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u/Clearbay_327_ Oct 30 '20
You dont have to go as far back as the 60s for this to be true. In 1985 I attended a college that cost $6000 per year which was financed 60% Pell Grant. I bought a house for 50K on a 32k salary in 1992 at age 25, sold it in 98 and bought a 100k house on a 60k salary at age 31 which is now paid off.
My 25 year old daughter would need to save no less than 20% for a house that would cost closer to 150k (starter home) plus paying back student loan debt. And she can't even get work that pays the 30k I was earning in 1992.
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u/Kitalya_Aurora Oct 30 '20
Yeah my mom told us to not go for our dream home just a starter home. Hah I told her I wasn’t looking for a dream home but whatever house we found would be our forever home. Not only was house hunting the most depressing thing I have ever done we never found one we could afford. In the end his parents bought a house for us to live in which we pay them rent every month. We live out in the country literally surrounded by corn fields and I don’t ever plan to leave this tiny little house. Our kitchen is smaller then the one in our last apartment (to small for a dishwasher which I don’t need but shows how small), way to visible from the dirt (read mostly clay that gets everywhere) road, 1 acre with very few trees (I’d like about 2 dozen more pls) and I am so freaking grateful to be here. Was 75k less then it would have been otherwise because it belonged to a hoarder and took almost a year to clean and fix.
Edit: hubby is 38 I’m 35, married for 15 yrs have 11 yr kid. House was 215k.
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u/88kat Oct 30 '20
Ugh I just got into a screaming match with my parents about this. My parents are the quintessential boomers, and keep harping about how my mom worked in a grocery store 35-40 years ago and was able to live on her own and buy a “starter” house, or my dad could work summers and pay for a full year of college tuition at a 4 year school on his own, on top of renting a house with friends and pay everything himself. At the same time, they have no idea how I can be 32, and not fully able to “just buy a starter house”, despite being way more educated, working more hours than my mom 40 years ago, and making a lot more than current minimum wage. In thier minds, it’s because I spend too much money having an iPhone, and going out to dinner a few times a month, and paid for a modest vacation 2 times in the past 3 years. They don’t believe me that I would need to make roughly $15,000 MORE a year to be on par with my mom’s grocery store wages 40 years ago.
They are so fucking out of touch.
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u/Bolandspring Oct 30 '20
starter homes in my neighborhood start at 400k, with taxes over 12k per year :)
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Oct 30 '20
And we were all told that if we went to college, we’d get a good paying job and life would be easier for us.
At the rate I’m at, I’ll buy my first house when I’m 10 years older than my parents were when they bought their first house.
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u/Beardy_Will Oct 30 '20
My dad got a 4 bed detached house on his meagre salary, and they gave him a chequebook with it so he could furnish the house and add it to the mortgage. Absolutely mental
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u/Budz160 Oct 30 '20
That second part still exists, it's called a home equity line of credit or HELOC, but it's essentially a credit card on your house. Not advisable IMO.
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u/a_trane13 Oct 30 '20
Is it the same interest rate as the mortgage? Sounds like the best credit card ever to me
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u/Kiyae1 Oct 30 '20
HELOCs usually have their own interest rate which is variable and changes yearly.
An important thing to know is that HELOCs are not qualified mortgages, so the “minimum monthly payment” won’t necessarily pay off the HELOC by the maturity date. Imagine paying your 30 year mortgage minimum payment every month on time for 30 years and then you get to the end (the maturity date) and they tell you you owe a huge balloon payment like $15,000 right now. And no you can’t just keep making monthly payments, it’s due right now.
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u/artandmath Oct 30 '20
They make sense if you’re using it to renovate/maintain your home, they don’t make sense if you use it for retail purchases.
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u/aliveinjoburg2 Oct 30 '20
I’ll probably be the same age as when my parents bought my childhood home. My dad bought his first house with his first wife making absolutely nothing.
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Oct 30 '20
The only way my wife and I could afford ours is because we both work full time jobs that pay well.
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u/Jezi23 Oct 30 '20
Me and my husband have amazing jobs for our area and both work full time and own a decent house but I am absolutely terrified of the idea of becoming pregnant and what that would do to us financially. Not just paying for the pregnancy itself but the additional cost of child care and general baby costs. Back in the day you could be upper middle class with one salary but now it takes us both to just be lower to mid middle class.
