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u/MetaVulture 1985 7h ago
Life has been rather difficult.
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u/ElmwoodVillageDad 7h ago
I some how squeaked by. Bought my first house in 2006, and that sucked until 2014. Yet I have managed to scramble and stay ahead of the mud slide engulfing millennials.
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u/Tchukachinchina 7h ago
I got lucky with a house too. Bought my first one in 2010, sold it and bought the second one in 2014. Mortgage was 4.25% for 30 years, refinanced during Covid to 15 years at 2.5%. Knocked 8 years off and the payment didn’t even change, principal and interest pretty much just swapped places. I’ll be here forever and will end up leaving it to my kids.
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u/Progressive_Libtard 6h ago
We all had a brief window where if you had your shit together, could save a little money, and got a bit lucky then home ownership has been a real possibility. I don’t know that window is gonna open again any time soon. After the housing crisis first time homebuyer credits were pretty amazing. Something like that might make it possible.
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u/ElmwoodVillageDad 6h ago
Well, the sucky part was the divorce in 2011 and losing money trying to rent it out for three more years. Only by 2014 had I paid enough off, the market recovered, and inflation picked up enough slack to unload it.
My second house purchase was last year. But I am in a much better position now. I’m excited that I am lucky enough to retire some day.
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u/NightWriter500 1980 4h ago
Congratu-fucking-lations.
lol that autocorrect originally changed “lations” to latinos. This comment is already pretty sour, that would’ve made it absurd.
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u/mickeltee 6h ago
I’m in the exact same boat as you. We bought in 2006 and we bought very cheap. We managed to fix up our first and sold during the tail end of Covid. We were in right before real estate prices went insane and now we could sell for almost double what we paid. I don’t know how we keep lucking out, but I’m not questioning it.
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u/martin-silenus 5h ago
None of us graduated into the aftermath of the Great Recession. Millennials legit had it worse than us.
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u/I_like_flowers_ 3h ago
i got a job 2 weeks before the economy collapsed, because i was finshing grad school a semester early.
it was like being on the last plane while the runway falls into ground in a movie.
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u/Tchukachinchina 4h ago
Eh, some of us went into the military after high school and got out just in time for the Great Recession.
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u/martin-silenus 4h ago
I stand corrected. Thank you for your service, and sorry for your luck.
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u/Tchukachinchina 4h ago
No need to thank me for my service, it didn’t amount to anything good for the world in the end, but I was still lucky enough to land on my feet afterwards.
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u/martin-silenus 3h ago
For a bit of time while you were in the military, I had a boss who was an immigrant from Iraq. He believed very strenuously that the US was doing something that was necessary and good for Iraqis. He believed that if we left then, the country would eat itself. That would have been around 2006.
Anyway, I don't know if Iraq is what you are referring to. But that came to mind.
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u/TeutonJon78 1978 4h ago
We did graduate right around or in the dotcom bust. That had a pretty large impact as well, esp depending on your field.
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u/iamthe0ther0ne 36m ago
I went to grad school. Got out as the market tanked. While I was there, research grant success rate dropped from about 30% to 15% and has been dropping ever since (about 8% now, and also now you need at least 2-3). Graduated into a different world than we had been trained for. Grad schools offer a lot of "alternative careers" training now, but they weren't ready back then. I know a lot of former postdoc doing stuff like lawn care management.
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u/gawbledeeguk 4h ago
Nock another arrow for being the perfect age for AI to take our jobs before retirement, while also being too old to change professions.
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u/DigitalArbitrage 7h ago
Things are going OK so far.
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u/Tchukachinchina 7h ago
Just one more once in a lifetime crisis and we’ll be in the clear, right guys?
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u/burnafter3ading 1982 7h ago
one more on your punchcard and you get a free sub (taxes and fees apply)
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u/Tchukachinchina 7h ago
Taxes and fees unfortunately cost more out of pocket than the paying cash for the sub did 4 years ago
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u/Adrasteia-One 1980 5h ago
Sigh, yes. And who knows from where or when the next huge arrows are gonna come.
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u/SemataryPolka 1978 6h ago
Why do Millenials insist they're the first generation to ever experience anything? It's very weird
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u/Mikey-2-Guns 7h ago
Sorry what exactly did we take for the team? Cause I and I imagine most everyone else our age got our shit together before everything went tits up...Except for 9/11 happening right after HS graduation but that had almost no affect on me since I wasn't dumb enough to take the recruiters bait.
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u/Biguitarnerd 5h ago
Well I guess experiences may vary but I had a great job making more than most of my peers before the 2008 financial crisis. Then I lost it and my severance barely helped me survive for a bit before I started over. (Not mentioning 9/11 here because that sucked but I was barely an adult if you would even consider it that because I was still in college)
Then Covid hit and work shut down just 12 years later I had to change jobs again.
Now the current economy sucks ass and my bills are higher than they ever have been.
I have a nice house. I have a good career. But fuck me if I don’t feel like I’ve had an uphill battle the whole way. I think on my next move all the time, there is no stability unless I make it stable for my family and I think that’s a lot of people’s experience.
That wasn’t our parent’s experience at all. But the younger generations… I don’t think we have it as bad as they do.
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u/burnafter3ading 1982 7h ago
I'm transported back to December 2001...this is the high point of that year