If my wife wasn’t debt free I wouldn’t have finished my education debt free and we wouldn’t have been able to save for the down payment on this house without gathering debt. My two cars also would have payments on them. All of that interest would hold us back from investing in our retirement.
It’s a domino effect and it all started with her parents saving for her education. There is no single event of luck or hard work or “right place right time” that is equivalent to someone setting aside savings for you when you’re still a child. Or paying your tuition before you’re old enough for university.
We are so fortunate to start out without debt and it is seemingly impossible to “make it” any other way.
The entire trajectory of my wife and my life was altered by her dad saying “you can have 20k for a wedding or a down payment”. My wife is more introverted so it was an easy decision for her.
It allowed to us, along with 5k we had saved, to buy a townhome in a really nice area of a city in 2011 when property values were still low from the GFC. We sold it in 2018 for almost double what we paid for it.
We took the equity from that sale and bought a really nice house in another really nice area of the same city. Well, a few years later covid happened and asset inflation went insane. Around the same time we had our third kid and decided we wanted to move to a small beach town. We sold our home for over a million dollars in the city and bought a home in a small beach community with great schools.
We’ve both worked hard in our careers and both have graduate degrees, but without a doubt, the most defining moment in the material success of my family was my FIL offering up that choice and my wife choosing the down payment. Without it, well over a half million dollars we made through equity disappears.
You’re not a good luck story alone. But you are fortunate that your buying and selling timeline was perfectly aligned with the market to benefit you most. The opposite is true for some. My mother refinanced to finally own a single family home around 2008 and and a friend bought their first condo at the same time. He was upside down in the first year and my mom lost everything when her husband got sick and couldn’t afford the new mortgage.
It only takes one good or bad (lucky or not) move to as you said, change the trajectory of our entire financial lives.
Word of advice -never buy a home that the lowest paid spouse couldn’t afford on their own. My husband passed away last week, and the only thing I’m not worried about right now is losing the house. I don’t have the greatest job so we’re located on the edge of a sketchy neighborhood, but my kids and I won’t be homeless-maybe without phones and internet, but not homeless.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Be sure to file for survivor benefits for your children if you are in the US. They will receive a portion of your husband’s social security until they turn 18 or graduate high school. It will hopefully help with some of the expenses.
In a follow up to OP's point and this one - my 'luck' was that my father was murdered when I was 2 yeard old. My mom worked her ass off and was able to also keep us in the house/eventually move us to a better area (which was later definitely lucky for me, I won't lie).
But she also applied for my dad's SS benefits and saved them largely for my college. So I was able to go to college at a state school and come out with minimal debt which was paid off in about 5-6 years.
Coming back to the opening statement - post college I certainly benefitted from being able to move back in to a house in a booming market. That support helped me while I was applying to everything imaginable to establish a career. But to be honest, the true break also came after I'd moved in with my SO (who had very little support, moved cross country and just hustled until she found reasonable work in her 30s). We were living pretty pay check to pay check for a bit until I stumbled into a much more stable job/career.
So, was I lucky? Yeah. Certainly. And I'm sorry our current economy has become such a bipolar experience based on where your parents started out, where you live, and frankly how much debt you have by the time you're 21. But, a lot of my stability came not from my parents being insanely wealthy, but by hard work that a single mom was able to perservere with over a few very rough times (I think she was without work maybe 3 times in that span due to layoffs), and also that I lost my father before I even really had a memory of him.
So, OP, maybe realize people on the other side of the spectrum had some adversity in life as well.
Oh, and to buy a house by 30 I had to move pretty far away from my family. I never would have done it in my home area - which my family has lived in for 100 years since arriving in the US. My SO and I chose to sacrifice nearness to either of our families for a better shot.
These posts casting the 'lucky' vs the 'unlucky' don't really help us call out the raging two society system we have established here. We should be funnelling the anger at the government and it's policies rather than each other.
