5 ms·

So you're not going to be able to live where most people want to live. That's far different from having no house. "Giving up on housing" is not the right answ

So you're not going to be able to live where most people want to live. That's far different from having no house. "Giving up on housing" is not the right answer. "Start small and work your way up", like most of us did. See, when you hit 20, you're looking at your parents, and you're seeing them when they're 45 or 50. You're not seeing them when they were 20. You expect that you're going to be able to live like they do at 50, not like they did when they were 20. That's not realistic. But the answer isn't to give up. The answer is to keep working on it, over decades, instead of expecting it to be handed to you on day one.

trident5000 3y ago
lol good luck telling that to this this community who are frustrated they cant afford a home in the most niche place on earth and refuse to live anywhere else.
- doctorwho42 3y ago
  Is wanting to live less than an hour commute to work "the most niche place on earth"? Most people I know are renting because they can't afford anything within an hour commute and we have grown up hearing and seeing the pains of the commuter life. So why saddle ourselves with both a 30 year mortgage for a overpriced home that will also drain us of 10+hrs/week
  - trident5000 3y ago
    Sounds like a lifestyle choice. Stop packing into cities like a can of sardines and it wont be an issue. Being inflexible to literal physics and reality is a personal issue.
    - redserk 3y ago
      This is less a physics problem and more of a zoning/planning issue.
    - watwut 3y ago
      Living in a place with no jobs is not exactly the solution for financial issues. And when you commute for more then 3 hours each day, it becomes impossible to be present parent or keep relationships or just do anything except work.
    - bzudo 3y ago
      Cool. Let me work remote.
    - kyubey 3y ago
      If you want to work and have a life, stop living where jobs are! Simply don't make adequate money to survive! Simply die! Being unaware of reality is also a personal issue too, bud.
      - Clubber 3y ago
        There are a lot of mid sized cities with reasonable housing and decent job prospects with a reasonable commute (< 30m). I know, I live in one of them.
        coldpie 3y ago
        Which one? This used to be true where I live (Twin Cities area, Minnesota) but is no longer. Prices have really exploded pretty much everywhere over the past 10 years, my home purchased in 2013 is now worth about double. It's easy to miss if you haven't been on the market.
        Clubber 3y ago
        I haven't checked in a while. In my city there are still reasonable houses (I don't want to say for obvious reasons), but I bought mine in the early 2000s and it only recently doubled. I just looked and you can still find fixer-uppers in not great neighborhoods for under $100K, but you can live in them with electric/water and all that.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > Is wanting to live less than an hour commute to work "the most niche place on earth"? I'm guessing OP meant San Francisco? There is some truth in that message. One can't always live where you wish. In my 20s my #1 goal in life was to live in Manhattan. I tried and tried and tried, but could never afford it. I gave up. Moved somewhere much cheaper (but still jobs around, not talking middle of the desert) where affording a house was no problem. It's not exactly what I wanted at the time, but looking back after a couple decades, has turned out fine.
tommoor 3y ago
My dads first house cost less than his first car, bought around the same time.
- Clubber 3y ago
  I find that hard to believe.
bequanna 3y ago
Check out a graph showing average income vs monthly housing costs over time.
financltravsty 3y ago
Quite easy to say when you already have the momentum of a career and net worth. Much harder to sincerely believe when you're crushed with student loans, have no savings, and career prospects are utterly depressing if you weren't fortunate enough to be raised in an environment that pushed you to set your life up properly from the get-go. There are no guarantees and the odds are harrowing. Software engineering could completely dry up tomorrow. Then what? The professions that make any sort of thriving wage and have some semblance of career stability (medicine, finance, etc.) all have stringent gatekeeping pedigree requirements. What's left? Sales? Restarting in a trade where all the incumbents have been doing manual labor since they were in middle school, and you're no longer as youthful and full of vigor as you once were? Grind out for 10 years to get a foothold in the industry, and your body's breaking down, but now you have a shot at starting your own business instead of getting paid $60k/yr (disregarding backbreaking overtime) to do shit work. Great, you're 40 now and all of the economic tribulations you've faced means your retirement accounts are severely lacking. You will never retire and will have to keep on working until you die (either naturally or on the job). Healthcare: costs are going to go up. Housing: you never got the chance to own, so now you're stuck burning money renting. Inflation: everything is more expensive, but compensation hasn't grown with it. Or more poignantly: can you keep on grinding forever? With all of the young bucks that come into this field with the drive to "make a name for themself" and reinvent the wheel ad nauseam. Can you keep up, old man? You're one psychological accident away from being unable to put bread on the table. Then what? Disability? Living in halfway houses because you can't pay rent anymore? Being surrounded by people who've fallen on hard times who can do nothing but drag you down with them? That's when you spiral further into a hole you can never get yourself out of. You're fucked. I don't expect to live like my parents, but I won't pretend that life is not utterly and depressingly precarious. Lucky are the middle-aged and older; for they had grown up in utter blissful ignorance of things. Woe is the hyper-connected youth; unable to simply exist.
watwut 3y ago
Except that economy when starting is not the same across generations. In addition, cohort of people who graduated into depression will never recover as a whole either. And that is the thing - they simply do not see path to better conditions in the long term either.
wnolens 3y ago
Your take is from a tech worker perspective or you're a boomer. You're assuming it's still possible to buy when saving 5k/year (what my median friend is able to do). It really isn't, or requires complete sacrifice of much of what makes life worth living anyway. Re: location, there are cheaper places but they're far enough away it's like asking most people to move a plane ticket away from everyone they know (and likely all jobs they have experience in) to restart life. Instead, most of my friends just accept the studio apartment they live in which costs half their cash flow, and spend the other half on essentials and therapy to cope. It's hard to see this from a $1M house in the burbs
wrigglingworm 3y ago
The median price of a home in the United States is currently $412,020. Median weekly earnings of the nation's 122.1 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,118 in the third quarter of 2023 (1118x52=58136) 412,020/58136=7.09 years wages to pay off a home Median house price 1980: $64,600 The 1980 median family income was $21,020 64600/21020=3.07 years wages to pay off a home https://www.redfin.com/us-housing-market https://www.redfin.com/us-housing-market https://www.gobankingrates.com/investing/real-estate/how-much-new-home-cost-year-were-born/ https://www.gobankingrates.com/investing/real-estate/how-muc... https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1982/demo/p60-132.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1982/demo/p60-13... edit more detail 2023: 412020 30 year loan at 6.5% = Total principal paid $412,020 Total interest paid $525,508.80 Monthly payments $2,604.25 58136/12=monthly salary of 4844.6 53.7% of monthly pay going to home loan (at 0 down) 1980: 64600 30 year loan at 14% = Total principal paid $64,600 Total interest paid $210,953.77 Monthly payments $765.43 21020/12=monthly salary of 1751.6 43% of monthly pay going to home loan (at 0 down)

