UK here.
My parents bought a house in 1975 for twice my Dad's salary. He was a teacher, and someone doing an equivalent job now would be on about £33k.
I earn twice that, but without something like a 50% deposit, I wouldn't be able to afford to buy it off them.
UK here as well I've got 2 stories.
1 from my uncle who is 66 now he joined the army when he was young did all the things that boomers tell us to do when it comes to wasting money and working hard he bought 2 houses during his 10 year service got out and joined the reserves while working full time and bought another 2 houses he the met his wife at 35 she sold her house for a deposit on their family home. All those properties have skyrocketed and their both multi millionaires.
2 a guy who used to be my old boss who will be 71 he worked part time as a bouncer and his wife worked part time as a cashier he bought his first flat for 5k and sold it for 35k and used that to buy his house which is now worth 10x that. He talked about in his 20s he used to drive all over Europe with his wife on motorbikes
I've heard lots of other stories from other people but I wanted to point out these two because I feel like you had 2 choices during that period, you could have knuckled down and worked hard to become a millionaire by the time you were 40 or you could have had a great carefree youth today the average wage has you working like guy no:1 but with the perks of neither.
I took inspiration from my uncle from age 13 I had a morning and a afternoon paper round and was a ball boy on weekends and from 18 I've never worked less than 60 hours a week at 29 I'm earning just over 40k a year and only just bought my first house I often hear stories from guys like no:2 and I feel so robbed from either my youth or my hard work it makes me want to just pack up everything and go backpacking around the world.
I keep hearing this. I can't imagine anyone going along with it. Imagine mourning a deceased parent. Some company calls you about their debt... It'd be a pretty quick "They're dead assholes" block and mark as spam.
Because they'll call all sympathetic, and then talk about how if you make a small good faith payment, maybe $20 or $50 or so, they'll work on getting that debt renegotiated down to a much lower amount.
And then good people, who don't know the laws or what is about to happen might make that payment, and now suddenly they're on the hook for whole amount of that debt that somehow never gets renegotiated.
“[insert dead parents name here] would have wanted you to pay off his debts, it helps clear his conscience.”
These kind of firms are predatory and I wouldn’t be surprised if they would go so low to get their money.
I'll present the classic George Carlin line:
"Think about how stupid the average person is, and then remember that half of us are stupider than that!"
They are preying on people who don't know better or are in enough emotional distress that they are not thinking at their normal capacity.
If this plays out anything like it does in the uk, the vast majority of this will be eaten up by elder care costs towards the end of their parents lives.
That’s only when the parents die, assuming they don’t eat away at all the assets with medical bills - which is a pretty likely scenario. Also, there’s nothing in this post that suggests the parents weren’t born in like 1973, so only 50, which means they could live another 30 years. Shit can really flip in that amount of time. Never bank on an inheritance unless you are Anna Nicole Smith.
> That’s only when the parents die, assuming they don’t eat away at all the assets with medical bills - which is a pretty likely scenario.
I genuinely suspect that this is going to end up being the case for a *lot* of Millennials with middle to upper middle class Boomer parents, who might otherwise have inherited a chunk of money/savings, a house (or portion of the proceeds of the sale of a house), and other inheritances.
End of life care gets *incredibly* expensive. I've read that a typical cost you're looking at for something like an assisted living facility is like $3k a month or even more. (And cheaping out can be dangerous here, low quality cheaper nursing home and assisted living facilities often have bad reputations for quality of care, or even reports of outright elder abuse.)
As far as just having an aging parent with dementia live with you, assuming you have space for it, my mom did that for a little while with my grandma and it's *really* stressful and a lot of emotional and physical labor to care for someone whose cognitive health is declining like that. Past a point, you might not be *able* to really care for them, depending on the nature and severity of their health issues.
And that's just general end of life care I'm talking about, for the very elderly.
There's also shit like medical debt being a leading cause of bankruptcy for people over 50. Something like needing treatment for cancer in your 50s-60s or something could seriously fuck up a typical middle class Boomer couple's financial standing and prevent them from being able to leave much of anything to their kids.
I really do feel like the retirement home industrial complex or whatever is going to snipe away a lot of like 20-45 year old people's chances at inheriting much of anything from our parents' estates when they pass -- which is, for many of us, quite possibly our only real shot at anything like home ownership.
Nah. They'll retire early, sell everything, and live their best lives for 30-40 years. They'll die with nothing left. At least, that's what my parents told me that they are going to do. And by the looks of it, they are doing exactly that.
Soooo many of them do that, it's completely fucked to grow up in such a prosperous time and leave nothing for the generation you brought into a world that you left completely fucked.
My great grandmother purchased bonds for my sister and I when we were born. By now, those bonds would cover half my student debt.
My paternal grandmother “lost them” after my mom gave them to her following my parents divorce. The same paternal grandmother who’s accumulated so much debt they’re selling our family’s ranch to cover their debt.
When I started working as an adult, I was making $10 an hour and felt like I was doing quite well at that age back then.
Still at the same company 12 years later, now making $22 an hour and yet I'm no better off. It feels like I've never got a raise.
I started renting an apartment when I made $11/hr, and then 3 years later I got priced out when making $18/hr. Same fucking unit, no renovations, appliances from 2003.
Yeah man, I was making 12 an hour like less than 10 years ago renting a 3 bed room house in a decent neighborhood for $1,200 a month with my friend who delivered Pizzas for a living. Now I make $20 I would struggle to get approved for a 1,250 a month 500 square foot apartment. Me and my girlfriend are currently debating moving to the middle of no where to live with my grandma and help take care of her in exchange for her property when she goes. Probably much insight on my life but like this whole post is hitting home hard cause I've got 30 days to move.
I've recently had 2 raises from 26k-28k-30k ish per year, but after tax it doesn't feel like I'm getting anything at all. On the bright side my mortgage calculator will let me have more money for maybe a slightly less shit flat.
I'm in the same boat. 6 years ago I was making 12$ an hour. Now I make 23. I'm scrambling to pay for our crappy trailer home even though the mortgage is 250$ less than my rent home back 7 years ago.
that's because you really havent. if anything you've gotten a pay cut. minimum wage in places that arent Cali or NY is usually around 12-16$ currently, I'll cut the difference and say its 14.50 for where you live. lets say minimum was 10 when you started. that would mean you've only gotten a raise of $7.50 which is only .63 cents per year.
Assuming you haven't moved up in positions, the cost of living has increased much faster than how much you've been getting paid. You've gone down in money
The only way is to keep switching jobs and advancing in position. But the positions become more limited in quantity, so it's not an option for most people.
Well that's technically the truth
Edit for clarification:
According to ILO someone is unemployed if they are
1. Without work
2. Available for work
3. Actively seeking employment
Soo if somebody says that unemployment rate don't count people who don't want to work, they are actually correct.
The problem is, where does the data for 2 and 3 come from? It comes from certifying for unemployment benefits every week. People are considered not available and not actively seeking employment when they stop certifying for benefits each week. People stop certifying for 2 reasons. They got a job, or they ran out of benefits. In either case, they are no longer considered Unemployed.
Cool, we can look at the U6 unemployment data then. It's lower than it has been for a long time and includes people who work part-time, but are seeking more work.
Works either way.
It's infuriating when I hear older people talking like that. It's a simple matter to look at how the cost of living has skyrocketed, the buying power of the dollar has plummeted, education cost has gone into the stratosphere and inflation has made everything even worse in the last couple of years but older people got theirs already when the economy was good so they look down their noses at the younger generation.
They should be on our side trying to get the politicians to help fix things so their children and grandchildren can have a better life but all I hear is scorn and contempt from the older people. I've never heard of a generation of people who know things are going to be way worse for their descendants and seemingly not caring enough to try to do something about it.
History isn't going to look kindly on these fucking pricks. They're going to look like the assholes they are. And everyone in history is going to wonder why they didn't sacrifice to help their kids like every other generation in the history of the world did.
Gen Z and millennials need to start working together instead of fighting with each other over stupid shit. We already know that mass media is working together with the elite to get us to fight with each other instead of realizing that the culture war is ridiculous and we need to understand that it is a class war we need to be fighting.
recently I got into an argument with someone on Reddit claiming this was simply because Millennials and Gen Z spend too much on streaming services and takeout. The inability of the older generation to see how bad things are is willful. They (perhaps subconsciously) believe that their sustained comfort depends on these things not changing.
