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American dream of owning a home is dead, majority of renters say
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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When I was in my late teens/early twenties I truly thought that in ten years I'd own a home for sure, with some hard work and dedication.
Ten years later, I don't even get to buy groceries every week or eat every day. I've lost 30 pounds in the last year just from skipping so many meals.
I can't wait to see what the next ten years holds.
And if one more person tells me I should make sure to invest for retirement... I can't even feed myself, what you want me to invest? My retirement plan is work until I'm too old/sick/injured and then off myself.
Have you tried having rich parents? That helps...
/s
I wasn't smart enough to make that choice this time around, but next life being born into a rich family is my number one criteria :)
Yeah, maybe if someone told me I should have specced my character for wealth or charisma, instead of creativity or wisdom, I might be enjoying this game more…
It's really quite easy. Just cut out the avocado toast, stop buying those expensive coffees, and invest that cool $69,000,000 your parents left you from their work on the board of an orphan crushing factory.
The funny thing is that I've never had avocado toast and I tried coffee once, hated it, and never tried it again. I can't drink energy drinks either. Take that, financial columnists!
One of my friends solved this by sitting down with her parents and having them ‘help her budget things out’.
Suddenly they shut up about it. And gave her some money. So all it takes with some people is rubbing their faces in it so they can’t pretend prices are the same as they were in the 50s.
I posted in another thread that I have nothing to save for retirement but people chastise me for getting the occasional chai latte or buy Taco Bell for my kid once in a while and I got the response, "what are you going to do about your child's future?"
Hope we can afford to feed her until (if ever) she can make it on her own?
As if I could put the $20 or so a month on "luxuries" like those into a savings account and become a millionaire by the time I'm 65.
You should at least put in as much as your organization matches because that’s income you’re missing out on otherwise.
Sorry, I definitely might come off as rude in this comment, but this line of thought really annoys me. Do you think people are poor simply because they're too dumb to think "I should spend less money on groceries?" Don't you think they've already considered finding a better-paying job, if such a possibility exists for them? If moving is even an option for them (which is a big if), where do you suggest they get the money to rent a moving truck, as well as the money for a security deposit on a new apartment?
Your comment is about as helpful as asking "Have you tried not being poor?"
It's usually spending money poorly, yes. But I don't blame them, I blame the lack of education on these topics.
If you aren't even using freely available budgeting options, then I recommend to start there and assess spending.
I very rarely encounter people who complain about money but also have real concrete budget. If I ask it's usually met with excuses and changing the topic.
If you truly have a genuine budget and still can't figure out where the money is going, then it's a more serious chat.
But the absurd frequency you see people posting about how they can't afford groceries and lo and behold, they're buying a bunch of overpriced garbage and paying extra for non necessities, it's bananas.
If you complain about food costs and I find out you don't know how to break down a whole chicken, I feel a little less bad for you.
If I find out your buying dumb shit, my empathy starts to go down.
I lived with and worked in a poverty stricken industry for many many years, and the constant frequency I saw people complain about money one day, then waste money the next, has gradually over time led me to just assume most people are completely inept when it comes to budgeting.
And I mean, it's not exactly a required course in high school, so I am not that surprised.
And it's mostly food, drugs, and alcohol when it comes to wasting money.
That and the "buying little things you dont need thatll end up in the trash" I see often. Fast fashion and all that jazz.
It's a serious problem honestly.
It often isn't. I say this as someone who volunteers weekends on such a group (food donations).
It's very often chasing dopamine hits to compensate for how utterly isolated and desolate they feel. WIthout a support network or community to back them up, the easiest at hand way to compensate is small expenditures on treating themselves to help stave off the doom.
Which add up very fast, because turns out treats aren't free.
And this can take many forms. Collectibles, fast food, literal treats, energy drinks, coffee, cigarettes, weed, booze, etc.
When you have learned helplessness and truly believe it's pointless to save money, it becomes trivial to waste it on dozens of little pick me ups.
I've seen it endless times. I've helped people budget and so often they are shocked to realize they are spending absurd amounts of money on their guilty pleasure.
Let me make this clear, I've helped a decent handful of folks unfuck their budget. They had jobs, they rented, they couldn't figure out why saving money was hard.
We took a look and so much random shit Id be like "do you know you spent $300 at convenience stores this month?" And they'd be like "what? No way, that's impossible"
But I'd show em and they'd be flabbergasted.
Turns out that red bull and a snack everyday before work, and a treat everyday after work, adds up to a huge hole in the pocket.
And these are people truly in poverty, min wage at best, part time, struggling to pay bills.
This is nothing but the avocado toast thing all over again you rancid piece of shit
The house my folks paid 120k for 6 years ago is valued at 650k, none of that has to do with my Steam collection.
