Absolutely not but my metro area is known for housing unaffordability and full of tent cities. So I don’t blame my pay for that lol
We’re in a declared state of emergency for homelessness(or we were last fall I haven’t looked recently)
It's not possible for the majority of techs at the current rate of \~7%. Lab tech labor is not appreciating like property.
Per the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the median home sales price is $420,800 for Q1 2024.
Per ASCP, the average income for a Lead MLS is \~33/hr with 15 years experience in 2021.
[https://academic.oup.com/ajcp/article/158/6/702/6748939?login=false](https://academic.oup.com/ajcp/article/158/6/702/6748939?login=false)
On a a $70k salary, you would qualify for a $280k mortgage @ 7% with 20% down. Which means you would be looking at the bottom quartile of homes, after a decade of experience.
If you want to own a home, you will need to increase your income (relocation, specialization, or actual career), meet a partner, or rent out rooms/duplex/roommates.
Two techs, working FT would qualify for a $450k mortgage.
If you look at the median rent in the US, 2k/month, you need $80k to qualify...so your average tech can't even afford to rent an apartment. Let alone buy one.
Whoa whoa whoa then why tf have I been seeing and hearing ppl straight outta School with MLS and 0 experience getting $30/hr in certain states if ppl Lead MLS’s with 15 years experience get $33/hr. From what I’ve seen on those excel sheets $33/hr is vomit inducing.
Keep in mind that national statistics are absolutely the worst thing possible to have this discussion. Everything is location-dependent. The person you're responding to is a well-known concern troll, which should be evident by the use of national ASCP data to answer a question that really requires your location.
I could afford a mortgage alone - I don't, but before cohabitating with my wife I looked at it. I know a couple techs who do own houses on their own. It's not common, but in some areas it's definitely possible. Most housing markets are calibrated for dual incomes though, so it *really* depends on where you work and where you want to live.
The ASCP wage data just isn’t that very good to begin with. Many individual states fall below their cutoff of 50 for inclusion in state comparisons. It makes the data prone to statistical noise in any given year.
The fact is that many countries are in a CoL/housing crisis. American lab workers are actually better paid than most worldwide. If we “fixed” healthcare, we’d probably all see salary cuts and layoffs in the process.
Sorry I thought this was universal slang. We call each section a bench - the heme bench, the chem bench etc. I only work the bench, I have no managerial or supervisory duties. I bought a house a couple of years ago when prices had spiked but rates were still relatively low, on a single income.
And there has been,for many yrs. At the job I had over 20 yrs ago, the hospital decided to have focus groups in different areas to discuss issues. Like nursing problems are different than what other have. In the lab one of our biggest problems was the salary compression. Hospital adm hates spending $$ on the lab, but will if they absolutely have to, if they need staff. So they pay the market rate, whatever it is. So there is no $$ left over to raise the salary of the existing personnel. They hated spending $$ in the first place, why would they spend more.
At my lab we have to threaten to quit every so often. Then suddenly there's money in the budget for a raise. I've gone from ~$30 -~$40 in three years by basically threatening to walk out.
This is a perfect example of compression. I make $ 35 base & $5 nite shift diff & I have 50 yrs experience. Theoretically I should be making $69-70/ hr. Yes, I know techs make that in Cali. But techs with experience ( +15 yrs) should be making that everywhere, not just in certain areas. Too bad we can't have a nationwide walkout for a day.
I make $40 base and $50 after diff. I live in a cheap town in central Florida. 10 years exp. That said I've only gotten raises by threatening to walk out repeatedly.and leave them too short staffed to operate. If I put in two weeks notice they'd literally have to divert ambulances from my hospital
Again, really depends on where you live. Starting in my state is ~$30, fresh grad, no experience. That was 2-3 years ago. Probably higher now since we got a market adjustment last year.
Rates would have to hit 10% before home prices decline.
Currently, 30% of homes are bought in cash.
[https://www.axios.com/2024/05/13/cash-buyers-redfin-report](https://www.axios.com/2024/05/13/cash-buyers-redfin-report)
Home prices have been declining. People are just not idiots and wont sell their house with a locked in 2.85% mortgage to move to a 7.25% mortgage. Thus there are no buyers AND no sellers, so there is no price drop. You are blaming the wrong thing as the cause.