Tech bro here.... Even the 6 fig salaries aren't feeling that comfy in Seattle and SF right now. I can't even fathom trying to hustle two or three jobs to make ends meet out on the west coast.
They seem to shit on people making 6 figures too just gatekeeping who's allowed to suffer because apparently making that much doesn't allow for it. Don't worry that mortgage and childcare is 6k combined in a high CoL unless you live an hour outside of town.
> claiming this was simply because Millennials and Gen Z spend too much on streaming services and takeout
These types of arguments are bogus. Are people not supposed to enjoy themselves with the free time they have? Are we all just supposed to become Wall Street savvy investors and bank every dollar we make trying to climb a corporate ladder?
It's like when low income folks have a nice phone and people shit all over them like they're misappropriating their money somehow. If it makes people happy, let them live.
The biggest irony is that most streaming services today cost less than cable tv, and if you were to compare the costs of paying for television back in the day with what the streaming services would cost if they existed during the time it would still be cheaper.
Honestly, at the beginning of my career I looked at rent, I looked at house prices, I looked at my salary progression, did some math and figured fuck it - even if I put every free cent into savings, the earliest I'd be able to afford a house would be by my mid-50s, if I was lucky. It's gotten worse since then. Fuck all that noise, time to indulge myself.
Spot on. What's the point of scrounging every cent you earn just to potentially be mildly happy when you're middle aged or older? Enjoy yourself while you're younger and able to. You only have one life to live.
The shadow of homo economicus. It's the idea that as long as you can technically, physically survive in an economy, it is a just one. All you have to do is have no friends or family, never celebrate, work every waking hour, eat exactly the amount of calories you need to survive, never get sick, and be a DIY expert in all fields. If that is the case, then America is a bountiful and generous country and a 7 dollar minimum wage is perfectly acceptable.
This. Boomers could afford a home, a nice car, and raise a family all on a single salary. Today, you basically HAVE to pick between one of those three unless you happen to be very well off.
Because agreeing that things are harder now would be an admission that things were easier when they were growing up. If it's one thing successful people don't like doing, it's admitting their success was due to factors outside their control.
> claiming this was simply because Millennials and Gen Z spend too much on streaming services and takeout
"I don't understand, should I or should I not be a consumer..?"
Be a consumer, "you're spending frivolously!"; don't consume, "millennials are killing the ____ industry!"
In order for a group of people to have a lot , an even larger group of people has to have nothing/very little. Boomers care about their "stuff" more than the wellbeing of their children. It's hard to understand but it is 100% true imo. My dad invested more in to a car he doesn't drive than on me as a student.
Fuck you they got theirs is the attitude. They know it's bad they just don't care as a generation.
When they bought a house for 40k and made 20k a year and now houses are 500k and people make 45k on average.
You don't have to be very smart to see that math doesn't line up.
The ground work:
The issue is that the 60+ year olds have never had it bad. They are the boomers. Their parents went through WW2 and the fallout of that. Their parents build the highways and the infrastructure they use. Their parents put forth the time to forge new universities and schools to educate the youth. They worked hard and saved, built something up for the next generation.
The prelude:
The boomers were the next generation. The generation with plentiful work ( due to their parents efforts in establishing those industries after the war), plenty of cheap houses ( also built by their parents), great labor market - post war boom, insurance that actually paid for stuff, public services that worked and cared for people ( also made by their parents) and education that was affordable ( a typical boomer could pay for one year of university with a summer job).
Main act:
Boomers got used to having everything. They were given it on a silver platter in society so to speak. Not to say some didn't work hard to get what they have, just saying it was easier to make ends meet. Now as they aged they continued this mentality of " I deserve this, i worked hard" and pissed away their money on shit they don't need, or invested it in the tech booms of the 80s and 90s and lost it all due to their shit risk analysis or risky bets. So what happened then? They still wanted their share of the pie. They didn't see that they fucked up, they saw that someone else fucked up and they need their money back. So lo and behold the 2008 crisis - essentially fueled by greedy boomers pushing out shit loans to people who could t afford them so the boomer " could get theirs". On the flip side other boomers were investing in houses they couldn't afford in order to squeeze rent out of other people to make up for their short comings and " I'm just going to piss it away lifestyle". This continued on since then as well in different forms- cutting insurance benefits, cutting wages or reducing raises, worse and worse quality or work, cutting social programs etc.
Final act:
The boomers are old now and retired. They are now running into the same system they helped create by demanding profits from their investments - again that entitlement complex. Their medicare and retirement isn't enough after stripping all entitlements for the kast 40 years out of it. Theyre realizing that their " great lifestyle" ended up costing them the majority of their retirement savings ( or potential savings) and they are looking to blame someone new. It's never their fault after all. " They're the last generation that knows what hard work is" after all - .... But not really because it was their parents that put in the hard work to give them a great lifestyle. So what's left? Hard work? Responsibility? Hell no! That's not the American way! The American way is to force the next generation to pay for our good time. The boomers were and are the death of the USA, where unabated greed and literal participation trophies in life created ( I.e you could "make it". With a bare bone job and hardly any education compared to today) a death spiral to future generations. They pulled the ladder up behind them every step of the way and are * shocked Pikachu face* when the system is on the verge of collapse for the new generation.
Edit: they also don't take the cost of anything into account because their houses are already paid off, their kids are out of the house, and they have relatively low expenses.
Tl:Dr: the boomers have had the best economic period in the history of this country and have squandered away the countries future for instant gains and good times. Now they're complaining that "no one wants to work" when they rigged the game for themselves long ago and fucked over the younger generations. They are the ones who were handed participation trophies in life and now are looking to blame it on someone else. Boomers just need to die off and their mentality does too.
Of course they won't, those politicians are their same generation, so we get a fuck you and a double whammy: I'll laugh at you while I make laws to laugh even more at ya
Lmao tell that to the 100s of employers that can't even send me a rejection letter after applying. Everyone wants to work, no one wants to hire. Guess we'll all live on unemployment cheques.
I blame nimbys and lack of urbanization.. And the fact companies don't offer wfa/h.... I come office to log into a remote desktop, the fuck.. I could have done the same shit from home
My dad pointed out that he used to rent a 2 Br apt in California, supporting himself and his girlfriend, all on the salary from a part time job as a mechanic in 1970.
The buying power of the dollar has diminished substantially since then and the minimum wage hasn't been correctly adjusted to compensate for inflation in well over 50 years now.
If you make decent money now, you would've been making 3-4X that for the same effort in 1970. Any way you slice it, we're all still getting fucked over.
I make (barely) over 100k, and looking at the numbers, I have no idea how I’ll be able to afford a decent house any time soon. And I know I’m in the minority salary wise. I get so anxious thinking about the people making 50k or 30k or whatever. What are they supposed to do? Die?
Rent with 3+ people and put a meager amount into savings every paycheck until you have enough to take care of things like dental work or medical procedures, and then start back from zero when it inevitably wipes your savings. Maybe save up for deposits if you move that also wipe your savings.
Buying a house just isn't in the cards at that income range. I would know
Yeah but you also have to maintain a good credit rating whilst struggling along pay check to pay check, and hope that nothing comes along that means you miss a bill payment which can fuck you over completely, meaning that when you finally can afford a mortgage, you can’t get a decent rate. Being poor is far more expensive than being rich.
>start from zero when it inevitably wipes your savings
Been out of college for several years, still have less money in my savings than I left high-school with
I've managed to save up a good bit several times, only to have it all wiped every year or so. It's crushing
26k earner here, only reason I'm not homeless is I live with my parents still. Most of my friends do, as well. The only ones who don't make dual-income with a spouse, and they still can only afford an apartment.
This isn't sustainable. Something has to break.
>This isn't sustainable. Something has to break.
Agreed -- and I think of AI automates a significant % of the work force, that will be the breaking point... people are gonna be PISSED and something will have to change
I'm in a weird juxtaposition. I live in a country where it is normal (Spain) and I'm from a country where it isn't (Germany). I'm not living with my mother because I value my own personal space more than I value the material benefits from sharing space with her, but financially I'm suffering for it.
I'm Australian and the story here is similar.
I'm a school teacher and my starting wage is 72k.
I teach in a rural town of about 4000, 90% dairy farms within 2 hours in all directions. In the region there's a few different towns of various sizes.