trident5000 3y ago

lol good luck telling that to this this community who are frustrated they cant afford a home in the most niche place on earth and refuse to live anywhere else.

doctorwho42 3y ago
Is wanting to live less than an hour commute to work "the most niche place on earth"? Most people I know are renting because they can't afford anything within an hour commute and we have grown up hearing and seeing the pains of the commuter life. So why saddle ourselves with both a 30 year mortgage for a overpriced home that will also drain us of 10+hrs/week
- trident5000 3y ago
  Sounds like a lifestyle choice. Stop packing into cities like a can of sardines and it wont be an issue. Being inflexible to literal physics and reality is a personal issue.
  - redserk 3y ago
    This is less a physics problem and more of a zoning/planning issue.
  - watwut 3y ago
    Living in a place with no jobs is not exactly the solution for financial issues. And when you commute for more then 3 hours each day, it becomes impossible to be present parent or keep relationships or just do anything except work.
  - bzudo 3y ago
    Cool. Let me work remote.
  - kyubey 3y ago
    If you want to work and have a life, stop living where jobs are! Simply don't make adequate money to survive! Simply die! Being unaware of reality is also a personal issue too, bud.
    - Clubber 3y ago
      There are a lot of mid sized cities with reasonable housing and decent job prospects with a reasonable commute (< 30m). I know, I live in one of them.
      - coldpie 3y ago
        Which one? This used to be true where I live (Twin Cities area, Minnesota) but is no longer. Prices have really exploded pretty much everywhere over the past 10 years, my home purchased in 2013 is now worth about double. It's easy to miss if you haven't been on the market.
        Clubber 3y ago
        I haven't checked in a while. In my city there are still reasonable houses (I don't want to say for obvious reasons), but I bought mine in the early 2000s and it only recently doubled. I just looked and you can still find fixer-uppers in not great neighborhoods for under $100K, but you can live in them with electric/water and all that.
- jjav 3y ago
  > Is wanting to live less than an hour commute to work "the most niche place on earth"? I'm guessing OP meant San Francisco? There is some truth in that message. One can't always live where you wish. In my 20s my #1 goal in life was to live in Manhattan. I tried and tried and tried, but could never afford it. I gave up. Moved somewhere much cheaper (but still jobs around, not talking middle of the desert) where affording a house was no problem. It's not exactly what I wanted at the time, but looking back after a couple decades, has turned out fine.

tommoor 3y ago

My dads first house cost less than his first car, bought around the same time.

