Let’s get over the idea that it’s a generation war and not a class war. Thinking all boomers are rich and own houses is like thinking all gen z are lazy. Neither is true by a long shot, but this is what the oligarchs and corporations want us to think about each other so we get distracted and don’t notice that they are the ones buying up all the housing so we can’t and they can rent to us at whatever price they want. Let’s stick together against them instead.
edit to add: And BTW don’t forget the next gens are growing up in an even worse situation and will face the effects of living under an autocracy and the effects of unaddressed climate change, while you get old and boomers are gone. Who do you think they’re going to blame? You, that’s who, while those in power laugh at all of us.
Something else: even boomers who own houses can still be poor and struggle to make ends meet.
“Oh, why don’t you just sell your house then!” 'cause then they and their family have no place to live. “But you could rent!” Yeah, that will work for a while and then they’ll be poor again.
Damn. Well said.
Preaching to the choir but I’m singing Amen right back at you.
Let’s also stop using terms like Gen Z or Boomers altogether. They are often used by the media to make articles seem more interesting to certain target groups. But from a scientific point of view, they are about as meaningful as zodiac signs.
“Here’s why Cancers can’t keep their money together and why Scorpios nevertheless are constantly jealous of their standard of living.”
Adding to this that, between Boomer and Gen Z, there is a generation that equally hate both of them 😂
Are people under the impression everyone who had a 40 hour a week job had their own house?
Everyone? No. Far, far more people than now? Absolutely.
In 1990 my mom stayed home and raised us. My dad worked a measly construction job and we lived in a two story, 5 bedroom house (which they lost after the 2008 collapse, I took it over and lost in 2012).
My mom was also able to borrow against that house over and over again for cars.
Around 1996 my dad got his CDLs and drove a coal truck.
We bought that house for 30k.
My aunt bought a huge colonial house with 8 bedrooms for roughly 60k in 1979-80. She never worked. Her husband was a coal miner.
When it burned down in 1996, she bought a beautiful brick home in a wonderful neighborhood for 100k. She sold that same house recently for 600k.
The difference is absurd.
A “measly construction job” is a good paying one. A person working at a McDonald’s for 40 hours a week at that time would not be able to afford an apartment let alone a house. When your aunt bought her house interest rates were in the teens, today they are 7% and that’s a record high. My parents bought a house in 1976 for $28,000 dad worked full time at a city job plus always had a second job or side hustle. Our family would strip copper to make ends meet. Mom cooked every meal, eating out was a rare treat. Never once did we even order pizza, Mom make it with powder dough. We didn’t have cable. Got by on two junker cars sometimes one.
Every generation has it’s challenges. This is the first to have a public circle jerk/pity party
My dad’s construction job was working for my mom’s brother for next to minimum wage. Not that it matters.
A minimun wage construction job? Someone is lying to you. Dad was probably working the glory hole at kwik-e-mart. No bank is going to give a house loan to someone making minimum wage.
Well, they did.
As a matter of fact they gave my parents multiple loans until it exceeded the value of the house so badly that we couldn’t keep up with it.
They did this so many times for so many people in my neighborhood that the place is now nearly rubble because of it. Oh, and that kind of irresponsible lending led to the 2008 collapse.
Every generation has it’s challenges
And the younger ones have an objective, mathematically proven worse version of the challenges than the earlier ones did
Nobody claimed it was ever perfect, only that it’s worse now, which it is
Haha I love it when kids tell me what my life was like.
Back to my original point. No, not everyone who worked 40 hours a week could afford a house.
You can wrap yourself in self pity or you can be resourceful, your choice.
Mate, a smaller percentage of our generation has houses. Wrap ya head around that. No one’s arguing every other generation had a house, that would be idiotic.
So self pity it is
Yours.
love it when kids tell me what my life was like
Didn’t happen, I said what it was like now by comparison
No, not everyone who worked 40 hours a week could afford a house.
And no body ever claimed that
You can wrap yourself in self pity or you can be resourceful, your choice
Lol, you have no idea what you’re talking about
100%
My mom worked at Sizzlers in the early 90s when she and her husband, a no-degree “engineer” were able to buy a 4 bedroom house with a huge yard and 2 car garage in the DC suburbs (MD side), with two cars. A few years later, they upgraded to an even bigger house in an even nicer part of the county.
Objectively poor people had houses that they owned, in places people wanted to live. None of that has been possible for at least a decade or more. Millennials are now in our 40s and have more education and experience than Boomers ever did, yet the ROI and QOL differentials are staggering.
Don’t let Boomers gaslight you; they collectively played this game on the easiest mode.