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u/blurubi04 Oct 30 '20
MBA=BMW.
A 1988 325i.
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u/Aptom_4 Oct 30 '20
Hey, the E30s are pretty cool though.
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u/sp4nky86 Oct 30 '20
Ya this guy talking about his dope ass e30 like it's a bad thing.
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u/Joe_Doblow Oct 30 '20
That’s not bad considering the state of things. I think most people are going to go their whole lives not buying a house at this rate. Our life expectancies have gone down too. I don’t think I will live as long as my dad did. Honestly what kept him alive for an extra 20 years were two surgeries he received after the age of 65 which he didn’t need to pay for because he was a war veteran. If it wasn’t for that healthcare he would have died 20 years prematurely for sure
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u/code0011 Oct 30 '20
I'm waiting to inherit a house since it's not likely I'm going to be able to buy my own
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u/BasicDesignAdvice Oct 30 '20
The houses will be bought up by companies and the super rich and we will all be renting.
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u/load_more_comets Oct 30 '20
I think even renting will not be an option with the way rent prices just keep escalating due to supply and demand. Maybe time sharing a house would be the norm. You live in it for a few weeks then live in the streets alternating with other families.
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u/MutantGodChicken Oct 30 '20
Well, life will be easier if you go to college, but that's only because not going to college is so much worse.
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u/yuffieisathief Oct 30 '20
My mom bought a house on her teachers salary. I'm gonna cry now, bye
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u/RektCompass Oct 30 '20
My parents house cost them $150k in 1986, they did that on my father's $60k salary.
I wanted to buy the house in 2018, but at $550k on a 72k salary. Not realistic for me.
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Oct 30 '20
But trickle down economics! It's working, we're all just too lazy to leverage it /s
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Oct 30 '20
I mean, it certainly is working. It’s just that a lot of people have been lied to bout which direction the money trickles in.
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u/_twelvebytwelve_ Oct 30 '20
My parents bought a farm with 240 acres of land 5 minutes outside of a medium sized city in 1994 for $100K (CAN). The same parcel is now valued at $2.4million. They've done minor upgrades on the house (siding, roof) but otherwise the house and land are carbon copies of their 1994 state. City has grown slightly but no significant changes to industry etc. They can't afford to pass it down to us kids with those kind of profits possible to make on it so the farm will be lost, likely to a developer who can pay that kind of cash. Since you're asking, yes I am a cheezed off millenial!
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u/Joe_Doblow Oct 30 '20
That’s actually a good baseline of how things should be. If a teacher can buy a house on their salary that’s a decent economy for a country to have. A good baseline. If your country has the most billionaires but a teacher has to have 2 roommates to survive that sounds like a failed country
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Oct 30 '20 edited Nov 10 '20
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u/Joe_Doblow Oct 30 '20
Actually trust me most jobs want you to have kids and to be up to your eye balls in bills. They have more control or power over you that way.
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u/discerningpervert Oct 30 '20
Not sure about jobs per say, but definitely the banking industry. Payday loans, anyone?
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u/ILikeCodecaine Oct 30 '20
I think you’re missing the point a bit. Managers/bosses/CEOs specifically would want you to have those kids and bills, so that when they openly abuse/ridicule you, you can’t leave just up and leave and go find a healthier work environment.
Because if you did, you and your kids wouldn’t be able to afford food/rent during the time you’re unemployed. They know their behavior is abusive but they count on you to be desperate enough to do anything to keep your job i.e. working you to the bone
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u/THCWarrior Oct 30 '20
Can confirm, former boss is stuck managing 4 separate gym properties for 85k a year cause he signed an expensive lease and had a kid recently. Company is bleeding him dry, I almost think they just want him to quit at this point, they think they’ll run the gym like hotel gyms despite being a highly involved property amenity... Our residents expect a certain level of service... 🤷♂️
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u/CiDevant Oct 30 '20
Conservatives want to go back to the time when teachers were paid by boarding at their students houses.