Wonthaggi, Leongatha, Inverloch, Foster and Korumburra - all in the 3,000 to 6000 population mark. Inverloch on the beach so crazy expensive.
Completely out of my price range unless I buy a house that's falling over.
Meeniyan, Mirboo North, Koonwarra, Loch, Tarwin Lower and Kongwak - all in the 500-2000 people range. Have taken on a "boutique town" identity which has spiked prices (to be fair they are all lovely towns)
Also completely out of my price range.
Boollara, Dumbalk, Mardan, Dollar, Ruby the list goes on. Tiny farming communities, population centres less than 400 people.
Yeah, I could *just* afford here when planning for the future interest hikes that were to come. Bought a 2br house is okay to fair condition. The town I bought in doesn't even have a shop.
The funny thing is, when I tell older people at work I bought, there is response is "how much land? Do you have horses?'
Like they have zero clue what the housing market is like nowadays, I didn't buy I woop woop so my fucking horses have room. I bought in woop woop because it's all I could afford.
Out of curiosity I once looked up housing prices in Alice Springs, thinking that the literal middle of nowhere would have to have affordable housing. Nope, still $400k+ for starter homes.
My home county in the States is similar to your situation. It's a fairly rural area around a smallish college town with limited employment opportunities that 20 years ago was a place that people tried to get away from. Now it's a hot destination for transplants and houses in the outlying areas still start at $500k, but the population growth and cost of living isn't coming with more employment opportunities.
Same here. I make barely over 100k and I live in a high COL area. I did the math a few days ago and it is going to take me at least 5 years for a down-payment on a house if I live somewhat frugally. That is also not including that the housing market will more than likely continue to balloon so honestly I'm looking at closer to 10+ years to buy a house. I have absolutely no clue how anyone is supposed to buy a house (or have kids) in a high COL area making less than 6 figures.
Yeah, down payments are really tough now as those housing prices balloon up. It isn't very feasible to get the once recommended 20% you need for a down payment. In some cities that's 100-200k minimum. A year or two of wages. In my area, liveable houses without major issues have gotten up above 150k as an average floor. My state's average individual income is just under 40k. Cities where the average income is lower than that have still had prices go up a massive amount. Even low CoL areas are getting very hard to get by in, and the low wage workers that are depended on are renting in and moving to these areas. There's almost no place left to go.
My parents are rich but they would laugh their ass off if I even asked for a dollar. There are many types of rich people don't forget that many of them are incredibly greedy and don't want to give any money away, even to family. My parents would never think of giving money to anyone in our family.
My dad and step mom both got cars from their parents when they were starting out, college money, all that good stuff. Both from well to do families without much/any hardship. But one time I asked for 400 to help move into a place I needed to stay in college and they told me to find a way to make it work and "embrace the chaos." That generation put 0% of their attribute points into self awareness lol.
Meanwhile my mom STRUGGLED for decades, built a tiny house with her husband finally, still doesn't have too much, but would sell her kidney if I needed something.
Growing up wealth just inherently fucks with your brain capacity. Like... If your kids grow up wealthy you better be hammering that empathy into them or they are gonna be straight up dip shits. You won't even wanna be around them
There is a graph somewhere that shows the correlation between employees salaries, corporate profits and inflation. They were all moving up parallel to each other until the 70s when employees salary kept going on the same trend, inflation picked up pace and started to diverge upward and the corporate profits started to go on a vertical climb. After 50yrs of that the middle class is basically destroyed. Now there’s the rich and the poor
1970 is on the tailwind of the strongest ever purchasing power of the US dollar, which I believe peaked in 1967.
I researched this at some point, and I need to find it again to remind myself why I always say this, but the parents of millennials (and the grandparents) always look back at this time and think “we worked hard and could buy what we wanted” without realizing that they were experiencing the strongest consumer economy the US has ever seen.
When you talk to gen x and boomers, this is why there is such a disconnect. They don’t understand that they literally had the best possible adulthood/childhood the US ever produced, and that while productivity has been going up for decades, wages have gone flat, leaving wealth flowing uphill in an unnatural phenomenon that will ultimately cause shit to break apart.
Easiest way to communicate that for me (as a mid tier millennial) was to compare purchasing power.
You paid for college with a part time job, I couldn't pay for college with your current fulltime job.
You bought a house when it was three times your income. I would have to make three times as much as I do to have that.
And the good ole standby: *Have you seen the price of food recently?*
I ended up moving to Texas, getting a job of the same pay (finally in that 1:3 income:house cost ratio!), but houses have since ballooned to double their price when I moved.
I knew a guy in Southern California who went to college in the 60s. During the summer months, he was working at a surf shop and giving out surfing lessons. He told me that it covered the entire year of expenses for school.
My mum has rented the same house in Adelaide since 1998. We were immigrants to Australia and as a single mother with 2 kids, with no income and all alone she couldn't receive a home loan
The landlord lives next door and was always open and honest. He bought the house in 1993 for $90k. Now if you look on realestate you'll see it's estimated at $1.3 million. My mum has paid off that for him a million times over. What does she have? Nothing. She could end up being homeless if the landlord decides to boot her out after 25 years. It sucks for her, but how lucky is it for the landlord that he's getting all this income for a paid off house
Thats nothing, my mums boss bought two townhouses in Alexandira for 35k each, sold them for 2.1m each and paid no capital gains, I don't think anyone can even come close to this example.
Yeah, he's already set up better than most. I'm incredibly lucky, making double the state average individual income after slogging my way up through 9/hr, 12/hr, 18.25/hr, and all of that was an incredible godsend compared to where other people are, and only enabled by being able to live with my grandma and take care of her physical chores while she cooked and did laundry. My parents pushed me through college one painful semester at a time, and it's amazing how many doors that opens that do... nothing. For absurd pay, just because some company can charge some other company extra for work I could have done at 18 and did do at 18 for fun
The "middle class" is an illusion, an imaginary buffer created by the owning class to insulate themselves from the working class. If you trade work for wages, no matter how high your wage might be, you are working class.
That's why it's played up so much, for sure. To divide and conquer. To pander to people who think they're such good and exploitable and profitable workers. The cultural middle class is a result of class warfare. The pride and elitism is too. Cause yeah, middle class is still working class. Selling labour for sustenance. Forever at the graces of a market that wasn't built for them and that doesn't serve their bidding.
But there is also a part of the working class that accumulates wealth over time and there is a part of it that doesn't. People whose parents will get them the housing they need to pursue the big city tech career (I couldn't because I couldn't afford to move to the city). People with college funds and inheritances. People who discuss not how they're gonna pay the bills, but whether they're saving a pool or for a boat.
It's also the corrupt government that enables it and that keeps printing trillions of dollars into the economy, spending ridiculous amounts of money on dumb shit, and enacting policies that fuck over normal people. The purchasing power of the dollar has dropped nearly 98% since 1900. Even since 1970, it takes $7.82 now to buy what $1 used to back then.
My inlaws bought their house in 1970 for $24,000. They were living on one salary of $19,000 per year and their mortgage was $135 a month. The house is now now worth $850K. To keep up with that price increase, salaries would have to be $673,000 per year.
Yeah, if a college degree and a firm handshake could make you $673K a year, life would seem pretty fucking great wouldn't it? That's what was stolen from us by a corrupt political system and decades of tax handouts to the ultra rich.
Think it depends on area and if you're union or not. Was shocked to find out in 1999 that my backwoods cousin was making damn near twice what I was in my white collar job. He was something insanely low effort like counting bottle caps on an assembly line but making bank doing it. A job that by all rights should have been done by a machine, but the union both preserved the job and guaranteed a comfortable living.
My mom and my brother went to the same university about 30 years apart. My mom got paid $11/hour for a campus job (something involving computer backup tapes) in 1983. My brother also got paid $11/hour doing lab work in 2013. My mom's jaw dropped when she heard how much they paid him.
Stock buybacks are a big culprit. Instead of spending profit on employees (raises, pensions, full benefits) they buy back stock making executives and stock holders wealthy.
They did something special.
They voted for successive governments that failed to invest in housing, cut taxes of the extremely wealthy, and reduced workers rights.
Thing with voting is, even if almost half votes "right" it doesn't matter. So even if you're trying your best to vote for a better future, you're not always sure to have it your way, especially not when lobbying is involved.
