lived to enjoy it; that they survived at all (my father flew 60 missions in the South Pacific in WWII), etc.

I try to emulate my parents' way of being happy with what they have--which has never been all that much but has provided a rich, full life for them (though my father complains sometimes that he never "accomplished" anything). I forget that almost every day. And every so often I slap myself and try to be as gracious as they are.