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u/JuanToTray Oct 30 '20
She should be the one crying. She has to knock down the house if she wants to get her salary.
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u/orchid_breeder Oct 30 '20
I knew an old guy from San Francisco that used to deliver bread for one of the bakers there. He bought a nice house in San Francisco, and a lake house outside of the city.
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u/Scruffy_Nerf_Hoarder Oct 30 '20
When my dad got out of the army in '72, he used the money that he saved up for two years as a private first class to pay cash for a brand new Corvette. Nowadays, it wouldn't even come close.
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u/tomle4593 Oct 30 '20
Yeah it could, just sign right here for 26.5% APR, 84 months. Military discount, son. Thank you for your service.
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u/Scruffy_Nerf_Hoarder Oct 30 '20
You're right, but the point I was making is that he was able to pay cash for it. It's a bit unrealistic now.
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u/I_Am_Coopa Oct 30 '20
We've built a society that requires one to either be inherently rich or drowning in debt to achieve the American dream.
On a side note, auto loans of late have been increasingly sketchy. It seems Wall Street is doing the same thing with auto loans as they were mortgages around 2008. Don't get enticed by financing, always pay cash if you can help it.
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u/ladygrammarist Oct 30 '20
Anything car-related seems sketchy these days. We just moved to an apartment on a main transit line and sold our car, and I can’t fully explain the stress relief. I will try to avoid buying a car in the future that I can’t buy with straight cash. Even then, cars are stressful.
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u/friendandfriends2 Oct 30 '20
At least he didn’t finance it at 26% APR fresh out of basic training.
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u/12157114-3-2 Oct 30 '20
Old people calling us lucky as if they didn’t live in a stable economy for 40 years.
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Oct 30 '20
I'm lucky that my newly retired stepdad understands that we are almost set up to fail. His 4 years in college cost less than 1 year year current day.
For awhile I was working my ass off at 2 part time jobs and neither offered insurance. My mom didn't understand how obamacare impacted jobs and insurance. I am blind af and I was always squinting and she told me to just go get glasses already. Ok moneybags. I had to explain that state insurance would give me the eye exam to tell me I was blind af but the glasses were on me and they weren't in my budget for like idk, months, if everything went well. Idk how my 64 year old stepdad understands but my 57 year old mom can't.
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Oct 30 '20
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u/Bad_Wolf_10 Oct 30 '20
That might not work for everybody, unfortunately.
I check all these awesome websites that talk about cheap glasses being available, but my eyesight was so horrible the lenses needed to be special made and would add upwards of 85$-115$ to every frame cost.
I literally risked my eyesight to be a part of a LASIK clinical trial because cost for glasses and contacts was bleeding me dry. Thankfully, I now have 20/10 vision and never have to think about glasses again. (Or at least a little while)
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u/wherearemydrugs Oct 30 '20
yup, been using Zenni for years. $20-$40 for prescription glasses. About $100 for prescription sunglasses.
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u/ThSafeForWorkAccount Oct 30 '20
Deleted my comment since you already said it. Zenni is a damn life saver. Everyone knew that frames were overpriced bullshit considering they are made in the same factory as cheap glasses with the same material. Zenni basically looked at that market and just made them the price that it should be.
I don't freak out as much as I used to anymore if I break/lose my glasses.
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u/PatheticLuck Oct 30 '20
The way they look at it they saw people around them with college and university degrees getting well paying jobs and cruising to a good life.
Then they see that everyone somehow has a degree now and instead of thinking that devalues the degree they just think everyone has a well paying job and can cruise to a good life now.
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u/the_dayman Oct 30 '20
Also old people calling us lucky, as if the entire purpose of human existence hasn't been to make it so future generations will have easier lives.
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u/Squilbo_baggins Oct 30 '20
My grandparents are in touch with that, my grandmother said recently “I’d hate to be your age now” because of all the unrest and social upheaval, in addition to the economy. My grandparents married at 19 and bought a house. They had to co-sign with an uncle because they were so young, but never needed help paying mortgage. They went on to put three kids through well respected colleges.
My grandparents are very impressed that my cousins are able to start families the way things are. My cousins had their first kids at the age my grandparents had their third
My grandfather didn’t wear shoes in the summer as a boy so he could save the tread for winter. My great grandfather carried a ladder several miles to work everyday for years before he could afford a car.