I personally am capable of working any boomer in their prime into exhausting while I’m still pushing for hours more. The whole “millenials are lazy” is corporate bullshit designed to make parents think their kids are just lazy and not being ripped off by the system they demand exists.
Pull a 16hr shift working network engineering during an outage, then come back to work in 8hrs for another full day on a Monday, then when the boomer stops having their mental break down they can apologize in person to every millennial they talked shit about.
Oh, and because you’re an engineer, NO OVERTIME! YOU SALARY BITCH! THOSE HOURS ARE INCLUDED!
Ok that’s fine I’ll just be leaving that much earlier on friday
Yeah that sounds healthy in the long run
I’ve got three meetings and an unscheduled emergency requiring 90% of the IT staff to sit on a conference call that says you’ll be staying late Friday, too.
Ok that’s fine I just won’t be coming in at all on monday then.
And if it’s going to keep happening like this we’re gonna have a conversation about renegotiating my employment, because this is not what we agreed to.
When you signed your employment contract one of the stipulations was that the company maintains the right to change the conditions of the contact at anytime without your knowledge or consent. So your choices are, arrive on time to work Monday morning or the company will presume that you have abandoned your position without notice and that you have forfeitted any potential severance agreement and any expectation of future a reference. We understand that we’re on crunch time but we are doing everything in our power to scale our workforce to our dynamic needs and we appreciate your continued patience and professionalism.
“We’ve got one that knows their worth! Stuff 'em in the oubliette before they infect the others! Ya want unions? This is how ya get unions!!1!¡!”
Ah, not a team player I see.
Good!
Let’s talk about suburbs. These generations left the city because they couldn’t afford it. Now suddenly living 5 mins from work is expected but then the an entry level job can’t afford it and it’s a generational difference? Can you afford to buy a house within 45 mins to your work? Hell ya where I live but you don’t have immediate access to all city amenities.
Me and my fiancee both work full time to just barely survive each month with no savings because the CoL is so fucking high it’s unmaintainable. And if you reply with “just move”, first: I’m in the midwest, it’s not AS bad out here, and second: Moving is a privilege, it’s expensive, time consuming, and often times you end up in a worse spot than you were before
I can install some pull handles on your bootstraps for a small monthly subscription fee. No, you won’t own them.
I’d love to know your version of “just barely” is you have two adults working full time in a 2 person household.
Maybe your mortgage is far higher then I’m imagining.
I live in an apartment, but it’s overpriced, and it’s just me. This world is designed to be a 2 person household.
So I have to imagine you’re living beyond your means. I’m living beyond my means too, but I also don’t have a decent wage either. So living at all is living beyond my means.
You should add up your whole house income, divide that number by 4, and THAT number should be what your mortgage shouldn’t be higher than.
I suspect your mortgage is probably much higher than that number.
Either that or we have different definitions of “just getting by”.
😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
You are lucky. Do not assume everyone else is as lucky as you.
≥ Mortgage You lost me there, renting is much more expensive than paying a mortgage off
Yep if you rent for 60 years you’ll have nothing and spend more by far than the cost of the mortgage.
Depends where and how you live. My rent is $800 a month, but some mortgages are thousands of dollars.
Where the fuck do you live with $800 rent? Middle of Montana? Dead center of Death Valley? Gtfo.
Lakewood, a suburb of Cleveland. It’s overpriced as hell.
$800 Rent is cheap in this economy
Yeah, but I’m not in your economy. Average wage around here is lkke $10/hr.
You pay $500 less than the average American for rent. I think you may be lacking the perspective necessary to engage productively with this topic.
My rent is $500 less than whatever metric you’re using, but our local ecconomy is also lowers than yours.
Average wage here is 10/hr for a factory job. I’ve heard some places like Seattle make $20/hr just working at starbucks.
And keep in mind my rent is basically 1 room.
800 if split 5 ways probably
Ikr, just saw an ad for a nearby apartment wanting 1,200$ a month for a studio apartment… in Nebraska
Again, the “how you live” thing again, in your opinion, what is the “correct” way to live?
My rent is around 1800 euro, if I’d buy this apartment, my mortgage would be around 3000. That’s for more than half a mil. After 30 years I’d have paid off more than a mil.
The company I rent from just got their financing much earlier, and in very big quantities. (Eg it has 100s to 1000s apartments and houses.)
Every year I make more money, every year the place I live is more difficult to buy.
If you lived in America your rent would be 3000 and your mortgage 3000. 10 years from now you would be paying 4000 whilst they continue to pay 3000 or 2000 even if they bought during any of the 4 crashes we have had in the last 20 years.