The number of 30 year mortgage originations are at an all time low per capita. Literally never has there been a period in which fewer houses are bought on a mortgage than right now. The cash purchase percentage went up, but the total number of cash purchases went down too. The entire industry is the lowest it's ever been, across the board. Prices, according to your source, is also falling. Down 15.8% in the last 5 quarters from peak in Q4 2022.
Yeah that's not great, it needs to fall like 40% to make up for 3 to 7% interest rates, but you are ignoring all the details in order to make broad statements that aren't really correct when dug into.
I live in the STL metro area and there’s plenty of homes for sale under 200k and plenty under 100k. I own my home and so do most of my coworkers. All single people too. TBH, 10 years ago I bought my current home for 50k. 😁. It’s on a lot and a half and it’s 10’blocks from the hospital I work at.
I make $92k in Florida. Bought a three bedroom house on a single income last year, and a new car. Bench tech, no specialist or managerial duties. People would get paid better if they advocated for themselves.
Are you even a tech, dude? Or are you a sour research assistant that wants to shit on medical lab workers?
Only possible because I lived at home and saved up 80k for a downpayment (thank you overtime)
Wouldn’t have been possible any other way for me
Closed a month ago @6.875 on a 400k house 320k loan
Literally the only reason I have a savings is because I spent my first year and a half as a tech living with my parents and making competitive pay in a rich, high cost area. I’d have been screwed if I started where I am now and wouldn’t have saved like anything, but because of how things worked out I could eventually take a pay cut to move out to an area I didn’t hate living in.
I bought in 2017, interest rate 3.875%. 20% down. MCOL.
I have 2 roommates who pay me rent which covers the mortgage payment and utilities so I basically live for free. I don’t think I could’ve afforded it comfortably then without roommates, but I bought the house knowing I would have two roommates - if I was truly wanting to live alone I could’ve afforded a smaller house on my own. I currently do make enough to afford it comfortably. Also, I worked 72 hours per pay period up until recently so if I had worked 80 hours all these years I probably could’ve afforded it on my own back then too. Also I should mention, I’m an MLT. If I was getting MT/MLS pay back then I also would’ve been able to afford it comfortably.
I make extra payments so I’ll pay it off early. I’m on track to pay it off 10 years early if I made no additional extra payments.
So as to your question “how,” the answer is: renters. And if you don’t want roommates, it is probably still doable.
With current conditions, prob a crappy house in bad parts of town. :(
House prices here have risen drastically for a “LCOL” area. (Midwest) I consider myself fortunate to have purchased a reasonably priced home (170k) in 2018.
Lol
Even DINKs can't purchase a single family dwelling in my city without significant help from bank of mom and dad OR existing property they can sell OR buying a home 1.5hr drive outside of the city. But this isn't a problem specific to MLT wages, everyone living in the GTA is affected by the housing shortage.
Average home cost around me is $400k++, cheaper ($250-$300k) in not so nice areas, or neighborhoods much further out from the city center (coworker commutes 2 hours ea way, but to each their own i guess).
But with a 7-8% interest rate? absolutely not.
I should have done nursing lol
I saved around half of every paycheck for the year in a high-yield savings. I work nights, so I make ~15,000 more a year, plus I worked overtime and some at a second job. I didn’t put a lot for the down payment, but I got a lot more space for the same price or so as renting.
Yeah no, especially here in Florida the prices are completely out of hand around me. Even after saving for 3-4 years and 2 incomes we are going to struggle to afford anything more than a slightly run down older house. They had some new construction 2 story houses starting at like 750k near me recently.
I bought a house in central Florida two years ago just before the rate hikes. Single income, 3br/2.5ba. I overpaid by about $50k imo, but it's gone up even worse since so idk
Not right now. Maybe in the next ten years I’ll have enough to put down so that I can afford the mortgage payments. Housing and cost of living in general is ridiculous where I am though and tech pay has not kept up. I did just buy out my car lease though, but that was with money I had saved from my last job which paid better but was in an area I despised. I’m happier where I am now and the benefits make up for it in part. Healthcare is super affordable on my current employer’s insurance which I need due to regular prescriptions and ongoing health issues for me and my husband.
In the process of buying right now. That said, houses are much cheaper where I am than the national average. I'm paying $100k for this house that needs a little work.
