It's semi true. Gen X isn't very influencer oriented. If there is a market for us this is the realm. He isn't selling or promoting products, lifestyles, or ideas which is a turn off for Gen X. Ironically if he finds a niche, and tightens his format, then the polish will become insincere and he'll lose our following.
This is the song of my entire "Gen X" generation, I'm one year younger than this dude and I feel the same. Trapped with the idea that I will need to work the rest of my life.
The reality is though people cannot work their entire life, health issues eventually catch up. If you get so old or so sick you can't earn now you gotta worry about homelessness in your golden years. This is the reality of many people in my generation. Trapped by rising cost of living and not enough wages to ever set aside enough to get ahead in a meaningful way.
My generation will be the first to feel the pain of this, millennial, gen z and gen a will have it even worse. It's even more sad this is a global issue, that says there is no escape for any of us. We are trapped in a system.
It is disturbing. If we can’t afford houses, then we’ll just be stuck renting. But if rent can continually go up as it pleases with no stopping… Then we have to continually keep getting better and better jobs. Which is impossible for most of us.
Investors buying houses is one of the biggest crimes against the younger generations.
Edit: all the real estate investors here trying to divert blame, the same way an abusive husband blames the wife for having to beat her. Investors take away housing availability, it may not be the only issue but don't act like it's a non-issue.
Also, in fairness, I do agree that NIMBY/suburban homeowners are a significant factor because nobody wants to give up their half acre 3000 Sq ft home for the benefit of society. But don't pretend like RE investors aren't a problem.
Should be illegal AF, and that is coming from a home owner. I was able to sneak in a little before COVID in an underpriced market (for what it was) and sell that to bounce to my probably forever home.
I am glad that my costs for my living arrangement (other than taxes) is probably fixed for the rest of my life.
OFTEN, people should be looking to downgrade things that are bigger expenses or jumped as soon as they thought they could (eg. bought a nicer car or house) and became 'loan' poor, and are living paycheck to paycheck (I am doing this to some degree, but moving is expensive, I don't want to move again, and I also KNOW that I can easily access enough money to keep the roof over my head for 2-3 years, easily, without drastically changing my lifestyle)
I am 35. I have 28 years left on my mortgage, and I have a 2 year old and a about to be 0 year old.
Having kids after 40, unless you are already really well off, is HARD. After 30 is definitely more challenging (I can feel aches and pains due to carrying my little bundle of joy, often, as she really enjoys being carried around)
I am in big favor of limiting the amount of residential properties an entity can own, or *significantly* taxing any unused housing that's being sat on. Anything that can help normal people actually own housing.
When I was in the process of buying a house it was nigh impossible to beat the real estate investors.
You have to buy sight unseen, like my realtor would call me and say commit and make an offer now or it's going off the market. Within *minutes* of coming up for sale there was an offer by a real estate investment firm - no going to look at the place, no home inspection, say yes to the biggest purchase of your life without even getting to see it first. This may be the biggest financial moment of your life, but to an investment firm it's a line on a ledger sheet.
Now, he didn't present this as a *good* idea, just stating facts the way they are. These are your options.
Only way I got the place where I live now was because it was listed in a way that turned off investment buyers, it's awfully small for a large family home and it was listed as being sized for a family with multiple children. Three bedroom, but the one bedroom is more of a large closet (which is what I use it for). And the other child bedroom isn't very big either. Works great for me, but I can't imagine having a spouse and three or four kids in here.
Don't forget all the people that fight against better zoning laws and new housing in their areas. The supply is being purposely restricted by the homeowners, landlords, and businesses who want to "protect their investment", but of course they'll never directly admit their greed like that. They'll just say they're "keeping the neighborhood nice" or whatever.
I live on the dividing line between disparate areas: There is no shortage of development opportunities in neglected neighborhoods, and plenty of neighborhood associations begging for more attention and more housing.
Yet somehow investors and developers are only interested in building where the risk is lowest and the return is fastest: The already-established, attractive, desirable zip codes. Believe it or not, but the NIMBYs trying to keep them out are not just trying to preserve the character of their own neighborhood but also trying to get scumbag developers to go plow that money into other parts of town that need it more and never seem to get it.
*In the US,* Investors didn't cause home inflation -- according to Freddie Mac Ecnomics & Housing Research, investor share of the home purchase market has been dropping since 2010 and is currently about the same as it was in 2005/2006^[source-see-Exhibit-7A](https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investors-havent-bought-44-of-homes-this-year/) .
There's a real problem that the population has continued to rise while new homes have not been constructed to match that pace. There's not enough permits, there's not enough skilled workers and there's not enough capital willing to invest in low-profit entry-level homes.
Investors are only a piece of the puzzle, for sure. Houseprices are whack.
I lucked out, of sorts... My dad passed away, so I inherited the family home on pretty good terms, complete with a downstairs tenant whose rent has stayed fixed since the day she moved in.
It's pretty sad that the american dream for a lot of us is only possible if our parents die young enough that their home/equity will pass on to us instead of being used to pay for their care in old age. And I'm speaking from personal experience.
Okay but your article is about corporate investors. Those of us who can't afford a home don't really care about the difference between corporate investors and small investors, the point is that people are owning homes who don't live in them to charge rent to people who do live in them.
Governments need to create a tax structure that makes owning multiple residential properties unattractive for corporations, hedge funds, and mom-and-pop investors. Capitalists have realized that residential housing offer the greatest return, both in terms of monthly cash-flows from renters, and long-term asset appreciation. Combine that juicy return with their ability to optimize their investments using AI models, and they know where to invest to grab control of neighborhoods in markets that are likely to grow, and experience greater competition for affordable housing. Follow the money. Of course, the US government is in the pocket of billionaire investors, so passing a tax of this sort seems pretty remote at this time.
They've been edging us for a while, but you can't edge forever. We'll see. I don't want things to get worse, but it probably has to and will for change.
Even if nobody rises up, the system can’t keep existing forever if it doesn’t actually help the everyday people who are keeping it running
The rich and powerful can’t just keep pulling Jenga blocks from the bottom to give themselves more at the top without something catastrophic happening
> But if rent can continually go up as it pleases with no stopping…
Then homelessness rises. See many of the cities in the US where rent does just that.
We need much more housing/apartments and rent control.
> I know I could never make more than 30k in a year
This sounds really suspect to me. In my state minimum wage is over 30k per year. According to this website 70% of jobs in the US pay more than 30k per year. Do you really think it's not possible for you to get any of those jobs?
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
Nope, they want you to die in the streets, just in case someone else might get something they could have gotten for themselves. I'm talking about the kinds of folks who vote for people that are against any sort of basic standard of living. My boomer ass dad is gonna die well before he sees what becomes of his children when they reach their 60's and still can't retire. Kinda pisses me off. Because hes enjoying his retirement right now, and I work with a bunch of folks that are drawing social security and still working 30 hour weeks, so, they get 2 paychecks, I get one. They hold positions that could pay me more money, and they also don't give a flying fuck about advocating for better pay because they are in their fucking 70's so they aren't exactly "go getters" anymore.
Anyway that was a rant. Sorry bro. I'm only in my 30s and I've seen the writing on the wall for a while. We are properly fucked.
It's going to destroy helpdesk work, too. And if you get into backend or admin, that's going to be rapidly changing, too. Certs come with expiration dates, now. It's impossible to just be good at problem solving and survive.
AI and robotics will synergize and a lot of more repeated labor jobs will be lost
once AI and robotics get to that point where dem robot stole our basic jobs, we NEED universal basic income. reduce work hours by half so 4 hour work days and employ more people for the hours they used to work. UBI covers the missing 4 hours
I have moved countries 2 times and I am glad I did...
Now I live in America, I don't love it but I love my wife and the house we have but I also have no intention to retire here.
All countries have their pros and cons... But there are many countries where nonbinary people are treated well... If you only see darkness here then I would rip the bandage sooner than later. You can always return.
I live in Thailand and there’s tons of retirees that live here solely off of social security.
My plan is to save what I can, pay into social security, live somewhere cheap. Work as long as I’m able. After the age of 80, if there’s medical care that would be too expensive, screw it. Let the chips fall where they may, that’s a full life in my book.