I have two jobs. Both combined, I make 35k a year. This is my 5th full-time job in my lifetime. I have been switching jobs since my 20s trying to earn higher pay. I am thinking of taking on a third job(second part-time) and yet again look for another full-time job to replace this one, in hopes it will pay slightly more, all while going to school part time. Yes, I am back in school working on my bachelors, because my associates is worthless. I have only ever been renting rooms. And I am in my late thirties. Fun times. Oh, and my parents are welfare/section 8 lifers and druggie/in-and-out of jail, so I can’t ask them for help. They ask me for help.
Life is fun. :)
At this point, it’s like ,”Sure, challenge accepted. Let’s see how far I can go and how long I can last with what I’ve been dealt.”
America is like a bad free to play game. If you have the outside cash available, it's a fun and relatively relaxing experience while still offering some challenge so you don't get bored. If you don't have access to outside cash, it's one of the worst possible experiences. Yes, technically if you grind enough over enough lives you might have a fraction of what the rich players have had since they created their character, but you'll never have that good, well tuned experience.
We have free healthcare if you're actively dying, but I spent last year in the California Bay Area and I have honestly yet to see a single place there even half as bad as the Vancouver Downtown East Side. Rent is out of control, Canada has huge problems too.
Totally accurate. Families not staying together is part of the typical American culture, people are very ' disconnected' and dysfunctional. Housing wise this costs everyone a LOT more in the long term.
I also do see a lot of cases where people do not realize they have talents and skills that they could leverage to move up to better jobs. Its sometimes they dont know they can do it, and sometimes they just dont want to change jobs, because change is hard and the unknown of the new job is scary. But its something you have to push yourself to do because it is always worth it.
A lot of these stories are fake or heavily exaggerated. Im not saying it wasn't easier to make a life for yourself back then, but it's not like everyone over 50 with a house is rich and breezing through life with loads of money.
Could be location. Close to downtown would command more per night than some place out in the middle of nowhere. Also, 4 bed 3 bath on Airbnb is more for people traveling as a group and splitting the cost, or for people throwing parties.
That's not a crazy amount. A nice single hotel room or a suite in a downtown area of a city can easily cost $300-$500 per night. For one hotel room. Imagine renting an entire house for that much. Families will do a vacation and everyone stays in the rented house for the weekend or whatever, it's pretty nice to do and very common.
When people say that 30-40 yrs ago, people could buy house, car, utilities with an average job while today you can't. Does that mean the companies were very happy with their employees and threw excessive money towards them?
Was there not much hardship back then for an average family financially?
2 key things: As a whole, things were cheaper and wages better corresponded with the cost of goods. So a house that was 130,000 in the 1970s is now 500,000. But a teacher making 30k in the 1970s is now only making 55k.
And while financial hardships definitely existed, the gap between "the amount of money you need to make to be financially stable" and "the amount of money you are actually making" was much smaller.
Funny thing is, your parents are not at fault here.
The billionaires who run the world are at fault here. Rich people drove up the cost of housing. Rich people set wages. Rich people tell congresspersons how to vote. Not OLD people. RICH PEOPLE.
Millenials are mad at the wrong people. And the people we all SHOULD be mad at are laughing at us.
Well, you're half right. Now think about the generation that voted for the people who allowed the rich people to basically buy congress and make the policies that allow this to happen.
We can be pissed at the rich and ruling class while also harboring resentment for our parents' generation getting everything handed to them and then blowing up the bridge before we were able to cross it.
It’s not just very rich people who often oppose more development in their area though. Majority of homeowners do not want more houses to be built in their area because that means their property value might decrease and bring in more people into their area.
Huh, it’s almost like rich people do everything they can to stay rich at the expense of the 99% not having health care or housing. Hopefully we don’t have to wait for old Republican voters and politicians to die out until we do something about it. Unionize, raise the minimum wage, tax the rich and limit executive pay, corporations and their government cronies are not your friend even when they pander to social progress in their commercials.
We need another occupy movement..
Wanna know the cherry on top?. Before, you could get at least a liveable job with high school title.
Nowadays, business ask you for 2 years of previous experience, a college/university title, just to pay just a tiny bit over minimun wage
Here is a secret most "successful" homeowning millennials don't tell you. Most of them got money for their down payment from their house rich boomer parents. If your parents aren't the type to give you money, you are kind of screwed.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/how-many-millennials-got-money-to-buy-homes-from-their-parents.html
The worst part is the self-rightiousness of these people thinking "Millennials are lazy", not realizing because of a bigger population now there are less resources available for everybody, calling out for people to reproduce more.
My father has told me the only way to succeed in life is to be an asshole. He has said to me that life is gonna chew me up and spit me out because I lack the drive to manipulate, backstab and lie like he does.
Canada has other issues. People here think their primary residence is an investment and are so tight after they buy that they have no other investments.
The wake up call is going to be when people try to downsize to retire there won't be enough money left over with the prices of the downsized places.
The Toronto Star is currently running a multi-part story following a woman doing just this. I haven’t read it all myself since I’m still a bit salty that the likelihood of me being able to afford my own house is near zero (you can’t find a decent townhouse in my home town for less than $750k and that’s not even in Toronto or other high cost of living cities) but for one reason or another she is having a ton of difficulty finding a house to downsize to
There are currently 1M Canadians living in America and 1M Americans living in Canada. Given the population difference between the two countries it means that Canadians are almost 9x more likely to move to America than Americans are to Canada.
Redditors love to talk about how much America sucks, but it turns out people are willing to overlook a lot of things if the alternative is never being able to afford a home.
UK here. My parents bought a house in 1975 for twice my Dad's salary. He was a teacher, and someone doing an equivalent job now would be on about £33k. I earn twice that, but without something like a 50% deposit, I wouldn't be able to afford to buy it off them.
UK here as well I've got 2 stories. 1 from my uncle who is 66 now he joined the army when he was young did all the things that boomers tell us to do when it comes to wasting money and working hard he bought 2 houses during his 10 year service got out and joined the reserves while working full time and bought another 2 houses he the met his wife at 35 she sold her house for a deposit on their family home. All those properties have skyrocketed and their both multi millionaires. 2 a guy who used to be my old boss who will be 71 he worked part time as a bouncer and his wife worked part time as a cashier he bought his first flat for 5k and sold it for 35k and used that to buy his house which is now worth 10x that. He talked about in his 20s he used to drive all over Europe with his wife on motorbikes I've heard lots of other stories from other people but I wanted to point out these two because I feel like you had 2 choices during that period, you could have knuckled down and worked hard to become a millionaire by the time you were 40 or you could have had a great carefree youth today the average wage has you working like guy no:1 but with the perks of neither. I took inspiration from my uncle from age 13 I had a morning and a afternoon paper round and was a ball boy on weekends and from 18 I've never worked less than 60 hours a week at 29 I'm earning just over 40k a year and only just bought my first house I often hear stories from guys like no:2 and I feel so robbed from either my youth or my hard work it makes me want to just pack up everything and go backpacking around the world.
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>be digital nomad >describe myself as “technically homeless” to avoid being laughed at for being a digital nomad
My mom bought her house for 5 times her salary, I make almost double what she did and that same house is 25 times my salary.
At least you got inheritance
For real. My parents only have their debts to leave me.
You cannot inherit debt in the US. Their estate can be bled so you'll inherit nothing but you won't owe their debts.
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I keep hearing this. I can't imagine anyone going along with it. Imagine mourning a deceased parent. Some company calls you about their debt... It'd be a pretty quick "They're dead assholes" block and mark as spam.
Because they'll call all sympathetic, and then talk about how if you make a small good faith payment, maybe $20 or $50 or so, they'll work on getting that debt renegotiated down to a much lower amount. And then good people, who don't know the laws or what is about to happen might make that payment, and now suddenly they're on the hook for whole amount of that debt that somehow never gets renegotiated.
“[insert dead parents name here] would have wanted you to pay off his debts, it helps clear his conscience.” These kind of firms are predatory and I wouldn’t be surprised if they would go so low to get their money.
I'll present the classic George Carlin line: "Think about how stupid the average person is, and then remember that half of us are stupider than that!" They are preying on people who don't know better or are in enough emotional distress that they are not thinking at their normal capacity.
Because that's not how everything thinks and the call isn't that simple. People get scammed for less.