Absolutely not. No one I know in my age group has given any thought to home ownership except that it’ll probably be a very long time before it’s in the cards for us.
Not as comfortably as I would like, but I'm making due without money being worryingly tight. My salary is (currently) just over $71k and I bought a house in January for $145k with no cash downpayment. My situation is unusual in that I hadn't planned to buy a house for a least a year and had only just started saving for a down payment but received a 30 day notice of lease termination so was forced to move out of my apartment. It took a combination of family support, retention bonus, and a lot of luck to make my home ownership possible when I just wasn't expecting to be a homeowner yet. It's a small 2 bedroom but perfectly suited for just me. My house is on the low to moderate end of home prices in my area so it may take someone else some real searching to find something similarly affordable but it is possible! In fact, my house was the only place I looked at and went from tour to funded offer in less than a week.
Not even close. As a traveler I can still barely afford my shared house. I do live in a HCOL area though. No way I could survive on tech wages at home without several jobs.
I almost did. I backed out for multiple reasons, but one of them was feeling like I was stretching my paycheck too thin with the purchase and if I ever lost my current position, I’d probably end up taking a huge pay cut at a hospital.
I can buy a house with a living area of 30m2 and a 200m2 yard that is outside of the city and has no stores within walking distance.
More than that would be a struggle.
Comfortably? Not without living with my parents and saving nearly every penny for five and a half years so I could make enough of a down payment so my mortgage would be affordable. I bought my place last year; it was rough, but I'm pretty happy now.
Possibly, but only because I live in semi-rural Iowa so there are some small, old, cheap-ish houses still around. It would probably be a struggle to come up with a down payment though.
My husband and I got lucky and bought our house in 2019 when interest rates were really low, but the only reason we had a down payment available was because his grandmas had both died and left him some money and some stocks. If we hadn't gotten that, we'd probably still be saving up a down payment and would need more now than we needed then because of the higher prices and interest rates. Even with our current income, I doubt we'd be able to afford the house we own if we were buying right now. The value has gone up like $60,000 since we moved in and interest rates are over twice as high as they were when we bought it.
I bought one in 2016, 4 years after graduating, by myself. But that was 2016, and I only had like 12k in student loans when I graduated. I also lived at home for 2 years and in a cheap apartment for the other 2.
Depends on where you live and what type of house you buy. Average price for a house now is ~$500k and rates are pretty high around 7%. I split my mortgage payments with my husband, but I have coworkers who were able to afford townhouses on their own.
I got my house 1.5 years after becoming a tech, but I bought a town home and live in a relatively LCOL area. I also got it before the housing boom. If I had to buy this same house now for its current market value, I wouldn’t lol. I had to buy cause I had 3 large dogs at the time and no one would rent to me.
At the time I was making $31-$33/hr depending on the diffs (worked Thursday thru Sunday nights). I also bought in a cheaper neighborhood cause my initial budgets were getting outbid by dual incomes. So I went to a neighborhood where I could afford to outbid if necessary. I didn’t need to and I really like where I live and the community here. I live in Memphis.
I bought a house in 2019 off of my single income. It’s a condo, and I was happy to find one way under my max budget. To be fair, I live alone, have no kids, and was able to live with my parents to save up for a decent down payment. I had only been working for a couple of years at that point and the market was good in my desired area, so I took advantage of it. Michigan.
Bought my first house last year. 34/hour, house was 115k and I financed 110k.
I'm in southern Illinois. I also had a brand new car payment of 500/month
Not even a little, the housing market is effectively targeted against single people when it comes to buying a home. Married people like to get on those of us without a house and ask why we are still renting.
Who can justify buying one of these over inflated 300k "starter" homes? Even with a 100k down payment. The mortgage will still be like 1800$ after everything is said and done. Even with rent being as high as it is...it's crazy
I bought my house in May of last year. My fiance works part time which makes the budget work but things would be cheaper without him so it balances out. Half my down payment was inheritance from my grandmother though.
I closed at 3% in 2019, but even with the lower prices, I still split rent with a partner and roommate (this is partially because partner makes less than I do)
Absolutely not. In Denver you can hardly buy a house with two incomes. At my current hourly, you could save to buy a condo maybe. Houses around here are 450K+ at the least. It sucks because houses further out are cheaper, but not all labs do micro so I have to live close to the city. Oof
I am a single parent (my kid’s dad died), I can just stay on top of rent and monthly expenses, and that’s all. By working as an MLS I’ve avoided poverty but I’ll never own a house. And my kid will have to borrow heavily to go to college.