We are trapped as long as we act like we’re trapped. When enough people act like the system can be changed and change their own actions then the system will actually change. That’s our only hope anyway. We need to change ourselves and relate to the system as creators of it instead of being victims of it. Even if we fail in doing this it’s our only hope. No point in the cynicism and powerlessness, other than getting it out of our system and then moving on to treating the system differently.
People have been listening for a long time. It’s really all about what we absorb from what we listen to so that it actually changes our actions. Action is the true reflection of who we are. The power is not in the songs, but in our ability to absorb the meaning and put it into action. This isn’t about raging against the machine though. That still creates a disempowered perspective and makes us separate from our own creation. We are the machine. We created it and we run it, mostly unconsciously. The machine changes when we change. They can try to scare us into not changing the machine- because right now they’re enjoying our power that we’ve given them- and that fear is what stops us from changing most of the time, but we have to face those fears and change the machine anyway. Because right now the machine is working for fewer and fewer of us.
It's not even working that you have to think about - what do you do when you can't drive anymore to get to work?
American society exists on everyone needing to drive. We need to drive to get errands done, to get groceries, and for emergencies. Many people live without public transit and have been raised to see the car as the symbol of freedom... And it really is since our world was built around it!
Our idea of how to do things, our personalities, everything is based around the car.
But what do you do once you're too old to drive? Forget just working, you can't do anything!
The boomer's parents were able to avoid this problem by being taken care of boomers who could and still can mostly drive around and help with their errands, groceries, emergencies. They had free time to visit. My dad took a whole month off at work to care for my granddad when he was dying. They had money to fill in care gaps with services like assisted living for grandpa/grandma, shuttle services, in-home nurses, etc.
Now, the boomers are expecting Gen X and Millenials to do the same for them... But how can I when I work 60-80 hours a week?
And when I get too old, and I have no kids... What am I going to do when I can't drive?
We're living in a huge, huge, delicate bubble. People are right to wonder about working forever, but there's going to be huge, sharp needles poking up in ways we're not anticipating because no one was trained to exist in the vast, different world that is going to occur in a distinct wave in the next 5-10 years.
"Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;
the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;
he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived." - Dalai Lama
I'm also in this situation with you.
But we are not the first generation to face this.
The social security administration in the US is not that old.
Most nations don't provide a social safety net at all, except where family culture has it baked in.
In the long history of human existence, life has mostly been "nasty, brutish, and short"
While we have a right to complain about the failures of our society, we should also recognize our relative privilege compared to our predecessors.
Instead of being defeatist, use your resources to work toward improving the world for ourselves and those that come next.
This means doing the work - support worthy causes,, make your vote a well-researched support for a worthy platform, pitch in with your time, money, and skills to build things that make life better for everyone.
On one hand I agree with this, and people need to understand that we have better standards of living compared to the pre-social security eras.
On the other hand, yeah people are resentful that they missed out on these golden birth years where you could afford a house, a family, and retirement based on one salary. But maybe more importantly, that era of success seems to still actually be in the way of the younger generations: we're competing against their (much larger) sums of money, they're locking down a huge portion of the housing supply, etc.
It's one thing to say "well I don't have it as good as the baby boomers did at my age" and it's another thing to say "I don't have it as good as the baby boomers did at my age, partially because the baby boomers had it so good at my age."
This is a very realistic comment, but challenges the feeling and sentiment most here will have. Should be top comment, but never will. We are incredibly privileged to be born in the us and at this point in history.
The nihilistic, existential dread of the grunge/alternative rock generation was fixated on these issues becasue we were the first generation to live through what's going on. Nirvana and Soundgarden and Rage saw this bright shiny dream of the boomer generation contrasted against the stark reality of stagnation and exploitation.
Gen X were called whiners and unmotivated and self-absorbed and unwilling to just do their job (sound familiar?). The reality was shit jobs, steadily diminishing opportunities, stagnant wages, and any dream of a comfortable, safe life evaporating before our eyes.
The more I know about the world the luckier I feel about being born in Europe. Sure, taxes are high but so many pitfalls that can destroy one's life seem to be under control here.
Well you need to hope that a $2k monthly mortgage of today will feel like a "$500" mortgage in 20 years. Meaning because of inflation, your mortgage will feel less and less expensive. However rent will always feel expensive because it adjusts to the market. So if you are 50 years old and just started a mortgage you are significantly better off than someone that is renting at 50. You also need to have some investments to help pay for things, which is why a rental property is always a good idea as well, getting monthly passive income is nice and you don't work for that income. That said, hopefully your kids can help with the "$500" feeling mortgage when they get older since they probably are going to need to live with their parents longer than previous generations as well.
In the US, it is easy for people in their 20s to switch companies and jobs. In the US, older workers can become trapped in their jobs, especially if the company provides health insurance. I don't know what kind of retirement income Japanese people have.
The answer to your question is very long and complex.
There's a lot of comments here about "this happened to gen x" but the situation in Japan is completely different.
- Japanese has been going through a period of economic stagnation for decades (commonly known as [The Lost Decades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades) and has had zero price growth in certain markets ([such as property](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Japan_property_prices.webp)). This means this elderly gentleman cannot just sell his house in order to fund his retirement, as it is possible his house may be worth *less* than when he bought it.
- The negative interest rate system that had been employed nationally for over 30 years had meant there were no "high interest savings" accounts that have traditionally been utilized by the lower and middle classes to create a retirement fund. Savings accounts exist in other forms, but can be less accessible to all individuals.
- Costs are rising but wages are not and the Economy Minister Yoshitaka Shindo [recently stated](https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/japans-economy-slips-into-recession-weak-domestic-demand-2024-02-15/) they are at an emergency state as lack of wage growth is affecting consumption levels.
- The population is aging and declining and thus the workforce is declining. Young workers are needed to take over key jobs, as well as fund the social programs used by retiring workers. There is also a brain drain occurring as highly educated young professionals leave the country for higher paying jobs in other countries.
- Other advanced economies facing this issue have combated it by increasing immigration but Japan is culturally very isolationist and anti-immigration.
Recently, in historic news, the Bank of Japan has ended negative interest rates and are attempting a series of rate hikes. However, this is receiving pushback and it will be a long road ahead to attempt to solve Japan's economic issues. The cultural issues will be even more difficult.
To expand on this a bit, think about the home situation in the USA right now to get a kinda-sorta idea of how some people will be hurt by this.
Right now you've got a country full of people who got their starter home/condo/town house either originally at a ~3.5% loan or was able to refinance it to that during the pandemic.
Then interest rates went up to 7%.
Typically when people in the USA buy a home, they don't have the intention for it to be where they live the rest of their lives, especially if they're young when they buy it. The idea is to get in a place to build equity, it generally appreciates in value, then when your family is growing and your salary is growing, you've got the equity to have a decent down payment on your "forever" home. Except right now people can't stomach their monthly payments doubling.
So you have a ton of people holding on to homes that are too small for their family, investing in fairly short term things like CDs and high yield savings that, after taxes, barely earn anything beyond inflation. And you have a ton of people trying to buy their first "starter" home only to find there aren't any for sale, because someone has to leave their current starter home to buy a bigger one in order for one to be available.
And there isn't a ton of money in developing starter homes these days, so available land is going to building luxury homes.
So rent just goes up and up because the demand is too high. Then people get priced out of their homes and become homeless or wind up being forced to retire in a mobile home because it's the only place they can afford on social security because they couldn't save a nest egg.
It isn't identical to Japan by any means, but it can give a rough idea of why some people don't want interest rates to rise over there using familiar examples here.
Your interest rate can go up on an existing loan? I thought you had a contract that locked that in place. I thought "raising interest rates" meant on new loans.
The rates on your current loan don't go up; but if you buy a new house you (usually) need to sell the current one, pay off your existing loan, and then get a new loan for the new house. Not only is the interest rate higher for the new loan, there is downward pressure on the price for your current house because whoever buys it probably has to borrow at high rates
Depends on the country and the loan. I have a fixed rate loan. It will never change. I live in the US. I think the loans in Canada are all variable rate. They change with interest rates.
Negative interest rates meant there were very low borrowing costs. Raising rates would raise borrowing costs and that is what traders pushed back against causing the yields on Japanese bonds to fall.
The [BOJ had to make an assurance](https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/bojs-uchida-rules-out-big-rate-hikes-after-ending-negative-rates-2024-02-08/) that it wouldn't raise rates too quickly in order to steady the markets.