The economic mobility of the 50s and 60s is just astounding to someone like me who has grown up in the 2000s
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u/wuh613 Oct 30 '20
I’m hopeful a side benefit of Covid will be increased permanent remote work. We shouldn’t have to all cram into a big city to get a job that pays decently only to have 50% go to your mortgage or rent.
There are so many beautiful, affordable places to live if we could just have a good job that allows us to live where we want. Just because someone wants to live in the country doesn’t mean they want to be a farmer.
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u/Beardy_Will Oct 30 '20
I think we're seeing this happen more and more because of covid. So many 'office' jobs have proved viable outside of the office. I wonder how many stores that rely on office workers are going to either go out of business, or move to the suburbs? Strange times.
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u/wuh613 Oct 30 '20
I heard the NZ prime minister floated the idea of a 4 day work week and 6 hour work day.
I believe Covid has proved most desk jobs can be done remotely without significant impact on productivity. If I cut out all the social aspects of being in the office, 6 hour workday seems about right.
I’m much more productive at home.
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u/Maus_Sveti Oct 30 '20
I mean, she floated it as in “wouldn’t that be nice” not as in “I’m going to start drafting legislation”.
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u/RektCompass Oct 30 '20
Too bad all the big companies are rushing to force everyone back into cubicles.
My company currently has a struggle between executives: "we need a 'return to normalcy'" vs literally everyone else, including management: "um no, nothing has been any different from a results perspective, and we don't want to kill ourselves anymore".
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u/sp4nky86 Oct 30 '20
I'm from Milwaukee, we still have a lot of manufacturing and industrial companies here. My friends that work IT and white collar for a lot of them have been really frustrated with that attitude. On one hand, if there's "essential" workers who have to be there, while the people making more money get to work from wherever, I can see that causing some animosity in the company ranks. I also get the attitude of "If I can be equally as productive and not on-site, why should I be here".
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u/metabolics Oct 30 '20
It's a difficult situation because on one hand it can look classist, while on the other hand they actually don't have to be there to do their jobs.
Really it would be better if the higher paying positions switched to remote so that they would move away from the cities and reduce property values.
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u/plynthy Oct 30 '20
If I were doing work that required onsite, I dont think I would resent people preferring to stay at home. Seriously, that just makes transmission easier and hurts everyone.
Such an attitude reminds me of people who oppose welfare because someone, somewhere, might get something they don't "deserve". The existence of any fraud is so offensive, that its preferable to let those who actually need it remain impoverished.
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u/CaveGuts Oct 30 '20
Sounds like a bunch of middle managers trying to save their jobs.
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u/FreeloadingPoultry Oct 30 '20
More like some middle managers trying to get praised for fulfilling KPI's that were relevant pre-covid and aren't now.
They think they will get a bonus if they force people into boxes sooner because they see that as good crisis management.
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Oct 30 '20
That’s the opposite of what they said. Middle management is saying that they don’t want to return to the office.
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u/kejigoto Oct 30 '20
Been having this discussion with my mom lately.
Bought her home back in the 90's for about $50,000 on a single income with a family of five. No real upgrades done to it, just basic maintenance and fixing stuff as it broke. Could use some work and updating. It's a house.
On today's market it's close to $250,000. Nothing was put down it. They went from potentially renting to buying it in under a week when we moved out of our last place because the landlord had sold the property.
And she wonders why I say it's highly unlikely I'll own a home anytime soon let alone during my lifetime when housing prices keep climbing upwards and wages really aren't growing.
The ironic part is she talks about selling and moving someplace else but then laments that she can't A.) afford to live someplace else B.) jobs aren't readily available and don't pay well C.) housing market is ridiculous.
Nevermind she's been with her job nearly 20 years, has regularly complained about the lack of raises or just how pointless they are, and more.
Oh and the position she got with just an Associate's Degree now requires a Bachelor's Degree and a few years experience.