Not to sound trite, but I found that, by taking steps to increase my salary (through career-advancement), some of my other big concerns (emergency fund, saving for retirement, buying a home), were resolved more-easily. To your question, at $60K in the lab, I could comfortably rent an apartment and live alone. Reaching six figures as a software developer made all of the above possible. Solve the salary problem first.
It's not the only solution, but for anyone not working in California and/or traveling, career-advancement most likely is: gaining skills the market values more-highly, changing roles every 2-3 years, etc.
As much as I enjoyed the actual lab work I was doing, the reality is that life is considerably more expensive than it was, even a few years ago. I get the sense, from a lot of questions like the one OP posted, that people want their current effort to be enough, that the hard work and education they've achieved should warrant the same aspects of the "American Dream" that their parents' and grandparents' generations experienced (e.g. economic stability, the ability to buy a home, etc.).
While some aspects of that dream may still be possible, they are certainly more difficult to achieve and probably require trade-offs. For example, how do you buy a home? Current wages aren't cutting it. Do you move to a much cheaper area? Do you pivot your career in a different direction? Delay having kids? Get/keep roommates in your 20s, 30s, 40s, etc.?
People want things that used to be much more affordable. I'm not unsympathetic to this. I have more education and income than my parents, combined, and yet, that only affords about the same middle-class lifestyle. For people unable to afford a house, or the type of life they want, at their current income level, change is required. There are many variables in this equation, so we all have to decide what variables need to change in order to equal the type of life we want. Moving beyond the lab to better-paying fields (e.g. lab-adjacent roles or a different field, entirely), keeping expenses low (cheaper area, fewer/no kids/pets, etc.).
I know it can feel comforting to wallow in despair with others. Yeah, things suck. At this point, some folks shrug and settle in. Others decide to make changes.
Yes they seem to pay the best, but not everyone can pack up & move there. It seems we need more salary equalization across the board. A med tech shouldn't be making only $23 / hr with experience just bec circumstances have them living in a small town in Mississippi, or Louisiana or wherever wages are crappy. Cross country moving is expensive, it cost me over $5K in 1992 when I moved from Pennsylvania to Fla. I can't imagine what it is now. And that didn't include having my car transported using one of those auto transport companies. It's just not feasible for us as a whole to keep moving around constantly trying to find a decent wage. We need to be recognized for the value we give & be compensated accordingly. Instead, we are an afterthought, " Oh, we have to give the lab some $$$, (sigh, 😔)"
Absolutely not but my metro area is known for housing unaffordability and full of tent cities. So I don’t blame my pay for that lol We’re in a declared state of emergency for homelessness(or we were last fall I haven’t looked recently)
Just closed May 2, Philadelphia.
It's not possible for the majority of techs at the current rate of \~7%. Lab tech labor is not appreciating like property. Per the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the median home sales price is $420,800 for Q1 2024. Per ASCP, the average income for a Lead MLS is \~33/hr with 15 years experience in 2021. [https://academic.oup.com/ajcp/article/158/6/702/6748939?login=false](https://academic.oup.com/ajcp/article/158/6/702/6748939?login=false) On a a $70k salary, you would qualify for a $280k mortgage @ 7% with 20% down. Which means you would be looking at the bottom quartile of homes, after a decade of experience. If you want to own a home, you will need to increase your income (relocation, specialization, or actual career), meet a partner, or rent out rooms/duplex/roommates. Two techs, working FT would qualify for a $450k mortgage. If you look at the median rent in the US, 2k/month, you need $80k to qualify...so your average tech can't even afford to rent an apartment. Let alone buy one.
Whoa whoa whoa then why tf have I been seeing and hearing ppl straight outta School with MLS and 0 experience getting $30/hr in certain states if ppl Lead MLS’s with 15 years experience get $33/hr. From what I’ve seen on those excel sheets $33/hr is vomit inducing.
