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240-240k in the greater metro area near me:

https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/240000-250000_price/970-1011_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/47.553823,-121.946182,46.765736,-123.42247_rect/9_zm/


Realistically, having this large of a map and setting this narrow a price range really gets to the heart of "location matters" . . . there are under 1k sq ft. houses, and there are near 2k sq ft houses. It's all in the location.

 LordofHats wrote:


For me at least, these skills were taught in school.

Problem is that no one takes "Home Economics" seriously, and jokes about it being a class for girls to learn "womun's workz."

We had a test for skipping that class, which IIRC was basically "here, balance this fictional ledger". The home economics part of it was barely more complicated than "how do you put out a grease fire?" I think there were 20 people in my class that took it, and only a handful (I think it was 6-7? It was less than 10) of them managed to pass it.

That, combined with folksy 40+ year out-of-date advice like "invest in CDs and bonds" (this was around 2002) means that, at least in my area, the classes that were taught were probably kind of worse than unhelpful.

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/883-Rupert-Rd_Pottstown_PA_19464_M37093-93754?view=qv

This is about 2 miles away, on the outskirts of my town. I own a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom victorian built in 1890. 2100 square feet. I have a poured foundation, which is suprisingly rare for a house thats as old as mine in town. I paid $109k for it last year, and its already worth about $150k (appraised at $120, but it needed work). Granted, I live in the edge of the badlands, have cameras, and 3 people have been shot within a mile of me in the last month, but it was cheap, and the neighborhood is slowly improving. Another 10 years and I'll have most likely doubled my money.

And because I just experienced this:

Employers expecting you to live in high cost of living areas on sub-par pay.

Sure I could live in the DC area on 30k. If I were a hobo.

cuda1179 wrote:What does a $250,000 home for sale look like in your area? If anyone wants to post a link to a realtor's website that would work great.

I tried https://www.immowelt.de/ and https://www.immobilienscout24.de/ with a price up to 250000€ or 300000€ (other option wasn't available on one site) and got roughly 25 to 50 m2 (add a zero to get approximate size in square feet) flats/apartments (no houses) of all types. The smaller sizes were probably on the lower end and for 250000€ you get about 30m2 (or 300 square feet).

One can roughly cut off the last three digits and use the rest as the size in square feet ± a bit depending on neighbourhood.

This is glorious.

@Mario: I kind of agree with you, but ... a lot obviously depends on where you're "willing" to live, surely?

I bought an old farmhouse with gakloads of land, outhouses, a double garage, etc. etc. for ca. 30K EUR about 12 years ago ... but it was in Ost-Friesland ... to the west of Aurich (which is a town, not a city ... despite its website claims!). I probably spent about the same in renovations/upscaling (I tend to do the actual labour myself) and ended up with quite a nice place ... but it was in the middle of nowhere ... and I was freelance at that time.

 War Drone wrote:
@Mario: I kind of agree with you, but ... a lot obviously depends on where you're "willing" to live, surely?

Yes, the variations I mentioned were just for different neighbourhoods in my city, not the urban/rural divide (or Germany in general) which has much more variation in pricing. Munich is regularly in the top ten lists of most liveable cities worldwide (often even in the top three or so, sometimes even first, depending on how those lists are weighted) and that comes with a price.

Looks like my (suburban) area tops out at a 1200 sq. ft condo for that price.

At the headline, Pew Research Center seems to have some conflicting census data: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/11/young-adult-households-are-earning-more-than-most-older-americans-did-at-the-same-age/

However, they are going by Millennial Household Income and not actual Net Worth like the Fed.

After bottoming out in 2011, incomes are rising for American households – and those headed by a Millennial (someone age 22 to 37) now earn more than young adult households did at nearly any time in the past 50 years, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new census data.

That's not too surprising. Even excluding the fact that dual-income households are almost the standard nowadays, I'd expect you will see income for a single earner at any given age bracket increase over time barring major (and historic) economic changes.

It doesn't mean anything if it doesn't keep up with inflation or the cost of living though.

Yeah, Millennials are earning more but education, housing, healthcare, etc all cost far more when adjusted for inflation than they used to. This means that while people may be earning more (when adjusted for inflation) now the costs of living have increased even farther. This results in less over all wealth.

I would be very interested in a study on higher education that compared spending 20+ years ago to today. I would imagine that it would be possible as I would think that state universities (at least in some state) would be required to release their budget and spending information. I'm just really curious as to the actual cause of the vast increase in cost of higher education. I've always kind of thought it was a combination of less state funding combined with more lavish spending on amenities for students but I would like to know what the actual reason was, even if it was just for a couple of state schools.

Regarding the 250k challenge; 250k US is like $334k Canadian.