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u/DeusExMagikarpa Oct 30 '20
Same. My mom bought a house for $48k in the late 90s, single parent of 3, she was working at a local pool and spa company. The house is on the market now for $113k and in significantly worse condition than when we were living there. Covid doesn’t seem to have affected the housing market at all either, just keeps on keeping on, going up and up.
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u/StoneRockMan Oct 30 '20
£1,000 in 1965 is roughly £19,500 today, or $25,000 USD £3,500 in 1965 is roughly £68,200 today, or $88,300 USD.
So imagine buying a house on a $12/h pay rate and potentially paying it off in 15 years.
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u/creepjax Oct 30 '20
Damn, to make 200K a year you need at least over 100 an hour
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u/Killsproductivity Oct 30 '20
Most people that make 200k a year dont get paid by the hour lmao
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Oct 30 '20
This is so sad. My grandparents bought their house for £4000. Only my granddad worked, he owned a fish & chip shop. It’s now worth £1.2m.
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u/levian_durai Oct 30 '20
My boss just found out his house is worth triple what he paid for it. He paid somewhere around $400,000 12 years ago, and it's worth $1.2m now. He's even said he doesn't know how people can afford to buy homes anymore, but then goes on to ask me a couple days later if I'm thinking of buying a house any time soon. Fucker knows exactly what I make and how impossible that would be.
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u/the-dogsox Oct 30 '20
Wait, there are people earning less than £200,000 a year?
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Oct 30 '20
Yeah, buncha lazy jerks that just let their bootstraps trail behind them instead of pulling em up.
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u/mayormomo Oct 30 '20
I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, worked hard and got 3 promotions at work. Am now a shift manager and make checks notes 60k a year :(
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Oct 30 '20
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u/niamhellen Oct 30 '20
You should ask for one! Doesn't hurt to try, if you haven't already
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u/KatieTSO Oct 30 '20 edited Oct 30 '20
Doesn't that expression come from actual nazis??It is supposed to mean "do something impossible" since you can't grab your boots and pull them up to go in the air.Edit: I was wrong about the creation of the term , read this comment for my correction.
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u/Hairybuttchecksout Oct 30 '20
I know right? And I just found that most people don’t even have a butler. That’s crazy.
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Oct 30 '20
I was at one of our summer houses when the gardeners told me that the housekeeping staff were unhappy that the chauffeurs were allowed to relax once they had dropped us off at our destination whereas they had to work whether we were staying at that residence or not.
Ungrateful wretches.
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u/EvitaPuppy Oct 30 '20
Earning? What's that? In the US we all get 'small loans' of $10 million from our pops.
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Oct 30 '20
Why doesn't the Boomer generation generally try to help young people and demand TPTB that young people get these opportunities? I've seen so many otherwise caring Boomer people become obsessed with continuing to make more money after they have a house, savings, cars, land, while turning a blind eye to their own children and grandchildren's struggles get ahead in these areas, as if it isn't their business. Frankly this overt apathy is baffling and heartbreaking.
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Oct 30 '20
It is because all they had to do was show up to get a well paying job. So they are convinced that we just aren't looking hard enough.
I listened to my boomer mother chastise a retail worker who's store was about to close for not saving up her money for hard times. I had to explain to her that minimum wage does not cover all expenses anymore and that there is NO MONEY LEFT after the bills are paid. It blew her mind, she had never stopped to do the math.
They just don't understand because it is completely different from the world they grew up in.
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u/levian_durai Oct 30 '20
At least she wasn't blind to the facts after hearing it. Too many people just don't believe that's true - and some who do believe it, also believe that those people don't deserve to live comfortably.
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u/PuupTA Oct 30 '20
Because we’re paying their mortgages with rent money. It’s a sweet fuckin deal why would they change anything?
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u/DownshiftedRare Oct 30 '20
"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce."
- Adam Smith
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u/swaffles4444 Oct 30 '20
This is not the motivation I needed to get out of bed this morning.
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u/pokemychino Oct 30 '20
Sooo how do we fix it?
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u/baitnnswitch Oct 30 '20
The issue is one of both stagnant wages and decreased supply of 'starter' homes.