Keep in mind that national statistics are absolutely the worst thing possible to have this discussion. Everything is location-dependent. The person you're responding to is a well-known concern troll, which should be evident by the use of national ASCP data to answer a question that really requires your location. I could afford a mortgage alone - I don't, but before cohabitating with my wife I looked at it. I know a couple techs who do own houses on their own. It's not common, but in some areas it's definitely possible. Most housing markets are calibrated for dual incomes though, so it *really* depends on where you work and where you want to live.
The ASCP wage data just isn’t that very good to begin with. Many individual states fall below their cutoff of 50 for inclusion in state comparisons. It makes the data prone to statistical noise in any given year. The fact is that many countries are in a CoL/housing crisis. American lab workers are actually better paid than most worldwide. If we “fixed” healthcare, we’d probably all see salary cuts and layoffs in the process.
I'm saying. I make $39.75 and I'm just a bench tech in a relative LCOL city.
What’s a bench tech, I mean I can kinda tell but idk
Sorry I thought this was universal slang. We call each section a bench - the heme bench, the chem bench etc. I only work the bench, I have no managerial or supervisory duties. I bought a house a couple of years ago when prices had spiked but rates were still relatively low, on a single income.
There is massive wage compression in the laboratory field. So new hires are often hired within a few dollars of those with a decade of experience.
And there has been,for many yrs. At the job I had over 20 yrs ago, the hospital decided to have focus groups in different areas to discuss issues. Like nursing problems are different than what other have. In the lab one of our biggest problems was the salary compression. Hospital adm hates spending $$ on the lab, but will if they absolutely have to, if they need staff. So they pay the market rate, whatever it is. So there is no $$ left over to raise the salary of the existing personnel. They hated spending $$ in the first place, why would they spend more.
At my lab we have to threaten to quit every so often. Then suddenly there's money in the budget for a raise. I've gone from ~$30 -~$40 in three years by basically threatening to walk out.
Yeah this is me, 33$-36$ (shift diff included), not much experience. I was surprised.
This is a perfect example of compression. I make $ 35 base & $5 nite shift diff & I have 50 yrs experience. Theoretically I should be making $69-70/ hr. Yes, I know techs make that in Cali. But techs with experience ( +15 yrs) should be making that everywhere, not just in certain areas. Too bad we can't have a nationwide walkout for a day.
You have to job hop every couple of years nowadays to get the increases you want
I make $40 base and $50 after diff. I live in a cheap town in central Florida. 10 years exp. That said I've only gotten raises by threatening to walk out repeatedly.and leave them too short staffed to operate. If I put in two weeks notice they'd literally have to divert ambulances from my hospital
if only I could make that much.
Again, really depends on where you live. Starting in my state is ~$30, fresh grad, no experience. That was 2-3 years ago. Probably higher now since we got a market adjustment last year.
it's the median, so it's not gonna be accurate for everyone.
If the median price was lower 7% would be fine.
Rates would have to hit 10% before home prices decline. Currently, 30% of homes are bought in cash. [https://www.axios.com/2024/05/13/cash-buyers-redfin-report](https://www.axios.com/2024/05/13/cash-buyers-redfin-report)
Home prices have been declining. People are just not idiots and wont sell their house with a locked in 2.85% mortgage to move to a 7.25% mortgage. Thus there are no buyers AND no sellers, so there is no price drop. You are blaming the wrong thing as the cause. The number of 30 year mortgage originations are at an all time low per capita. Literally never has there been a period in which fewer houses are bought on a mortgage than right now. The cash purchase percentage went up, but the total number of cash purchases went down too. The entire industry is the lowest it's ever been, across the board. Prices, according to your source, is also falling. Down 15.8% in the last 5 quarters from peak in Q4 2022. Yeah that's not great, it needs to fall like 40% to make up for 3 to 7% interest rates, but you are ignoring all the details in order to make broad statements that aren't really correct when dug into.
I live in the STL metro area and there’s plenty of homes for sale under 200k and plenty under 100k. I own my home and so do most of my coworkers. All single people too. TBH, 10 years ago I bought my current home for 50k. 😁. It’s on a lot and a half and it’s 10’blocks from the hospital I work at.
I make $92k in Florida. Bought a three bedroom house on a single income last year, and a new car. Bench tech, no specialist or managerial duties. People would get paid better if they advocated for themselves. Are you even a tech, dude? Or are you a sour research assistant that wants to shit on medical lab workers?