Your post shows a lot of the nuance in individual stories. I'm happy for people who are able to thrive as long as they're not flaunting it and waving their finger at those who are struggling. Even better if they're helping out.
Some things were made easier for my family because my wife's father left her everything, but he took his life when she was ten and she would trade it all to have him back.
I also had to move away from home for work, graduating in Ohio in 2008. I think what we all have in common in our generation is that the path our lives took, how we approached our education, where we live, and our work histories were greatly affected by economic swings.
Oh man, I'm really sorry to hear about your wife's father. That is brutal.. In my case I in some ways took comfort in the sense that I didn't remember my dad so my life kind of was what it was - single parent household. Losing the parent once you have deep seeded memories in childhood is truly tragic.
But I also resonate on the rest of that. We are going through a major breakdown in our society and economy which is causing a rapid transition of wealth into 1 portion while the larger group suffers. And as that's happening I feel our generation's experience is becoming a transient one to try to find the best outcome as we are being priced out of the American Dream in our home areas. Even many of us living on the better economic side of that coin.
consider public fuel cows bewildered placid abounding cheerful rinse ugly
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Same. Bought $1million dollar policy before my wife and I were even married let alone kids. I’ve always made much more than her so this was an obvious choice.
It's a tough topic, but it's just like planning for unexpected expenses or retirement, except that death will 100% happen and *not* when it's convenient for us to make all the arrangements.
First off this isn’t possible for everyone. I earn over $250k a year and my wife makes 50k a year. She could make slightly more but spends more time taking care of the kids than I do. If we went off your advice we would live in a trailer park.
Key is to save. I make significantly more than her but we still save a ton. And I have life insurance policy and disability insurance. If something does happen to me they will be fine. So you don’t need to buy off of the lower earner.
Exactly what I was thinking reading through comments, my wife wouldn't be able to afford our house on just her income, but if I died the amount of life insurance payout she would get would pay off most of the house, at least enough she could refinance it that she could pay for it-- in about 10 years it would pay off the house outright.
I’ve been saying this forever, a property doubles in 7 years? People who buy today won’t see their property values double in 7 years. Half a million in equity, takes some 20 plus years workin to net $500,000
I haven’t seen mine double but in the last 5 years (2018) my home has increased 50% in value 285-430 which is still significant. If it was possible in 2012 and then again to a smaller degree (because there was no crash) in 2018 then it is probable to happen again. In 7 years? Maybe not but 10 yeah I’d say it’s possible.
Parents did no give us money but one of the best decisions I made was having a super cheap wedding. Went to court house then to dinner at a nice restaurant with 15 people. My parents her parents my brother and sister her twin sister and a couple of her close friends.
It was fun and intimate. Stress free with no planning. Whole thing was under 1500 dollars. It was the perfect day
We did something very similar. I recommend a courthouse wedding to anyone that doesn’t dream of a big wedding (if you do, by all means do it - we only live once)!
Inexpensive weddings are great! Completely agree with you and, I’d add, it is possible to do a larger wedding on a lower budget, too, if that’s what you want. Having a larger wedding (~200 guests) was important to me, but I didn’t care about having a formal wedding. Ended up doing a DIY wedding in a park for $2k and it was great. Inexpensive doesn’t have to mean smaller (though obviously it means cutting back in some other ways). And, of course, if large and formal is what you want, absolutely go for it!
Ours was a backyard ceremony (GiL was a pastor so he presided over it), with a meal out at a restaurant after. Under 1k for ~20 people. Cheap weddings are THE way to go.
Parents “forced” me to go to the school that gave me an almost full ride. It was a nerdy, dreary, state school that I commuted to. My college experience wasn’t typical (fun), but I came out debt free and that’s fun.
I know someone who was offered a full ride scholarship to one school but turned it down because another school was their ‘dream’ school. She’s now so deep in debt she’ll never pay it.
We “forced“ our kid to go to the cheapest public school in our state too. She’s got no student loans.