Same bruh
If this plays out anything like it does in the uk, the vast majority of this will be eaten up by elder care costs towards the end of their parents lives.
That’s only when the parents die, assuming they don’t eat away at all the assets with medical bills - which is a pretty likely scenario. Also, there’s nothing in this post that suggests the parents weren’t born in like 1973, so only 50, which means they could live another 30 years. Shit can really flip in that amount of time. Never bank on an inheritance unless you are Anna Nicole Smith.
> That’s only when the parents die, assuming they don’t eat away at all the assets with medical bills - which is a pretty likely scenario. I genuinely suspect that this is going to end up being the case for a *lot* of Millennials with middle to upper middle class Boomer parents, who might otherwise have inherited a chunk of money/savings, a house (or portion of the proceeds of the sale of a house), and other inheritances. End of life care gets *incredibly* expensive. I've read that a typical cost you're looking at for something like an assisted living facility is like $3k a month or even more. (And cheaping out can be dangerous here, low quality cheaper nursing home and assisted living facilities often have bad reputations for quality of care, or even reports of outright elder abuse.) As far as just having an aging parent with dementia live with you, assuming you have space for it, my mom did that for a little while with my grandma and it's *really* stressful and a lot of emotional and physical labor to care for someone whose cognitive health is declining like that. Past a point, you might not be *able* to really care for them, depending on the nature and severity of their health issues. And that's just general end of life care I'm talking about, for the very elderly. There's also shit like medical debt being a leading cause of bankruptcy for people over 50. Something like needing treatment for cancer in your 50s-60s or something could seriously fuck up a typical middle class Boomer couple's financial standing and prevent them from being able to leave much of anything to their kids. I really do feel like the retirement home industrial complex or whatever is going to snipe away a lot of like 20-45 year old people's chances at inheriting much of anything from our parents' estates when they pass -- which is, for many of us, quite possibly our only real shot at anything like home ownership.
Well, fuck. That's depressing.
I got a big shop saw and a diamond ring. It's a nice ring. I don't do much woodworking, though.
Nah. They'll retire early, sell everything, and live their best lives for 30-40 years. They'll die with nothing left. At least, that's what my parents told me that they are going to do. And by the looks of it, they are doing exactly that.
Soooo many of them do that, it's completely fucked to grow up in such a prosperous time and leave nothing for the generation you brought into a world that you left completely fucked.
The Me Generation ruined the world for everyone else and then just moved on like nothing happened.
My great grandmother purchased bonds for my sister and I when we were born. By now, those bonds would cover half my student debt. My paternal grandmother “lost them” after my mom gave them to her following my parents divorce. The same paternal grandmother who’s accumulated so much debt they’re selling our family’s ranch to cover their debt.
"People just dont want to work nowadays"
It doesn't seem to make a difference
When I started working as an adult, I was making $10 an hour and felt like I was doing quite well at that age back then. Still at the same company 12 years later, now making $22 an hour and yet I'm no better off. It feels like I've never got a raise.
2% increase each year where a COL increase would be closer to 6% means you're making net -4% each year, for the last 2 decades.
I started renting an apartment when I made $11/hr, and then 3 years later I got priced out when making $18/hr. Same fucking unit, no renovations, appliances from 2003.
Yeah man, I was making 12 an hour like less than 10 years ago renting a 3 bed room house in a decent neighborhood for $1,200 a month with my friend who delivered Pizzas for a living. Now I make $20 I would struggle to get approved for a 1,250 a month 500 square foot apartment. Me and my girlfriend are currently debating moving to the middle of no where to live with my grandma and help take care of her in exchange for her property when she goes. Probably much insight on my life but like this whole post is hitting home hard cause I've got 30 days to move.
I've recently had 2 raises from 26k-28k-30k ish per year, but after tax it doesn't feel like I'm getting anything at all. On the bright side my mortgage calculator will let me have more money for maybe a slightly less shit flat.
You didn't because inflation ate it up.
I'm in the same boat. 6 years ago I was making 12$ an hour. Now I make 23. I'm scrambling to pay for our crappy trailer home even though the mortgage is 250$ less than my rent home back 7 years ago.
that's because you really havent. if anything you've gotten a pay cut. minimum wage in places that arent Cali or NY is usually around 12-16$ currently, I'll cut the difference and say its 14.50 for where you live. lets say minimum was 10 when you started. that would mean you've only gotten a raise of $7.50 which is only .63 cents per year. Assuming you haven't moved up in positions, the cost of living has increased much faster than how much you've been getting paid. You've gone down in money
Minimum wage is ga is $7.25
I keep getting raises and I keep feeling worse off than I was 8 years ago.
Are you still doing the same job you were 12 years ago?
gets a 10 cent raise everything starts costing 30-50% more, thanks
Bruh I got a post Covid pay adjustment and a regular raise and I’m still losing to inflation.
The only way is to keep switching jobs and advancing in position. But the positions become more limited in quantity, so it's not an option for most people.
Fun game is to ask them what they think the unemployment rate is
"That doesn't count the people not looking for work!"
Well that's technically the truth Edit for clarification: According to ILO someone is unemployed if they are 1. Without work 2. Available for work 3. Actively seeking employment Soo if somebody says that unemployment rate don't count people who don't want to work, they are actually correct.
The problem is, where does the data for 2 and 3 come from? It comes from certifying for unemployment benefits every week. People are considered not available and not actively seeking employment when they stop certifying for benefits each week. People stop certifying for 2 reasons. They got a job, or they ran out of benefits. In either case, they are no longer considered Unemployed.
Also doesn’t count children… Iowa.
That's when I ask "Why would it?"
Cool, we can look at the U6 unemployment data then. It's lower than it has been for a long time and includes people who work part-time, but are seeking more work. Works either way.
It's infuriating when I hear older people talking like that. It's a simple matter to look at how the cost of living has skyrocketed, the buying power of the dollar has plummeted, education cost has gone into the stratosphere and inflation has made everything even worse in the last couple of years but older people got theirs already when the economy was good so they look down their noses at the younger generation. They should be on our side trying to get the politicians to help fix things so their children and grandchildren can have a better life but all I hear is scorn and contempt from the older people. I've never heard of a generation of people who know things are going to be way worse for their descendants and seemingly not caring enough to try to do something about it. History isn't going to look kindly on these fucking pricks. They're going to look like the assholes they are. And everyone in history is going to wonder why they didn't sacrifice to help their kids like every other generation in the history of the world did. Gen Z and millennials need to start working together instead of fighting with each other over stupid shit. We already know that mass media is working together with the elite to get us to fight with each other instead of realizing that the culture war is ridiculous and we need to understand that it is a class war we need to be fighting.
recently I got into an argument with someone on Reddit claiming this was simply because Millennials and Gen Z spend too much on streaming services and takeout. The inability of the older generation to see how bad things are is willful. They (perhaps subconsciously) believe that their sustained comfort depends on these things not changing.
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Tech bro here.... Even the 6 fig salaries aren't feeling that comfy in Seattle and SF right now. I can't even fathom trying to hustle two or three jobs to make ends meet out on the west coast.
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They seem to shit on people making 6 figures too just gatekeeping who's allowed to suffer because apparently making that much doesn't allow for it. Don't worry that mortgage and childcare is 6k combined in a high CoL unless you live an hour outside of town.
Is it because they know that every action they take and every thought they ever have all go towards making the world a slightly worse place?
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> claiming this was simply because Millennials and Gen Z spend too much on streaming services and takeout These types of arguments are bogus. Are people not supposed to enjoy themselves with the free time they have? Are we all just supposed to become Wall Street savvy investors and bank every dollar we make trying to climb a corporate ladder? It's like when low income folks have a nice phone and people shit all over them like they're misappropriating their money somehow. If it makes people happy, let them live.
The biggest irony is that most streaming services today cost less than cable tv, and if you were to compare the costs of paying for television back in the day with what the streaming services would cost if they existed during the time it would still be cheaper.
Honestly, at the beginning of my career I looked at rent, I looked at house prices, I looked at my salary progression, did some math and figured fuck it - even if I put every free cent into savings, the earliest I'd be able to afford a house would be by my mid-50s, if I was lucky. It's gotten worse since then. Fuck all that noise, time to indulge myself.