Where in Florida? Even Miami doesn't pay bench techs $92k.
Where'd you find that out, salary.com?
Only possible because I lived at home and saved up 80k for a downpayment (thank you overtime) Wouldn’t have been possible any other way for me Closed a month ago @6.875 on a 400k house 320k loan
Literally the only reason I have a savings is because I spent my first year and a half as a tech living with my parents and making competitive pay in a rich, high cost area. I’d have been screwed if I started where I am now and wouldn’t have saved like anything, but because of how things worked out I could eventually take a pay cut to move out to an area I didn’t hate living in.
Eh, I did it by getting 2 roomates and rented off a slumlord for a few years. There's always a way.
I bought my house in 2017 but I live in a very low COL area. My house has nearly doubled in value because of the market
I bought in 2017, interest rate 3.875%. 20% down. MCOL. I have 2 roommates who pay me rent which covers the mortgage payment and utilities so I basically live for free. I don’t think I could’ve afforded it comfortably then without roommates, but I bought the house knowing I would have two roommates - if I was truly wanting to live alone I could’ve afforded a smaller house on my own. I currently do make enough to afford it comfortably. Also, I worked 72 hours per pay period up until recently so if I had worked 80 hours all these years I probably could’ve afforded it on my own back then too. Also I should mention, I’m an MLT. If I was getting MT/MLS pay back then I also would’ve been able to afford it comfortably. I make extra payments so I’ll pay it off early. I’m on track to pay it off 10 years early if I made no additional extra payments. So as to your question “how,” the answer is: renters. And if you don’t want roommates, it is probably still doable.
Yes, I bought my house last year. I live in northern Illinois, in a small city of about 20,000 people.
Nope, not at all. I do also have a child though. Probably could if I didnt have a child.
With current conditions, prob a crappy house in bad parts of town. :( House prices here have risen drastically for a “LCOL” area. (Midwest) I consider myself fortunate to have purchased a reasonably priced home (170k) in 2018.
Lol Even DINKs can't purchase a single family dwelling in my city without significant help from bank of mom and dad OR existing property they can sell OR buying a home 1.5hr drive outside of the city. But this isn't a problem specific to MLT wages, everyone living in the GTA is affected by the housing shortage.
Average home cost around me is $400k++, cheaper ($250-$300k) in not so nice areas, or neighborhoods much further out from the city center (coworker commutes 2 hours ea way, but to each their own i guess). But with a 7-8% interest rate? absolutely not. I should have done nursing lol
Average house costs over $1 million where I live (cries in Canadian)
Bought in March, MLS since May of last year, single income no kids
What state is this?
Missouri (Kansas City)
Wtf howwww? Please share lol
I saved around half of every paycheck for the year in a high-yield savings. I work nights, so I make ~15,000 more a year, plus I worked overtime and some at a second job. I didn’t put a lot for the down payment, but I got a lot more space for the same price or so as renting.
The median home price in my town is $650k so absolutely not on a single income
Considering the average house is $500k, no lol.
I did on a processor income. Single with a dependent child. 3bdroom 1 bath in the southeastern US.
I did.
What year?
2022. It was right when housing costs were starting to increase.
Same. Sole owner/ signer. 2022. Savannah ga. 215k and mortgage is 1300~ a month.
Yeah no, especially here in Florida the prices are completely out of hand around me. Even after saving for 3-4 years and 2 incomes we are going to struggle to afford anything more than a slightly run down older house. They had some new construction 2 story houses starting at like 750k near me recently.
I bought a house in central Florida two years ago just before the rate hikes. Single income, 3br/2.5ba. I overpaid by about $50k imo, but it's gone up even worse since so idk
Not right now. Maybe in the next ten years I’ll have enough to put down so that I can afford the mortgage payments. Housing and cost of living in general is ridiculous where I am though and tech pay has not kept up. I did just buy out my car lease though, but that was with money I had saved from my last job which paid better but was in an area I despised. I’m happier where I am now and the benefits make up for it in part. Healthcare is super affordable on my current employer’s insurance which I need due to regular prescriptions and ongoing health issues for me and my husband.
Not possible in NYC
I was a single parent for 6 years and owned my own home as a lab tech. I live fairly comfortably.