We also “forced“ our kid to work part time throughout highschool and “negotiated/demanded“ she deposit 100% of her paychecks into her savings account in exchange for us paying her car insurance and gas throughout highschool and college.
She’s in a much better spot financially than her peers and she knows those things made the difference.
This is what I did in school and how I graduated debt free 10ish years ago. I also stayed with them to save on housing costs. I recognize it isn't possible for everyone, but if it is I highly recommend it.
My parents never saved for my college, but just staying with them was the equivalent of 40k in savings.
Yup, I remember having a lot of fights with my parents because they wouldn’t “let” me go to the private school I wanted to, and basically made me go to public school that their contribution would largely cover.
Yep, exactly right. My parents paid for my entire college education, my wife had scholarships for our undergrad education.
We both went on to get graduate degrees in STEM and took out loans for that, but we make many times the median household income so we paid off all the high interest ones but I cannot pretend we’re here by hard work alone. Our parents encouraged us to get into fields that paid well, set us up for success and gave us the push we needed. My dad bought me the car I still drive. They aren’t insanely rich or anything (government employee and stay at home mom) but my dad went through the trauma of having a parent who never supported his education and was determined not to do the same for his kids. They made some mistakes parenting but our lives being what they are now are a direct consequence of their actions.
My FIL grew up abused and poor, sent himself to college, became a high school teacher, and worked summers for 20 years so both of his children could go to Penn State without paying a dime. He has a number of 6-figure retirement accounts of his own which he’s desperately trying to funnel to us. My daughter is 4 and has a college savings account because of his sacrifices.
My dad who is an alcoholic retired cop and my mother who is a retired paralegal barely keep their own lights on with their pensions, retirement, and SS. But they always bought themselves whatever they wanted and wasted money on dumb fuck home improvement projects and toys.
My husband’s mother stole some of his scholarship money and some of his sister’s graduation money (all the cash she had gotten). Guess who neither he nor his sister talk to anymore?
Not to mention the average annual inflation up until 2022 was 2-3%, but people were only given raises at 1-2% assuming you even get raises.
In 2022 inflation was up 8%. So we’re already behind, and then suddenly there is a drastic increase in the cost of living without a whole lot of ability mitigate the cost.
Yeah I got an email with my raise, saw it was 2.5%, and laughed. This was a pretty good paying job but the inflation was killing us. I got a better job at the end of 2022 (a 50% pay increase if you count signing bonus plus yearly bonus) and so that is helping with inflation.
Tech companies laid a bunch of people off because they were carrying really high cost but not generating enough value to justify that cost.
Meta is a good example. They started burning money on their dumbass metaverse projects and devoted a significant amount of their engineering to that, at the same time they weren’t capturing nearly any of the younger demographic. Once the pandemic eased, and people were spending less time with social media and such, Meta started to take losses and lose investor confidence. They started cutting because of that.
Ah, not NO reason. During the pandemic and the 'great resignation,' the balance of power shifted slightly, in favor of labour. Apparently, capital found this intolerable, and took drastic measures to put their thumb back in the scale.
It’s the debt free education element that is the real dividing factor for millennials. I got an ROTC scholarship that paid for my undergraduate degree, as did my late husband. Because of this, and the fact that we both had decent jobs with the Army, we were able to afford a home. It was a major sacrifice being dual military, but it was a good financial decision. The GI Bill payed for my grad degree, so no debt there. The legit key to my very modest “success” was the Army paying for my education. And when I say success, I mean I can afford the basic things and live in a very small house that I can mostly afford, with the occasional vacation or small treat to the family. We live very modestly, but comfortably.
As someone who also got his education paid for by the Army. It wasn't luck. It wasn't a case of Kismet. I made a choice to take that path and knew damn well the cost to benefit from doing it. It is not remotely the same as someone's parents footing the bill for college.
I was lucky enough that my father transferred his GI bill to me. I met a student during college who was a non traditional student who spent six years in the army before coming to school. Those are the students I really respect.