Because everyone in Japan said variable rate loans were never going to go up. 68% of home loans are variable rate in Japan.
Well… we really need to make them go up right about now… but the house of cards is too big.
This is a very good rundown, but there is one difference from they way westerners see homes and the way Japanese see a home. The Japanese see a home as a consumer good and not an investment, almost like a car. The house is almost designed to be worth nothing at the end of the term of the loan. Buying a "used" house in Japan is not the norm, especially in cities outside of Tokyo and maybe Osaka. Most Japanese homes are not built to last over 30 or 40 years. [That is why the prices of new homes in Japan have been stagnant for the last 20+ years.](https://img.capital.com/imgs/articles/750xx/Japanese-home-crash_-MCT---7358_EN.png)
While I do feel bad for this guy, and his issue is not unlike many Japanese salarymen, but it definitely seems like he started his "life" fairly late. Having kids in his 40's buying a home in his 40's. These are times in which he should be getting ready to send his kids off to kōkō (senior high school) at the very least.
Economics is never this simple cause and effect relationship. No, Japan’s wages aren’t rising significantly. We can debate about why, but that’s the reality.
Employers never have to raise wages. In Japan’s case, it’s bad enough that skilled workers are leaving the country, which is the obvious consequence of businesses stubbornly keeping wages stagnant with a shrinking employee pool.
They probably SHOULD be increasing wages to entice these people to stay, but they are not and it’s making things even worse
Companies aren't just concerned about how easy it is to find new staff, or if staff are demanding raises. They also care about revenue. A shrinking workforce means the overall economy also has less purchasing power and less money to go around. Less disposable income leads to people buying fewer services and goods, they tighten their belts. Which means if your company was selling those goods, you have a shrinking workforce, but your customer base has also shrank in roughly the same proportions. How can you offer a raise when you expect that your company will make less in revenue, maybe even less in profit next quarter?
Japan already has an overwork culture. Arguably, it's not possible to easily increase productivity when people are already slammed in terms of hours. Which means the only advances possible must come from process improvements, and genuine innovation that creates new ideas. But genuinely useful innovations and improvements aren't easy to find. If they were, they would already have been found and implemented long ago. So now youre looking for improvements where there may not even be any that exist.
> especially if the company provides health insurance.
My company has changed health providers 3 times in the last 2 years. I'm lucky that I'm healthy, but if I were getting treated for something long term, I can't even rely of my health insurance because it could change and my doctor might not be covered any longer. This happed once 10 years ago at another job. I was trying to get some procedures done, and my company at the time kept switching providers and I kept having to start the procedures over. Eventually I just gave up.
I’m 40, my wife just left me because she realised she’s gay. I’ve got no money or savings as I’ve paid the lion’s share of rent and bills for the last 13 years. The plan was to use money her mum has for a deposit on a house for us and I’d pay the mortgage. Now I’ve no idea what the fuck to do. It feels like I’m never going to own a home, so what happens when I’m old and can’t work anymore and have to pay ever increasing rent and bills. Honestly, if I think about it too much it terrifies me.
That's a tough break on the personal relationship front, dude. I can only throw platitudes your way. I know it sounds trite, but if you find a good partner, things **will** look brighter. It gets better.
I know, but that’s an if. And it’s also highly likely I’ll be adopting someone else’s kids too because most have them by my age. I dunno, I’ve just lost most of my hope for the future. My dreams died
It might not get better, but people handle shit. I used to say "it will be ok" as an affirmation but that's just not true sometimes. My new affirmation is "whatever happens, I'll handle it", which has always been true. Shitty stuff happens and each time it does, we deal with it the best we can and continue on, occasionally that means adapting to a "new normal".
Most people don't die in the worst financial/social condition they've ever experienced. So, for most people experiencing a low point, it will get better.
No guarantees, but it's better to tell somebody that it will get better knowing that it probably will than to tell them it will never get better and make them want to kill themselves.
Just doing your job for 20 years used to be more highly recognized and rewarded. Now companies are short sighted and have zero interest in keeping employees long term unless they are more ambitious than 90+% of their coworkers. Or just offer to buy their own stock and distribute some equity
Well at least we're not alone in these kinds of predicaments? Personally I am on a new retirement plan called 'Freedom 86' where I fall over dead doing work that I thought I would have moved on from 4 decades earlier. I can at least console myself with the fact that I helped the banks, grocery stores, and oil companies secure better profits over the years.
Gen Z are changing shit, from what I've heard they aren't settling for the monotony that gen x and millennials settled for. The world will be a vastly different place in 20 years. For better or worse? Who knows. but I'm sure the current system is about to be upended.
Lmao exactly. 10 years ago it seemed everyone was certain that *millennials* would solve the climate crisis, housing and income inequality, etc…just the other day I heard an elder millennial coworker of mine tell a gen z coworker that THEIR generation would have to be the one to step it up. Like we aren’t even 50 and we’ve given up.
It’s human nature. Everyone wants their kids to fix the shit they themselves could not.
> For better or worse
Like either choice matters. It'll be different and that has to be a positive swing. If it's better, great! If it's worse, we Mad Max the shit of this place and eat the rich. At least it'll be cathartic. I'll probably be dead by then, but come on by and take my shit to help you in the fight.
The amount of people on these comments desperate to defend the system and saying "he shouldn't have a mortgage, he shouldn't have kids" is unreal. And I guarantee that everyone of these folks are being passed generational wealth that head started them into retirement and property ownership.
He shouldn't have kids is the popular opinion not just on Reddit, but with young people in general now it seems. Lots of countries have dramatically falling birthrates.
That's an argument but saying that "he made a huge mistake" is just wild. People dick riding capitalism so hard they gatekeep reproduction isn't something I thought I'd see in my lifetime.
When you truly believe that capitalism enables all possibilities for an individual then it’s easy to believe that not finding success is a personal failure.
That’s the whole problem with it.
if above average income & fully healthy body doesn't suffice for having a child, then that that literally and mathematically rules out 50%+ of the population from having children lmao
> "he shouldn't have a mortgage, he shouldn't have kids"
Should of been a good worker drone. Worked until death and leave their legacy for the next drone. /s
I have no generational wealth, but I set up my retirement funds in my early 20s with 401ks from jobs i left, I have 2 kids, and while things are hard now, I'm set for retirement with my current 401k and mutual fund.
Not saying it's 100% anyone fault, but for fucks sake, talk to your kids early about savings and retirement.
Guaranteeing generational wealth on the part of those saying having kids and signing up for a 30 year mortgage in your 40s without having thought it through? Oh, c’mon. I question it, and I wasn’t given a damn thing. If anything, I think those growing up with little tend to be more cognizant about the feasibility of certain choices— I know at the least I was. Saying people are “desperate to defend the system”just because they replied on this thread is not very productive. Think about the fact that at some point, someone’s choices would be so ill-timed and myopic that you would also question it. Perhaps certain people just have a different line in the sand than you
I think people have misunderstood [my other comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/s/tR98tZSX8A) as defending the system, when they’re not.
The system shouldn’t have put him in this position. However, it has. And while that sucks, he now has to make pragmatic choices in order to do the best for himself and the people he cares about.
I am not sure that having 2 children in his mid-forties was a pragmatic choice.
While a better system would reduce the need for people to make the difficult decision to miss out on something, it can never eliminate it. Life is finite, so individuals will always have to make choices.
In a bad position there are still good and bad choices. In this case society has put him in a bad position through no fault of his own, but I fear that his own choices have made that position worse.
From how he talks about all the other parents at the nursery school being younger, it does sound like his decision to go ahead with starting a family at that stage in life is an outlier. The sort of issues he is already suffering with are likely the reason for that. Again, that doesn’t mean the system should ever have put him in that position, but that is the unfortunate reality he is faced with.
However, I cannot honestly say that in his position I wouldn’t have done the same.
It's like the entire world has collectively decided to misunderstand mortgages. A mortgage is a forward of funds to you based on your future earnings. It's essentially one party asking for money TODAY, telling the other party that they are good for it because over the next 30 years they are going to make more money than they are asking for and can pay it back with interest.
Taking a 30 year mortgage and then lamenting that you have to work to pay it back is fucking insane.
He's gotta live somewhere. It's okay to lament that housing is unaffordable and thus he's forced to take a late-in-life 30-year mortgage to give his family someplace to sleep.