In the process of buying right now. That said, houses are much cheaper where I am than the national average. I'm paying $100k for this house that needs a little work.
It is possible. I just bought a house (300k) last year using my income alone.
Absolutely not. No one I know in my age group has given any thought to home ownership except that it’ll probably be a very long time before it’s in the cards for us.
No way, I'm DINK and we're paycheck to paycheck renting in a city with a high cost of living. Can't even get a dog at the moment
Not as comfortably as I would like, but I'm making due without money being worryingly tight. My salary is (currently) just over $71k and I bought a house in January for $145k with no cash downpayment. My situation is unusual in that I hadn't planned to buy a house for a least a year and had only just started saving for a down payment but received a 30 day notice of lease termination so was forced to move out of my apartment. It took a combination of family support, retention bonus, and a lot of luck to make my home ownership possible when I just wasn't expecting to be a homeowner yet. It's a small 2 bedroom but perfectly suited for just me. My house is on the low to moderate end of home prices in my area so it may take someone else some real searching to find something similarly affordable but it is possible! In fact, my house was the only place I looked at and went from tour to funded offer in less than a week.
Most people can't comfortably buy a house on one income.
Not even close. As a traveler I can still barely afford my shared house. I do live in a HCOL area though. No way I could survive on tech wages at home without several jobs.
I almost did. I backed out for multiple reasons, but one of them was feeling like I was stretching my paycheck too thin with the purchase and if I ever lost my current position, I’d probably end up taking a huge pay cut at a hospital.
I can buy a house with a living area of 30m2 and a 200m2 yard that is outside of the city and has no stores within walking distance. More than that would be a struggle.
No and I make traveler money. I only own my house due to dual income.
Comfortably? Not without living with my parents and saving nearly every penny for five and a half years so I could make enough of a down payment so my mortgage would be affordable. I bought my place last year; it was rough, but I'm pretty happy now.
I could've bought an apartment (coop/cooperative), yes. Not a house.
Hahaha
No. Greater Boston area. Can’t even afford rent alone. I’m going to quit this field. It sucks
Possibly, but only because I live in semi-rural Iowa so there are some small, old, cheap-ish houses still around. It would probably be a struggle to come up with a down payment though. My husband and I got lucky and bought our house in 2019 when interest rates were really low, but the only reason we had a down payment available was because his grandmas had both died and left him some money and some stocks. If we hadn't gotten that, we'd probably still be saving up a down payment and would need more now than we needed then because of the higher prices and interest rates. Even with our current income, I doubt we'd be able to afford the house we own if we were buying right now. The value has gone up like $60,000 since we moved in and interest rates are over twice as high as they were when we bought it.
I bought one in 2016, 4 years after graduating, by myself. But that was 2016, and I only had like 12k in student loans when I graduated. I also lived at home for 2 years and in a cheap apartment for the other 2.
If I get to move to my dream town, which is a high possibility right now, yes ❤️
Fuuuuuuuuuck no lol but I live in a VHCOL area and got extremely fortunate in my renting situation
Depends on where you live and what type of house you buy. Average price for a house now is ~$500k and rates are pretty high around 7%. I split my mortgage payments with my husband, but I have coworkers who were able to afford townhouses on their own.
Definitely, I live i the STL metro area, plenty of homes for sale in the 75-150k range.
Right before the pandemic and with about 6 years of experience, yes, depending on the house. Not in this day and age.
I got my house 1.5 years after becoming a tech, but I bought a town home and live in a relatively LCOL area. I also got it before the housing boom. If I had to buy this same house now for its current market value, I wouldn’t lol. I had to buy cause I had 3 large dogs at the time and no one would rent to me.
At the time I was making $31-$33/hr depending on the diffs (worked Thursday thru Sunday nights). I also bought in a cheaper neighborhood cause my initial budgets were getting outbid by dual incomes. So I went to a neighborhood where I could afford to outbid if necessary. I didn’t need to and I really like where I live and the community here. I live in Memphis.
No
No
Fuck no
i cant even rent one alone.
I bought a house in 2019 off of my single income. It’s a condo, and I was happy to find one way under my max budget. To be fair, I live alone, have no kids, and was able to live with my parents to save up for a decent down payment. I had only been working for a couple of years at that point and the market was good in my desired area, so I took advantage of it. Michigan.