Some houses shooting up in price due to various (shitty) factors does not mean every single house has. Only a small portion of them have which has biased the average price up.
If 10% of houses go up x5 in price, the average price will now calculate significantly higher even if the other 90% only change a small bit.
This is a common thing people try and cite. "Yeah but some house skyrocketed in price so that must mean house prices are fucked across the board"
They aren't, that's just a fact.
The following are fucked areas:
Major City cores as the west's renting markets are unhinged atm.
Closer to the core suburbs of tourist destinations for the Airbnb markets
Pockets of speculation areas that are being heavily gentrified.
Properties with land large enough to be potentially capable of being split into 2 smaller properties legally, as a speculation market. (This us why sometimes you see big old spots suddenly skyrocket, they satisfy the conditions to turn into 2 properties which can be lucrative if leveraged by a rental company)
Everything else had been fairly well in lockstep with inflation from what I have seen.
Nice anecdata and all but I bought in 2020 and my place has almost doubled in value already. It's a run of the mill condo.
The (already high) rent prices have also approximately doubled over the same time span.
Buying in early 2020 was the difference between me easily living here and likely having to move to a cheaper area of the country.
And I'm a debt-free, child-free elder millennial who has a large salary and whose parents paid for my college.
The problem isn't that they aren't scraping together enough of their $30k a year to save due to buying too many bon bons, it's that they gross $30k a year and $15-20k of their net goes to the landlord.
That sounds 100% like your property fits roughly into one of the groups I outlineded above then.
It doesn't, but you'll keep believing anything you want no matter what the data says because you're dug into an anti-reality position.
Rents have gone up rapidly across the country, and that's after a long period of wage stagnation that didn't keep up with inflation for three or four decades. But yeah you're right, I'm well off not because I timed the real estate market and had all of the other advantages I listed, but instead because I didn't buy avocado toast. 🙄
Except I have bought basically whatever I wanted and from the look of things (e.g. mega yachts and private planes) so have other people who are considerably richer than either of us.
It's math dude, if your rent is $2k a month and you net $25k a year you aren't going to be able to save your way out of that hole.
As an aside, people like yourself who told me to move to lower COL areas also provide extremely bad financial advice and pretend it's universally applicable. Lower COL areas usually also have lower salaries, and you may be able to get a better dinner out in lower COL area, or get a slightly better house or something, but you aren't going to see the $20-$40k in additional salary you receive in a higher COL area.
Better just keep working the same job and renting the same place then, as we know those are absolutes that can't possibly be changed to fix the problem.
Renting somewhere you can't afford counts as bad budgeting.
If only there was some way to live in one place, and work in another... perhaps even several ways to do that... oh well.
Seriously do people just never move, and stay in shitty jobs and settle with a shit hand?
I moved several times abd changed jobs several times in my 20s as I clawed my way out of poverty. You have to get cool with not staying tied down if you want to do well.
If a place fuckin sucks, sell your shit and move.
If your job sucks, get a better one.
If rent is insane, get roommates.
And if you struggle with getting a job, you either aren't looking in the right places, you've set your standards too high, or you have some deeper rooted issue that's red flagging your application.
Or you are struggling with systemic racism/sexism/classism/ableism in the domain which of course fuckin sucks, and that one doesn't have as easy of a solution.
I wonder if you'll sing a different tune after the next rounds of tech layoffs.
"Learn to code, bro" doesn't hit the same for me in the post EQ economy, and not every job can be done remotely.
The stats are clear that wages for non-c level positions have stagnated, but you'll keep believing whatever you want despite them.
You also seem to have gone out of your way to step over the point I was making which is that I did everything you're saying, had no dependents, and had it not been for a little bit of luck in my timing, I too would've been in the "can't afford a house" camp.
A perfect example of this is actually people who stayed in the same exurban area and work similar jobs to the generation before them. I have relatives that are teachers, and former neighbors who are teachers. Wanna guess which generation is barely making ends meet in a shitty little house and which is living fat and rich next to engineering and management neighbors?
Edit: PS this Vonnegut quote is for you: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/158414-america-is-the-wealthiest-nation-on-earth-but-its-people
I am completely unaffected by this, as I am not clinging to the hulls of sinking ships.
Local internet denizen struggles to grasp that wealth is accrued over time, more news at 11.
If you keep comparing apples to oranges, you'll never be happy.
Also, to flip it around, if you ask both if those households what budgeting tools they use, do you think you'll get similar answers?
I'd strongly bet the the folks struggling will go "what do you mean"? And those doing well will go "We use x"
I'd also bet if you open the two households fridges and cupboards you'll get extremely different results that help shed some light on the situation.
I have so many, so many friends my age that complain about money, then I visit their home abd see their fridge and I instantly think "oh, well, now I see why they are having issues..."
It's become very difficult to not just assume it's either budget issues, or a total lack of willing to change location/job. It's pretty much always one of those two.
