re: The Myth of the Broke Millenial

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This isn’t even debatable

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Oh my.
Settled science?




Here's a comparison with the UK:



The bubbles are absolutely problematic.
Sans those, the median income vs median home price would be okay. Both 21st century US bubbles are government derived.

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There are appropriate boards for this kind of post. This is not one of them.

Post that image on the OT or PT board and it will generate some discussion.

My wife and I married in 2002.
We bought a starter home 20 years ago. With down-payment from moneys saved, our new home payment was 10% more than we afforded on rent while waiting tables.
I took the appreciation on that home along with extra savings put aside for 5 years and bought my current home 15 years ago.
My mortgage payment on the new home was the same payment as the first home because of the 20% down-payment and no PMI. Despite buying a 40% more expensive home than the first.
Mortgage rates were about the same at the time.

How? I paid my way through college. I learned to live poor. I prioritized my money. A reliable Honda is more valuable to me than what my neighbors drive (I paid $13,000 for my vehicle in 2010 and I'm still driving it). We've never taken a cruise. Most of our vacation memories with our young family were tent camping.
Between housing expense, car expense, and vacation expense, we've been able to sustain for a long time on what 2 restaurant servers could sustain. Despite our incomes going up each year over the past 21 years.

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We bought our first home in 2003. Zero kids

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We bought our first house a year or two later. It was the absolute definition of a starter house. Slightly under 1400 sq ft, vinyl siding, single car carport.

There were 3 of us when we bought it but we found out my wife was pregnant again a few weeks after we moved in.

It was 20 miles from my office which was a 45 min to an hour commute in the evenings. We lived there almost a decade even though it wasn't really where we wanted to live. It's what we could afford at the time.

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Post ww2 peace

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So, for example, you're addressing "the greatest gen" and "silents"? You're addressing a "peace" in which the draft was still active, and we fought two major wars in Korea and Vietnam? You're leaving off stagflation, followed by some of the most decimating inflation in US history, the Dot.com bubble bust - 9/11 recession, etc.

Every generation has its woes. Every generation has its advantages. Every preceding gen (dating back to the Babylonians) has lamented underperformance of its successor. Every successive generation laments the lack of vision and resistance to change of its predecessors.

If you want to discuss the economics of something more specific in detail, we can.

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Perspective is interesting. In 1969 an RCA 23" TV-Phono Console cost $975. That's about $6800 today. It picked up 5 channels (if you got the UHF antenna working) with awful resolution.

"Pong" hadn't yet been invented, but it was about $100 ($700 today) when it first came out a few years later.

Middle class homes were smaller, with tiny&cheap appliances, linoleum floors, formica counters, and hollow interior doors. Adding a 650 watt microwave oven @ $495 would run >$3400 in today's money.

Meanwhile real median income in the 1970's was ~15-20% below present levels.

Then again, things were simpler. For example, they only had two genders to contend with.

Personal anecdotes are meaningless when discussing the situations faced by generations. Glad you figured things out.

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We bought our first house a year or two later. It was the absolute definition of a starter house. Slightly under 1400 sq ft, vinyl siding, single car carport.

There were 3 of us when we bought it but we found out my wife was pregnant again a few weeks after we moved in.

It was 20 miles from my office which was a 45 min to an hour commute in the evenings. We lived there almost a decade even though it wasn't really where we wanted to live. It's what we could afford at the time.

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Fun experiment: Look up that house on Zillow and see what it's worth now. Remember that that house is now 20 years older, needs more work, outdated, etc, etc.

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$15/hr then is $24/hr now

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True. But $15/hr was a good starting salary $30k) with a degree. Minimum wage was around $4 or $5/hr then but is $15/hr for most jobs today.

Are you comparing minimum wage today with the starting salary for a college graduate in the 90’s?

If somebody is only making minimum wage in either era they aren’t going to be able to afford a house.