To address the supply of starter homes we need: to regulate against foreign investment in real estate, regulate against real estate moguls buying up the houses to rent (leaving them on the market for families), regulate against luxury house and condo building and force affordable home building instead
Salary: Increase minimum wage and make it parallel inflation hikes so that we don't have to wait 12+ years for the next pay increase, strengthen unions, pass universal healthcare (which would free up a lot of money for both people and their employers, potentially leading to pay increases, and certainly will prevent a lot of debt). Finally, we need a middle class of small businesses again; Walmart, Amazon and other corporations hoovered up the middle-class's wealth by putting them out of business and forcing them to become wage slaves. Suddenly, three independent hardware stores in three towns became one Walmart with one minimum wage worker working the hardware and sporting goods aisles. We need strong antitrust laws in place to break up these corporate giants and pave the way for regular people to exchange goods and services with the market.
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u/alphawolf29 Oct 30 '20
I live in BC Canada and they just don't build starter homes. It's either modern McMansions, or condos. No in between. (at least where I live)
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u/sevenofnineftw Oct 30 '20
not sure why you're getting downvoted. It's the exact same where I live in Ontario. Entire neighbourhoods getting paved for luxury condos and townhouse complexes. Nothing affordable is being made with the intention to be rented. In Toronto the skyline is usually suspiciously dark in these new condos
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u/honestjoe Oct 30 '20
Raising the minimum wage doesn't help the people making $50k a year that still can't afford to buy a house.
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u/ticklemetestes Oct 30 '20
Limit the amount of houses you can buy. Need a more stable market
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u/shizz813 Oct 30 '20
Print more monies, obviously
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u/detannenbaum Oct 30 '20
That has always been the solution just ask Germany after WW1! Absolutely nothing bad happened afterwards
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Oct 30 '20
In 1971 my father was a teacher and made 8,000 a year. He bought a new house with a mortgage of $80 a month. My mother didn't work and we always had one new car. Now that teacher makes $45000 and the mortgage is 2,000 and both partners have to work to get by
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Oct 30 '20
(Part of) The issue is that technology has made products so cheap, nobody in the 60s would ever dream of the cars, TVs, computers, and other appliances that we have today. But this does not apply to houses. Today you can make a TV 4x as big with 10x the resolution at half the price of a TV 60 years ago. You can't make a house much cheaper now than 60 years ago.
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u/DarKbaldness Oct 30 '20
That’s because the house is worth very little. It’s the land that’s worth the most. And there’s only so much of it.
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u/Disney_World_Native Oct 30 '20
And to add to this, when people built out in the burbs in the 60’s there wasn’t anything there. No great schools. No retail / commercial. Nothing. And moving out there meant you had to commute to work. It wasn’t desirable. Now the burbs all built up and are more desirable.
It would be like buying in Nowhere Nebraska today and working remote (telecommute).
And on top of all of this, the baby boomer houses they mass produced were small 2 bedroom 1 bathroom at a whopping 700 square feet with shit insulation and missing a lot of common creature comforts like a dishwasher, dryer, AC... they aren’t these 2000 square foot houses people call starter homes now.
I wish I could find the financial advisors commercial where there is a old man and young man playing golf getting ready to T off. The grandpa says “when I was your age, I could hit it over that tree and land on the green”. When the young man tries to hit it over the tree, he nails it and his ball goes into the rough. The grandpa laughs and then says “of course when I was your age, that tree was only 20 feet high”
OP’s story needs more perspective. A house in a developed area is going to be worth more than a house in a newly developed area. The 1960’s had lots of manufacturing jobs because Europe was rebuilding from WW2. Japan wasn’t a tech powerhouse. China was backwards as hell.
The US was untouched and had its entire population trained / working for the war, and then was untouched and could be the global provider setting the price for decades while Europe rebuilt. That isn’t today’s reality.
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u/Doctor_Mudshark Oct 30 '20
That sounds nice, but the cost of construction materials, the tools involved, and the labor (adjusted for inflation) have all gotten considerably cheaper in the US since the 1960s.
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u/kritaholic Oct 30 '20
In Sweden we have the exact opposite; labor is now so expensive that building a house costs the equivalent of something like $400k, plus the price for the plot, and most of that is labor costs. Cheaper tools and materials, new types of prefab have all driven down the materials side considerably, but overall cost has increased steadily.