True, mortgage does not increase over time. As long as I stay put it is somewhat limited but over enough time that will be a significant factor.
One key difference between renting and buying is that you can then sell the apartment or house. You can’t claw back rent after being a good tenant for 30 years.
True true, I try to invest most of the difference, hopefully that will be worth something too when I need it.
Lets use WA as an example. Average house costs 588k interest rate is about 7% now. So you’ll be paying $4300 per month. So man that’s rough but surely there are some cheaper that average units out there! If you want to be anywhere near where the majority of the jobs are even a lot drive away you are going to have a hard time getting below 450k or 3300 per month.
Well maybe you can rent cheaper right? 2BR 1.5 bath where again most of the jobs are can easily run you $2000-2500 which seems like a very nice savings however whereas your fixed rate mortgage is you know fixed your rent will probably exceed the payment on your mortgage within 10-12 years and since you have no equity you have no cushion to fall back on if you ever experience a downturn you could find yourself a bum on the street. Hell if you aren’t able to save anything you will definitely be heading for bum status when you get old enough that you can’t work. Holding on to being able to own something is an investment in not descending into desperate poverty later.
I think its weird how people don’t believe people can actually be struggling in America without also somehow being the source of their own problems. It’s like people like you have broken brains.
I think its weird how people don’t believe people can actually be struggling in America without also somehow being the source of their own problems. It’s like people like you have broken brains.
Decades of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” Republican propaganda will do that. So many Americans have been convinced that if you aren’t wealthy, you only have yourself to blame. And if you’re poor, you are inherently flawed as a human.
Hell if you aren’t able to save anything you will definitely be heading for bum status when you get old enough that you can’t work. Holding on to being able to own something is an investment in not descending into desperate poverty later.
I picked this out because it illustrates how utterly fucked up our system is, because we need housing to be:
-
Expensive, because it’s the default retirement investment vehicle for the working classes.
-
Cheap, so that young people just starting out can buy it.
See a problem?
-
That formula hasn’t been valid for like, 20 years?
Yeah that inital response gave me the impression that they live in a completely different situation than what I, and most of the people I know IRL are experiencing. Typical rent prices out here are 120% the sum of 2 weeks of minimum wage pay, not including utilities
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Exactly! Same boat, I am too poor to move! Due to missed payments on mortgage, credit cards, and medical bills, our credit score is abysmal. There is no way we can get a new mortgage or pass credit checks for an apartment. On top of that I don’t have the time or money to invest into the house so there are many things that need to be fixed, some of these absolutely need to before selling it so I also can’t just sell either. 3rd, you’re right. Wherever I do end up moving (if somehow we did get approved), it’s probably going to cost more due to higher interest rates, and it will most likely cost more. We are praying to make it a few more years until stupid daycare is done so we can finally make ends meet a little…
I never thought I would be in this bad of a situation in my life, but here I am and I just want to survive each day. Thinking about money every day for years now is tiring and stressful. They have a name for it, its called poverty brain.
The US requiring credit cards is part of the problem why people have money troubles. It’s a lot less transparent than just using bankcards (or cash). The whole credit system mostly benefits older people and richer people than starters. It should be that if you don’t have debt your need to pay monthly on you should be able to take a mortgage for the max amount. In the end if I can spend 1000$ a month for a mortgage and I have zero other monthly loan payments I should be able to get a loan which requires a payment of 1000$.
Edit: budgeting using a free tool like Actual Budget can help you give some more headspace
I had a basic but nice first house, but I sold it to move for a new job. I even was lucky enough to still make a bit of a profit. But not enough, and now I’m stuck back with renting again, can’t really afford to buy a new house with interest rates, prices, inflation eroding my income in other areas, and poor availability. I think back to my parents buying their first house and how nice it was by comparison, for a fraction of the price even adjusted for inflation and it gives me a really unfortunate sense of perspective, much less hearing stories like yours or from friends I know who are in a bad situations. I’m not struggling, but prospects for improving things aren’t great either, and that seems to be the case for everyone I know.
Don’t worry. All that work you’re doing will pay off… your landlord’s fifth mortgage.
In my case I’m subleasing so I’m paying off my Landlords’ Landlord’s fifth mortgage
Landlords all the way down.
Landlords are parasites.
You just need to put in some extra effort or get a side hustle like we did. /S elder millennial.
::strangles the shit out of them with their own bootstraps::
Moving is a privilege,
Poor people move all the time. It’s a fucking wild take to call moving a privilege. Though I do agree with the last bit about sometimes (or maybe even often) being in a worse position than before
I read something in The Atlantic about how people used to move about every three years and that sounds insane to me.