For about $350k Canadian I could get a bachelor a few blocks away from where I'm renting now.

https://www.realtor.ca/real-estate/20096951/0-1-bedroom-condo-3708-1-king-st-w-toronto-bay-street-corridor?

My current place is a 625 sqft condo with en suite washer/dryer, central air heating/cooling, and a small balcony that I don't use much, but appreciate having access to all the same. Rent is around $1850 including gas and hydro.

According to a cursory google search, including my annual bonus I'm making at or slightly above an average salary wage for the city. I have the luxury of walking to work, and while I could shave some of the cost of living down by moving further out, that often gets offset by the cost of transit (let alone car payments/gas/parking if I went that route) and the extra hours spent commuting each day. I have coworkers that have to get up around 6:30 to be in the office for 9, whereas I don't even roll out of bed until 8, and get in around 9 as well.

I have never considered myself a 'Millenial', though the term/range seems to have drifted over time. Born in 80, it seems I'm now on the cusp of that generational divide. I associate people in their early 30's with it, personally, but recognize I might well fit into it as well.

I believe the average condo in Toronto is around 600k+, and a semi-detached home starts around 1.2m (both figures in Canadian, for clarity), as such I have concluded I will likely never own my own home. Short of winning the lottery or doubling my salary ahead of inflation and whatever the housing market does, it is unlikely to be feasible. Instead I rent, save what I can, contribute to retirement through my work plan along with personal retirement savings, and have a little left over to travel once in a while, look into a new computer or other significant home purchase, and try to balance being financially prudent while also enjoying some of the things that life has to offer.

I could scrimp, save, and eat instant noodles for years and likely wouldn't even put a dent in a downpayment. Short of a major windfall or a couple of tragic losses to the family, that kind of money is just not within my reach.

Not to mention that it's so high that there are concerns of a bubble existing, and that borrowing against all of my savings to buy in would potentially just be throwing money into a market before the floor falls out, but that's less of an astute analysis and more a recognition of the uncertainty of life. Sorting out a six figure downpayment is hard, accepting rent as just how it is, well, I've been doing that for ages.

Don't worry, once all the Boomers die off there will be lots of real estate to buy up cheap, or you will inherit a house.

:(

 Easy E wrote:
At the headline, Pew Research Center seems to have some conflicting census data: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/11/young-adult-households-are-earning-more-than-most-older-americans-did-at-the-same-age/

However, they are going by Millennial Household Income and not actual Net Worth like the Fed.

After bottoming out in 2011, incomes are rising for American households – and those headed by a Millennial (someone age 22 to 37) now earn more than young adult households did at nearly any time in the past 50 years, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new census data.

Yep. Me and my wife earn more than my parents did at the same age. However my mum didn't work from when I was born until I was about 9. My wife has to work to pay the bills, but 50% of her income is taken up by childcare, but we need the other 50% to survive, in order to pay for our house. The important question is not how much income they had but how much disposable income they had. My mum didn't work, my dad had a decent paying job, but not mega bucks, I would guess about the equivalent of £70k now (that's average for his profession now, and apparently he was on the low end due to living in a mining area in the 80s). They had a 5 bedroom detached house, went on two foreign holidays a year and had three children. We have been on one holiday in ten years, in the UK. So I suspect whilst the take home was lower the disposable was much much higher.

I don't think the baby boomers deserve all the hate they're currently getting.

https://artplusmarketing.com/the-real-reason-baby-boomers-and-millennials-dont-see-eye-to-eye-written-by-a-millennial-5c7dfb15fe05

My Dad is a very early Boomer, born in 49. He's worked his knuckles to the bone,(literally on one of his middle fingers) to provide for us. nothing was given to him, he didnt have it easy. He took advantage of having a fairly financial savvy, and now owns multiple property investments and his own business. he cares nothing for material wealth. It was to ensure we had a safety net as we worked through early adulthood.

I don't think its fair to heap resentment on folks who only acted through a desire to help their children, and blame them for our problems.

Its the everlasting cycle. the youngsters blame their parents, who in turn chastise them for their decreasing morals. that sort of thinking doesnt get us anywhere.

There are a lot of Americans who got out of ww2 in the 40's, went to college on the G. I. Bill, got a SBA loan in the 50's and started a small business, the sent their kids to college with pell grants in the 60's, retired with medicare and social security in the 70's, then voted for Reagan in 1980 because they wanted to get government off their backs and were tired of freeloaders being given things instead of earning everything with nothing given to them like they did.

well I cant speak for the states. But you cant blame people for taking advantage of incentives like that.

No, but you can blame them for denying those incentives to anyone else once they've had the benefit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
No, but you can blame them for denying those incentives to anyone else once they've had the benefit.

Or for the sort of doublethink Techpriestsupport mentions; "I did it all by myself", disregarding the thousands of dollars of government aid they received. Because I deserved it, not like those freeloaders.

