I assume everyone had roughly the same thought around 2012. Mid sized city jobs paying 100k+ and you could still find homes with half an acre for $300k. As sala

I assume everyone had roughly the same thought around 2012. Mid sized city jobs paying 100k+ and you could still find homes with half an acre for $300k. As salaries got inflated due to FAANG and startup competition it really seemed like an easy out was just keep a lower cost place or rent. The dream of WFH was find a HCOL job and buy LCOL place and a helicopter or maybe just save for retirement at 45. Now given the cost of living increases, the $300k places push $900k in midsized cities. The HCOL areas have gone up in value and the mortgage due to interest is almost twice as high over 2019. Assuming a $15-$20k net take home the housing will be half of it. Grocery bills seem about twice as high. Even with much higher salaries it seems like everything has been squeezed back to the 2012 math. Not everyone ended up riding the salary train and it's even harder form them. And that's assuming you get to keep your job in the shuffle back to the office/layoffs.