This is why:
I’m still waiting for that oh-so-desired housing market crash.
Will suck for the boomers, but hey, maybe then I could actually afford a house! It’s about time for the boomers to actually sacrifice something for the younger generations.
Their house value has tripled. While our salaries and wages haven’t kept up at all. Our paycheck may be bigger than their old $2.50 an hour (that they oh so often like to comment about), but our purchasing power has barely budged. We’re making the same when adjusted for inflation, while expected to pay three times more for every single thing:
After adjusting for inflation, however, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today.
I’m not too jaded, just annoyed. Especially when it is nearly constant that the older generations act like they had it so difficult. By every economic metric, they sure didn’t. By every economic metric, they had it easier by an absolutely insane multiplier.
The idea that I could make the same today and buy a house for 3 times less while having nearly no debt because car/education prices were dramatically lower is incomprehensible. I truthfully can’t even imagine it. Life would be so much easier.
So this is why I have severe disdain for those of the older generation who talk down upon any of the Gen Y and younger crowd. It was their generations policies, mostly immigration and fiscal, that trapped us in this situation in the first place.
Their own policies lead to our generations massive financial decline and then they are so entitled to wonder why we don’t just do things like they did. The simple answer is because we can’t. There isn’t any money to do so.
So to all of the boomers: You are why we are not buying houses.
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