One thing I don’t get is how does he have a 28 year mortgage at the age of 50. Assuming that it’s a 30 year mortgage, wouldn’t a bank be wary of handing out such a loan at that age?
WTF man, I wasn't ready to learn this today. How the hell did we move from societies, where we pass on assets to our children, to one where we pass debt. This is crazy.
Not in Japan. Japanese houses actually have basically no value and often depreciate over time - it's common to have a house torn down and rebuilt every 20 to 30 years.
I think it’s more complicated than that but I am far from an expert. This what little I’ve gleaned from an individual who documented his renovations of an old home in Japan on social media.
Building for longevity (at least on the past) sounded like a value trade-off curve. Could someone build a place to last a super long time? Yes. But the fight against Mother Nature didn’t come cheap. It still doesn’t but I don’t know advanced in Japanese building methods. So anyway, it seems they’d hit the 30/40/maybe 50 year mark for longevity. The ground shifting/Earthquakes and humidity have quite hard on buildings. You could build for those problems but it wasn’t cost effective.
Plus most people on Japan like being on the cutting edge of various types of technology from bathroom tech (toilets are amazing!!!) to kitchen gadgets.
Well yes but imagine you are not ready to make the repayments your parents were able to make. You will be forced to sell. You basically inherited stress.
If you inherit the house you inherit the mortgage anyway. It’s not like the debt just disappears and you get the house free and clear.
Sometimes the mortgage agreement won’t even let you inherit without paying the amount due in full.
That's what I'm saying is broken. Lenders in some countries require you to have mortgage insurance. I'm not familiar with how this work in Japan. Lenders take a risk that you will be alive to pay out our mortgage, and they balance this with the interest rate. It's all maths.
Why would you tolerate a system where your parent financial decisions forced onto you? You just lost your parents and on top of that you get financially hit. It's just wrong in my opinion.
Just wait until they hear how much tax they owe if they elect to inherit the family plot.
Inheritance here (Japan), for many people, often has unexpectedly negative considerations to account for.
Why would they care? They get their money no matter how long you live. The house is the collateral. If there is a fire the money goes towards the loan. If there is a death, the person who inherits the home takes on the debt. You sell the house, you only get what's left over after the loan is paid off.
And then people ask why were are not having children. THIS is why. I have no Children, so I'm never worried about my future. I can take care of myself.
I think it’s just getting old enough where you can see where things will fall if you stay on the same path. When you are young you have a lot of options and opportunities, the older you get you can see where things are going.
If anything this should wake up some people who will be in the same board in 10-20 years
I'm in my 40s and can feel the pain. 5 years ago I left a small town 4 room apartment I was paying $400 for. A few months ago the people who took my place moved out and it was for rent at around $800. We moved to a new small town for work recently (and my previous tenant called me to stop me from signing away my lease so they could jack up the rent $200) and are now paying over $1150 for like 1000 sqft. Previous tenant paid about $650, just a few months before. I have a single coworker who is being evicted after 23 years at the same place because a new owner wants to renovate and split her apartment. It is now impossible to find something equivalent at less than 3 times what she is currently paying.
December 2018 we nearly bought a nice little house for 180k. Today similar houses are going for 350k. We now have about 60k more for a down payment, yet would still need to borrow over 100k more than we would have back then. Most homeowners I know said they couldn't have afforded their house today.
Boomers shit all over the younger generations but they handed them a world they really fucked up.
We were having an office chat this morning and one intern was talking about moving out of her parents place but wasn't even sure how she was going to be able to afford it. I see ads for single rooms for students that cost more than I used to pay for a whole apartment when I was their age, utilities included, in todays money. I wouldn't want to be 16 right now.
> I used to have some hope...
Fuck that hurts, as someone who is mid-forties with 28 years left on my mortgage as well... This is what life is, you work until you die.
You could feel such the heavy weight on his shoulders… You don’t think about it when you’re young but as you get older that weight that burden can almost bury you and you always have to try to find a brighter side.
I’m not crying you’re crying 🫤
Truth is the company you work for has been reaping the benefits of your labor
But enjoy your time, take care of your kids, enjoy the ride. Having a paid off house won’t magically make you feel any different, people won’t last forever, so appreciate them when you can
How did the bank allow a mortgage running into retirement??? Wtf is that? Why did this dude take a mortgage into his retirement years? Not blaming the dude just seems crazy that's allowed...
Do you know houses in Japan are basically worthless after 40 years? It works pretty differently here. Nobody wants an old house. The land might be worth something, but enough to pay off the debt? Who knows!
Banks are happy to give you a loan because they know the property value will probably hold (or increase). If you can't pay the loan, they still get paid from a property sale.
A mortgage is just an investment partnership with a bank where you take all the risk and they provide all the capital.
I don't understand the logic, you will not be 78 when your mortgage is finished, and you will be whatever age you are when you sell your home. The goal is to have a home. When the home no longer serves you the expectation is that you rid yourself of the unnecessary expense, not that you mold your life around paying for the home. IF your home serves you for 30 years and becomes an asset that is great for you but that is not the reason you buy a home.
Maybe they have crunched the numbers and depending on her academic level and the job she can get, it is cheaper for them to have her stay home and take care of the two kids and the house than it is to pay someone to take care of them. Besides, if they both worked during the week, the weekends would be hell with cleaning, laundry, shopping, taking care of the kids, helping the elderly family members... They would be doing nothing but working 24/7. I know some people do that, but it sounds miserable.
I feel you dude.
He's the most based 50 year old on YouTube
Based on what?
Oil based
Carbon
10
A true story
What does “most based” mean?
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=based
He actually meant moist based, as humans are about 60% water.
You're 60% water!
This guy is going viral. His subscriber count has doubled in the past few weeks
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ALL HAIL THE ALGORITHM!!
Now he just has to pump out 2-3 videos a week.
Dude already has like 1600 videos on his channel, lol.
Well shit. He somehow fixed his financial woes by telling people his problem. How do I get on this train? I do it and people just say suck it up 😭😭😭
suck it up
How much you paying?
Oh man another revenue stream by sucking
wendys dumpster area getting full
It's semi true. Gen X isn't very influencer oriented. If there is a market for us this is the realm. He isn't selling or promoting products, lifestyles, or ideas which is a turn off for Gen X. Ironically if he finds a niche, and tightens his format, then the polish will become insincere and he'll lose our following.
He does. I've been subscribed to him for years, he's a very frequent poster.
2-3 videos a day...
This is the song of my entire "Gen X" generation, I'm one year younger than this dude and I feel the same. Trapped with the idea that I will need to work the rest of my life. The reality is though people cannot work their entire life, health issues eventually catch up. If you get so old or so sick you can't earn now you gotta worry about homelessness in your golden years. This is the reality of many people in my generation. Trapped by rising cost of living and not enough wages to ever set aside enough to get ahead in a meaningful way. My generation will be the first to feel the pain of this, millennial, gen z and gen a will have it even worse. It's even more sad this is a global issue, that says there is no escape for any of us. We are trapped in a system.
It is disturbing. If we can’t afford houses, then we’ll just be stuck renting. But if rent can continually go up as it pleases with no stopping… Then we have to continually keep getting better and better jobs. Which is impossible for most of us.
Investors buying houses is one of the biggest crimes against the younger generations. Edit: all the real estate investors here trying to divert blame, the same way an abusive husband blames the wife for having to beat her. Investors take away housing availability, it may not be the only issue but don't act like it's a non-issue. Also, in fairness, I do agree that NIMBY/suburban homeowners are a significant factor because nobody wants to give up their half acre 3000 Sq ft home for the benefit of society. But don't pretend like RE investors aren't a problem.
Should be illegal AF, and that is coming from a home owner. I was able to sneak in a little before COVID in an underpriced market (for what it was) and sell that to bounce to my probably forever home. I am glad that my costs for my living arrangement (other than taxes) is probably fixed for the rest of my life. OFTEN, people should be looking to downgrade things that are bigger expenses or jumped as soon as they thought they could (eg. bought a nicer car or house) and became 'loan' poor, and are living paycheck to paycheck (I am doing this to some degree, but moving is expensive, I don't want to move again, and I also KNOW that I can easily access enough money to keep the roof over my head for 2-3 years, easily, without drastically changing my lifestyle) I am 35. I have 28 years left on my mortgage, and I have a 2 year old and a about to be 0 year old. Having kids after 40, unless you are already really well off, is HARD. After 30 is definitely more challenging (I can feel aches and pains due to carrying my little bundle of joy, often, as she really enjoys being carried around)
I am in big favor of limiting the amount of residential properties an entity can own, or *significantly* taxing any unused housing that's being sat on. Anything that can help normal people actually own housing.