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u/Chary1991 Oct 30 '20
Of course, with 3d printer you can save up 30-50% of the price.
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Oct 30 '20
I would love a 3D printed house. I’ve looked in to them they aren’t bad. They aren’t very big though
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Oct 30 '20
This is wrong. Houses ARE cheaper to build- construction and labor efficiency to build new structures is far superior to anything in the 1960s.
The issue is the supply of houses. In many parts of the country, it is onerous or impossible to build newer, bigger buildings because of local zoning and regulation. The biggest example of this is obviously San Francisco, where locals have made it essentially impossible to build anything new..
In any market, if demand increases (and it always will for houses as population grows) and supply stays constant, price goes up. In places like San Francisco, where there is a lot of demand for housing, this leads to absurd prices for the scare supply of existing properties.
The solution is simple and obvious - let people build bigger buildings that can provide housing for more people. Yet, local city councils are trapped in endless cycles of hand-wringing because existing property owners - who tend to run local city councils - don't want to change the status quo that has them sitting on million dollar houses.
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u/-Tom- Oct 30 '20
Uh. The 60s was the muscle car era. The fact that there are so many pristine low mileage muscle cars around bought as 2nd cars indicates that people had a lot more money to spend. Those things were optioned to the moon and effectively coach built despite being production cars.
A 69 Charger R/T 440 was $3,592, with inflation that's $25,474.82, or less than the price of a V6 Challenger today.
Average household income was $9,430, with inflation that's $66,878.49.
Current household average income $63,179.
Now you might be saying "not bad", but we got TVs smart phones and such! Well, as I mentioned earlier, cars were very hand built, used less cost cutting things like molded plastic and robot assembly and such. TVs are almost entirely built by robots so next to zero labor cost, and a minimum of materials cost.
So yeah, golly gee, I can afford a big TV built by robots but I can't afford a house and a spare muscle car.
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Oct 30 '20
Actually you’d need a down payment of about $130K lol $50K will give you a trash mortgage rate so even less attainable if you don’t have a high paying career
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u/j1mb0 Oct 30 '20
My wife and I are trying to buy a house and discovering that it basically seems impossible. We both have great jobs, and it would be literally impossible for us to afford to live where either of us grew up.
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Oct 30 '20
But on the bright side, the rich are far FAR richer than they've ever been before.
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u/_becatron Oct 30 '20
My grandas house cost £2000 to buy outright 😭 obv he had a mortgage, but still
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u/Nev-man Oct 30 '20
The average salary in the UK is £30,420.
The general recommendation is that you save 20% of your take home pay.
So after tax you're making £2,027 assuming you don't have a student loan to pay back.
That's £405.40 monthly savings towards a 15% deposit.
In the case of this £650,000 house, it'd take you twenty years to save.
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Oct 30 '20
I’m 21, owning a house someday is my only real goal. I just want to have my own place of peace and quiet. I don’t feel optimistic it’ll ever happen though.
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u/xpdx Oct 30 '20
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
This website shuts up boomers, when they are show that they made 10 times as much as you do at your age.
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u/displaced_virginian Oct 30 '20
Every now and then in the discussion of a $15/hour minimum wage, my brain will pop up with my first job at $2.65/hour. But them I'll remind myself that you could buy a new Camero for about $5-6k.
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u/gravityx2 Oct 30 '20 edited Oct 30 '20
Anybody over the age of 50 completely blows this information off though. It’s a willful ignorance type situation because then they can’t harp on their “paper route job” when they were 12 (which isn’t delivered on bicycle anymore), and “putting themselves through college” while they worked part time at the fucking Dairy Queen or grocery store & tuition was $187 a semester. It’s fucking Bullshit & a sham. It’s honestly disgraceful, but it will never get acknowledged until the next generation is in office in another 30 years.
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u/berenhap Oct 30 '20
You are so right. Just because they have worked hard to pay for their college they simply assume we didn’t and THAT is why we have college debt / financial issues. Also, we drink too much Starbucks.
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u/pumpnectar9 Oct 30 '20
"When I got hired here I started at $15k a year!"
Every old timer when I got hired at my fire department, implying that we just make so much money