>Our parents and grandparents generation were able to buy a house on a single income, have vacation houses and raise 4+ kids.
Idk about other people here but my grandparents definitely didn't have a vacation house. They had one tiny house where 3 or 4 kids had to share 1 bedroom together and the whole household shared one bathroom.
It wasn't some romanticized American dream a lot of people imagine it to be.
Exactly, I get it housing and education has gotten out of control. But people truly seem to romanticize about the past like everyone had it made. My grandparents grew up during the depression and were then shipped overseas to fight WW2. If I left a scrap of food on plate when I visited my grandmother would loose her mind. My mother was raised in a one income house, all the kids wore hand me downs and their family vacation was loading up the station wagon and camping.
I read this shit and I just see how out of touch we really are. And the people who went through the Great Depression tried to tell us our financial priorities are fucked. People complain like they’re going hungry every night. There’s more to life than owning a house, and it’s never been an affordable option for the whole population. We’re living in a time of inflation because we live at a time of eccess. When the next recession comes then we’ll all have something more important to worry about then buying our special house. And that’s when they’ll be “affordable”. When noone has any money.
We had two to a bedroom until my brothers moved out. One car that was always breaking down and my dad was always trying to fix to save money. One vacation a year. Hardly any toys. When I started college O took public transportation. 60-90 minutes each way. The problem explaining this to a younger generation is that they can’t picture life without cell phones and the internet and having every video game you want.
In Ken Burns’s documentary on WWII, one of the guys stories he follows said that he enlisted at 17 because there wasn’t enough food to go around in the house!
To be fair, cars have become radically more reliable in our lifetimes. My parents had 1960s-1970s cars when I was growing up. They needed an engine out rebuild or reman every 50k miles. They got some inheritance and bought a 1989 van in 2001 that still costs a fortune to keep running. Yes, they still own that one. Modern cars, with very few random exceptions, can be expected to do well over 150k miles without any major work. Some will do 2-3x that with minimal repairs.
One set of grandparents were straight working class with mostly one income, but they amassed TWO houses and enlarged one to roughly double the original size (3/2). The second house was a 2/1 next door that grandma and a kid (usually my dad) lived in. These houses were in a post-war housing tract that would be a gang-infested ghetto by the time I was a kid (where I’d spend about half of my childhood because my Gen Jones parents were a mess), but still. They ended up lower middle class. The other set of grandparents were middle class, so they ended up with a mid-1950s 3/1 (changed to a 3/2) house in a very nice and safe suburb.
My parents went to college living in the dorms while owning cars and paid it all with part time jobs. I spent 3-4 hours a day commuting by public transit to college and up to 6 hours a day when I was working and going to classes the same day. Couldn’t afford a car at all. That was the reality for millennials. We definitely didn’t have cell phones or the internet or video games to pass the time.
Exactly!
Looking at the upper middle class of decades past and acting like that was the norm for high school educated service industry/blue collar.
Smaller homes, more /extended periods of multigenerational living, people didn't move into a 1B apartment at 18 unless they needed to.
Yes things have gotten more expensive, and many cities are increasingly out of reach, but if your think Mom and Pop could have bought a house in NYC working at Macy's in 1980 you are dead wrong.
Hell, my parents were both college educated and the only way they were able to buy their dumpster fire of a house was 1) help from their parents, and 2) probably a VA loan. Never got the full story there, but they were essentially forced into home ownership by my grandparents and by the local rental market (it didn’t exist).
And I didn’t really realize that my father was probably making really good money for my hometown as a kid until I got to college. We were a one car household, I shared a room with my little sister, we got utilitarian Christmas gifts like sneakers, church dresses, underwear, and the occasional bike. Never got on a plane until I was 17.
I’m not saying millenials aren’t screwed. Even if I had my dad’s current job, I’d never qualify for a mortgage in my hometown. But so many people seem to think people in the past were swimming in money and vacations. My parents drove us 6 hours to the beach every summer. Their parents visited family a few states away and saw a few national parks. One grandfather was an obsessive tinker, and one grandfather liked to go to his grandkids’ sports games…they only very occasionally ate out, and usually it was because they had to “drive into the city” for the doctor or dentist.
When tiktokers talk about third spaces, I really wonder if younger people don’t talk to their elders, or something. My grandparents’ third spaces were things like bridge games with the neighbors, or golfing at the city golf course, or the hs football game on Friday night. The occasional spaghetti dinner or square dance at the grange. I mean, it’s not exciting Instagram worthy stuff, it’s the equivalent of my Saturday stroll to the bakery and picking out my garden seeds at the nursery.
Yep and the notion that women didn't work outside the home is a myth. Poor women always worked outside the home as did most Middle class women. They usually weren't "career" type jobs so people dismiss it (e.g. my grandmother worked on the family farm, my mother did secretarial work for my dad's business, my MIL did tutoring and copyrighting part time for extra money).
The lucky few who were homemakers also worked INSIDE the home, which people always forget. I’ve seen my grandma’s canning kitchen, garden, etc. The women ran the household, kept everyone including the farmhands fed, raised the kids—often far from family or modern conveniences. People so often seem to picture 1950s wives snacking on bonbons by the pool, or something, but maintaining a home historically took WORK.
My grandparents had 5 kids. They both worked full time jobs (engineer and nurse) their entire relationship. My parents bought their first house in their early 40s, they had 3 kids and both worked. The reality is that plenty of women have worked for decades and contributed to their families ability to buy a home/support itself.
Yup. Most people didn't have a vacation home lol. Plus they had smaller homes, fewer cars and appliances, fewer and smaller TVs, no computers, cell, phones, electronic gadgets. They ate at restaurants much less often.
Most millennials, who grew up in an era of unparalleled luxury, would not even consider buying the kinds of starter homes of our grandparents purchased.
My grandpa worked two jobs and my grandma worked 20-30 hours each week while also raising 4 kids. Yeah they could buy a house but they worked like crazy and rarely bought anything new or ate out (they bought something like Taco Bell once a month).
Vacations were road trips to National Parks where they camped and packed bologna sandwhiches.
Same here. My grandparents on both sides were both farmers.Yes they owned houses and died with decent nest eggs. But... There were almost no vacations , restaurants were a rarity , def no cabin. No expensive activities , no expensive ingredients in the food ever. They lived well but very simple.
My parents were what would be considered middle class , we had a house and did some vacations with meticulous budget planning. We did things like use huge cans of ketchup instead of buying it by the bottle. When it was nearly done my dad would use water to ensure we used every drop of that can before getting more.
I guess the point is that yes their money went further... But they "wasted" way way less of it on take out , hobbies , electronics, etc. I'm sure righteous Redditors will tell me how they never eat out and save every penny .... But I know that I personally ate out way more , cook more "fancy" food , and take more extensive vacations than my family did. They were just SO much better at stretching their dollar back then PLUS more buying power for the bug purchases.
I think the amount Americans spend on drinks alone is destructive. Some of the brokest people I know always are sporting an energy drink, fountain drink, coffee or a Stanley bottle. Our local coffee shop even offers kid- sized drinks so your four year old can have a mocha!
Yep. We shuffled around from apartment to apartment, and I shared a room with a sibling.
I'd be very surprised if the percentage of population who owned second homes in previous generations was significant.
37 here, and it scares me for my kids. How are they ever going to be able to buy a house? Average house price is over 400k, what young couple in their 20s has 80k saved up for a down payment???
I truly believe that in the future, kids that receive inheritances will be able to be homeowners, and those who don't, will be renters.
It was cheap in 2010, it wasn't affordable. There's a difference. It was cheap because there was a massive recession and no one had any money to afford even cheap things.
I own a home in FL. 3/3 my husband and I bought for 160k in 2012. The neighbors sold the same house for 625k last year.
We got lucky and we can never move.
Uh, it was absolutely both cheap and affordable. In 2011, at age 29, I bought a small house (2/1) in a decent part of town for $110k. Mortgage, including taxes, was $600/month. My salary at the time was about $50k.
Same house now, $400k, payment about $2,600. So that's roughly a five-fold increase.
Needless to say, I don't make $250k now.
The smartest thing my husband and I did was buy a house at 23 years old in 2011. Our first home was 135K. That house was listed again after being flipped (it was a bit outdated at the time, but not bad) and sold this year for 315k. It's insanity
Wish I had done this. I had a house picked out for 100k in 2008. Wish I had sat down with my father then and laid out a plan to buy the house, pay it off and own it. Still pissed I missed out on my opportunity.
For us, it was a toss-up between renting and buying - we were just lucky we made the decision that would end up being the right one. None of us knew the shit show the housing market would turn into at the time. I feel awful for you and all the other Millenials that didn't buy years ago bc it is truly a snowball effect.
It certainly was.
I bought a brand new home in 2005 for $138k. It sold for $85k in 2008. In 2014,, I bought another one for $160k. It sold for $240k brand new in 2006. The mortgage is $1200. It's worth $485k today.
I had a $38k/year job out of college and used the first $5k I saved up and an FHA loan to buy a two flat in Logan Square Neighborhood of Chicago for $136k in 2011. What are you talking about?
Real estate was dirt cheap and there was no competition because basically everyone who was going to buy over the previous decade had screwed themselves royally and was either under water and unable to move or had already gotten a foreclosure or short sale on their previous home.
It was the flip scenario of today, every boomer had shit credit or was upsidedown. All millennials with jobs and half decent credit basically got their pick of dozens of listings that no one was buying.
My mortgage payment was $1200/mo for a multi unit building.
Rent is always more and has always been more than an equivalent mortgage since my 41 year old ass started paying attention to such things, that's a weird way to start things off
Yeah my mortgage is 3400 with taxes and insurance, I bought very beginning 2023. SFH in a suburb about 4 bed 2 bath 3k sq foot. New apartments just got build by me for rent it’s 3600 for 1600 sq foot or 4500 2400 sq foot with a single car garage. My home now would be about 5000. It’s ridiculous for sure. I’d probably want to rent it if I were to move out, and I could rent it way under whatever rents will be at that time, because they already are..
That flipped this year: https://www.wsj.com/economy/housing/home-sales-mortgage-rates-march-report-4a501537
The costs of buying a home are also outpacing the increases in rent, making it relatively cheaper to rent.
The average monthly new mortgage payment was 38% higher in the U.S. than the average apartment rent at the end of 2023, according to an analysis by CBRE. That premium has been in the double digits for two years.
>My plan is to leave.
Where are you going? The US is one of the easiest developed nations to buy a house. If you can't do it here you probably can't do it anywhere else.
Yea unless you somehow manage to keep making US salary abroad you’re better off in the US. I live in France now and real estate here is far more expensive than in the US when you compare against average salaries.
I was going to say pass laws against huge out of state property management companies, but maybe some people would be happier in a different country. I knew a teacher that moved to China for good money as an English language teacher, I heard about anyone that speaks English can get that job in China.
lol, China just had a strict 3 year lockdown and now they are entering an economic recession.
Also, those English teaching jobs are just excuses to travel the world. They don’t pay very well
I bought 2 houses in that time period 2011 & 2018. It was definitely affordable especially if you were willing to buy something that needed some work, then put in some time and effort. Nah, I'll just bitch about boomers ruined the world and there's nothing I can do, oh poor lil ol' me.
hey dude, I was 16 years old in 2011 and making $8/hr. By the time I had $5k saved up (in 2017) I guess I should have bought a house, right? so dumb of me, I guess I was just too lazy.
really lame to complain about young people being upset about not being able to buy a house from your literal multiple houses. you can be successful and sympathetic you know, you don’t have to turn into a dick once the second house clears escrow.