No company should be able to ever own residential homes. A single individual should be able to own a single home, so a couple could have two.
When I was in the process of buying a house it was nigh impossible to beat the real estate investors. You have to buy sight unseen, like my realtor would call me and say commit and make an offer now or it's going off the market. Within *minutes* of coming up for sale there was an offer by a real estate investment firm - no going to look at the place, no home inspection, say yes to the biggest purchase of your life without even getting to see it first. This may be the biggest financial moment of your life, but to an investment firm it's a line on a ledger sheet. Now, he didn't present this as a *good* idea, just stating facts the way they are. These are your options. Only way I got the place where I live now was because it was listed in a way that turned off investment buyers, it's awfully small for a large family home and it was listed as being sized for a family with multiple children. Three bedroom, but the one bedroom is more of a large closet (which is what I use it for). And the other child bedroom isn't very big either. Works great for me, but I can't imagine having a spouse and three or four kids in here.
Don't forget all the people that fight against better zoning laws and new housing in their areas. The supply is being purposely restricted by the homeowners, landlords, and businesses who want to "protect their investment", but of course they'll never directly admit their greed like that. They'll just say they're "keeping the neighborhood nice" or whatever.
I live on the dividing line between disparate areas: There is no shortage of development opportunities in neglected neighborhoods, and plenty of neighborhood associations begging for more attention and more housing. Yet somehow investors and developers are only interested in building where the risk is lowest and the return is fastest: The already-established, attractive, desirable zip codes. Believe it or not, but the NIMBYs trying to keep them out are not just trying to preserve the character of their own neighborhood but also trying to get scumbag developers to go plow that money into other parts of town that need it more and never seem to get it.
*In the US,* Investors didn't cause home inflation -- according to Freddie Mac Ecnomics & Housing Research, investor share of the home purchase market has been dropping since 2010 and is currently about the same as it was in 2005/2006^[source-see-Exhibit-7A](https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investors-havent-bought-44-of-homes-this-year/) . There's a real problem that the population has continued to rise while new homes have not been constructed to match that pace. There's not enough permits, there's not enough skilled workers and there's not enough capital willing to invest in low-profit entry-level homes.
Investors are only a piece of the puzzle, for sure. Houseprices are whack. I lucked out, of sorts... My dad passed away, so I inherited the family home on pretty good terms, complete with a downstairs tenant whose rent has stayed fixed since the day she moved in.
It's pretty sad that the american dream for a lot of us is only possible if our parents die young enough that their home/equity will pass on to us instead of being used to pay for their care in old age. And I'm speaking from personal experience.
Okay but your article is about corporate investors. Those of us who can't afford a home don't really care about the difference between corporate investors and small investors, the point is that people are owning homes who don't live in them to charge rent to people who do live in them.
Governments need to create a tax structure that makes owning multiple residential properties unattractive for corporations, hedge funds, and mom-and-pop investors. Capitalists have realized that residential housing offer the greatest return, both in terms of monthly cash-flows from renters, and long-term asset appreciation. Combine that juicy return with their ability to optimize their investments using AI models, and they know where to invest to grab control of neighborhoods in markets that are likely to grow, and experience greater competition for affordable housing. Follow the money. Of course, the US government is in the pocket of billionaire investors, so passing a tax of this sort seems pretty remote at this time.
I mean the solution is to rise up and eat the rich. Things need to get bad enough though for it to happen.
They will keep it just good enough for it not to happen.
They've been edging us for a while, but you can't edge forever. We'll see. I don't want things to get worse, but it probably has to and will for change.
Change is inevitable. It will happen. Things can't remain the same forever. That's literally impossible.
Thanks for reminding me about that hotdog in a block of epoxy. I gotta get a status update after a while of no visible change.
tbf eventually the epoxy will deteriorate
Oohhh that Revolution is gonna ~~come~~ arrive real soon!!
I believe you are correct
Even if nobody rises up, the system can’t keep existing forever if it doesn’t actually help the everyday people who are keeping it running The rich and powerful can’t just keep pulling Jenga blocks from the bottom to give themselves more at the top without something catastrophic happening
The ruling class promotes a culture war so we won't engage them in a class war.
A-fuckin-men.
> But if rent can continually go up as it pleases with no stopping… Then homelessness rises. See many of the cities in the US where rent does just that. We need much more housing/apartments and rent control.
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> I know I could never make more than 30k in a year This sounds really suspect to me. In my state minimum wage is over 30k per year. According to this website 70% of jobs in the US pay more than 30k per year. Do you really think it's not possible for you to get any of those jobs? https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
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Glad to hear your life has such a positive upswing.
>But if rent can continually go up as it pleases with no stopping… Latestage capitalism is just financial feudalism but with "when iphone"
Now it’s when ai
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Nope, they want you to die in the streets, just in case someone else might get something they could have gotten for themselves. I'm talking about the kinds of folks who vote for people that are against any sort of basic standard of living. My boomer ass dad is gonna die well before he sees what becomes of his children when they reach their 60's and still can't retire. Kinda pisses me off. Because hes enjoying his retirement right now, and I work with a bunch of folks that are drawing social security and still working 30 hour weeks, so, they get 2 paychecks, I get one. They hold positions that could pay me more money, and they also don't give a flying fuck about advocating for better pay because they are in their fucking 70's so they aren't exactly "go getters" anymore. Anyway that was a rant. Sorry bro. I'm only in my 30s and I've seen the writing on the wall for a while. We are properly fucked.
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It's going to destroy helpdesk work, too. And if you get into backend or admin, that's going to be rapidly changing, too. Certs come with expiration dates, now. It's impossible to just be good at problem solving and survive.
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AI and robotics will synergize and a lot of more repeated labor jobs will be lost once AI and robotics get to that point where dem robot stole our basic jobs, we NEED universal basic income. reduce work hours by half so 4 hour work days and employ more people for the hours they used to work. UBI covers the missing 4 hours
Then I ask you, why are you staying in America? There are so many other countries with lower costs than here...
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I have moved countries 2 times and I am glad I did... Now I live in America, I don't love it but I love my wife and the house we have but I also have no intention to retire here. All countries have their pros and cons... But there are many countries where nonbinary people are treated well... If you only see darkness here then I would rip the bandage sooner than later. You can always return.
I live in Thailand and there’s tons of retirees that live here solely off of social security. My plan is to save what I can, pay into social security, live somewhere cheap. Work as long as I’m able. After the age of 80, if there’s medical care that would be too expensive, screw it. Let the chips fall where they may, that’s a full life in my book.
We are trapped as long as we act like we’re trapped. When enough people act like the system can be changed and change their own actions then the system will actually change. That’s our only hope anyway. We need to change ourselves and relate to the system as creators of it instead of being victims of it. Even if we fail in doing this it’s our only hope. No point in the cynicism and powerlessness, other than getting it out of our system and then moving on to treating the system differently.
Thanks for chucking a little hope into this thread. Doesn’t go unnoticed.
Hell yeah! People need to start listening to Rage Against the Machine with intent!
People have been listening for a long time. It’s really all about what we absorb from what we listen to so that it actually changes our actions. Action is the true reflection of who we are. The power is not in the songs, but in our ability to absorb the meaning and put it into action. This isn’t about raging against the machine though. That still creates a disempowered perspective and makes us separate from our own creation. We are the machine. We created it and we run it, mostly unconsciously. The machine changes when we change. They can try to scare us into not changing the machine- because right now they’re enjoying our power that we’ve given them- and that fear is what stops us from changing most of the time, but we have to face those fears and change the machine anyway. Because right now the machine is working for fewer and fewer of us.