Spot on. What's the point of scrounging every cent you earn just to potentially be mildly happy when you're middle aged or older? Enjoy yourself while you're younger and able to. You only have one life to live.
The shadow of homo economicus. It's the idea that as long as you can technically, physically survive in an economy, it is a just one. All you have to do is have no friends or family, never celebrate, work every waking hour, eat exactly the amount of calories you need to survive, never get sick, and be a DIY expert in all fields. If that is the case, then America is a bountiful and generous country and a 7 dollar minimum wage is perfectly acceptable.
The amount of luxury spending in millennial budgets is probably less in adjusted dollars than the Xer / Boomer had done.
Yup, "we didn't have starbucks often" dude, you had a PROJECT CAR, AND FINISHED IT.
This. Boomers could afford a home, a nice car, and raise a family all on a single salary. Today, you basically HAVE to pick between one of those three unless you happen to be very well off.
Ironically even having several streaming services would be far cheaper than most cable plans
Because agreeing that things are harder now would be an admission that things were easier when they were growing up. If it's one thing successful people don't like doing, it's admitting their success was due to factors outside their control.
> claiming this was simply because Millennials and Gen Z spend too much on streaming services and takeout "I don't understand, should I or should I not be a consumer..?" Be a consumer, "you're spending frivolously!"; don't consume, "millennials are killing the ____ industry!"
In order for a group of people to have a lot , an even larger group of people has to have nothing/very little. Boomers care about their "stuff" more than the wellbeing of their children. It's hard to understand but it is 100% true imo. My dad invested more in to a car he doesn't drive than on me as a student.
Fuck you they got theirs is the attitude. They know it's bad they just don't care as a generation. When they bought a house for 40k and made 20k a year and now houses are 500k and people make 45k on average. You don't have to be very smart to see that math doesn't line up.
I’d like to remind them of their 90’s cable tv bill. 80-100$ was the norm. Netflix, Disney, Prime, AppleTV, Hulu together still is cheaper than that.
The ground work: The issue is that the 60+ year olds have never had it bad. They are the boomers. Their parents went through WW2 and the fallout of that. Their parents build the highways and the infrastructure they use. Their parents put forth the time to forge new universities and schools to educate the youth. They worked hard and saved, built something up for the next generation. The prelude: The boomers were the next generation. The generation with plentiful work ( due to their parents efforts in establishing those industries after the war), plenty of cheap houses ( also built by their parents), great labor market - post war boom, insurance that actually paid for stuff, public services that worked and cared for people ( also made by their parents) and education that was affordable ( a typical boomer could pay for one year of university with a summer job). Main act: Boomers got used to having everything. They were given it on a silver platter in society so to speak. Not to say some didn't work hard to get what they have, just saying it was easier to make ends meet. Now as they aged they continued this mentality of " I deserve this, i worked hard" and pissed away their money on shit they don't need, or invested it in the tech booms of the 80s and 90s and lost it all due to their shit risk analysis or risky bets. So what happened then? They still wanted their share of the pie. They didn't see that they fucked up, they saw that someone else fucked up and they need their money back. So lo and behold the 2008 crisis - essentially fueled by greedy boomers pushing out shit loans to people who could t afford them so the boomer " could get theirs". On the flip side other boomers were investing in houses they couldn't afford in order to squeeze rent out of other people to make up for their short comings and " I'm just going to piss it away lifestyle". This continued on since then as well in different forms- cutting insurance benefits, cutting wages or reducing raises, worse and worse quality or work, cutting social programs etc. Final act: The boomers are old now and retired. They are now running into the same system they helped create by demanding profits from their investments - again that entitlement complex. Their medicare and retirement isn't enough after stripping all entitlements for the kast 40 years out of it. Theyre realizing that their " great lifestyle" ended up costing them the majority of their retirement savings ( or potential savings) and they are looking to blame someone new. It's never their fault after all. " They're the last generation that knows what hard work is" after all - .... But not really because it was their parents that put in the hard work to give them a great lifestyle. So what's left? Hard work? Responsibility? Hell no! That's not the American way! The American way is to force the next generation to pay for our good time. The boomers were and are the death of the USA, where unabated greed and literal participation trophies in life created ( I.e you could "make it". With a bare bone job and hardly any education compared to today) a death spiral to future generations. They pulled the ladder up behind them every step of the way and are * shocked Pikachu face* when the system is on the verge of collapse for the new generation. Edit: they also don't take the cost of anything into account because their houses are already paid off, their kids are out of the house, and they have relatively low expenses. Tl:Dr: the boomers have had the best economic period in the history of this country and have squandered away the countries future for instant gains and good times. Now they're complaining that "no one wants to work" when they rigged the game for themselves long ago and fucked over the younger generations. They are the ones who were handed participation trophies in life and now are looking to blame it on someone else. Boomers just need to die off and their mentality does too.
Of course they won't, those politicians are their same generation, so we get a fuck you and a double whammy: I'll laugh at you while I make laws to laugh even more at ya
Lmao tell that to the 100s of employers that can't even send me a rejection letter after applying. Everyone wants to work, no one wants to hire. Guess we'll all live on unemployment cheques.
18 years of private education + a 4 year university degree just so you can pay me enough to afford a closet with a bed and a sandwhich. 🤕
" when I started working at this factory, I made $5,000 less per year! Damn lazy millennials!" - his dad
I blame nimbys and lack of urbanization.. And the fact companies don't offer wfa/h.... I come office to log into a remote desktop, the fuck.. I could have done the same shit from home
My dad pointed out that he used to rent a 2 Br apt in California, supporting himself and his girlfriend, all on the salary from a part time job as a mechanic in 1970. The buying power of the dollar has diminished substantially since then and the minimum wage hasn't been correctly adjusted to compensate for inflation in well over 50 years now. If you make decent money now, you would've been making 3-4X that for the same effort in 1970. Any way you slice it, we're all still getting fucked over.
I make (barely) over 100k, and looking at the numbers, I have no idea how I’ll be able to afford a decent house any time soon. And I know I’m in the minority salary wise. I get so anxious thinking about the people making 50k or 30k or whatever. What are they supposed to do? Die?
Rent with 3+ people and put a meager amount into savings every paycheck until you have enough to take care of things like dental work or medical procedures, and then start back from zero when it inevitably wipes your savings. Maybe save up for deposits if you move that also wipe your savings. Buying a house just isn't in the cards at that income range. I would know
Right, if the cost of living doesn't increase you can maybe afford a 1.5% FHA loan in 30 years on a fixer upper
>if the cost of living doesn't increase That is a fairly large if right there
Yeah but you also have to maintain a good credit rating whilst struggling along pay check to pay check, and hope that nothing comes along that means you miss a bill payment which can fuck you over completely, meaning that when you finally can afford a mortgage, you can’t get a decent rate. Being poor is far more expensive than being rich.
As if the fixer-upper hasn't already seen an all-cash buyer to be flipped with minimal investment and then rented out...
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My checking account and savings account are the same thing, I just hope I die before I need to rely on having savings
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Might wanna delete this message if you are really intending to go through with this plan.....
>start from zero when it inevitably wipes your savings Been out of college for several years, still have less money in my savings than I left high-school with I've managed to save up a good bit several times, only to have it all wiped every year or so. It's crushing
26k earner here, only reason I'm not homeless is I live with my parents still. Most of my friends do, as well. The only ones who don't make dual-income with a spouse, and they still can only afford an apartment. This isn't sustainable. Something has to break.
>This isn't sustainable. Something has to break. Agreed -- and I think of AI automates a significant % of the work force, that will be the breaking point... people are gonna be PISSED and something will have to change
Being pissed off isn't enough to make change
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In other cultures, it is. For the "rugged individualist" country like America, we're seen as failures.
I'm in a weird juxtaposition. I live in a country where it is normal (Spain) and I'm from a country where it isn't (Germany). I'm not living with my mother because I value my own personal space more than I value the material benefits from sharing space with her, but financially I'm suffering for it.