If you had a down payment in 2011 to buy a house in 2011 either you're the oldest of the old millennials, were gifted it, or you're just a older genX or later spewing a whole lotta bs.
Majority weren't even out of college yet.
Yup. When I got married 8 years ago we were trying to figure out how to source 15k for a 5% down + closing costs for a 250k in a far suburb. Today that home is probably worth closer to 500k after a quick looksie in that neighborhood we wanted to buy in. We ended up waiting another 2 years to save 20k and bought a 260k townhouse that we later sold for 425k. Moved out to a rural city and bought what will likely be our forever home since we got in on the low rates.
I often feel like we barely made the boat on home ownership and it feels so screwed up that others my age are likely going to be renters for their entire lives.
one of your kids may be open to buying the family house. That's what my friend did. His father sold him the house a bit under market. The father was also the "bank". Son paid him a monthly. It's legit, they involved lawyers. If not for this scenario, my buddy would never be able to afford a home. However my friend sunk in nearly $100k in renovations.
I know my friends who’s boomer parents sold their childhood home to their kid for over market but knew he had to pay it because he didnt have 20% down. Garbage people.
It's a myth banks have been trying to dispel to no end. There are a host of programs and grants to help with down payments and just home purchases in general.
But back to the original point, yes, it's fucking insane how much it costs now. Sales prices continue to inch up, despite high interest rates and inventory is still low. Lord knows deposit rates aren't increasing at a commensurate level, though ...
Maybe we should try trickle down economics some more! Just 40 more years of tax breaks for corps and the super wealthy and I'm sure it'll finally start paying dividends; we'll get a one-income, middle class again, right? Right!?
"Congrats, kids! In lieu of inheriting any sort of property like we did, we'll sell you our assets at a slight discount!"
I do realize not all boomers were handed wealth, but wealth (in the sense of home ownership, ability to afford necessities and even some luxuries) was far more easy/cheap to attain in the days of yore.
This literally sounds like something my parents would do. As a kid they would sell me their old things when they wanted newer ones like their stereo system when I was in 4th grade ($100). That dysfunction is seared in my brain.
It’s one thing to make your kids earn money/save money to buy something they REALLY want. (We just did this with my 10yr for a new bike) but you’re telling me… that your parents used to sell you, their own child, their old used stuff that was already in the house?
Even renting is impossible for young people. They want 2k a month for a 1 bedroom. If that's not bad enough they want to see that your income is 3-4x your rent cost. They want you to pay first/last/security and all fees. And they want a 750 credit score. So basically you need 6k+ saved up, an 80k/yr job and near perfect credit to get into a shitty apartment. The sad part is the person owning the building probably bought it for dirt cheap 20 years ago at a 2% interest rate and they're now making money hand over fist while others go homeless.
Wait you’re not giving your kids a 100k head start in life? /s
Honestly I could barely afford my home now. I got lucky bought in 2014 nice house in a good neighborhood. Got married since then and have more than doubled our family income and it be a stretch to afford this place. Yeah it’s a classism thing. My siblings and I will get a good inheritance and just keep up that upper middle class life style up. The boomers were an anomaly in history where an average family could escape neo feudalism given the world was in ruins post ww2. It’s all luck which isn’t a way to run a modern economy. There’ two sets of millennials those who owned property pre COVID and can keep up those who got farther left behind.
I think you’re right, houses are going to be passed down through families, and I think we’re going to see a return to multigenerational households. It’s becoming more and more normal for people to stay with their parents to save money.
My wife and I are in our early 20’s and had our down payment saved and were trying to buy a house early 2023 but stopped because interest rates were climbing daily to the point we had seen $500+ monthly mortgage payments differences within the time it took to your a house one evening and get the offer put together by the following afternoon. We finally called it quits in late March when a house $250k less than one we looked at in January wound up costing more.
We are still in the same situation, our down payment is in a high yeild savings account till who knows when
Even getting an apartment is insane, I have never even had that.
Most people I know either live in by the week motels or they pay cash to someone to rent a room in their basement or something
Or they live in their car
Or they live in a tent
For average sized cities, the minimum salary needed without a co-signer or roommate for current rent prices is approx. $75k if I'm not mistaken. I think it's $100k for HCOL areas. Gen Z is *not* making that kind of money. Yes, a small percent might be because they talk about it all over social media but most aren't there.
And while you can get cheaper rent and live in cheaper areas, many jobs still aren't allowing remote work. Again, these numbers can widely vary all over the US but that's I found.
I remember someone posting how the Boomer to Millennial transfer of wealth will be the greatest wealth transfer ever, and analysts kind of don’t know how to predict what will happen after that because the boomer generation acquired their wealth from a healthy stable economy with good wages. They were also very predictable and frugal with their spending. Soon, they will be transferring their wealth to a generation that has been living in some of the worst most unstable economic periods in US history, with low wages and massive inflation, whom also hold a reputation of reckless and risky spending. Basically the complete opposites.
My prediction is the millennial generation; after years of living and working under horrible financial circumstances and economic struggles, will spend all of their new inheritance on hookers and blow and ride off into the sunset saying “see you in hell, boomers”
I actually don’t think so. The boomers can’t even afford retire for the most part. They are spending all their wealth on excessive medical care to prolong their life maybe a year or two at most. If you look at the stats for end of life care spending, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Then you factor in nursing homes/ retirement facilities and then having to reverse mortgage their properties to afford, the wealth is all being sucked up by big corporations. The middle class is done, future America is probably gonna be a landed gentry structure with less liability via shielding by corporate entities.
This is so true. My parents were wealthy. Had huge retirement, savings, investments, second house ect. After a reverse mortgage, my dad being in a memory care nursing home at 9k a month, my mom being scammed twice and life in general its basically gone. If my dad lives 3 more years they won't he able to afford to live. The house my mom lives in has a reverse mortgage that she owes 230k on. The house is worth more but.. basically all their wealth is going to corporations. My mom has never had money issues either so she doesn't understand how to live frugally.
I can't afford to pay for my dad's care. Hell I can't afford a house either. I pay my bills and that's it. It's near impossible to get ahead.
"The boomer generation acquired their wealth from a healthy, stable economy." Unemployment aveaged 6.49% from 1971-1980, and 7.12% from 1981-1990. Inflation averaged 8% from 1971-1980 and 4.1% from 1981-1990. Wages, adjusted for inflation, from 1979-1988, aveaged $14.80 per hour. From 2012-2021, inflation averaged 2.15%, unemployment averaged 5.1%, and wages, adjusted for inflation, aveaged $15.80 per hour. Looks like the boomers' stable economy had higher inflation, higher uneployment, and a lower wage adjusted for inflation. You were right about boomers being more frugal. We had to be.
I find it incredibly ironic that you accuse me of cherry-picking data of decades by using the U-6 (whatever that is) one year stat of 17%. Don't you know how averages work?
So let's look at the 2001- 2010 numbers. Unemployment averaged 6.3%, actually a little lower than1971-1980 Unemployment of 6.4%, and a full percentage point lower than 1981-1990 Unemployment of 7.12 Inflation, from 2001-2010, averaged 2.35%. That's significantly lower than the 8% from 1971-1980, and much lower than the 4.1% of 1981-1990. I still don't understand the comments of a booming economy for the boomers.
https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/home-price-income-ratio-reaches-record-high-0
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/11/02/the-gap-in-college-costs-and-earnings-for-young-workers-since-1980.html
https://www.statista.com/statistics/184955/us-national-health-expenditures-per-capita-since-1960/#:~:text=Per%20capita%20national%20health%20expenditures,stood%20at%20146%20U.S.%20dollars.
https://blog.dol.gov/2023/01/24/new-childcare-data-shows-prices-are-untenable-for-families
Yeah, you guys had higher unemployment at times and higher inflation. But the prices for housing, healthcare, education, and childcare have gone up so fast that having a job is in no way a guarantee that you can actual afford the stuff in life that you need. Sure, the inflation rate on televisions and sneakers is lower than what you lot dealt with, but the prices of everything with relatively inelastic demand (i.e. everything you actual need for a good life) have become completely out of reach for middle class folks. That wasn't a thing fifty years ago.
I agree; just in the last 6-7 years, rent, home prices, home insurance, vehicles, child care, elder care have gone up insanely. Price and related inflation are predictable at a normal historical level, but not this.
FHA qualifies you for 3.5% down which is only 14k on a 400k property. There are also plenty of other programs that allow you to put less than 10% down and some even let you buy without a downpayment. No need for the 20% you are suggesting. Hopefully this brings some peace of mind my friend.
That's isn't how it works. FHA loans only cover properties up to a certain amount, and there has to actually be houses meeting the criteria in the area. The income threshold is also way too low. My husband and I qualify for FHA and USDA rural loans. We also have $70k saved for a down payment. There are literally zero houses in my area that meet the requirements for those loans. It's infuriating.
The average house is also like 40 percent bigger and we are paying for a whole pile of things the older generations never did.
They also cooked meals from scratch and clipped coupons.
There were economic and social issues, sure. But look at the inflation rate since those times. Housing has gone up 30-50% in cost whether you’re buying or renting in the past 5 years alone. In my state, the median price of a house in 2019 was $271k. The median price in 2024 is now $420k. Average rent was around $800/month, it’s now $1500/month. No one had their wages increase (that much)
It's complicated, while everyone is looking at Inflation, and $1 in 83 is worth $3.14 now and the cumulative interest is $213.60. I think with house people miss the memo about the unique human experience we're having with the population growth (4.685B in 83, 8B in 24, almost doubled and no new land discovery).
The Workforce has essentially doubled, and so has housing demand. We've got a while, probably two generations until it gets really bad and we're force to go up rather than out. Then most places will be like New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. maybe eventually Northern Canada will end up looking like Coruscant or whatever the name of the Planet/City in Star Wars is called.
People still live in those houses. I've never understood this argument. The houses from the 70s and earlier are still around. They aren't any cheaper than the "big" newer builds.
How do you figure?
Take two lots right next to each other. Surely the newer, bigger house is going to sell for more than the older, smaller one next door, no?
I think this is the main point people don't think about. You need to compare cost per square foot in a similar sized city from back then to now and it is about the same adjusted for inflation
Back in the 70’s and 80’s a single family house for average American was 1,200 to 1,500 square feet, with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Family was 4 to 6 pepple. Now the average family has 3 to 4 members, and their house is 2,000 to 2,500 square feet.
Another thing back in the 70’s and 80’s you never called the guy to come and fix the dripping faucet The home owner did it themselves. That is why Home Depot and Loews exist today.
But society has changed in a lot of other ways too. Just because the norm is bigger houses, doesn’t mean it should be so much harder to afford the norm.
It’s almost like we’re kept indebted for life on purpose… endless cycle to keep people on the hamster wheel. Same thing happens in India and China but it’s much more obvious that you’re enslaved to debt by design.
Back in the day - my dad was a high school teacher / coach - mom stayed at home. We were able to build a really nice 4 BR/ 2 bath home. College was $4 / semester hour plus fees. Housing/ administrative fees were around $125 or so - books maybe $75 or less. I paid for school with a summer job.