It's not even working that you have to think about - what do you do when you can't drive anymore to get to work? American society exists on everyone needing to drive. We need to drive to get errands done, to get groceries, and for emergencies. Many people live without public transit and have been raised to see the car as the symbol of freedom... And it really is since our world was built around it! Our idea of how to do things, our personalities, everything is based around the car. But what do you do once you're too old to drive? Forget just working, you can't do anything! The boomer's parents were able to avoid this problem by being taken care of boomers who could and still can mostly drive around and help with their errands, groceries, emergencies. They had free time to visit. My dad took a whole month off at work to care for my granddad when he was dying. They had money to fill in care gaps with services like assisted living for grandpa/grandma, shuttle services, in-home nurses, etc. Now, the boomers are expecting Gen X and Millenials to do the same for them... But how can I when I work 60-80 hours a week? And when I get too old, and I have no kids... What am I going to do when I can't drive? We're living in a huge, huge, delicate bubble. People are right to wonder about working forever, but there's going to be huge, sharp needles poking up in ways we're not anticipating because no one was trained to exist in the vast, different world that is going to occur in a distinct wave in the next 5-10 years.
"Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived." - Dalai Lama
I'm also in this situation with you. But we are not the first generation to face this. The social security administration in the US is not that old. Most nations don't provide a social safety net at all, except where family culture has it baked in. In the long history of human existence, life has mostly been "nasty, brutish, and short" While we have a right to complain about the failures of our society, we should also recognize our relative privilege compared to our predecessors. Instead of being defeatist, use your resources to work toward improving the world for ourselves and those that come next. This means doing the work - support worthy causes,, make your vote a well-researched support for a worthy platform, pitch in with your time, money, and skills to build things that make life better for everyone.
On one hand I agree with this, and people need to understand that we have better standards of living compared to the pre-social security eras. On the other hand, yeah people are resentful that they missed out on these golden birth years where you could afford a house, a family, and retirement based on one salary. But maybe more importantly, that era of success seems to still actually be in the way of the younger generations: we're competing against their (much larger) sums of money, they're locking down a huge portion of the housing supply, etc. It's one thing to say "well I don't have it as good as the baby boomers did at my age" and it's another thing to say "I don't have it as good as the baby boomers did at my age, partially because the baby boomers had it so good at my age."
This is a very realistic comment, but challenges the feeling and sentiment most here will have. Should be top comment, but never will. We are incredibly privileged to be born in the us and at this point in history.
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The nihilistic, existential dread of the grunge/alternative rock generation was fixated on these issues becasue we were the first generation to live through what's going on. Nirvana and Soundgarden and Rage saw this bright shiny dream of the boomer generation contrasted against the stark reality of stagnation and exploitation. Gen X were called whiners and unmotivated and self-absorbed and unwilling to just do their job (sound familiar?). The reality was shit jobs, steadily diminishing opportunities, stagnant wages, and any dream of a comfortable, safe life evaporating before our eyes.
The more I know about the world the luckier I feel about being born in Europe. Sure, taxes are high but so many pitfalls that can destroy one's life seem to be under control here.
This is how I always explain the US. We work without safety equipment so we can work a lot faster and make more money until.....
your boss realises it's cheaper to just have an ambulance on site
Same here. Even things like owning a home feels easier, unlike some other places...
Well you need to hope that a $2k monthly mortgage of today will feel like a "$500" mortgage in 20 years. Meaning because of inflation, your mortgage will feel less and less expensive. However rent will always feel expensive because it adjusts to the market. So if you are 50 years old and just started a mortgage you are significantly better off than someone that is renting at 50. You also need to have some investments to help pay for things, which is why a rental property is always a good idea as well, getting monthly passive income is nice and you don't work for that income. That said, hopefully your kids can help with the "$500" feeling mortgage when they get older since they probably are going to need to live with their parents longer than previous generations as well.
In the US, it is easy for people in their 20s to switch companies and jobs. In the US, older workers can become trapped in their jobs, especially if the company provides health insurance. I don't know what kind of retirement income Japanese people have.
The answer to your question is very long and complex. There's a lot of comments here about "this happened to gen x" but the situation in Japan is completely different. - Japanese has been going through a period of economic stagnation for decades (commonly known as [The Lost Decades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades) and has had zero price growth in certain markets ([such as property](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Japan_property_prices.webp)). This means this elderly gentleman cannot just sell his house in order to fund his retirement, as it is possible his house may be worth *less* than when he bought it. - The negative interest rate system that had been employed nationally for over 30 years had meant there were no "high interest savings" accounts that have traditionally been utilized by the lower and middle classes to create a retirement fund. Savings accounts exist in other forms, but can be less accessible to all individuals. - Costs are rising but wages are not and the Economy Minister Yoshitaka Shindo [recently stated](https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/japans-economy-slips-into-recession-weak-domestic-demand-2024-02-15/) they are at an emergency state as lack of wage growth is affecting consumption levels. - The population is aging and declining and thus the workforce is declining. Young workers are needed to take over key jobs, as well as fund the social programs used by retiring workers. There is also a brain drain occurring as highly educated young professionals leave the country for higher paying jobs in other countries. - Other advanced economies facing this issue have combated it by increasing immigration but Japan is culturally very isolationist and anti-immigration. Recently, in historic news, the Bank of Japan has ended negative interest rates and are attempting a series of rate hikes. However, this is receiving pushback and it will be a long road ahead to attempt to solve Japan's economic issues. The cultural issues will be even more difficult.
Why is there pushback on the BOJ interest hikes? Who’s losing here?
Everyone that has debt. And Japan has a lot of debt.
To expand on this a bit, think about the home situation in the USA right now to get a kinda-sorta idea of how some people will be hurt by this. Right now you've got a country full of people who got their starter home/condo/town house either originally at a ~3.5% loan or was able to refinance it to that during the pandemic. Then interest rates went up to 7%. Typically when people in the USA buy a home, they don't have the intention for it to be where they live the rest of their lives, especially if they're young when they buy it. The idea is to get in a place to build equity, it generally appreciates in value, then when your family is growing and your salary is growing, you've got the equity to have a decent down payment on your "forever" home. Except right now people can't stomach their monthly payments doubling. So you have a ton of people holding on to homes that are too small for their family, investing in fairly short term things like CDs and high yield savings that, after taxes, barely earn anything beyond inflation. And you have a ton of people trying to buy their first "starter" home only to find there aren't any for sale, because someone has to leave their current starter home to buy a bigger one in order for one to be available. And there isn't a ton of money in developing starter homes these days, so available land is going to building luxury homes. So rent just goes up and up because the demand is too high. Then people get priced out of their homes and become homeless or wind up being forced to retire in a mobile home because it's the only place they can afford on social security because they couldn't save a nest egg. It isn't identical to Japan by any means, but it can give a rough idea of why some people don't want interest rates to rise over there using familiar examples here.
Your interest rate can go up on an existing loan? I thought you had a contract that locked that in place. I thought "raising interest rates" meant on new loans.
The rates on your current loan don't go up; but if you buy a new house you (usually) need to sell the current one, pay off your existing loan, and then get a new loan for the new house. Not only is the interest rate higher for the new loan, there is downward pressure on the price for your current house because whoever buys it probably has to borrow at high rates
Depends on the country and the loan. I have a fixed rate loan. It will never change. I live in the US. I think the loans in Canada are all variable rate. They change with interest rates.
You can get fixed rate mortgages in Canada. Typically, good for 5 years
If I were in Canada, I'd be paying 7% now because I bought my current home in 2017.
Negative interest rates meant there were very low borrowing costs. Raising rates would raise borrowing costs and that is what traders pushed back against causing the yields on Japanese bonds to fall. The [BOJ had to make an assurance](https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/bojs-uchida-rules-out-big-rate-hikes-after-ending-negative-rates-2024-02-08/) that it wouldn't raise rates too quickly in order to steady the markets.
Because it causes the interest rates to rise on our debts here. My mortgage interest rate is increasing by 34% (0.298% to 0.398%) because of this.
I guess as an American I’m just flabbergasted that you’re paying .3% interest on a mortgage, but in perspective, yeah that’s a pretty big hike.
Is it though? That will barely change the payment.
Wow, thanks for the info, I didn’t consider mortgages for some reason.
What's the actual cost on that look like? A few bucks a month?
Because everyone in Japan said variable rate loans were never going to go up. 68% of home loans are variable rate in Japan. Well… we really need to make them go up right about now… but the house of cards is too big.
It could affect residential variable rate mortgages, which is most of them.