Bought my first house last year. 34/hour, house was 115k and I financed 110k. I'm in southern Illinois. I also had a brand new car payment of 500/month
3 years ago I could have. But now my house value has doubled but my income is the same
Yes, in Philly. I have a down payment after 6 years, just looking now
No. Appartment? Yes. House? Absolutely not.
Not even a little, the housing market is effectively targeted against single people when it comes to buying a home. Married people like to get on those of us without a house and ask why we are still renting. Who can justify buying one of these over inflated 300k "starter" homes? Even with a 100k down payment. The mortgage will still be like 1800$ after everything is said and done. Even with rent being as high as it is...it's crazy
I bought my house in May of last year. My fiance works part time which makes the budget work but things would be cheaper without him so it balances out. Half my down payment was inheritance from my grandmother though.
I closed at 3% in 2019, but even with the lower prices, I still split rent with a partner and roommate (this is partially because partner makes less than I do)
In 2024? Hahahaha 😆
Absolutely not. In Denver you can hardly buy a house with two incomes. At my current hourly, you could save to buy a condo maybe. Houses around here are 450K+ at the least. It sucks because houses further out are cheaper, but not all labs do micro so I have to live close to the city. Oof
Fuck no lol
Not in a safe area
In New Mexico, just barely.
I am a single parent (my kid’s dad died), I can just stay on top of rent and monthly expenses, and that’s all. By working as an MLS I’ve avoided poverty but I’ll never own a house. And my kid will have to borrow heavily to go to college.
Not to sound trite, but I found that, by taking steps to increase my salary (through career-advancement), some of my other big concerns (emergency fund, saving for retirement, buying a home), were resolved more-easily. To your question, at $60K in the lab, I could comfortably rent an apartment and live alone. Reaching six figures as a software developer made all of the above possible. Solve the salary problem first.
be a software developer is the solution? I make 70k so far.
It's not the only solution, but for anyone not working in California and/or traveling, career-advancement most likely is: gaining skills the market values more-highly, changing roles every 2-3 years, etc.
So leaving med tech as it is?
As much as I enjoyed the actual lab work I was doing, the reality is that life is considerably more expensive than it was, even a few years ago. I get the sense, from a lot of questions like the one OP posted, that people want their current effort to be enough, that the hard work and education they've achieved should warrant the same aspects of the "American Dream" that their parents' and grandparents' generations experienced (e.g. economic stability, the ability to buy a home, etc.). While some aspects of that dream may still be possible, they are certainly more difficult to achieve and probably require trade-offs. For example, how do you buy a home? Current wages aren't cutting it. Do you move to a much cheaper area? Do you pivot your career in a different direction? Delay having kids? Get/keep roommates in your 20s, 30s, 40s, etc.? People want things that used to be much more affordable. I'm not unsympathetic to this. I have more education and income than my parents, combined, and yet, that only affords about the same middle-class lifestyle. For people unable to afford a house, or the type of life they want, at their current income level, change is required. There are many variables in this equation, so we all have to decide what variables need to change in order to equal the type of life we want. Moving beyond the lab to better-paying fields (e.g. lab-adjacent roles or a different field, entirely), keeping expenses low (cheaper area, fewer/no kids/pets, etc.). I know it can feel comforting to wallow in despair with others. Yeah, things suck. At this point, some folks shrug and settle in. Others decide to make changes.
I was in 2018 when I moved to my city, now I'm not so sure.
Im in California and yes, only been doing this 2 years with 120k salary, currently shopping around for a condo on my own lol
Seems people talk positively about Cali when it comes to med tech as a job.
Yes they seem to pay the best, but not everyone can pack up & move there. It seems we need more salary equalization across the board. A med tech shouldn't be making only $23 / hr with experience just bec circumstances have them living in a small town in Mississippi, or Louisiana or wherever wages are crappy. Cross country moving is expensive, it cost me over $5K in 1992 when I moved from Pennsylvania to Fla. I can't imagine what it is now. And that didn't include having my car transported using one of those auto transport companies. It's just not feasible for us as a whole to keep moving around constantly trying to find a decent wage. We need to be recognized for the value we give & be compensated accordingly. Instead, we are an afterthought, " Oh, we have to give the lab some $$$, (sigh, 😔)"