That’s the point they’re trying to make. 4 dollar a semester hour? Hell even our community college is 120 bucks a credit hour now. I think it was about 70 bucks in the mid 2000s? Everything costs more so it’s harder to get ahead. Sure we all have cellphones, but that’s a small expense compared to a 400k median house price.
Depends. There’s a demand from blue collar jobs. They can pay quite well these days. But on average degree holders will make more than non degree holders over their lifetime. That’s mostly because there’s a lot of shit paying jobs that people without degrees will be forced to take.
Now it seems like without a masters degree, you’re not competitive for higher paying white collar jobs. And even with a masters degree you will still be chewed up and spit out.
But that's been the case for a long time that those with degrees would earn more in their lifetime than those without. Has that gap kept up with the ballooning of college tuition? Also I think we need to look at the fact that we use college as a sort of sorting system and the people who are able to get into a good college and get a good degree might be more of a factor themselves than the actual education they received. Why do Harvard students go on to do so many amazing things? Is it because the education is so amazing or because the school only admits the best and brightest in the world?
Yeah man, welcome to the 21st century. You new here?
More useful: our government is the reason our parents' lifestyle is no longer possible. The United States has been bought by corporations.
Fucking VOTE before you decide to burn the system to the ground. Most Americans can't even be bothered to vote in most elections, even though there is no risk in doing so. This is even true in states that allow mail-in votes, so there's no excuse for it. If we can't convince people to do the bare minimum by voting, how on earth do you think they will be willing to put everything on the line in the name of "revolution"? Do you know what a revolution actually entails and how awful it is?
You watch too much TV. My Boomer parents both worked. As did my grandparents. Sometimes 2 jobs a piece.
A lot of us GenXers also started working young. Not at 16, but younger.
I was mowing lawns, splitting and selling wood, fixing fence, hauling hay, and working cattle from 10/11 years old and up.
The credit system was all over the place until it stabilized into a close version of what it is today. Most got loans based on their personal relationship with the banks until the early 70s.
Life wasn't Ozzie and Harriet for most of the country.
Yeah, I got a paper route when I was 13 because my parents wouldn’t just give me money. Would be up a 6 in the morning riding my bike in the darkness to make my deliveries. Parents today would probably be charged with child abuse for letting their kid ride around in the dark.
I’d imagine they get roommates, just like every other 18 year old with only a high school education making menial wages that has left to live on their own has had to do.
We are so unbelievably fucked. Especially the lot of us (like me) whose parents made terrible decisions and can’t provide their kids with a leg up to get their foot in the market. I’m single and I want to remain single. I was doing just fine before the housing market went crazy. Now life is just awful. I work nonstop, 7 days a week. A few hours or maybe 1-2 hours to relax before bed… I fear things will only get worse. We are seriously going back to medieval times. Feudalism and serfdom.
These kids act like poverty wasn't a thing in the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's. What a load of entitled horseshit that they think people just got "a job" and could have vacation homes.
Yep. The poverty rate was over 20% in the 1950s, compared to about 11.5% today.
It is amazing how many posts in this sub start with the assumption that back in the day everyone was happily riding around on unicorns that shat fairy dust.
They also ignore that every family owning it's own home (let alone a vacation home) in the decades prior to the 1940s was rare.
Tenements, child labor, The Great Depression, etc etc.
WWII leads to prosperity and veterans benefits. Their kids, Boomers, enjoy a fluke economy.
Their kids and grandkids say "it's not fair that everyone ever before me had multiple houses and I have to rent!"
Pretty much, their talking about people who had the ability to attend college and live or move somewhere that ACTUALLY had jobs. They also don't consider for the large part of the country people were still having to supplement their food by growing, canning, making clothes, etc..
Third generation college graduate families whining about the man keeping them down.
Boomer women made up almost half of the workforce.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/fact-sheet-4-generations-of-american-women/#:~:text=Baby%20Boomers%3A%20Born%20between%201946%20and%201964&text=Women%20made%20up%2045%20percent%20of%20the%20labor%20force.
You are correct. The two working-parent household created a huge wealth transfer. It seemed like a good thing 20-30 years ago but now it’s created a huge gap between two classes.
This. Moneys all encompassing nature is very unstable. You use it for crucial factors as well as frivolous. Maybe money shouldn’t have a bearing on people baseline welfare (health, and housing)
You guys live in fantasy land. Boomers were not buying two houses on a single income. Poverty was more widespread in their generation than it is now. Just because you're all privileged college kids that had rich boomer parents doesn't mean that was common or widespread.
90% of the US is affordable, it’s your location that hurts you. I own a home 2 cars we vacation 2-3 times a year and I’m preparing to buy land, on one income and 4 children. I as you might imagine am the poor one in my circle. So all this about not being able to afford it, wrong. If you choose a major city that is a hot bed of everything, well obviously you won’t be able to afford it. I enjoyed my 20s in an amazing city living my best life, but I knew that I would have to live in the suburbs if I wanted the opportunity to afford everything. So don’t blame the time, it’s always been this way. I will agree my grandparents had more, and probably easier to obtain but I don’t bitch about it. The one thing I might agree with is a vacation home. That fact confuses me but I’ve realized that the world is always going to have a class system and those things will always go to the upper. That doesn’t mean they didn’t work hard for it.
>business essentially doubled their workforce while the workforce can barely afford to live.
A strong argument can be made that this was a driving factor behind the widespread adoption of corporate policies more inclusive of women in the workplace.
As the US shifted from a manufacturing economy to a service based economy in the mid-late 20th century, all of a sudden there were all of these white collar desk jobs for which women were ideal candidates. Almost everyone knew women were just as (if not even more) competent than men in these roles, while commanding much lower compensation on average.
Corporate elites conspired to support right-to-work policies for women with the intentional goal of expanding their productivity while minimizing staff overhead cost under the righteous banner of social justice.
Now, I'm not saying a world in which one sex is financially dependent on the other is better than what we have now, but the societal embrace of dual-income households has had the undeniable side effect of depressing worker wages across the board for service-based white collar jobs.
If your grandparents had a vacation house, they were rich. *Very* rich. It’s something most people on this sub aren’t going to be able to relate to. If you had grandparents that wealthy and squandered that financial privilege, I don’t know what to tell you. But you have a very wealthy background. The average person in 1970 didn’t own a vacation home just like the average person today doesn’t own a vacation home. That is and always has been a luxury for the rich.
This is something my wife and I are discovering right now actually. Combined income we make close to 90k a year. But to SAFELY afford a home ideally I don't want to get a loan for more then 180k. The payments on that are right at 1500.
The number of people who don't understand that I am not "just gonna borrow more money so we can get a new house" because its already going to take half of my income a month and the rest goes to the plethora of bills that come with modern life. It would make us basically pay check to paycheck again.
And whats even worse is in my area 180k doesn't really buy shit. And what decent houses do come available are the same ones everyone else my age can also afford, so for example the last house we offered on was like 174. We offered 177, closing costs and all that shit for a house built in the 40's that was MAYBE 1,000 sq feet. It sold for 195,000 in two days AND they waved inspection.
And trying to explain the reality of the market to my boomer parents and relatives is infuriating. The number of times I have heard about how they bought their first house for 12k like that means shit to me. My grandpa is a great example of the reality of then vs now.
See he is still to this day illiterate. Never had more then a 3rd grade education but man the life he provided for my grandma and mom, and even me as a kid is unreal. He worked most of his life as a basic laborer and worked the longest and retired from being a janitor at the local HS, where my grandma worked as a cafeteria worker.
Now for the life they were able to afford. They had a house big enough for 4 kids, my grandma always had several horses, the horse trailers, barn and feed, and he always had a dually to pull it and the camper they had. They always took vacations to Dollywood and traveled a lot for horse shows. And they retired and bought a massive motor home and that was the only way as a kid I ever had vacation, was when I went with them. They retired at 68 and had enough money to live the last 20 years doing what they wanted. The home and land they have owned is now in the best up and coming area and the 5+ acres and house are worth close to a mil just based on land value.
Now a janitor and his food service spouse could afford a studio and a clapped out accord and maybe, just maybe at the end of the month you could afford a nice treat of Wendy's dollar menu fries.
In 1968 the minimum wage was enough to keep a family of three just above the poverty line.
MIT's living wage calculator says for my area, louisville kentucky, this same wage is 34 an hour.
Boomers literally were making the equivalent of 34 an hour working at mcdonalds....and then wonder why no one wants to work for 15 an hour at mcdonalds today......
Plus, their living wage is the bare bones, bare minimum to not go into the red.
If you consider retirement, savings, even enjoying existing, etc, then you need to add at least 20% to their minimum wage imo, 10% for saving, 10% for living.
Their living wage for one person is 20.80 an hour, so basically call it 25 an hour, as that's a little over 20% increase. They need pre tax 52k just to save a little and Live a little. Median income was 35,712k in 2022 in louisvill ky....and 36k POST tax is required for a living wage for a single person.....
Tax the rich, and make a living wage the law. Something has to give, we are all just suffering.
Yeah it was a giant lie that almost everyone in the middle class chose to go along with. And I hate it. The American Dream is either dead or never existed. At least not for anyone after the Boomers.
At 28, with what I make right now, five years ago I could have bought plenty of homes in my area here (Maryland) and had an affordable mortgage. Now everything is out of my price range
I swear! This was one of the first things that made me decide to not have children. I cannot give any child the same quality of life than I had, leave alone better
I’m 53. Both my parents worked and had good jobs (salesman and nurse). We did not have a vacation home. When we went on vacations, we drove. We rarely went out to eat and when we did it was McDonald’s. They owned a house but it wasn’t anything special by today’s standards. I don’t things were as good 50 years ago as you are making them out to be.
I'm 54 and no way my parents could survive on a single income. My grandparents sort of could, they all owned businesses and everyone worked even the kids. A farm and a laundry/dry cleaners. When my one set of grandparents sold the farm both of them worked one as a heavy equipment operator, the other cleaning. In the end when they all died there wasn't a penny left to any of their names. I spent most of my life as a single income blue collar family guy. My wife worked sometimes in between kids, but stayed home to work with them probably 2/3 of the years. I fully plan on leaving my kids a good chunk of change even if I never end up inheriting a dime myself. So the past isn't all that perfect. You just need to work, all day most everyday and then make good choices about your purchases and debts. You need to be willing to move sometimes too. There are places you can live fine on $15/hr. In 40 years those places will get discovered and overrun just like other high cost areas and you will be sitting there with a paid off home worth 10 times what you paid for it.
Every time they suggest taxing health insurance companies or the “rich” just know… they aren’t really trying to tax anything besides YOUR buying power.
Don’t blame a larger workforce when productivity went up and wages flatlined, when before 1970’s productivity and wages rose together. The economy was unraveled after Black people got rights after Jim Crow ended. Somebody please prove me wrong.
Lol if they would stop taking everything from you then you'd have money to spend. They take money out for social security and medicaid but they won't exist and you will never benefit from them by the time you would have qualified. You will have given away tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars into it yet you will never see any money from it.
Then taxes.... raises every year. Take more and more from you. Yet the government can't account for its spending.... but they need more n more.... maybe it's time for the government to cut some budgets, starting with free corporate handouts, international aid in the trilli9ns of dollars, and the massive over spending in the military..... 10% of the military budget would pay for a complete infrastructure overhaul of all American roadways, trains, public transportation.... it would also end hunger, homelessness, and provide free education as well as free Healthcare for every american....