And also, the phrase “I just read something thing in The Atlantic” makes me feel even older than my gout and shingles.
You’re going to have to rename yourself to Boomer Humor Doomergod. (Sorry about the gout and shingles.)
As soon as I’m on my Good Screen tm I’ll do it
Edit: Done
When I was young we averaged moving every 4.5 years, but for reasons, I got very accustomed to changing environments every year or so, and as an adult I’ve struggled to stay in one place for the clean start it offers, but moving is so expensive now, and I don’t like driving anywhere near enough to be a nomad van dweller type.
I can maybe do it one more time in the near future, assuming money and housing values don’t tank first, but that’s probably it for the rest of my days. I hope it really scratches the anxious itch for change, cuz if not…
Look at this guy he knows all the poor people.
Poor people move all the time.
Yes, that’s why all the inner city projects are devoid of people. They’ve all moved somewhere else because it’s so easy for them.
I have a feeling the poors don’t move to different cities/states that often.
Demand for human labor is declining, and as a result, wages are declining.
Which is precisely why wages shouldn’t be decided through market mechanisms
Or maybe we get rid of the “wages = living” bit.
We could all negotiate for the full value of our labor a lot better if we didn’t have a noose around our neck forcing us to work.
Re-title this article as “Lazy, Tired Workers Are Mad At Youthful Workers Like Lazy, Tired Workers 60 Years Ago Were Mad At Them 60 Years Ago”.
Another “Don’t mind the billionaires getting richer and fight each other for the scraps instead” article.
Among all my friends, there are two clear common denominators between those who rent and those who own houses. The ones renting have office jobs and live in the capital, while the ones who own houses live in smaller cities or the countryside and work in manual labor.
I’m not saying correlation is causation, but it’s an interesting observation - and so far, it applies to 100% of my friends.
Or have office jobs and commute a bit longer.
People say I’m crazy for commuting 1,5 hours (one way). But I get to go home to my own property. Especially now with hybrid working still being a thing, I only go to the office once or twice a week.
I must agree with the people saying you’re crazy for having that long commute. That’s over a month spent getting to and from work every year. Time is the most valuable asset in the entire world. By working we’re trading time for money but for the time spent commuting you’re not even getting paid. I would seriously consider trying to find an alternative solution to this.
I’m located in The Netherlands, the housing market here is fucked. An alternative solution would be to find something to rent closer to work, but I would pay 1,5 times as much in rent, for a small apartment in a neighborhood where I don’t want to live. Yes, I’m spending more time on my commute, but I also have more disposable income each month that I can save and invest. If all goes to plan, I can retire earlier and live mortgage free within 20 years. In essence, I’m trading a bit of time now, to have more spare time and a better financial position in the near future. I’m taking it.
ted to get the fuck out of here when she said: a lot of people wanted the lawnmower, but she doesn’t sell it to anyone (she mant she didn’t sell it to immigrants). And: “no offence to you, but your generation
do you drive, or take public transport? Americans will assume you drive, and then it is a pure waste of time. On the other hand, spending 3 hours on a train, one can sleep, work, watch a movie, read, whatever.
If they go to the office twice a week with an hour and a half commute each way that’s six hours a week driving. So 52 weeks a year that’s 312 hours or 13 days. Still not great but my commute is about 30min one way. I work five days a week so five hours a week, which would still be about 10 2/3 days a year. They also said they only have to commute once OR twice a week so they still probably drive less then the 13 days a year.
I’m just saying, sounds like a good deal
Many in GenX does, though.
https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation-2023/
I mean not really that far of from boomers.
78.8% vs 26%?
Cripes…
26% of adult Gen Zers owned a home in 2023, little changed from 2022. Meanwhile, the homeownership rate for millennials rose to 55% from 52%, and the rate for Gen X climbed to 72% from 70%.
GenX is 72% according to that site.
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I’ve gotta say i admire Zoomers a lot. Im a 1990 millenial and most of my generation simply put their heads down and pushed through and tried to emulate their boomers parents while not living their boomer parents reality, destroying themselves in the process. It seems that almost collectively your generation has said FUCK THIS SHIT and made moves to end it.
Its really impressive.
I don’t know about that. I’m a 1990 millennial and the vast majority of ppl my age collectively said fuck giving the extra effort for no return. I remember reading in my 20s that millennials pretty much gave up on retirement and started traveling.
Literally the poorest condition house would cost 100% of 8 years of take-home pay of my engineer salary where I live. That’s before accounting for loan interest on 20% down payment (I have 5%) which would push it up to 18 full years of my labor.
A single-family house is simply not worth 15+ years of my life, and I’m actively looking into cheaper options.