 Forar wrote:
According to a cursory google search, including my annual bonus I'm making at or slightly above an average salary wage for the city. I have the luxury of walking to work, and while I could shave some of the cost of living down by moving further out, that often gets offset by the cost of transit (let alone car payments/gas/parking if I went that route) and the extra hours spent commuting each day. I have coworkers that have to get up around 6:30 to be in the office for 9, whereas I don't even roll out of bed until 8, and get in around 9 as well.

Playing devil's advocate here...so you could potentially afford something. It just wouldn't be your ideal situation and lifestyle.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I don't think the baby boomers deserve all the hate they're currently getting.

https://artplusmarketing.com/the-real-reason-baby-boomers-and-millennials-dont-see-eye-to-eye-written-by-a-millennial-5c7dfb15fe05

My Dad is a very early Boomer, born in 49. He's worked his knuckles to the bone,(literally on one of his middle fingers) to provide for us. nothing was given to him, he didnt have it easy. He took advantage of having a fairly financial savvy, and now owns multiple property investments and his own business. he cares nothing for material wealth. It was to ensure we had a safety net as we worked through early adulthood.

I don't think its fair to heap resentment on folks who only acted through a desire to help their children, and blame them for our problems.

Its the everlasting cycle. the youngsters blame their parents, who in turn chastise them for their decreasing morals. that sort of thinking doesnt get us anywhere.

You imply that millennials don't work hard. They cannot hope to get this kind of thing. Property prices have gone up and up, far beyond wages. This, at least in the UK, is because the baby boomers have invested heavily in rental properties and fought tooth and nail against new building or reformed to the rental market. Pensions have been slashed. Over the past 10 years my pension contributions have gone up and up, with my pension going from a 1/40ths final salary to a 1/60th, to a 1/75th career averaged, and my contribution are looking to go up again next year. Why? Because my various pensions are in deficit. A deficit I did not make. A deficit created in promising high pensions to baby boomers, which I am now having to pay whilst seeing no benefit.

The facts are that this is not the same old inter generational complaining, millennials are the first generation since the industrial revolution to see standards of living and live expectancy go down.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I don't think the baby boomers deserve all the hate they're currently getting.

https://artplusmarketing.com/the-real-reason-baby-boomers-and-millennials-dont-see-eye-to-eye-written-by-a-millennial-5c7dfb15fe05

My Dad is a very early Boomer, born in 49. He's worked his knuckles to the bone,(literally on one of his middle fingers) to provide for us. nothing was given to him, he didnt have it easy. He took advantage of having a fairly financial savvy, and now owns multiple property investments and his own business. he cares nothing for material wealth. It was to ensure we had a safety net as we worked through early adulthood.

I don't think its fair to heap resentment on folks who only acted through a desire to help their children, and blame them for our problems.

Its the everlasting cycle. the youngsters blame their parents, who in turn chastise them for their decreasing morals. that sort of thinking doesnt get us anywhere.

I think the thing that everyone needs to take away from this discussion is that we are talking about the majorities or averages in our discussions. There are Millennials that are doing awesomely and Boomers who struggled, it's not a black and white situation. But in general terms the Boomers are the generation that has shaped the laws that are currently in place. Those laws have direct effects on society, for both good and bad. So when health care costs are out of control it is because of the laws (or lack of laws) passed by the US government have allowed it to happen and continue to happen and the majority of the law making body of the US government are Boomers, around 60% with the outgoing congress.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/seniority-rules-members-getting-older

If our current law makers actually cared around the future generations, studies like the one that started this thread would cause them to start re-assessing what they are doing and attempt to pass laws to correct it. Unfortunately the chances of that actually happening are roughly that of winning the lottery without actually buying a ticket, at least here in the US.

 gorgon wrote:


Playing devil's advocate here...so you could potentially afford something. It just wouldn't be your ideal situation and lifestyle.

When someone says they can't afford housing, it generally means within a reasonable radius of their workplace. I live an hour's commute outside of Toronto and houses in my area are 500K CAD minimum, you have to go another hour out to find stuff in the 200-300K range. Four hour daily commutes aren't reasonable - yes, some people do it, but it's not reasonable and it takes a huge toll on people.

 John Prins wrote:

 gorgon wrote:


Playing devil's advocate here...so you could potentially afford something. It just wouldn't be your ideal situation and lifestyle.

When someone says they can't afford housing, it generally means within a reasonable radius of their workplace. I live an hour's commute outside of Toronto and houses in my area are 500K CAD minimum, you have to go another hour out to find stuff in the 200-300K range. Four hour daily commutes aren't reasonable - yes, some people do it, but it's not reasonable and it takes a huge toll on people.

Again playing devil's advocate...so you could potentially afford something. It just wouldn't be your ideal location.