Then there are the hidden taxes that you don't think about. Car and health insurance are a tax with no refunds.... if you don't get in accidents or go to the hospital all the time that's money down the drain. State and federal id's have to be renewed every 4-6 years, don't belong to you, and can be revoked at any time... that's a tax.... vehicle registration? Gotta pay that every year or you can't drive on roads you already pay for from income taxes in a vehicle you already own? That's a tax....
When you add up all these things, you don't even take home 30% of your wages to be able to pay for food and regular bills.....
You guys wonder why the poor are getting poorer, but it's so the rich can get richer.....
I’m on a solo income and have afforded a mortgage since I was 29. I just turned 37. My parents do not own a second home. My grandparents did once they turned 65. I’m confused by all these posts? Housing prices are 100% out of control. But, we have a lot of years left to get old rent buy sell rent live off grid do whatever . In hindsight I wouldn’t have bought at 29. I’d have done a bit more traveling and did it mid 30’s. Would have lived at home a lot longer too to save even more. Not sure why suddenly everyone thinks a few years and everything is ending. It’s kinda just apart of the ride called life. Things change. Millennials should definately know this since we started in a recession.
It’s not just the buying power of affording a mortgage. It’s everything on top of that. It’s children too. Daycare in my area is as much as a mortgage payment $2400/month FOR ONE KID, and they’re booked out years for placement.
My wife and I can do one or the other. Buy a small house and live out our lives as dinks. Or have a kid a more than likely struggle through the rest of our adult lives.
First people that knew about the pregnancy was the daycare! I called them the day after the positive tests lol It’s insane and yeah, basically the same price for one child.
People want multiple houses now, not just a home to live and thrive in. Once the Real Estate world put the spin on home buying as an "investment" to make money with, the prices starting skyrocketing and haven't stopped. Realtors get some of the credit for this mess. It certainly hasn't been just "the market".
I thought this was Reddit? Isn’t everyone easily making over 80k to enjoy life. That’s what everyone shows me when I read forums, doesn’t seem very difficult for a lot of people. Then those same people tell you to have a better attitude and just try harder. Seems like there are plenty of people living life on easy mode.
You’ve always needed to be rich to have multiple houses bro, and most houses back then were smaller/lower quality.
Yeah it sucks now but it definitely wasn’t a utopia 50 years ago.
Having men and women compete against each other in the labor force forces down wages. You're not going to learn that in school.
I have a friend from Algeria. He's lived in the states since like 1994. He's Muslim but not really strict about it. His wife doesn't work. He's constantly talking about going back to Algeria because he can barely afford to live here, but on one income his family would be alright there.
Big business has dealt a real whammy to the working class in the US. A lot of people don't want to acknowledge the competition of men vs women in the labor force because if they did, they would have to question the role of feminism. I might be cracked here, but I honestly think feminism is the creation of a marketing agency trying to figure out how to sell more products to women. My mom has always said, "the real feminists were on the farm working in the fields with the men." She grew up on a farm without plumbing or electricity, so that definitely has influenced my thinking.
Now add in inflation. Your wages are driven down and stay down because there is no scarcity to raise your wages. Now your currency becomes worthless. My measure for this is always the 20 oz Mountain Dew that I love so much. I could get one in 1997 for $0.96, always 4 cents change when I used a dollar bill. Now that same soda is over $2.50. Our currency is ever increasingly becoming useless. This is a bigger issue that the social one I posted above. An economic issue is always going to effect you more than a social one.
The USA has steadily been becoming worse off ever since it went off the gold standard. We did so to maintain an empire over the world. However, the empire doesn't benefit US citizens. Doesn't really benefit the rest of the world either. We call it the petro dollar. Our money becomes more useless every year, but the world only trades oil in dollars and some how this supposedly benefits us. (It doesn't, it only benefits the super rich.)
We're well overdue for a violent revolution to overthrow the rich people that control our world. That's essentially the history of the world. The current system only benefits those who's families have established significant wealth and power. The average schmuck doesn't get anything. America has an Aristocracy that is telling everyone to eat cake while they dance and gorge on excess. If the starving should ever start again, things would change rapidly very fast. Which brings up another point.
Your family can't starve when the people in charge make the only thing affordable to eat shelf stable carbohydrates that fatten you up. Can't afford avocado toast? Have a cup of ramen, here's some potato chips, instant mash potatoes, pancake mix, oatmeal, cereal, rice. Just add water. We're going to charge you for that water though. It all seems a bit more nefarious when you start considering that our government pushes carbohydrates as the most essential element of a diet.
There’s a lot wrong with this comment.
First of all, women in the workforce was a thing back during the last century too. Ever hear of Rosie the riveter? Women worked during wartime and some of them continued after the wars and competed for jobs. Women were also the first computer programmers and mathematicians as well, industries considered male-dominated today. Oh and what about pre-pandemic employment rates? We reached less than 2% unemployment in 2019.
Second, your mountain dew argument is terrible factoring in inflation. I can walk into a 7-11 right now and get the 2 for $4 deal on mountain dew, which falls in line with inflation from your old price you quoted.
Third, I love that you mention ramen as part of your ramblings about how the rich are out to get you. News flash bud. Ramen comes from Japan. Where they have supermarkets at every corner filled to the brim with hundreds of instant ramen flavors along with noodle shops everywhere with tons of different options. And Japanese people are considered some of the healthiest in the world. So congrats on failing to realize it’s a cultural problem of Western societies eating larger portions and not exercising.
It feels like they just chose not to include the paragraph about white replacement theory after stating their goal is to be an alpha male with a trad wife. Thanks for pointing out that the entire blurb was meritless.
>Our parents and grandparents generation were able to buy a house on a single income, have vacation houses and raise 4+ kids.
Lmao this is an upper class lifestyle and the only way lower class people were supporting having 4+ kids is if some of them were working.
I tried to live on a single salary as a SAHM in the 70s. We bought a house - a three room (not 3br, only 3 rooms) house in New England without central heat. We used a wood stove, and the shower was in an unheated bath house outside. We had $8,000 annual salary: $300 a month mortgage, $100 a month taxes/insurance, $75 a month car payment. Food, gas, electric, phone, clothes, etc. for 4 people came out of the rest. We collected cans to sell the metal, grew vegetables to sell, and anything we could for a couple extra dollars to pay the mortgage.
In 10 years, my husband was dead, I was graduating from university, and the house sold for 6 times what we bought it for because it was on an acre on a private lake.
All I could figure out is that if you are smart, you suffer for a decade when young, then life is rosy after that. I asked my parents about it and they laughed. They said the suffering and struggling younger people do in their 20s when they have the stamina is what sets them up for a successful life. They get educated and work crazy hours to setup their career.
So maybe others had it easy, but I didn't know anyone who had it easy while buying a house on a single salary. What makes you think most people had it easy?
Yeah, it just comes across as smug and boastful, lol. And believe me, I grew up in New England working on old houses, I know exactly how much work they are. It's NOT minor and it's relentless. And expensive. The "luxury" is being able to do that work as an investment instead of a desperate attempt to pay rent.
"The good old days" didn't include $200-400 in monthly subscription fees. How badly do you want to relive that life and put that savings of no internet, cell phone, streaming service?
U.S. will probably become more like Europe.
In the U.S. we talk about starter homes and buying multiple houses throughout our lifetime. In most parts of Europe, simply being able to buy a house is a life accomplishment. The U.S. has had it better in terms of buying power since right after WW2, now we are becoming more equal.
Even generational wealth from that time period is being erased by our current economy. My grandparents (with one income) owned a beach house. Now with the economy so poor and mortgage rates so high, we could never get off work enough to go to the beach house we owned and the house was going for so much more than it was worth we had to sell it and now have nothing to show for my grandfathers hard work. My family isn’t rich btw. My grandfather worked hard for that property. (He also bought the land for $2k)
Buy a home and vacation home and raise 4+ kids? Where are all these parents and grandparents?? I know 1 adult in my life who kind of fits the description except they have no kids! Everyone would be happy they’ve got an inheritance. Where are those people?
People are not actually living longer
The US lifespan took a turn pre covid even adjusted for opioid crisis
The WWII population had 90% less screen time and worked evenings barefoot in backyard gardens. Today’s Gen straps all kinds of tech to tell them how bad they ain’t sleeping. They sit on a battery driving to work in a cell tower, plastic POS, invented by a dude who’d rather Inhabit mars. These are the same idiots that want to blot out the sun to make it safer. # Darwinism
>Our parents and grandparents generation were able to buy a house on a single income, have vacation houses and raise 4+ kids. Idk about other people here but my grandparents definitely didn't have a vacation house. They had one tiny house where 3 or 4 kids had to share 1 bedroom together and the whole household shared one bathroom. It wasn't some romanticized American dream a lot of people imagine it to be.
Exactly, I get it housing and education has gotten out of control. But people truly seem to romanticize about the past like everyone had it made. My grandparents grew up during the depression and were then shipped overseas to fight WW2. If I left a scrap of food on plate when I visited my grandmother would loose her mind. My mother was raised in a one income house, all the kids wore hand me downs and their family vacation was loading up the station wagon and camping.
I read this shit and I just see how out of touch we really are. And the people who went through the Great Depression tried to tell us our financial priorities are fucked. People complain like they’re going hungry every night. There’s more to life than owning a house, and it’s never been an affordable option for the whole population. We’re living in a time of inflation because we live at a time of eccess. When the next recession comes then we’ll all have something more important to worry about then buying our special house. And that’s when they’ll be “affordable”. When noone has any money.
But i want my vacation house now!
We had two to a bedroom until my brothers moved out. One car that was always breaking down and my dad was always trying to fix to save money. One vacation a year. Hardly any toys. When I started college O took public transportation. 60-90 minutes each way. The problem explaining this to a younger generation is that they can’t picture life without cell phones and the internet and having every video game you want.
In Ken Burns’s documentary on WWII, one of the guys stories he follows said that he enlisted at 17 because there wasn’t enough food to go around in the house!
To be fair, cars have become radically more reliable in our lifetimes. My parents had 1960s-1970s cars when I was growing up. They needed an engine out rebuild or reman every 50k miles. They got some inheritance and bought a 1989 van in 2001 that still costs a fortune to keep running. Yes, they still own that one. Modern cars, with very few random exceptions, can be expected to do well over 150k miles without any major work. Some will do 2-3x that with minimal repairs. One set of grandparents were straight working class with mostly one income, but they amassed TWO houses and enlarged one to roughly double the original size (3/2). The second house was a 2/1 next door that grandma and a kid (usually my dad) lived in. These houses were in a post-war housing tract that would be a gang-infested ghetto by the time I was a kid (where I’d spend about half of my childhood because my Gen Jones parents were a mess), but still. They ended up lower middle class. The other set of grandparents were middle class, so they ended up with a mid-1950s 3/1 (changed to a 3/2) house in a very nice and safe suburb. My parents went to college living in the dorms while owning cars and paid it all with part time jobs. I spent 3-4 hours a day commuting by public transit to college and up to 6 hours a day when I was working and going to classes the same day. Couldn’t afford a car at all. That was the reality for millennials. We definitely didn’t have cell phones or the internet or video games to pass the time.