The times I've seen people complain about it, and then their car has a bunch of fast food wrappers in it is endless. It's a plague.
And I don't necessarily blame them. I blame the lack of support networks, schooling, etc, that didn't teach them how to manage their lives. The wests' school systems churn kids out like a factory.
It's not impossible to claw your way out, but a lot if wealthy people 100% want you to think it is so you don't even try.
Instilling apathy is such a powerful form of control and oppression. Why bother? You can't do it. Give up. You'll never afford things. Just keep buying random pick me ups off Amazon instead.
Reminder that the same wealthy individuals that control nearly every source of news and info you consume also are heavily invested in city infrastructure.
The news outlets you consume from have a vested interest in keeping you thinking clawing your way up and out is impossible
Good for you! 👍
They were at their current stages at comparable ages as well. The teachers from the boomer generation were already in their fat pad by the time they were in their 30s. Which I noticed you didn't even bother guessing, because you knew it already.
The older set was a member of a teacher's union and the other set (of course) teaches at a charter school.
It's oranges to oranges and it is not my story. I'm "clinging to the sinking ship" of high tech.
You sound like a lovely, empathetic friend. /s
No, they don't. They want to tell you to hustle and get your grind set on...in other words they speak very similar lines of bullshit to the plebs as you are here.
Dude, the wealthy people news especially is full of side hustle this and grindset that. They want you to get roped in by business schemes that further enrich them directly. The former head of the department of education was an MLM owner.
Again, I'm doing just fine and dandy. The difference is I have eyes and ears and I use them. You're only half or a quarter enlightened if you think only racial disparities provide systemic barriers to class mobility in this country. I read a book that was a complete analysis of the meritocracy from the perspective of schooling, employment, etc. that was hundreds of pages long and actually used data to make its arguments. One of its main findings is that the racial gap in education is narrower than the gap caused by wealth disparity. In other words, you're worse off being a white poor kid in the modern educational system than you are being a rich black kid.
Jobs used to educate their workers. Upward mobility was available for people who had very little education. You could afford a house, two cars, and four kids on a single salary taken home by a person with only a high school diploma.
Sure, maybe it was a mirage, but other countries have been able to make gains on social and class mobility while the US steadily goes the other direction. Then everyone gets told by people like yourself to disbelieve their eyes and ears when they go house hunting and every house is 2x as expensive as it was a half decade earlier.
I hope one day you can connect the dots on how the the former helps with the latter.
I dont smoke, I've never done drugs, and I drink a few times a year. Have I been guilty of a few frivolous purchases in the past? Sure, but now I literally do not have the money, so I can't. I just make lists of things I'd like to buy "someday."
I've gone out and bought a $7 rotisserie chicken, a $3 bag of noodles and a $3 bag of carrots, thrown them in a pot with a bunch of garlic, spices and water, slow cooked them for an entire day, then pulled out the chicken, ripped off all the meat, discarded the carcass, and lived for an entire month off that soup. I was sooo sick of chicken noodle soup.
But I shouldn't have to. Why should I work my ass off for companies who make more and more profits while my rent goes up, food costs more and more, and every other fucking bill goes up, yet if I ask for a raise I'm a lazy millenial?
Have some fucking empathy.
and your view is still grossly ignorant to the point you should be ashamed of yourself.
Nobody can budget 0$ dollars in to more dollars.
$0 implies you don't have a job.
My entire post is about someone who has a job but complains about being unable to afford things.
Also, I missed another group, the "complains about money but never takes shifts" person.
Always saying they don't make enough, can't afford stuff, need more shifts, don't get enough hours, abd yet always are also the person first to ask to be cut early, always trying to get other people to take their shifts, never picking up other people's shifts, etc
There's always a few of em at every job. They don't seem to understand you have to actually work hours to get money, lol.
Over hundreds of folks I've worked with at dozens of gigs, I'd say about half of folks have both serious work ethic and responsible spending.
The other half either has shit work ethic, or, shit spending. Or both.
And I worked in a very much revolving door industry so I've seen a lot of faces in my time at this point.
The other half that had their shit together, every single one of them that I stayed in touch with over the years later, is now living comfortable in their 30s.
And when the topic comes up about so-and-so who was in the "doesn't have their shit together" group, it's either:
I also largely attribute this issue to undiagnosed mental disorders, and the west's total lack of caretaking of them.
I'd sat the vast majority of those "doesn't gave their shit together" folks struck me as having undiagnosed disorders and a total lack of support for it.
Which sucks, unfortunately, and I say that as someone who was in that group for a bit. You have to fight tooth and nail to get help in western capitalism.
Oh dear, thought I recognized that name and vibe. You're not here to repeat this kind of thing again, are you?
https://lemmy.world/post/11830662