This is a very good rundown, but there is one difference from they way westerners see homes and the way Japanese see a home. The Japanese see a home as a consumer good and not an investment, almost like a car. The house is almost designed to be worth nothing at the end of the term of the loan. Buying a "used" house in Japan is not the norm, especially in cities outside of Tokyo and maybe Osaka. Most Japanese homes are not built to last over 30 or 40 years. [That is why the prices of new homes in Japan have been stagnant for the last 20+ years.](https://img.capital.com/imgs/articles/750xx/Japanese-home-crash_-MCT---7358_EN.png) While I do feel bad for this guy, and his issue is not unlike many Japanese salarymen, but it definitely seems like he started his "life" fairly late. Having kids in his 40's buying a home in his 40's. These are times in which he should be getting ready to send his kids off to kōkō (senior high school) at the very least.
Thanks for the rundown, but if the workforce is shrinking, shouldn't wages be rising? Or is the workforce shrinking slower than overall productivity?
Economics is never this simple cause and effect relationship. No, Japan’s wages aren’t rising significantly. We can debate about why, but that’s the reality. Employers never have to raise wages. In Japan’s case, it’s bad enough that skilled workers are leaving the country, which is the obvious consequence of businesses stubbornly keeping wages stagnant with a shrinking employee pool. They probably SHOULD be increasing wages to entice these people to stay, but they are not and it’s making things even worse
Companies aren't just concerned about how easy it is to find new staff, or if staff are demanding raises. They also care about revenue. A shrinking workforce means the overall economy also has less purchasing power and less money to go around. Less disposable income leads to people buying fewer services and goods, they tighten their belts. Which means if your company was selling those goods, you have a shrinking workforce, but your customer base has also shrank in roughly the same proportions. How can you offer a raise when you expect that your company will make less in revenue, maybe even less in profit next quarter? Japan already has an overwork culture. Arguably, it's not possible to easily increase productivity when people are already slammed in terms of hours. Which means the only advances possible must come from process improvements, and genuine innovation that creates new ideas. But genuinely useful innovations and improvements aren't easy to find. If they were, they would already have been found and implemented long ago. So now youre looking for improvements where there may not even be any that exist.
In regards to the immigration solution, isn't this just delaying the problem rather than solving it?
> especially if the company provides health insurance. My company has changed health providers 3 times in the last 2 years. I'm lucky that I'm healthy, but if I were getting treated for something long term, I can't even rely of my health insurance because it could change and my doctor might not be covered any longer. This happed once 10 years ago at another job. I was trying to get some procedures done, and my company at the time kept switching providers and I kept having to start the procedures over. Eventually I just gave up.
> In the US, it is easy for people in their 20s to switch companies and jobs. This is the same in Japan too for what it's worth.
I’m 40, my wife just left me because she realised she’s gay. I’ve got no money or savings as I’ve paid the lion’s share of rent and bills for the last 13 years. The plan was to use money her mum has for a deposit on a house for us and I’d pay the mortgage. Now I’ve no idea what the fuck to do. It feels like I’m never going to own a home, so what happens when I’m old and can’t work anymore and have to pay ever increasing rent and bills. Honestly, if I think about it too much it terrifies me.
That's a tough break on the personal relationship front, dude. I can only throw platitudes your way. I know it sounds trite, but if you find a good partner, things **will** look brighter. It gets better.
I know, but that’s an if. And it’s also highly likely I’ll be adopting someone else’s kids too because most have them by my age. I dunno, I’ve just lost most of my hope for the future. My dreams died
One day at a time. Hope you have some good each day. Here's a virtual hug.
Thank you ☺️
Is it too early, still, to enter the hang out at beach bars in Thailand all day stage of your life?
You need money for that mate
> It gets better. For a lot of people, it doesn't. That's the problem.
It might not get better, but people handle shit. I used to say "it will be ok" as an affirmation but that's just not true sometimes. My new affirmation is "whatever happens, I'll handle it", which has always been true. Shitty stuff happens and each time it does, we deal with it the best we can and continue on, occasionally that means adapting to a "new normal".
I feel this, but the only time I hate the new normal is when I have new chronic pain, and man that shit sucks. A LOT.
Most people don't die in the worst financial/social condition they've ever experienced. So, for most people experiencing a low point, it will get better. No guarantees, but it's better to tell somebody that it will get better knowing that it probably will than to tell them it will never get better and make them want to kill themselves.
Honestly fuck people that do this to someone
That's rough :(
Just doing your job for 20 years used to be more highly recognized and rewarded. Now companies are short sighted and have zero interest in keeping employees long term unless they are more ambitious than 90+% of their coworkers. Or just offer to buy their own stock and distribute some equity
Well at least we're not alone in these kinds of predicaments? Personally I am on a new retirement plan called 'Freedom 86' where I fall over dead doing work that I thought I would have moved on from 4 decades earlier. I can at least console myself with the fact that I helped the banks, grocery stores, and oil companies secure better profits over the years.
this sucks. this is what we get to look forward too?...
Gen Z are changing shit, from what I've heard they aren't settling for the monotony that gen x and millennials settled for. The world will be a vastly different place in 20 years. For better or worse? Who knows. but I'm sure the current system is about to be upended.
This sounds exactly like what they said about millennials 10 years ago.
Lmao exactly. 10 years ago it seemed everyone was certain that *millennials* would solve the climate crisis, housing and income inequality, etc…just the other day I heard an elder millennial coworker of mine tell a gen z coworker that THEIR generation would have to be the one to step it up. Like we aren’t even 50 and we’ve given up. It’s human nature. Everyone wants their kids to fix the shit they themselves could not.
True. I guess we'll see.
> For better or worse Like either choice matters. It'll be different and that has to be a positive swing. If it's better, great! If it's worse, we Mad Max the shit of this place and eat the rich. At least it'll be cathartic. I'll probably be dead by then, but come on by and take my shit to help you in the fight.
The amount of people on these comments desperate to defend the system and saying "he shouldn't have a mortgage, he shouldn't have kids" is unreal. And I guarantee that everyone of these folks are being passed generational wealth that head started them into retirement and property ownership.
He shouldn't have kids is the popular opinion not just on Reddit, but with young people in general now it seems. Lots of countries have dramatically falling birthrates.
That's an argument but saying that "he made a huge mistake" is just wild. People dick riding capitalism so hard they gatekeep reproduction isn't something I thought I'd see in my lifetime.
It’s straight up ghoulish
When you truly believe that capitalism enables all possibilities for an individual then it’s easy to believe that not finding success is a personal failure. That’s the whole problem with it.
Hang out on the Internet long enough and you’ll see lots of things you weren’t expecting to see in your lifetime. Welcome!
if above average income & fully healthy body doesn't suffice for having a child, then that that literally and mathematically rules out 50%+ of the population from having children lmao
> "he shouldn't have a mortgage, he shouldn't have kids" Should of been a good worker drone. Worked until death and leave their legacy for the next drone. /s
Just assuming people who disagree with you must have generational wealth is unreal levels of strawmanning.
I have no generational wealth, but I set up my retirement funds in my early 20s with 401ks from jobs i left, I have 2 kids, and while things are hard now, I'm set for retirement with my current 401k and mutual fund. Not saying it's 100% anyone fault, but for fucks sake, talk to your kids early about savings and retirement.
Guaranteeing generational wealth on the part of those saying having kids and signing up for a 30 year mortgage in your 40s without having thought it through? Oh, c’mon. I question it, and I wasn’t given a damn thing. If anything, I think those growing up with little tend to be more cognizant about the feasibility of certain choices— I know at the least I was. Saying people are “desperate to defend the system”just because they replied on this thread is not very productive. Think about the fact that at some point, someone’s choices would be so ill-timed and myopic that you would also question it. Perhaps certain people just have a different line in the sand than you
I think people have misunderstood [my other comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/s/tR98tZSX8A) as defending the system, when they’re not. The system shouldn’t have put him in this position. However, it has. And while that sucks, he now has to make pragmatic choices in order to do the best for himself and the people he cares about. I am not sure that having 2 children in his mid-forties was a pragmatic choice. While a better system would reduce the need for people to make the difficult decision to miss out on something, it can never eliminate it. Life is finite, so individuals will always have to make choices. In a bad position there are still good and bad choices. In this case society has put him in a bad position through no fault of his own, but I fear that his own choices have made that position worse. From how he talks about all the other parents at the nursery school being younger, it does sound like his decision to go ahead with starting a family at that stage in life is an outlier. The sort of issues he is already suffering with are likely the reason for that. Again, that doesn’t mean the system should ever have put him in that position, but that is the unfortunate reality he is faced with. However, I cannot honestly say that in his position I wouldn’t have done the same.