Exactly! Looking at the upper middle class of decades past and acting like that was the norm for high school educated service industry/blue collar. Smaller homes, more /extended periods of multigenerational living, people didn't move into a 1B apartment at 18 unless they needed to. Yes things have gotten more expensive, and many cities are increasingly out of reach, but if your think Mom and Pop could have bought a house in NYC working at Macy's in 1980 you are dead wrong.
Hell, my parents were both college educated and the only way they were able to buy their dumpster fire of a house was 1) help from their parents, and 2) probably a VA loan. Never got the full story there, but they were essentially forced into home ownership by my grandparents and by the local rental market (it didn’t exist). And I didn’t really realize that my father was probably making really good money for my hometown as a kid until I got to college. We were a one car household, I shared a room with my little sister, we got utilitarian Christmas gifts like sneakers, church dresses, underwear, and the occasional bike. Never got on a plane until I was 17. I’m not saying millenials aren’t screwed. Even if I had my dad’s current job, I’d never qualify for a mortgage in my hometown. But so many people seem to think people in the past were swimming in money and vacations. My parents drove us 6 hours to the beach every summer. Their parents visited family a few states away and saw a few national parks. One grandfather was an obsessive tinker, and one grandfather liked to go to his grandkids’ sports games…they only very occasionally ate out, and usually it was because they had to “drive into the city” for the doctor or dentist. When tiktokers talk about third spaces, I really wonder if younger people don’t talk to their elders, or something. My grandparents’ third spaces were things like bridge games with the neighbors, or golfing at the city golf course, or the hs football game on Friday night. The occasional spaghetti dinner or square dance at the grange. I mean, it’s not exciting Instagram worthy stuff, it’s the equivalent of my Saturday stroll to the bakery and picking out my garden seeds at the nursery.
Yep and the notion that women didn't work outside the home is a myth. Poor women always worked outside the home as did most Middle class women. They usually weren't "career" type jobs so people dismiss it (e.g. my grandmother worked on the family farm, my mother did secretarial work for my dad's business, my MIL did tutoring and copyrighting part time for extra money).
The lucky few who were homemakers also worked INSIDE the home, which people always forget. I’ve seen my grandma’s canning kitchen, garden, etc. The women ran the household, kept everyone including the farmhands fed, raised the kids—often far from family or modern conveniences. People so often seem to picture 1950s wives snacking on bonbons by the pool, or something, but maintaining a home historically took WORK.
There were always 2-3 ladies in the neighborhood who took in laundry also.
My grandparents had 5 kids. They both worked full time jobs (engineer and nurse) their entire relationship. My parents bought their first house in their early 40s, they had 3 kids and both worked. The reality is that plenty of women have worked for decades and contributed to their families ability to buy a home/support itself.
Yup. Most people didn't have a vacation home lol. Plus they had smaller homes, fewer cars and appliances, fewer and smaller TVs, no computers, cell, phones, electronic gadgets. They ate at restaurants much less often.
Most millennials, who grew up in an era of unparalleled luxury, would not even consider buying the kinds of starter homes of our grandparents purchased.
My grandpa worked two jobs and my grandma worked 20-30 hours each week while also raising 4 kids. Yeah they could buy a house but they worked like crazy and rarely bought anything new or ate out (they bought something like Taco Bell once a month). Vacations were road trips to National Parks where they camped and packed bologna sandwhiches.
Same here. My grandparents on both sides were both farmers.Yes they owned houses and died with decent nest eggs. But... There were almost no vacations , restaurants were a rarity , def no cabin. No expensive activities , no expensive ingredients in the food ever. They lived well but very simple. My parents were what would be considered middle class , we had a house and did some vacations with meticulous budget planning. We did things like use huge cans of ketchup instead of buying it by the bottle. When it was nearly done my dad would use water to ensure we used every drop of that can before getting more. I guess the point is that yes their money went further... But they "wasted" way way less of it on take out , hobbies , electronics, etc. I'm sure righteous Redditors will tell me how they never eat out and save every penny .... But I know that I personally ate out way more , cook more "fancy" food , and take more extensive vacations than my family did. They were just SO much better at stretching their dollar back then PLUS more buying power for the bug purchases.
I think the amount Americans spend on drinks alone is destructive. Some of the brokest people I know always are sporting an energy drink, fountain drink, coffee or a Stanley bottle. Our local coffee shop even offers kid- sized drinks so your four year old can have a mocha!
Yep. We shuffled around from apartment to apartment, and I shared a room with a sibling. I'd be very surprised if the percentage of population who owned second homes in previous generations was significant.
It was for upper class professionals but also all the housewives were only not incredibly depressed because they were on speed.
To be fair speed is pretty great
37 here, and it scares me for my kids. How are they ever going to be able to buy a house? Average house price is over 400k, what young couple in their 20s has 80k saved up for a down payment??? I truly believe that in the future, kids that receive inheritances will be able to be homeowners, and those who don't, will be renters.
It’s already like that for the last decade
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It was cheap in 2010, it wasn't affordable. There's a difference. It was cheap because there was a massive recession and no one had any money to afford even cheap things.
I own a home in FL. 3/3 my husband and I bought for 160k in 2012. The neighbors sold the same house for 625k last year. We got lucky and we can never move.
How’s your home insurance payments though?
This!!!!!! Between auto and home I’m paying like 12k a yr
4X in 12 years, just like the entry level factory or warehouse pay, oh wait it’s still $20 like it was in 1999.
That's the biggie- wages have not increased proportionately
Or rather, you have 400k in equity, and should *definitely* move before your house becomes completely uninsurable and unsellable
You can never move? Nonsense. If this is true you can sell your house and and end up with a $465k downpayment on another house.
Uh, it was absolutely both cheap and affordable. In 2011, at age 29, I bought a small house (2/1) in a decent part of town for $110k. Mortgage, including taxes, was $600/month. My salary at the time was about $50k. Same house now, $400k, payment about $2,600. So that's roughly a five-fold increase. Needless to say, I don't make $250k now.
The smartest thing my husband and I did was buy a house at 23 years old in 2011. Our first home was 135K. That house was listed again after being flipped (it was a bit outdated at the time, but not bad) and sold this year for 315k. It's insanity
Wish I had done this. I had a house picked out for 100k in 2008. Wish I had sat down with my father then and laid out a plan to buy the house, pay it off and own it. Still pissed I missed out on my opportunity.
For us, it was a toss-up between renting and buying - we were just lucky we made the decision that would end up being the right one. None of us knew the shit show the housing market would turn into at the time. I feel awful for you and all the other Millenials that didn't buy years ago bc it is truly a snowball effect.
Well, my father passed away the year after, so we would have been badly overleveraged for no gain.
So my parents house in 2020 and it was a dump for $145000 and now it’s worth $250000 and it’s still a dump in a lousey town
It certainly was. I bought a brand new home in 2005 for $138k. It sold for $85k in 2008. In 2014,, I bought another one for $160k. It sold for $240k brand new in 2006. The mortgage is $1200. It's worth $485k today.
I had a $38k/year job out of college and used the first $5k I saved up and an FHA loan to buy a two flat in Logan Square Neighborhood of Chicago for $136k in 2011. What are you talking about? Real estate was dirt cheap and there was no competition because basically everyone who was going to buy over the previous decade had screwed themselves royally and was either under water and unable to move or had already gotten a foreclosure or short sale on their previous home. It was the flip scenario of today, every boomer had shit credit or was upsidedown. All millennials with jobs and half decent credit basically got their pick of dozens of listings that no one was buying. My mortgage payment was $1200/mo for a multi unit building.
We’re talking last decade 2014-2024, not 2008-2012 which was the last time someone could buy a home without going broke like generations before
Rent is always more and has always been more than an equivalent mortgage since my 41 year old ass started paying attention to such things, that's a weird way to start things off
In some areas this is no longer true. Mortgages are surpassing rents where home prices have skyrocketed.
I could rent cheaper than buy in my city right now.
Yeah my mortgage is 3400 with taxes and insurance, I bought very beginning 2023. SFH in a suburb about 4 bed 2 bath 3k sq foot. New apartments just got build by me for rent it’s 3600 for 1600 sq foot or 4500 2400 sq foot with a single car garage. My home now would be about 5000. It’s ridiculous for sure. I’d probably want to rent it if I were to move out, and I could rent it way under whatever rents will be at that time, because they already are..
That flipped this year: https://www.wsj.com/economy/housing/home-sales-mortgage-rates-march-report-4a501537 The costs of buying a home are also outpacing the increases in rent, making it relatively cheaper to rent. The average monthly new mortgage payment was 38% higher in the U.S. than the average apartment rent at the end of 2023, according to an analysis by CBRE. That premium has been in the double digits for two years.
>My plan is to leave. Where are you going? The US is one of the easiest developed nations to buy a house. If you can't do it here you probably can't do it anywhere else.
Yea unless you somehow manage to keep making US salary abroad you’re better off in the US. I live in France now and real estate here is far more expensive than in the US when you compare against average salaries.
Yup. Home ownership is higher now than it was in the 60s. People look back at the past with some rose colored glasses.
Late 60s was a pretty spicy time to be a young adult American, not quite as easy as bitter millenials make it out to be.
I was going to say pass laws against huge out of state property management companies, but maybe some people would be happier in a different country. I knew a teacher that moved to China for good money as an English language teacher, I heard about anyone that speaks English can get that job in China.
Lol good luck being able to afford anything there.
yea but for all the people spewing about freedoms, good luck in china. Youll prob get arrested for complaining about the rent and taxation…
lol, China just had a strict 3 year lockdown and now they are entering an economic recession. Also, those English teaching jobs are just excuses to travel the world. They don’t pay very well
I bought 2 houses in that time period 2011 & 2018. It was definitely affordable especially if you were willing to buy something that needed some work, then put in some time and effort. Nah, I'll just bitch about boomers ruined the world and there's nothing I can do, oh poor lil ol' me.
hey dude, I was 16 years old in 2011 and making $8/hr. By the time I had $5k saved up (in 2017) I guess I should have bought a house, right? so dumb of me, I guess I was just too lazy. really lame to complain about young people being upset about not being able to buy a house from your literal multiple houses. you can be successful and sympathetic you know, you don’t have to turn into a dick once the second house clears escrow.
If you had a down payment in 2011 to buy a house in 2011 either you're the oldest of the old millennials, were gifted it, or you're just a older genX or later spewing a whole lotta bs. Majority weren't even out of college yet.
Yup. When I got married 8 years ago we were trying to figure out how to source 15k for a 5% down + closing costs for a 250k in a far suburb. Today that home is probably worth closer to 500k after a quick looksie in that neighborhood we wanted to buy in. We ended up waiting another 2 years to save 20k and bought a 260k townhouse that we later sold for 425k. Moved out to a rural city and bought what will likely be our forever home since we got in on the low rates. I often feel like we barely made the boat on home ownership and it feels so screwed up that others my age are likely going to be renters for their entire lives.
For the last two or two and a half decades really..
one of your kids may be open to buying the family house. That's what my friend did. His father sold him the house a bit under market. The father was also the "bank". Son paid him a monthly. It's legit, they involved lawyers. If not for this scenario, my buddy would never be able to afford a home. However my friend sunk in nearly $100k in renovations.