I don’t know any millennials like that. You sure they aren’t Gen-X?
Okay but… where’s the news?
Ever wonder how “work ethic” became a trait that defines the quality of an individual? You can probably guess. Religion. Which of course needed people to work hard so they could donate more money to them.
My dad worked two full time jobs for a while to help the family get ahead while we were little. I think spending time with his young children would have been time better spent for everyone. He did stop when we got to school age. And he did spend a lot of time with us. Was a scout master, tball coach, all that. So I know he probably would have rather been with us than working that extra job. But from a young age it was drilled into him that work came first.
Now with younger people less into religion. We see more and more who realize that working hard for someone else doesn’t need to be a defining characterist of a person’s quality.
Maybe his motivation wasn’t so much “work ethic” as it was “taking responsibility to care for one’s family”, since he did stop the extra job when he could and spent time with you. He sounds like a great dad!
I mean part of it was good financial sense. Money saved early has longer to grow. But I don’t think they “needed” the money that bad. Two full time jobs is nuts. And there were plenty more instances where he clearly communicated that work ethic was equal to a persons value. But yeah, he was a good Dad.
I think they see the boomers doing nothing, but having everything, and the dream of having a house, two cars, and 2.5 kids was not something they were ever told they could have. They grew up with depressed millennials close enough in age to still be friends, who tell them “I’m fucked, so you don’t have a chance in hell!” And they’re right. With prices going up and wages stagnant or going down, they don’t ever get to save anything. And why should they? At the rate houses are climbing, that down payment keeps running away from them. And still, the only thing they will ever be able to pay for is a dump in a shitty part of town.
Until we bring back hope for the future, we will keep seeing people give fewer fucks.
I despise most of the boomers
I bought a lawnmower from someone online and went to pick it up. The lady was a turbo hoarder in her late 60’s she was smoking and smelled like a brewery. Her home was DISGUSTING. And i mean rat shit on the countertop. The only reason i was in her house was because there was so much shit around her house that the only way into her backyard was through the house. If you haven’t seen it, you can not understand how bizzare it was to carry a lawnmower through a hoarder house, when she had technically a big yard around.
I just wanted to get the fuck out of here when she said: a lot of people wanted the lawnmower, but she doesn’t sell it to anyone (she mant she didn’t sell it to immigrants). And: “no offence to you, but your generation is absolutely useless.” It was like some weird snl sketch
I probably would have just not bought that specific lawnmower and kept using my shitty one.
Part of me wanted to leave it in the “living room” and say: fuck this shit. Problem was that it was a bar mower, and i really needed it and they are usually pricey as hell and she basically gave it away for free. The other thing was that it was so disgusting that i felt like i HAVE to get something out of it.
Wait I thought boomers were all rich and lived in nice houses?
I’m going to guess that person’s TV has a Fox News logo burned into the bottom corner.
No this was peak euro trash
Hey Gen Z, first time being gaslit by boomers? Heh, yyeeeaaaahhhhhhh…they do that. Now imagine having them as your parent, and you’re 5, and you have to just live with their bullshit.
~Sincerely, Gen X and the older millenials.
“it’ll all make sense when you’re an adult”
well. i’m an adult now. some would even say old or middle aged. it still doesn’t make sense
My parents were Gen X but they faithfully followed the boomer mindset
Unfortunately, a lot of Gen X went that way.
Nuance is hard. It’s all just binary, isn’t it?
Never said it was?
I know many people in their 50s who are Boomer as fuck.
40s as well for me
The real Boomers were the assholes we met along the way.
I’m so glad as I’m close to my 40s I know so many fellow millinials who still thinks utter bullshit.
my parents were silent generation.
As shitty as my parents were, I’m suddenly grateful that they were pre-boomer. Still had to deal with stuff like listening to their bigotry, but having a dad that grew up during the Depression, and his own dad was out of work for much of it, meant that he never gave me shit for not being as successful as him.
However, I’m old enough to remember watching the boomers getting gaslit by the “Greatest Generation”.
But yeah, as an Xer, it seems like we got the short straw. The boomers sucked all the air out of the room for so very long, that if the (mostly boomer- and Greatest Generation- led) media stopped giving them all the attention for a moment, it was to only label us the “slacker generation”.
By the time the boomer narcissism’s grip was loosened, the focus was mostly on to Gen Y, and if we are being honest here, due to their numbers, the media narcissism around Gen Y reminds me very much of the boomers, with Gen Z quickly catching up.
I suspect that’s very much due to a numbers game - if advertising dollars figure they can center a particular group enough, they can scoop up all those $$$ by selling a certain age range a story about themselves…