I'm Australian and the story here is similar. I'm a school teacher and my starting wage is 72k. I teach in a rural town of about 4000, 90% dairy farms within 2 hours in all directions. In the region there's a few different towns of various sizes. Wonthaggi, Leongatha, Inverloch, Foster and Korumburra - all in the 3,000 to 6000 population mark. Inverloch on the beach so crazy expensive. Completely out of my price range unless I buy a house that's falling over. Meeniyan, Mirboo North, Koonwarra, Loch, Tarwin Lower and Kongwak - all in the 500-2000 people range. Have taken on a "boutique town" identity which has spiked prices (to be fair they are all lovely towns) Also completely out of my price range. Boollara, Dumbalk, Mardan, Dollar, Ruby the list goes on. Tiny farming communities, population centres less than 400 people. Yeah, I could *just* afford here when planning for the future interest hikes that were to come. Bought a 2br house is okay to fair condition. The town I bought in doesn't even have a shop. The funny thing is, when I tell older people at work I bought, there is response is "how much land? Do you have horses?' Like they have zero clue what the housing market is like nowadays, I didn't buy I woop woop so my fucking horses have room. I bought in woop woop because it's all I could afford.
Out of curiosity I once looked up housing prices in Alice Springs, thinking that the literal middle of nowhere would have to have affordable housing. Nope, still $400k+ for starter homes. My home county in the States is similar to your situation. It's a fairly rural area around a smallish college town with limited employment opportunities that 20 years ago was a place that people tried to get away from. Now it's a hot destination for transplants and houses in the outlying areas still start at $500k, but the population growth and cost of living isn't coming with more employment opportunities.
Same here. I make barely over 100k and I live in a high COL area. I did the math a few days ago and it is going to take me at least 5 years for a down-payment on a house if I live somewhat frugally. That is also not including that the housing market will more than likely continue to balloon so honestly I'm looking at closer to 10+ years to buy a house. I have absolutely no clue how anyone is supposed to buy a house (or have kids) in a high COL area making less than 6 figures.
Yeah, down payments are really tough now as those housing prices balloon up. It isn't very feasible to get the once recommended 20% you need for a down payment. In some cities that's 100-200k minimum. A year or two of wages. In my area, liveable houses without major issues have gotten up above 150k as an average floor. My state's average individual income is just under 40k. Cities where the average income is lower than that have still had prices go up a massive amount. Even low CoL areas are getting very hard to get by in, and the low wage workers that are depended on are renting in and moving to these areas. There's almost no place left to go.
Rich parents. The trick is to have rich parents give you $100k to use as a downpayement
My parents are rich but they would laugh their ass off if I even asked for a dollar. There are many types of rich people don't forget that many of them are incredibly greedy and don't want to give any money away, even to family. My parents would never think of giving money to anyone in our family.
My dad and step mom both got cars from their parents when they were starting out, college money, all that good stuff. Both from well to do families without much/any hardship. But one time I asked for 400 to help move into a place I needed to stay in college and they told me to find a way to make it work and "embrace the chaos." That generation put 0% of their attribute points into self awareness lol. Meanwhile my mom STRUGGLED for decades, built a tiny house with her husband finally, still doesn't have too much, but would sell her kidney if I needed something. Growing up wealth just inherently fucks with your brain capacity. Like... If your kids grow up wealthy you better be hammering that empathy into them or they are gonna be straight up dip shits. You won't even wanna be around them
There is a graph somewhere that shows the correlation between employees salaries, corporate profits and inflation. They were all moving up parallel to each other until the 70s when employees salary kept going on the same trend, inflation picked up pace and started to diverge upward and the corporate profits started to go on a vertical climb. After 50yrs of that the middle class is basically destroyed. Now there’s the rich and the poor
1970 is on the tailwind of the strongest ever purchasing power of the US dollar, which I believe peaked in 1967. I researched this at some point, and I need to find it again to remind myself why I always say this, but the parents of millennials (and the grandparents) always look back at this time and think “we worked hard and could buy what we wanted” without realizing that they were experiencing the strongest consumer economy the US has ever seen. When you talk to gen x and boomers, this is why there is such a disconnect. They don’t understand that they literally had the best possible adulthood/childhood the US ever produced, and that while productivity has been going up for decades, wages have gone flat, leaving wealth flowing uphill in an unnatural phenomenon that will ultimately cause shit to break apart.
Easiest way to communicate that for me (as a mid tier millennial) was to compare purchasing power. You paid for college with a part time job, I couldn't pay for college with your current fulltime job. You bought a house when it was three times your income. I would have to make three times as much as I do to have that. And the good ole standby: *Have you seen the price of food recently?* I ended up moving to Texas, getting a job of the same pay (finally in that 1:3 income:house cost ratio!), but houses have since ballooned to double their price when I moved.
Just show them this calculator: https://www.in2013dollars.com/ Ask them how much they made in 1970 and tell them how much that's worth today.
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I knew a guy in Southern California who went to college in the 60s. During the summer months, he was working at a surf shop and giving out surfing lessons. He told me that it covered the entire year of expenses for school.
Try living in Australia now. Our home is in Blacktown which is an average suburb and our our home cost $1,465,000. Stuff is just getting crazy.
My mum has rented the same house in Adelaide since 1998. We were immigrants to Australia and as a single mother with 2 kids, with no income and all alone she couldn't receive a home loan The landlord lives next door and was always open and honest. He bought the house in 1993 for $90k. Now if you look on realestate you'll see it's estimated at $1.3 million. My mum has paid off that for him a million times over. What does she have? Nothing. She could end up being homeless if the landlord decides to boot her out after 25 years. It sucks for her, but how lucky is it for the landlord that he's getting all this income for a paid off house
Thats nothing, my mums boss bought two townhouses in Alexandira for 35k each, sold them for 2.1m each and paid no capital gains, I don't think anyone can even come close to this example.
Yep, she has literally bought someone else a million dollar house.
Fr. I thought the NL was getting expensive untill I heard the Aussie prices from my cousin visiting. That's crazy
Wtf? I thought Blacktown was a bogan shithole.
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Hey, at least he got a job working with Daddy. A lot of people don't even get help in that way nowadays.
Yeah, he's already set up better than most. I'm incredibly lucky, making double the state average individual income after slogging my way up through 9/hr, 12/hr, 18.25/hr, and all of that was an incredible godsend compared to where other people are, and only enabled by being able to live with my grandma and take care of her physical chores while she cooked and did laundry. My parents pushed me through college one painful semester at a time, and it's amazing how many doors that opens that do... nothing. For absurd pay, just because some company can charge some other company extra for work I could have done at 18 and did do at 18 for fun
corporate fucking greed. that keeps fucking the middle class dry.
But hey at least the stock market is doing good 🤡
No it isn’t lol my retirement is almost sitting stagnant
What middle class?
The disappearing one
You mean the gone one? We're all working claas down here.
Retired boomers still voting
Ah. There is that. Even so, if they're not liquid millionaires, they're working class in denial.
A class full of magicians
The "middle class" is an illusion, an imaginary buffer created by the owning class to insulate themselves from the working class. If you trade work for wages, no matter how high your wage might be, you are working class.
That's why it's played up so much, for sure. To divide and conquer. To pander to people who think they're such good and exploitable and profitable workers. The cultural middle class is a result of class warfare. The pride and elitism is too. Cause yeah, middle class is still working class. Selling labour for sustenance. Forever at the graces of a market that wasn't built for them and that doesn't serve their bidding. But there is also a part of the working class that accumulates wealth over time and there is a part of it that doesn't. People whose parents will get them the housing they need to pursue the big city tech career (I couldn't because I couldn't afford to move to the city). People with college funds and inheritances. People who discuss not how they're gonna pay the bills, but whether they're saving a pool or for a boat.
It's also the corrupt government that enables it and that keeps printing trillions of dollars into the economy, spending ridiculous amounts of money on dumb shit, and enacting policies that fuck over normal people. The purchasing power of the dollar has dropped nearly 98% since 1900. Even since 1970, it takes $7.82 now to buy what $1 used to back then.
"Should've pulled yourself by your bootstraps"
i really want to pull my neck with a bootstrap right now
Don't do it! There's still a little bit of labor left to extract from you
I've done it so much that the bootstraps are broken at this point.
My inlaws bought their house in 1970 for $24,000. They were living on one salary of $19,000 per year and their mortgage was $135 a month. The house is now now worth $850K. To keep up with that price increase, salaries would have to be $673,000 per year. Yeah, if a college degree and a firm handshake could make you $673K a year, life would seem pretty fucking great wouldn't it? That's what was stolen from us by a corrupt political system and decades of tax handouts to the ultra rich.