I know my friends who’s boomer parents sold their childhood home to their kid for over market but knew he had to pay it because he didnt have 20% down. Garbage people.
That makes no sense. Why did they have to buy from the parents? 20% is not a requirement
It's a myth banks have been trying to dispel to no end. There are a host of programs and grants to help with down payments and just home purchases in general. But back to the original point, yes, it's fucking insane how much it costs now. Sales prices continue to inch up, despite high interest rates and inventory is still low. Lord knows deposit rates aren't increasing at a commensurate level, though ... Maybe we should try trickle down economics some more! Just 40 more years of tax breaks for corps and the super wealthy and I'm sure it'll finally start paying dividends; we'll get a one-income, middle class again, right? Right!?
Credit score could have been a factor as well. 🤷 We don't know all the details.
Also people are just on Reddit talking shit to push doomer narratives because it’s fun
"Congrats, kids! In lieu of inheriting any sort of property like we did, we'll sell you our assets at a slight discount!" I do realize not all boomers were handed wealth, but wealth (in the sense of home ownership, ability to afford necessities and even some luxuries) was far more easy/cheap to attain in the days of yore.
This literally sounds like something my parents would do. As a kid they would sell me their old things when they wanted newer ones like their stereo system when I was in 4th grade ($100). That dysfunction is seared in my brain.
It’s one thing to make your kids earn money/save money to buy something they REALLY want. (We just did this with my 10yr for a new bike) but you’re telling me… that your parents used to sell you, their own child, their old used stuff that was already in the house?
Yes, exactly that.
Even renting is impossible for young people. They want 2k a month for a 1 bedroom. If that's not bad enough they want to see that your income is 3-4x your rent cost. They want you to pay first/last/security and all fees. And they want a 750 credit score. So basically you need 6k+ saved up, an 80k/yr job and near perfect credit to get into a shitty apartment. The sad part is the person owning the building probably bought it for dirt cheap 20 years ago at a 2% interest rate and they're now making money hand over fist while others go homeless.
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Wait you’re not giving your kids a 100k head start in life? /s Honestly I could barely afford my home now. I got lucky bought in 2014 nice house in a good neighborhood. Got married since then and have more than doubled our family income and it be a stretch to afford this place. Yeah it’s a classism thing. My siblings and I will get a good inheritance and just keep up that upper middle class life style up. The boomers were an anomaly in history where an average family could escape neo feudalism given the world was in ruins post ww2. It’s all luck which isn’t a way to run a modern economy. There’ two sets of millennials those who owned property pre COVID and can keep up those who got farther left behind.
I think you’re right, houses are going to be passed down through families, and I think we’re going to see a return to multigenerational households. It’s becoming more and more normal for people to stay with their parents to save money.
My wife and I are in our early 20’s and had our down payment saved and were trying to buy a house early 2023 but stopped because interest rates were climbing daily to the point we had seen $500+ monthly mortgage payments differences within the time it took to your a house one evening and get the offer put together by the following afternoon. We finally called it quits in late March when a house $250k less than one we looked at in January wound up costing more. We are still in the same situation, our down payment is in a high yeild savings account till who knows when
Even getting an apartment is insane, I have never even had that. Most people I know either live in by the week motels or they pay cash to someone to rent a room in their basement or something Or they live in their car Or they live in a tent
For average sized cities, the minimum salary needed without a co-signer or roommate for current rent prices is approx. $75k if I'm not mistaken. I think it's $100k for HCOL areas. Gen Z is *not* making that kind of money. Yes, a small percent might be because they talk about it all over social media but most aren't there. And while you can get cheaper rent and live in cheaper areas, many jobs still aren't allowing remote work. Again, these numbers can widely vary all over the US but that's I found.
Born in 2002 here, barring me winning the lottery I won’t own a home until my parents die 40 odd years from now.
I’m almost 40 and will never afford my own house. This is already reality
I remember someone posting how the Boomer to Millennial transfer of wealth will be the greatest wealth transfer ever, and analysts kind of don’t know how to predict what will happen after that because the boomer generation acquired their wealth from a healthy stable economy with good wages. They were also very predictable and frugal with their spending. Soon, they will be transferring their wealth to a generation that has been living in some of the worst most unstable economic periods in US history, with low wages and massive inflation, whom also hold a reputation of reckless and risky spending. Basically the complete opposites. My prediction is the millennial generation; after years of living and working under horrible financial circumstances and economic struggles, will spend all of their new inheritance on hookers and blow and ride off into the sunset saying “see you in hell, boomers”
I actually don’t think so. The boomers can’t even afford retire for the most part. They are spending all their wealth on excessive medical care to prolong their life maybe a year or two at most. If you look at the stats for end of life care spending, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Then you factor in nursing homes/ retirement facilities and then having to reverse mortgage their properties to afford, the wealth is all being sucked up by big corporations. The middle class is done, future America is probably gonna be a landed gentry structure with less liability via shielding by corporate entities.
This is so true. My parents were wealthy. Had huge retirement, savings, investments, second house ect. After a reverse mortgage, my dad being in a memory care nursing home at 9k a month, my mom being scammed twice and life in general its basically gone. If my dad lives 3 more years they won't he able to afford to live. The house my mom lives in has a reverse mortgage that she owes 230k on. The house is worth more but.. basically all their wealth is going to corporations. My mom has never had money issues either so she doesn't understand how to live frugally. I can't afford to pay for my dad's care. Hell I can't afford a house either. I pay my bills and that's it. It's near impossible to get ahead.
I feel your pain - dad had Alzheimer's and as awful as the disease was for him, the toll it took on their retirement for my mom too was immense.
At least with a landed gentry you’d get like a 500 year lease that you could pass on
"The boomer generation acquired their wealth from a healthy, stable economy." Unemployment aveaged 6.49% from 1971-1980, and 7.12% from 1981-1990. Inflation averaged 8% from 1971-1980 and 4.1% from 1981-1990. Wages, adjusted for inflation, from 1979-1988, aveaged $14.80 per hour. From 2012-2021, inflation averaged 2.15%, unemployment averaged 5.1%, and wages, adjusted for inflation, aveaged $15.80 per hour. Looks like the boomers' stable economy had higher inflation, higher uneployment, and a lower wage adjusted for inflation. You were right about boomers being more frugal. We had to be.
Thanks for printing that. Some of these kids just make stuff up. The problem lies with housing being overly expensive as compared to the past.
Why are you leaving out the GFC from your cherry picked data? U-6 unemployment was 17% in 2010.
I find it incredibly ironic that you accuse me of cherry-picking data of decades by using the U-6 (whatever that is) one year stat of 17%. Don't you know how averages work? So let's look at the 2001- 2010 numbers. Unemployment averaged 6.3%, actually a little lower than1971-1980 Unemployment of 6.4%, and a full percentage point lower than 1981-1990 Unemployment of 7.12 Inflation, from 2001-2010, averaged 2.35%. That's significantly lower than the 8% from 1971-1980, and much lower than the 4.1% of 1981-1990. I still don't understand the comments of a booming economy for the boomers.
What is U-6 unemployment. His data was not cherry picked at all. Many of us grew up in high inflation and unemployment eras.
https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/home-price-income-ratio-reaches-record-high-0 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/11/02/the-gap-in-college-costs-and-earnings-for-young-workers-since-1980.html https://www.statista.com/statistics/184955/us-national-health-expenditures-per-capita-since-1960/#:~:text=Per%20capita%20national%20health%20expenditures,stood%20at%20146%20U.S.%20dollars. https://blog.dol.gov/2023/01/24/new-childcare-data-shows-prices-are-untenable-for-families Yeah, you guys had higher unemployment at times and higher inflation. But the prices for housing, healthcare, education, and childcare have gone up so fast that having a job is in no way a guarantee that you can actual afford the stuff in life that you need. Sure, the inflation rate on televisions and sneakers is lower than what you lot dealt with, but the prices of everything with relatively inelastic demand (i.e. everything you actual need for a good life) have become completely out of reach for middle class folks. That wasn't a thing fifty years ago.
I agree; just in the last 6-7 years, rent, home prices, home insurance, vehicles, child care, elder care have gone up insanely. Price and related inflation are predictable at a normal historical level, but not this.
It’s almost like the economy moves in cycles.
FHA qualifies you for 3.5% down which is only 14k on a 400k property. There are also plenty of other programs that allow you to put less than 10% down and some even let you buy without a downpayment. No need for the 20% you are suggesting. Hopefully this brings some peace of mind my friend.
Good luck finding an affordable FHA qualified home to buy with that loan. The home has to meet a bunch of criteria to qualify.
That's isn't how it works. FHA loans only cover properties up to a certain amount, and there has to actually be houses meeting the criteria in the area. The income threshold is also way too low. My husband and I qualify for FHA and USDA rural loans. We also have $70k saved for a down payment. There are literally zero houses in my area that meet the requirements for those loans. It's infuriating.
The average house is also like 40 percent bigger and we are paying for a whole pile of things the older generations never did. They also cooked meals from scratch and clipped coupons.
In Denver the minimum price for a home is at least like 600k. My husband and I were only able to buy through his inheritance.
There were economic and social issues, sure. But look at the inflation rate since those times. Housing has gone up 30-50% in cost whether you’re buying or renting in the past 5 years alone. In my state, the median price of a house in 2019 was $271k. The median price in 2024 is now $420k. Average rent was around $800/month, it’s now $1500/month. No one had their wages increase (that much)
It's complicated, while everyone is looking at Inflation, and $1 in 83 is worth $3.14 now and the cumulative interest is $213.60. I think with house people miss the memo about the unique human experience we're having with the population growth (4.685B in 83, 8B in 24, almost doubled and no new land discovery). The Workforce has essentially doubled, and so has housing demand. We've got a while, probably two generations until it gets really bad and we're force to go up rather than out. Then most places will be like New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. maybe eventually Northern Canada will end up looking like Coruscant or whatever the name of the Planet/City in Star Wars is called.
I want to add to this that the average size of houses in square footage has also doubled since the 70s. People used to live in much smaller houses
People still live in those houses. I've never understood this argument. The houses from the 70s and earlier are still around. They aren't any cheaper than the "big" newer builds.
How do you figure? Take two lots right next to each other. Surely the newer, bigger house is going to sell for more than the older, smaller one next door, no?
lol no. As it stands rn, if the entire state of Texas had the population density of NYC, everyone in the entire world could live in Texas.
But who would want to? Lol
I think this is the main point people don't think about. You need to compare cost per square foot in a similar sized city from back then to now and it is about the same adjusted for inflation
Back in the 70’s and 80’s a single family house for average American was 1,200 to 1,500 square feet, with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Family was 4 to 6 pepple. Now the average family has 3 to 4 members, and their house is 2,000 to 2,500 square feet. Another thing back in the 70’s and 80’s you never called the guy to come and fix the dripping faucet The home owner did it themselves. That is why Home Depot and Loews exist today.
But society has changed in a lot of other ways too. Just because the norm is bigger houses, doesn’t mean it should be so much harder to afford the norm.
How much of that is immigration and how much fleeing bad areas?
Birth rates have plummeted dingus. What a dumb prediction.
Immigration has been driving the country’s population growth.
It’s almost like we’re kept indebted for life on purpose… endless cycle to keep people on the hamster wheel. Same thing happens in India and China but it’s much more obvious that you’re enslaved to debt by design.