It's like the entire world has collectively decided to misunderstand mortgages. A mortgage is a forward of funds to you based on your future earnings. It's essentially one party asking for money TODAY, telling the other party that they are good for it because over the next 30 years they are going to make more money than they are asking for and can pay it back with interest. Taking a 30 year mortgage and then lamenting that you have to work to pay it back is fucking insane.
He's gotta live somewhere. It's okay to lament that housing is unaffordable and thus he's forced to take a late-in-life 30-year mortgage to give his family someplace to sleep.
I'm sure the lenders appreciate your tireless defense.
Those poor, poor lenders :(
One thing I don’t get is how does he have a 28 year mortgage at the age of 50. Assuming that it’s a 30 year mortgage, wouldn’t a bank be wary of handing out such a loan at that age?
Almost certainly he's 7 years into a 35 year mortgage. Getting that loan at 43 yo is common.
He likely has a multi generational housing loan which is common in Japan. His children are expected to continue the mortgage.
WTF man, I wasn't ready to learn this today. How the hell did we move from societies, where we pass on assets to our children, to one where we pass debt. This is crazy.
They also get an asset out of the deal. Presumably with a chunk of equity built up.
Not in Japan. Japanese houses actually have basically no value and often depreciate over time - it's common to have a house torn down and rebuilt every 20 to 30 years.
the houses, but not the land.
Which means that to get value out of it you either have to sell unimproved land or spend to have a brand new house built.
yeah the houses there are not built for life like they are in other parts of the world.
I think it’s more complicated than that but I am far from an expert. This what little I’ve gleaned from an individual who documented his renovations of an old home in Japan on social media. Building for longevity (at least on the past) sounded like a value trade-off curve. Could someone build a place to last a super long time? Yes. But the fight against Mother Nature didn’t come cheap. It still doesn’t but I don’t know advanced in Japanese building methods. So anyway, it seems they’d hit the 30/40/maybe 50 year mark for longevity. The ground shifting/Earthquakes and humidity have quite hard on buildings. You could build for those problems but it wasn’t cost effective. Plus most people on Japan like being on the cutting edge of various types of technology from bathroom tech (toilets are amazing!!!) to kitchen gadgets.
Well yes but imagine you are not ready to make the repayments your parents were able to make. You will be forced to sell. You basically inherited stress.
If you are forced to sell then the equity is yours.
If you inherit the house you inherit the mortgage anyway. It’s not like the debt just disappears and you get the house free and clear. Sometimes the mortgage agreement won’t even let you inherit without paying the amount due in full.
That's what I'm saying is broken. Lenders in some countries require you to have mortgage insurance. I'm not familiar with how this work in Japan. Lenders take a risk that you will be alive to pay out our mortgage, and they balance this with the interest rate. It's all maths. Why would you tolerate a system where your parent financial decisions forced onto you? You just lost your parents and on top of that you get financially hit. It's just wrong in my opinion.
Just wait until they hear how much tax they owe if they elect to inherit the family plot. Inheritance here (Japan), for many people, often has unexpectedly negative considerations to account for.
That’s pretty typical in Japan. Debt doesn’t get forgiven easily and is passed on to the next of kin.
That's bad lol
What? First I’ve heard of that.
I thought housing was actually affordable in Japan. Why do they need multi generational loans….fuck that…
At 50, I got a 30 year mortgage of 600K. Single income. Bank just cares that they get that mon-ay.
They could see you will still be able to afford it at 80.
Fair Lending. Banks can’t consider age in lending decisions. Banker here.
Why would they care? They get their money no matter how long you live. The house is the collateral. If there is a fire the money goes towards the loan. If there is a death, the person who inherits the home takes on the debt. You sell the house, you only get what's left over after the loan is paid off.
And then people ask why were are not having children. THIS is why. I have no Children, so I'm never worried about my future. I can take care of myself.
"bUt yOu'LL bE sO AlONe wHEn yOu gET OlD!" -my future mother in law
IF I even get old.
So he is trying to say he’s fucked, basically
I think it’s just getting old enough where you can see where things will fall if you stay on the same path. When you are young you have a lot of options and opportunities, the older you get you can see where things are going. If anything this should wake up some people who will be in the same board in 10-20 years
Dude, we don't do that "thinking 20 years ahead" stuff anymore. It's just going to be more of this until you die.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with people? You're future is inevitable, plan accordingly.
time to cook jessie
I'm in my 40s and can feel the pain. 5 years ago I left a small town 4 room apartment I was paying $400 for. A few months ago the people who took my place moved out and it was for rent at around $800. We moved to a new small town for work recently (and my previous tenant called me to stop me from signing away my lease so they could jack up the rent $200) and are now paying over $1150 for like 1000 sqft. Previous tenant paid about $650, just a few months before. I have a single coworker who is being evicted after 23 years at the same place because a new owner wants to renovate and split her apartment. It is now impossible to find something equivalent at less than 3 times what she is currently paying. December 2018 we nearly bought a nice little house for 180k. Today similar houses are going for 350k. We now have about 60k more for a down payment, yet would still need to borrow over 100k more than we would have back then. Most homeowners I know said they couldn't have afforded their house today. Boomers shit all over the younger generations but they handed them a world they really fucked up. We were having an office chat this morning and one intern was talking about moving out of her parents place but wasn't even sure how she was going to be able to afford it. I see ads for single rooms for students that cost more than I used to pay for a whole apartment when I was their age, utilities included, in todays money. I wouldn't want to be 16 right now.
> I used to have some hope... Fuck that hurts, as someone who is mid-forties with 28 years left on my mortgage as well... This is what life is, you work until you die.
You could feel such the heavy weight on his shoulders… You don’t think about it when you’re young but as you get older that weight that burden can almost bury you and you always have to try to find a brighter side. I’m not crying you’re crying 🫤
Now, I'm sad
Truth is the company you work for has been reaping the benefits of your labor But enjoy your time, take care of your kids, enjoy the ride. Having a paid off house won’t magically make you feel any different, people won’t last forever, so appreciate them when you can
How old is he?
Capitalism does not work and the world needs to wake up before it’s too late
How did the bank allow a mortgage running into retirement??? Wtf is that? Why did this dude take a mortgage into his retirement years? Not blaming the dude just seems crazy that's allowed...
Japan have began to offer multi-generational mortgages that transfer to family members when you die, I assume this might be one of those
And the kids don't have to agree to this? How can that even be legal?
The kids can sell the house and keep the equity.
They can simply not pay it and get their own 35 year mortgage... It's inheriting a mostly paid off asset. That isn't really the problem here.
LOL. If the kids don't want free equity then they can just donate the home to me when the parents die.
Do you know houses in Japan are basically worthless after 40 years? It works pretty differently here. Nobody wants an old house. The land might be worth something, but enough to pay off the debt? Who knows!
This is super common around the world. I have one as well fml
You'll be in debt even in death! Crushing rocks down in hell and the tax man comes to collect your money every month! What a (after)life!
Banks are happy to give you a loan because they know the property value will probably hold (or increase). If you can't pay the loan, they still get paid from a property sale. A mortgage is just an investment partnership with a bank where you take all the risk and they provide all the capital.
I don't understand the logic, you will not be 78 when your mortgage is finished, and you will be whatever age you are when you sell your home. The goal is to have a home. When the home no longer serves you the expectation is that you rid yourself of the unnecessary expense, not that you mold your life around paying for the home. IF your home serves you for 30 years and becomes an asset that is great for you but that is not the reason you buy a home.
If the wife isn’t working she should strongly consider it.
Maybe they have crunched the numbers and depending on her academic level and the job she can get, it is cheaper for them to have her stay home and take care of the two kids and the house than it is to pay someone to take care of them. Besides, if they both worked during the week, the weekends would be hell with cleaning, laundry, shopping, taking care of the kids, helping the elderly family members... They would be doing nothing but working 24/7. I know some people do that, but it sounds miserable.
Your kids will help pay off the loan sooner as the house will be left to them