And to be fair, the comment I replied to did mention a walk-to-work, "roll out of bed until 8" situation.

 gorgon wrote:


Again playing devil's advocate...so you could potentially afford something. It just wouldn't be your ideal location.

I feel like you're kind of trivializing the absurdity of spending 1/4 of the day traveling to a place to spend another 1/3 working for a grand total of 1/2 of your day dedicated to something and only being paid for 2/3 of that time. It's pretty damn unreasonable to underpay your employees so badly that the only way for them to make ends meet is to spend half as much time as they work on gas, unpaid, and then chalk that up to "well you just can't live in your ideal location."

I had a thing I was going to post here that was sarcasm, comparisons of housing, school, and food prices between the 60s and now, and various other things, but it got super depressing.

Instead I'll sit here and reflect on how I actually have an extremely well paying job, and while I actually do have savings and investments, I live pretty meagerly at this point, or at least what I'd consider meager. And I'm still not where I want to be on those savings and investments.

I don't honestly know how anyone with an even average paying job survives.

 LordofHats wrote:

 gorgon wrote:


Again playing devil's advocate...so you could potentially afford something. It just wouldn't be your ideal location.

I feel like you're kind of trivializing the absurdity of spending 1/4 of the day traveling to a place to spend another 1/3 working for a grand total of 1/2 of your day dedicated to something and only being paid for 2/3 of that time. It's pretty damn unreasonable to underpay your employees so badly that the only way for them to make ends meet is to spend half as much time as they work on gas, unpaid, and then chalk that up to "well you just can't live in your ideal location."

Not really where I was going with it.

Setting aside other situations for a moment, let's focus on a case of a younger person -- good worker, gainfully employed but still early in his/her career with an income that reflects that -- unable to purchase affordable housing in a desirable major metro area.

TO ME, this seems like a fairly timeless issue and not one unique to 2018 or the Millennial generation. What MAY be unique -- and what's interesting to me, and not in some mocking "HO-HO-HO, typical Millennial" way -- is that Millennials may be less inclined to sacrifice their lifestyles for the big house in a good neighborhood and school district. Because there are plenty of people who do those two-hour commutes each way and take those hits to their lifestyles because they value those other things THAT much.

Obviously, we're talking in degrees and not in absolutes, because there are certainly Millennials who are putting up with punishing commutes to get that house in the 'burbs. Still, even a change measured in degrees may eventually have some interesting implications for suburban and (especially?) exurban real estate markets.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I don't think the baby boomers deserve all the hate they're currently getting.

https://artplusmarketing.com/the-real-reason-baby-boomers-and-millennials-dont-see-eye-to-eye-written-by-a-millennial-5c7dfb15fe05

My Dad is a very early Boomer, born in 49. He's worked his knuckles to the bone,(literally on one of his middle fingers) to provide for us. nothing was given to him, he didnt have it easy. He took advantage of having a fairly financial savvy, and now owns multiple property investments and his own business. he cares nothing for material wealth. It was to ensure we had a safety net as we worked through early adulthood.

I don't think its fair to heap resentment on folks who only acted through a desire to help their children, and blame them for our problems.

Its the everlasting cycle. the youngsters blame their parents, who in turn chastise them for their decreasing morals. that sort of thinking doesnt get us anywhere.

I truly doubt that most of the parents that we have as users of this forum are high ranking politicians, nor in the top 1% wealthiest of our given nations. . . . So when people are blaming economic (housing/job/schooling) problems on boomers. . . you should keep in mind that it is the elites born in this time period who were doing the actual heavy lifting in terms of screwing over the later generations. . . Of course, while most of our parents were doing their best to provide for their immediate family, I don't think they are entirely blameless because you can quite often point to their voting habits as keeping those gak elites in power.

is that Millennials may be less inclined to sacrifice their lifestyles for the big house in a good neighborhood and school district. Because there are plenty of people who do those two-hour commutes each way and take those hits to their lifestyles because they value those other things THAT much

Which might matter for people who can actually afford a house, or have reason to own one.

My generation is getting married older because we can't afford marriage.

My generation is having children older because we can't afford children.

You're acting like this problem is some kind personal thing with us, when it isn't. We don't pay for these things because we can't afford in the first place. I can't even afford a 1 bedroom apartment, if only because the rental market is completely skewed and there's nowhere near enough 1 bedroom apartment's for all the people who want them. They're overpriced as hell, and hardly even available anyway. You basically have to buy a 2 bedroom even though you don't need it and you pay through the nose too.

I don't need a big house in a good neighborhood. I just need somewhere to live and work, so telling me how I'm not willing to make sacrifices for things I don't even want comes off as condescending talk from someone who is completely out of touch with what we're saying, which just rounds back to the original problem with boomers having completely different life expectations cause when my parents were my age nice houses in nice neighborhoods were affordable on entry level wages and entry level wasn't code for "we want experienced workers cheap."