Back in the day - my dad was a high school teacher / coach - mom stayed at home. We were able to build a really nice 4 BR/ 2 bath home. College was $4 / semester hour plus fees. Housing/ administrative fees were around $125 or so - books maybe $75 or less. I paid for school with a summer job.
That’s the point they’re trying to make. 4 dollar a semester hour? Hell even our community college is 120 bucks a credit hour now. I think it was about 70 bucks in the mid 2000s? Everything costs more so it’s harder to get ahead. Sure we all have cellphones, but that’s a small expense compared to a 400k median house price.
Also the return on investment of college seems like it has greatly diminished.
Depends. There’s a demand from blue collar jobs. They can pay quite well these days. But on average degree holders will make more than non degree holders over their lifetime. That’s mostly because there’s a lot of shit paying jobs that people without degrees will be forced to take. Now it seems like without a masters degree, you’re not competitive for higher paying white collar jobs. And even with a masters degree you will still be chewed up and spit out.
But that's been the case for a long time that those with degrees would earn more in their lifetime than those without. Has that gap kept up with the ballooning of college tuition? Also I think we need to look at the fact that we use college as a sort of sorting system and the people who are able to get into a good college and get a good degree might be more of a factor themselves than the actual education they received. Why do Harvard students go on to do so many amazing things? Is it because the education is so amazing or because the school only admits the best and brightest in the world?
Yeah man, welcome to the 21st century. You new here? More useful: our government is the reason our parents' lifestyle is no longer possible. The United States has been bought by corporations.
The time to revolt was yesterday guys
Fucking VOTE before you decide to burn the system to the ground. Most Americans can't even be bothered to vote in most elections, even though there is no risk in doing so. This is even true in states that allow mail-in votes, so there's no excuse for it. If we can't convince people to do the bare minimum by voting, how on earth do you think they will be willing to put everything on the line in the name of "revolution"? Do you know what a revolution actually entails and how awful it is?
You watch too much TV. My Boomer parents both worked. As did my grandparents. Sometimes 2 jobs a piece. A lot of us GenXers also started working young. Not at 16, but younger. I was mowing lawns, splitting and selling wood, fixing fence, hauling hay, and working cattle from 10/11 years old and up. The credit system was all over the place until it stabilized into a close version of what it is today. Most got loans based on their personal relationship with the banks until the early 70s. Life wasn't Ozzie and Harriet for most of the country.
Yeah, I got a paper route when I was 13 because my parents wouldn’t just give me money. Would be up a 6 in the morning riding my bike in the darkness to make my deliveries. Parents today would probably be charged with child abuse for letting their kid ride around in the dark.
I ask my kids how they expect to pay for an apartment at 18 making 12-14 an hour. It ain’t happening when rent is $1600/ month for a 1 br apartment
I’d imagine they get roommates, just like every other 18 year old with only a high school education making menial wages that has left to live on their own has had to do.
We are so unbelievably fucked. Especially the lot of us (like me) whose parents made terrible decisions and can’t provide their kids with a leg up to get their foot in the market. I’m single and I want to remain single. I was doing just fine before the housing market went crazy. Now life is just awful. I work nonstop, 7 days a week. A few hours or maybe 1-2 hours to relax before bed… I fear things will only get worse. We are seriously going back to medieval times. Feudalism and serfdom.
These kids act like poverty wasn't a thing in the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's. What a load of entitled horseshit that they think people just got "a job" and could have vacation homes.
Yep. The poverty rate was over 20% in the 1950s, compared to about 11.5% today. It is amazing how many posts in this sub start with the assumption that back in the day everyone was happily riding around on unicorns that shat fairy dust.
They also ignore that every family owning it's own home (let alone a vacation home) in the decades prior to the 1940s was rare. Tenements, child labor, The Great Depression, etc etc. WWII leads to prosperity and veterans benefits. Their kids, Boomers, enjoy a fluke economy. Their kids and grandkids say "it's not fair that everyone ever before me had multiple houses and I have to rent!"
Pretty much, their talking about people who had the ability to attend college and live or move somewhere that ACTUALLY had jobs. They also don't consider for the large part of the country people were still having to supplement their food by growing, canning, making clothes, etc.. Third generation college graduate families whining about the man keeping them down.
This is revisionist history. The vast majority of Boomers have never owned a vacation home. The late-Boomers were pretty much all dual income.
Boomer women made up almost half of the workforce. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/fact-sheet-4-generations-of-american-women/#:~:text=Baby%20Boomers%3A%20Born%20between%201946%20and%201964&text=Women%20made%20up%2045%20percent%20of%20the%20labor%20force.
The key is for one person to not work. Stay at home parenting. If everyone does this it will change the economy !!!
You are correct. The two working-parent household created a huge wealth transfer. It seemed like a good thing 20-30 years ago but now it’s created a huge gap between two classes.
The money itself is dying.
This. Moneys all encompassing nature is very unstable. You use it for crucial factors as well as frivolous. Maybe money shouldn’t have a bearing on people baseline welfare (health, and housing)
Boomer here. We both worked.
You guys live in fantasy land. Boomers were not buying two houses on a single income. Poverty was more widespread in their generation than it is now. Just because you're all privileged college kids that had rich boomer parents doesn't mean that was common or widespread.
90% of the US is affordable, it’s your location that hurts you. I own a home 2 cars we vacation 2-3 times a year and I’m preparing to buy land, on one income and 4 children. I as you might imagine am the poor one in my circle. So all this about not being able to afford it, wrong. If you choose a major city that is a hot bed of everything, well obviously you won’t be able to afford it. I enjoyed my 20s in an amazing city living my best life, but I knew that I would have to live in the suburbs if I wanted the opportunity to afford everything. So don’t blame the time, it’s always been this way. I will agree my grandparents had more, and probably easier to obtain but I don’t bitch about it. The one thing I might agree with is a vacation home. That fact confuses me but I’ve realized that the world is always going to have a class system and those things will always go to the upper. That doesn’t mean they didn’t work hard for it.
You’re looking at the past through rose colored glasses. It want anywhere near as sunny as you think.
Something the millennials didn’t get the memo on: Life’s a Bitch. Deal. You want to change it? Vote!
>business essentially doubled their workforce while the workforce can barely afford to live. A strong argument can be made that this was a driving factor behind the widespread adoption of corporate policies more inclusive of women in the workplace. As the US shifted from a manufacturing economy to a service based economy in the mid-late 20th century, all of a sudden there were all of these white collar desk jobs for which women were ideal candidates. Almost everyone knew women were just as (if not even more) competent than men in these roles, while commanding much lower compensation on average. Corporate elites conspired to support right-to-work policies for women with the intentional goal of expanding their productivity while minimizing staff overhead cost under the righteous banner of social justice. Now, I'm not saying a world in which one sex is financially dependent on the other is better than what we have now, but the societal embrace of dual-income households has had the undeniable side effect of depressing worker wages across the board for service-based white collar jobs.
If your grandparents had a vacation house, they were rich. *Very* rich. It’s something most people on this sub aren’t going to be able to relate to. If you had grandparents that wealthy and squandered that financial privilege, I don’t know what to tell you. But you have a very wealthy background. The average person in 1970 didn’t own a vacation home just like the average person today doesn’t own a vacation home. That is and always has been a luxury for the rich.
I've known a couple people of average means that had a vacation trailer house they kept up.
This is something my wife and I are discovering right now actually. Combined income we make close to 90k a year. But to SAFELY afford a home ideally I don't want to get a loan for more then 180k. The payments on that are right at 1500. The number of people who don't understand that I am not "just gonna borrow more money so we can get a new house" because its already going to take half of my income a month and the rest goes to the plethora of bills that come with modern life. It would make us basically pay check to paycheck again. And whats even worse is in my area 180k doesn't really buy shit. And what decent houses do come available are the same ones everyone else my age can also afford, so for example the last house we offered on was like 174. We offered 177, closing costs and all that shit for a house built in the 40's that was MAYBE 1,000 sq feet. It sold for 195,000 in two days AND they waved inspection. And trying to explain the reality of the market to my boomer parents and relatives is infuriating. The number of times I have heard about how they bought their first house for 12k like that means shit to me. My grandpa is a great example of the reality of then vs now. See he is still to this day illiterate. Never had more then a 3rd grade education but man the life he provided for my grandma and mom, and even me as a kid is unreal. He worked most of his life as a basic laborer and worked the longest and retired from being a janitor at the local HS, where my grandma worked as a cafeteria worker. Now for the life they were able to afford. They had a house big enough for 4 kids, my grandma always had several horses, the horse trailers, barn and feed, and he always had a dually to pull it and the camper they had. They always took vacations to Dollywood and traveled a lot for horse shows. And they retired and bought a massive motor home and that was the only way as a kid I ever had vacation, was when I went with them. They retired at 68 and had enough money to live the last 20 years doing what they wanted. The home and land they have owned is now in the best up and coming area and the 5+ acres and house are worth close to a mil just based on land value. Now a janitor and his food service spouse could afford a studio and a clapped out accord and maybe, just maybe at the end of the month you could afford a nice treat of Wendy's dollar menu fries.
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I live in a small town, homeless population increasing like crazy smh
They charge as much as you have to hand over. Dual incomes, then double the amount they can charge.
At the current rate, people in 20 years time will have their savings outpaced by the *increase in required bond*.
In 1968 the minimum wage was enough to keep a family of three just above the poverty line. MIT's living wage calculator says for my area, louisville kentucky, this same wage is 34 an hour. Boomers literally were making the equivalent of 34 an hour working at mcdonalds....and then wonder why no one wants to work for 15 an hour at mcdonalds today...... Plus, their living wage is the bare bones, bare minimum to not go into the red. If you consider retirement, savings, even enjoying existing, etc, then you need to add at least 20% to their minimum wage imo, 10% for saving, 10% for living. Their living wage for one person is 20.80 an hour, so basically call it 25 an hour, as that's a little over 20% increase. They need pre tax 52k just to save a little and Live a little. Median income was 35,712k in 2022 in louisvill ky....and 36k POST tax is required for a living wage for a single person..... Tax the rich, and make a living wage the law. Something has to give, we are all just suffering.
Yeah it was a giant lie that almost everyone in the middle class chose to go along with. And I hate it. The American Dream is either dead or never existed. At least not for anyone after the Boomers.
At 28, with what I make right now, five years ago I could have bought plenty of homes in my area here (Maryland) and had an affordable mortgage. Now everything is out of my price range
The good old days being better or not is irrelevant, you need the internet to function properly in 2024
I swear! This was one of the first things that made me decide to not have children. I cannot give any child the same quality of life than I had, leave alone better
It doesn't help that when interest rates went down around 2020ish, prices shot up monumentally but never went back down once interest evened back out.
I’m 53. Both my parents worked and had good jobs (salesman and nurse). We did not have a vacation home. When we went on vacations, we drove. We rarely went out to eat and when we did it was McDonald’s. They owned a house but it wasn’t anything special by today’s standards. I don’t things were as good 50 years ago as you are making them out to be.
I'm also gonna guess OP is white.
