Picture a dollar bill from 1962. Crisp, green, and good for real groceries.
That same dollar now covers about nine cents of what it once did. Prices are up 3.7% over the past year alone.
If you keep savings in a bank account, you already know this feeling. Your balance sits still. Meanwhile the cart at the grocery store keeps getting pricier.
This dollar has been reset before. In 1971, President Nixon cut its last tie to gold. Since then, its value has rested on trust in Washington and nothing else.
Last month, President Trump welcomed Xi Jinping to Washington for a state visit. The headlines covered trade, AI and the state dinner. One well-known analyst thinks the real subject was the dollar itself.
That slow leak matters more to our generation than to any other.
Our generation holds about half of all household wealth in America. And we do not get to keep it forever. It moves to the next generation on a calendar written in birth years.
51.6%
Share of U.S. household net worth held by boomers, early 2026
$124T
Wealth expected to change hands in America through 2048
$105T
Of that, the share headed to heirs
Nearly $100 trillion of that transfer comes from boomers and the generation before us. It is not a forecast of markets. It is the order in which families say goodbye.
Every dollar in that pile is counted in today’s money. What it buys when it arrives is another matter. The kids do not inherit a number. They inherit what the number can buy.
Where the cohort’s money sits this quarter, and where the handoff begins.
There is a cost in the middle of all this. The handoff itself has a toll booth.
A will has to be written. A trust has to be set up and run. An estate has to go through probate, the court process that confirms who gets what.
The honest catch is that families shop. Online wills cost a fraction of a lawyer’s fee, and simple estates often skip the full treatment. The toll booth can only charge what the family will pay.
Then comes the question of what the next generation buys with it. Plenty of that money will chase whatever is newest.
Wall Street has its own calendar for that. The biggest AI listing of the year is reportedly being lined up for mid-November.
The arithmetic
CPI-U, all items: 336.940 in September 2026, up 3.7% from a year earlier: Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI release of October 14, 2026. 1962 annual average CPI-U of 30.2: Bureau of Labor Statistics. $11.16 and “about nine cents” are Boomers Trade’s own calculations from those two index levels. Nixon suspended the dollar’s convertibility into gold on August 15, 1971: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington began September 23, 2026: Associated Press, via the Anchorage Daily News. Boomers held 51.6% of U.S. household net worth, about $89.8 trillion, in the first quarter of 2026: Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts. $124 trillion in transfers through 2048, $105 trillion to heirs, nearly $100 trillion from boomers and older generations: Cerulli Associates, December 5, 2024. A major AI listing reportedly targeted for mid-November: FXStreet, October 23, 2026.
This week, take the will out of the drawer and read the date on it. If it is older than your youngest grandchild, make the call. The dollar will keep moving. Your paperwork should keep up.
Andrew
Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.
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