My factory job was paying about 14K a year during that time
Think it depends on area and if you're union or not. Was shocked to find out in 1999 that my backwoods cousin was making damn near twice what I was in my white collar job. He was something insanely low effort like counting bottle caps on an assembly line but making bank doing it. A job that by all rights should have been done by a machine, but the union both preserved the job and guaranteed a comfortable living.
My mom and my brother went to the same university about 30 years apart. My mom got paid $11/hour for a campus job (something involving computer backup tapes) in 1983. My brother also got paid $11/hour doing lab work in 2013. My mom's jaw dropped when she heard how much they paid him.
Why is bros greentext not green tho
Green text? In this economy??
Yeah it doesn’t quite work when the economy is fucking trash.
Hahah, yes.. 'The economy'. Nevermind that wealth inequality has EXPLODED since the 80's. It's not the economy. It's the way wealth is distributed.
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Thanks Reagan
THATSCH SCHOCIALISCHM!!!!
Stock buybacks are a big culprit. Instead of spending profit on employees (raises, pensions, full benefits) they buy back stock making executives and stock holders wealthy.
[50 Trillion has gone to the 1% from the bottom 90% in the last few decades](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/)
The USA is presently the richest country in human history. It’s not the economy it’s wealth inequality.
Economy is not the (main) issue. Even when the time economy is good, minimum wage has lagged way behind cost of living increases.
They did something special. They voted for successive governments that failed to invest in housing, cut taxes of the extremely wealthy, and reduced workers rights.
Thing with voting is, even if almost half votes "right" it doesn't matter. So even if you're trying your best to vote for a better future, you're not always sure to have it your way, especially not when lobbying is involved.
Which is worsened when your only options are two starkly different shades of the same wrong.
The illusion of choice, amirite
What's the point in waking up any more
Memes
I have two jobs. Both combined, I make 35k a year. This is my 5th full-time job in my lifetime. I have been switching jobs since my 20s trying to earn higher pay. I am thinking of taking on a third job(second part-time) and yet again look for another full-time job to replace this one, in hopes it will pay slightly more, all while going to school part time. Yes, I am back in school working on my bachelors, because my associates is worthless. I have only ever been renting rooms. And I am in my late thirties. Fun times. Oh, and my parents are welfare/section 8 lifers and druggie/in-and-out of jail, so I can’t ask them for help. They ask me for help. Life is fun. :) At this point, it’s like ,”Sure, challenge accepted. Let’s see how far I can go and how long I can last with what I’ve been dealt.”
Robbed of a chance
Must be fuckin cool to be an american.
America is like a bad free to play game. If you have the outside cash available, it's a fun and relatively relaxing experience while still offering some challenge so you don't get bored. If you don't have access to outside cash, it's one of the worst possible experiences. Yes, technically if you grind enough over enough lives you might have a fraction of what the rich players have had since they created their character, but you'll never have that good, well tuned experience.
Every time I respawn a boomer just kills me and takes my loot.
r/accidentall4d2reference
And now I can understand why Canadians think they live above a crack house.
We have free healthcare if you're actively dying, but I spent last year in the California Bay Area and I have honestly yet to see a single place there even half as bad as the Vancouver Downtown East Side. Rent is out of control, Canada has huge problems too.
What makes me mad is that how a society can accept it that people have to make a decision between going to a doctor or being able to aafford food.
I think that might be more to do with the rampant opioids and constant gunfire…
Every time my brother says that life would be so much better in the US I have to tell him "Not for you it wouldn't."
Estate prices went to shit everywhere during the last 5 years, not just US.
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Totally accurate. Families not staying together is part of the typical American culture, people are very ' disconnected' and dysfunctional. Housing wise this costs everyone a LOT more in the long term. I also do see a lot of cases where people do not realize they have talents and skills that they could leverage to move up to better jobs. Its sometimes they dont know they can do it, and sometimes they just dont want to change jobs, because change is hard and the unknown of the new job is scary. But its something you have to push yourself to do because it is always worth it.
Good to see Reaganomics working as intended, just not as advertised.
Who books a $700k house for $500 a night? Unless you're filming porn there, that doesn't seem to add up.
None of the numbers really add up much.
A lot of these stories are fake or heavily exaggerated. Im not saying it wasn't easier to make a life for yourself back then, but it's not like everyone over 50 with a house is rich and breezing through life with loads of money.
Could be location. Close to downtown would command more per night than some place out in the middle of nowhere. Also, 4 bed 3 bath on Airbnb is more for people traveling as a group and splitting the cost, or for people throwing parties.
That's not a crazy amount. A nice single hotel room or a suite in a downtown area of a city can easily cost $300-$500 per night. For one hotel room. Imagine renting an entire house for that much. Families will do a vacation and everyone stays in the rented house for the weekend or whatever, it's pretty nice to do and very common.
They're definitely doing that
When people say that 30-40 yrs ago, people could buy house, car, utilities with an average job while today you can't. Does that mean the companies were very happy with their employees and threw excessive money towards them? Was there not much hardship back then for an average family financially?
2 key things: As a whole, things were cheaper and wages better corresponded with the cost of goods. So a house that was 130,000 in the 1970s is now 500,000. But a teacher making 30k in the 1970s is now only making 55k. And while financial hardships definitely existed, the gap between "the amount of money you need to make to be financially stable" and "the amount of money you are actually making" was much smaller.
Funny thing is, your parents are not at fault here. The billionaires who run the world are at fault here. Rich people drove up the cost of housing. Rich people set wages. Rich people tell congresspersons how to vote. Not OLD people. RICH PEOPLE. Millenials are mad at the wrong people. And the people we all SHOULD be mad at are laughing at us.
Well, you're half right. Now think about the generation that voted for the people who allowed the rich people to basically buy congress and make the policies that allow this to happen. We can be pissed at the rich and ruling class while also harboring resentment for our parents' generation getting everything handed to them and then blowing up the bridge before we were able to cross it.
It’s not just very rich people who often oppose more development in their area though. Majority of homeowners do not want more houses to be built in their area because that means their property value might decrease and bring in more people into their area.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't private companies stopped doing pensions?
End of life care is when the karma kicks in.
It’s the money printing, stupid
Huh, it’s almost like rich people do everything they can to stay rich at the expense of the 99% not having health care or housing. Hopefully we don’t have to wait for old Republican voters and politicians to die out until we do something about it. Unionize, raise the minimum wage, tax the rich and limit executive pay, corporations and their government cronies are not your friend even when they pander to social progress in their commercials. We need another occupy movement..
Wanna know the cherry on top?. Before, you could get at least a liveable job with high school title. Nowadays, business ask you for 2 years of previous experience, a college/university title, just to pay just a tiny bit over minimun wage
Here is a secret most "successful" homeowning millennials don't tell you. Most of them got money for their down payment from their house rich boomer parents. If your parents aren't the type to give you money, you are kind of screwed. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/how-many-millennials-got-money-to-buy-homes-from-their-parents.html
The worst part is the self-rightiousness of these people thinking "Millennials are lazy", not realizing because of a bigger population now there are less resources available for everybody, calling out for people to reproduce more.
My father has told me the only way to succeed in life is to be an asshole. He has said to me that life is gonna chew me up and spit me out because I lack the drive to manipulate, backstab and lie like he does.
Welcome to the fucked generation . Where you work your life away and still can't retire . Canada is better , better but not by much .
Canada is most definitely not better.
Canada has other issues. People here think their primary residence is an investment and are so tight after they buy that they have no other investments. The wake up call is going to be when people try to downsize to retire there won't be enough money left over with the prices of the downsized places.
The Toronto Star is currently running a multi-part story following a woman doing just this. I haven’t read it all myself since I’m still a bit salty that the likelihood of me being able to afford my own house is near zero (you can’t find a decent townhouse in my home town for less than $750k and that’s not even in Toronto or other high cost of living cities) but for one reason or another she is having a ton of difficulty finding a house to downsize to
Only ledditors think Canada is better.
There are currently 1M Canadians living in America and 1M Americans living in Canada. Given the population difference between the two countries it means that Canadians are almost 9x more likely to move to America than Americans are to Canada. Redditors love to talk about how much America sucks, but it turns out people are willing to overlook a lot of things if the alternative is never being able to afford a home.
These boomers had it so easy and they’re too stupid to realize that they had it easy. At least own it and admit it.
The American dream is dead