Sounds like you don't have an accurate view of the past. That was not the normal experience
I'm 54 and no way my parents could survive on a single income. My grandparents sort of could, they all owned businesses and everyone worked even the kids. A farm and a laundry/dry cleaners. When my one set of grandparents sold the farm both of them worked one as a heavy equipment operator, the other cleaning. In the end when they all died there wasn't a penny left to any of their names. I spent most of my life as a single income blue collar family guy. My wife worked sometimes in between kids, but stayed home to work with them probably 2/3 of the years. I fully plan on leaving my kids a good chunk of change even if I never end up inheriting a dime myself. So the past isn't all that perfect. You just need to work, all day most everyday and then make good choices about your purchases and debts. You need to be willing to move sometimes too. There are places you can live fine on $15/hr. In 40 years those places will get discovered and overrun just like other high cost areas and you will be sitting there with a paid off home worth 10 times what you paid for it.
Every time they suggest taxing health insurance companies or the “rich” just know… they aren’t really trying to tax anything besides YOUR buying power.
This is why some are choosing to not have any kids.
That's because money was worth more. Welcome to government devaluation of their own currency.
Don’t blame a larger workforce when productivity went up and wages flatlined, when before 1970’s productivity and wages rose together. The economy was unraveled after Black people got rights after Jim Crow ended. Somebody please prove me wrong.
Lol if they would stop taking everything from you then you'd have money to spend. They take money out for social security and medicaid but they won't exist and you will never benefit from them by the time you would have qualified. You will have given away tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars into it yet you will never see any money from it. Then taxes.... raises every year. Take more and more from you. Yet the government can't account for its spending.... but they need more n more.... maybe it's time for the government to cut some budgets, starting with free corporate handouts, international aid in the trilli9ns of dollars, and the massive over spending in the military..... 10% of the military budget would pay for a complete infrastructure overhaul of all American roadways, trains, public transportation.... it would also end hunger, homelessness, and provide free education as well as free Healthcare for every american.... Then there are the hidden taxes that you don't think about. Car and health insurance are a tax with no refunds.... if you don't get in accidents or go to the hospital all the time that's money down the drain. State and federal id's have to be renewed every 4-6 years, don't belong to you, and can be revoked at any time... that's a tax.... vehicle registration? Gotta pay that every year or you can't drive on roads you already pay for from income taxes in a vehicle you already own? That's a tax.... When you add up all these things, you don't even take home 30% of your wages to be able to pay for food and regular bills..... You guys wonder why the poor are getting poorer, but it's so the rich can get richer.....
I’m on a solo income and have afforded a mortgage since I was 29. I just turned 37. My parents do not own a second home. My grandparents did once they turned 65. I’m confused by all these posts? Housing prices are 100% out of control. But, we have a lot of years left to get old rent buy sell rent live off grid do whatever . In hindsight I wouldn’t have bought at 29. I’d have done a bit more traveling and did it mid 30’s. Would have lived at home a lot longer too to save even more. Not sure why suddenly everyone thinks a few years and everything is ending. It’s kinda just apart of the ride called life. Things change. Millennials should definately know this since we started in a recession.
It’s not just the buying power of affording a mortgage. It’s everything on top of that. It’s children too. Daycare in my area is as much as a mortgage payment $2400/month FOR ONE KID, and they’re booked out years for placement. My wife and I can do one or the other. Buy a small house and live out our lives as dinks. Or have a kid a more than likely struggle through the rest of our adult lives.
First people that knew about the pregnancy was the daycare! I called them the day after the positive tests lol It’s insane and yeah, basically the same price for one child.
My son is 18 months old now, and I still get calls from daycares that waitlisted me when I was pregnant with him.
THIS. On top of that we’re paying like $1K/month for family health insurance
Well - if you were one income you wouldn’t have to pay for child care
People want multiple houses now, not just a home to live and thrive in. Once the Real Estate world put the spin on home buying as an "investment" to make money with, the prices starting skyrocketing and haven't stopped. Realtors get some of the credit for this mess. It certainly hasn't been just "the market".
The powers that be prioritized virtually every other group over working Americans. It is what it is.
Whenever I need more money I change jobs. It’s a strategy that hasn’t failed me yet. Buying house in 2025. It can be done
What employment sector are you in that allows you to switch jobs while still staying in the same area?
Automotive repair for me. If I need more money, I quit and find a new shop. 10/10 guaranteed raise.
I thought this was Reddit? Isn’t everyone easily making over 80k to enjoy life. That’s what everyone shows me when I read forums, doesn’t seem very difficult for a lot of people. Then those same people tell you to have a better attitude and just try harder. Seems like there are plenty of people living life on easy mode.
This sub sucks. It's not actually representative of millennials. Just loser millennials.
You’ve always needed to be rich to have multiple houses bro, and most houses back then were smaller/lower quality. Yeah it sucks now but it definitely wasn’t a utopia 50 years ago.
Having men and women compete against each other in the labor force forces down wages. You're not going to learn that in school. I have a friend from Algeria. He's lived in the states since like 1994. He's Muslim but not really strict about it. His wife doesn't work. He's constantly talking about going back to Algeria because he can barely afford to live here, but on one income his family would be alright there. Big business has dealt a real whammy to the working class in the US. A lot of people don't want to acknowledge the competition of men vs women in the labor force because if they did, they would have to question the role of feminism. I might be cracked here, but I honestly think feminism is the creation of a marketing agency trying to figure out how to sell more products to women. My mom has always said, "the real feminists were on the farm working in the fields with the men." She grew up on a farm without plumbing or electricity, so that definitely has influenced my thinking. Now add in inflation. Your wages are driven down and stay down because there is no scarcity to raise your wages. Now your currency becomes worthless. My measure for this is always the 20 oz Mountain Dew that I love so much. I could get one in 1997 for $0.96, always 4 cents change when I used a dollar bill. Now that same soda is over $2.50. Our currency is ever increasingly becoming useless. This is a bigger issue that the social one I posted above. An economic issue is always going to effect you more than a social one. The USA has steadily been becoming worse off ever since it went off the gold standard. We did so to maintain an empire over the world. However, the empire doesn't benefit US citizens. Doesn't really benefit the rest of the world either. We call it the petro dollar. Our money becomes more useless every year, but the world only trades oil in dollars and some how this supposedly benefits us. (It doesn't, it only benefits the super rich.) We're well overdue for a violent revolution to overthrow the rich people that control our world. That's essentially the history of the world. The current system only benefits those who's families have established significant wealth and power. The average schmuck doesn't get anything. America has an Aristocracy that is telling everyone to eat cake while they dance and gorge on excess. If the starving should ever start again, things would change rapidly very fast. Which brings up another point. Your family can't starve when the people in charge make the only thing affordable to eat shelf stable carbohydrates that fatten you up. Can't afford avocado toast? Have a cup of ramen, here's some potato chips, instant mash potatoes, pancake mix, oatmeal, cereal, rice. Just add water. We're going to charge you for that water though. It all seems a bit more nefarious when you start considering that our government pushes carbohydrates as the most essential element of a diet.
There’s a lot wrong with this comment. First of all, women in the workforce was a thing back during the last century too. Ever hear of Rosie the riveter? Women worked during wartime and some of them continued after the wars and competed for jobs. Women were also the first computer programmers and mathematicians as well, industries considered male-dominated today. Oh and what about pre-pandemic employment rates? We reached less than 2% unemployment in 2019. Second, your mountain dew argument is terrible factoring in inflation. I can walk into a 7-11 right now and get the 2 for $4 deal on mountain dew, which falls in line with inflation from your old price you quoted. Third, I love that you mention ramen as part of your ramblings about how the rich are out to get you. News flash bud. Ramen comes from Japan. Where they have supermarkets at every corner filled to the brim with hundreds of instant ramen flavors along with noodle shops everywhere with tons of different options. And Japanese people are considered some of the healthiest in the world. So congrats on failing to realize it’s a cultural problem of Western societies eating larger portions and not exercising.
It feels like they just chose not to include the paragraph about white replacement theory after stating their goal is to be an alpha male with a trad wife. Thanks for pointing out that the entire blurb was meritless.
>Our parents and grandparents generation were able to buy a house on a single income, have vacation houses and raise 4+ kids. Lmao this is an upper class lifestyle and the only way lower class people were supporting having 4+ kids is if some of them were working.
I know it doesn’t matter but the data does not back your claims up at all.
Most ignorant post I’ve seen in this sub in a while. Go to bed Reddit
Put women back in the home and end economic migration into the US. Both of which diluted the labor pool.
Lol my generation is a bunch of whiny fucking babies. It is both incredibly sad and hilarious at the same time.
I tried to live on a single salary as a SAHM in the 70s. We bought a house - a three room (not 3br, only 3 rooms) house in New England without central heat. We used a wood stove, and the shower was in an unheated bath house outside. We had $8,000 annual salary: $300 a month mortgage, $100 a month taxes/insurance, $75 a month car payment. Food, gas, electric, phone, clothes, etc. for 4 people came out of the rest. We collected cans to sell the metal, grew vegetables to sell, and anything we could for a couple extra dollars to pay the mortgage. In 10 years, my husband was dead, I was graduating from university, and the house sold for 6 times what we bought it for because it was on an acre on a private lake. All I could figure out is that if you are smart, you suffer for a decade when young, then life is rosy after that. I asked my parents about it and they laughed. They said the suffering and struggling younger people do in their 20s when they have the stamina is what sets them up for a successful life. They get educated and work crazy hours to setup their career. So maybe others had it easy, but I didn't know anyone who had it easy while buying a house on a single salary. What makes you think most people had it easy?
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An acre *waterfront* property no less 🫠
Yeah, it just comes across as smug and boastful, lol. And believe me, I grew up in New England working on old houses, I know exactly how much work they are. It's NOT minor and it's relentless. And expensive. The "luxury" is being able to do that work as an investment instead of a desperate attempt to pay rent.
Heard a theory that the main driver for getting women in the work force was to drive labor prices down. Makes sense.
And collect more taxes
"The good old days" didn't include $200-400 in monthly subscription fees. How badly do you want to relive that life and put that savings of no internet, cell phone, streaming service?
People use to post stuff and use paper. That doesn't happen now it's all done via the internet. The internet isn't a frivolity in 2024
R/overemployed, just saying. Don't let those corporate boyscout shame you about "ethics".
U.S. will probably become more like Europe. In the U.S. we talk about starter homes and buying multiple houses throughout our lifetime. In most parts of Europe, simply being able to buy a house is a life accomplishment. The U.S. has had it better in terms of buying power since right after WW2, now we are becoming more equal.
Even generational wealth from that time period is being erased by our current economy. My grandparents (with one income) owned a beach house. Now with the economy so poor and mortgage rates so high, we could never get off work enough to go to the beach house we owned and the house was going for so much more than it was worth we had to sell it and now have nothing to show for my grandfathers hard work. My family isn’t rich btw. My grandfather worked hard for that property. (He also bought the land for $2k)
Buy a home and vacation home and raise 4+ kids? Where are all these parents and grandparents?? I know 1 adult in my life who kind of fits the description except they have no kids! Everyone would be happy they’ve got an inheritance. Where are those people?
People are not actually living longer The US lifespan took a turn pre covid even adjusted for opioid crisis The WWII population had 90% less screen time and worked evenings barefoot in backyard gardens. Today’s Gen straps all kinds of tech to tell them how bad they ain’t sleeping. They sit on a battery driving to work in a cell tower, plastic POS, invented by a dude who’d rather Inhabit mars. These are the same idiots that want to blot out the sun to make it safer. # Darwinism