re: The Myth of the Broke Millenial

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My dad was college educated and made a pretty solid living. We lived in a 1500/sq ft house for a family of 5 when I was growing up. My sisters shared a bedroom. Dad drove a 13+ yr old Monte Carlo. A vacation was to Houston to Astroworld. We ate out at a restaurant or fast food maybe once per month, if that.

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I'm a millennial. Early 30's. I've worked since I was 16 and haven't taken a dollar from my parents after I left the house at 21. I went to college on my dad's GI Bill benefits and it was the greatest benefit I never thought of once the whole time I was in school. Super appreciative of it now that I understand what it did.

These kind of comments drive me crazy. I talk about this with my father in law all the time.

That same house now is either in a shite neighborhood that no college educated and solid earning man would want to raise his family of 5 in or the $75k your dad paid for it in 1985 would cost $275k now. It's not about housing availability, which is already in short supply, it's about quality of housing availability. That of which there is very little of in metro areas.

I think most young people would be better off buying rural and commuting to get started in RE ownership.

Reality is generally not black or white, but rather more of a grey(somewhere in the middle):

Some millennials are doing really well in comparison to their historical (and current) peers; others just average; others poorer; and yet others far worse than even that.

Everyone has their own unique experience that adds to what is essentially a scatter plot that in turn represents a snapshot of the present day economic reality in our country.

The unfortunate reality is that the change in the average decline in overall financial security of that scatter plot is most certainly worse than previous decades, and to a degree that is so sharp as to be borderline terrifying when taken in the context of the historical average; and that concern I think doesn’t even take into consideration the coming funding crisis of Medicare and social security.

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That same house now is either in a shite neighborhood that no college educated and solid earning man would want to raise his family of 5 in or the $75k your dad paid for it in 1985 would cost $275k now. It's not about housing availability, which is already in short supply, it's about quality of housing availability. That of which there is very little of in metro areas.

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So it isn't a housing problem?

It is wanting a better product right now where you aren't willing to pay the premium price right now (or haven't earned your way to affording that).

This is where our society is at.
So many things are easy that our youth forget that things are actually hard or require more hard work to obtain.

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Did you even read the post? He said the same house not a “better product.”

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I did.
The same house would be more expensive or in too scummy of a neighborhood.
So he bitched about it.

It's as if those choices weren't the same for families in the early 2000s, 90s, 80s, or 70s.

Inflation has always been an issue. Arguments from millennials about inflation fall on deaf ears (they are earning a crap ton more than people earned in the 70s, 80s, and 90s).

The one point that no one mentions for which I have empathy is the problem of 0.
If you have nothing in an inflated world, it is absolutely much more difficult to sustain. That is a problem which will never be solved. As starting wages go from $3/hr to $4.75 to $9 to $15 to $20... those without anything are still left behind. But no one in the MT is in that category.

So there aren't 1500 square foot homes within an hour of a central business district outside the price point of a first time homebuyer?

That 1500 square foot home 25 miles from the business district are still available.
But the business districts are much more numerous and spread out.
Instead of buying in Dekalb County outside of Atlanta, it is finding that home in Dawson/Lumpkin County outside of Johns Creek.

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This is where our society is at.
So many things are easy that our youth forget that things are actually hard or require more hard work to obtain. So he bitched about it.

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Holy Boomer...

It's not about a better product, as stated. It's about supply and demand for the exact same product. Of course we all fight the same life/market dynamics of price, value, quality of life, etc. But if you want to argue that we are playing the same game 3-4 decades apart, I would kindly disagree with you. Especially as it comes to home ownership.

To your point about living rural, I agree completely, which is why I said it. Commute 30 minutes while you're young. It will be a pain certainly, but it will help younger families and homebuyers get into the market sooner so that 2nd house is in a more convenient area is easier to obtain.

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But if you want to argue that we are playing the same game 3-4 decades apart, I would kindly disagree with you.

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Are you taking the over, or the under?

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That dream is now dead, as the median price of housing to median income has gotten out of control. Anyone who denies this has the deadly sin of pride where they can’t admit the youth of today are fricked compared to them

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It's almost always boomers who are too ignorant to understand how unprecedented the economic conditions were over their lifetime. They're utterly incapable of seeing the bigger economic picture and think the economy has always been exactly like they've experienced and it always will be. They're dead wrong and always will be.

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Double post