Clubber 3y ago
I find that hard to believe.

bequanna 3y ago

Check out a graph showing average income vs monthly housing costs over time.

financltravsty 3y ago

Quite easy to say when you already have the momentum of a career and net worth. Much harder to sincerely believe when you're crushed with student loans, have no savings, and career prospects are utterly depressing if you weren't fortunate enough to be raised in an environment that pushed you to set your life up properly from the get-go. There are no guarantees and the odds are harrowing. Software engineering could completely dry up tomorrow. Then what? The professions that make any sort of thriving wage and have some semblance of career stability (medicine, finance, etc.) all have stringent gatekeeping pedigree requirements. What's left? Sales? Restarting in a trade where all the incumbents have been doing manual labor since they were in middle school, and you're no longer as youthful and full of vigor as you once were? Grind out for 10 years to get a foothold in the industry, and your body's breaking down, but now you have a shot at starting your own business instead of getting paid $60k/yr (disregarding backbreaking overtime) to do shit work. Great, you're 40 now and all of the economic tribulations you've faced means your retirement accounts are severely lacking. You will never retire and will have to keep on working until you die (either naturally or on the job). Healthcare: costs are going to go up. Housing: you never got the chance to own, so now you're stuck burning money renting. Inflation: everything is more expensive, but compensation hasn't grown with it. Or more poignantly: can you keep on grinding forever? With all of the young bucks that come into this field with the drive to "make a name for themself" and reinvent the wheel ad nauseam. Can you keep up, old man? You're one psychological accident away from being unable to put bread on the table. Then what? Disability? Living in halfway houses because you can't pay rent anymore? Being surrounded by people who've fallen on hard times who can do nothing but drag you down with them? That's when you spiral further into a hole you can never get yourself out of. You're fucked. I don't expect to live like my parents, but I won't pretend that life is not utterly and depressingly precarious. Lucky are the middle-aged and older; for they had grown up in utter blissful ignorance of things. Woe is the hyper-connected youth; unable to simply exist.

watwut 3y ago

Except that economy when starting is not the same across generations. In addition, cohort of people who graduated into depression will never recover as a whole either. And that is the thing - they simply do not see path to better conditions in the long term either.

wnolens 3y ago

Your take is from a tech worker perspective or you're a boomer. You're assuming it's still possible to buy when saving 5k/year (what my median friend is able to do). It really isn't, or requires complete sacrifice of much of what makes life worth living anyway. Re: location, there are cheaper places but they're far enough away it's like asking most people to move a plane ticket away from everyone they know (and likely all jobs they have experience in) to restart life. Instead, most of my friends just accept the studio apartment they live in which costs half their cash flow, and spend the other half on essentials and therapy to cope. It's hard to see this from a $1M house in the burbs

wrigglingworm 3y ago

The median price of a home in the United States is currently $412,020. Median weekly earnings of the nation's 122.1 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,118 in the third quarter of 2023 (1118x52=58136) 412,020/58136=7.09 years wages to pay off a home Median house price 1980: $64,600 The 1980 median family income was $21,020 64600/21020=3.07 years wages to pay off a home https://www.redfin.com/us-housing-market https://www.redfin.com/us-housing-market https://www.gobankingrates.com/investing/real-estate/how-much-new-home-cost-year-were-born/ https://www.gobankingrates.com/investing/real-estate/how-muc... https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1982/demo/p60-132.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1982/demo/p60-13... edit more detail 2023: 412020 30 year loan at 6.5% = Total principal paid $412,020 Total interest paid $525,508.80 Monthly payments $2,604.25 58136/12=monthly salary of 4844.6 53.7% of monthly pay going to home loan (at 0 down) 1980: 64600 30 year loan at 14% = Total principal paid $64,600 Total interest paid $210,953.77 Monthly payments $765.43 21020/12=monthly salary of 1751.6 43% of monthly pay going to home loan (at 0 down)