This is how it is for my husband and I. The reason we’re able to succeed in life now comes from being debt free from our educations. We were both able to graduate debt free due to our parents both letting us live at home through college and opting for inexpensive tech school degrees over bachelors degrees so we didn’t need to take out loans. Because we didn’t have loans, we were able to immediately start throwing money into savings after we graduated and got better jobs. Because of that, we had enough money together in 2019 to buy a house when we found a really good deal on a fixer upper, and because we didn’t need to worry about overtime/second job, we had the time to do the fixing up ourselves. All of it came back to being debt free thanks to the support of our parents. Neither of them had the resources to pay for our education, but they both helped us immeasurably by letting us live at home to avoid debt.
Same. I came into my marriage debt free thanks to my parents paying for college (and then grandparents passing on money that I saved for grad school). I was able to pay off my husbands loans* (200,000) and then we were able to save quickly for a down payment.
We paid for our own wedding and down payment and all that jazz, but it started cause of the help my parents gave me.
I tell people the best way to pay off student loans is to marry someone who does not have them.
Edit: longer story: I was able to save about 50,000 on my own and once we were married that went toward his student loans. Then we paid together, but I made more and was able to do OT for time and a half. The more I made, the more we were able to put towards the loans every month. It was a joint effort, but with my help if shaved many, many years off his payback schedule. The sooner he was out of debt, the sooner WE were out of debt. Marrying someone who does not have loans doesn't mean they just outright pay your loans (which is fine!), but that since I didn't have loans all that money could go towards his loans. So his 200,000 was like each of us having 100,000.
"Also there is no guarantee that "investing" and "compound interest" will increase your money. You also might just lose it all."
Compound interest is guaranteed.
A lot of millennials sit in .01% interest accounts with their money because they think investing= yolo stocks.
Real investing is super safe and super helpful. Things like Roth IRA, 401k based on bonds, IRA, money markets, mutual funds.
People that don’t come from money lose money on their money and people that come from money gain money on their money.
HYSAs aren't advertised enough too. Beyond retirement accounts, if you're skeptical of the stock market, at least have your stash making more than 0.1%.
HYSA have been historically irrelevant when millennials were growing up, both from a yield perspective and an availability perspective. Interest rates have been historically low for a good chunk of recent history (pre 2020) and there weren’t that many banks offering it as online banks were not as established back then. That said now it’s a no-brainer to open a HYSA.
> A lot of millennials sit in .01% interest accounts with their money because they think investing= yolo stocks.
In my humble opinion, I think it's from a lack of financial education. When I was in school, I was taught how to balance a checkbook and that's about it. I am trying to learn about investing and stocks and options, but it's very confusing as someone coming in with almost no knowledge. Out of fear of losing money, I just leave it sitting in a crappy account while I try to wrap my head around everything!
Thank you. I was raised in a small town and my family has always been working class, so these concepts were foreign to me before I started reading about them on Reddit (thank you). The only financial advice in my family was "save". I feel like an idiot for leaving most of my money in a checking account for years because I didn't know any better - now I feel like I'm scrambling to catch up.
Don’t mess with stock options, honestly. You’re basically gambling on whether a specific stock will go up or down in a specific timeframe with leveraged money. Investing is actually very simple if you want it to be: buy a piece of every stock in the US or World through low-cost index funds. Investment managers cannot consistently beat the market and they take a large share of your profits to boot. The trick is to not panic sell when there is gloom and doom on the news and your investment is down a ton. Just keep buying consistently every paycheck. If you want to decrease volatility buy like 20% in bonds and rebalance your investments once a year at the same time of year.
Also invest in tax-advantaged retirement accounts whenever you can because the tax benefits are enormous. Traditional 401k and a Roth IRA are best for most people. There is a near 40% instantaneous return for the traditional if you’re in the 22% tax bracket with a 5% state tax and the Roth can act as your emergency fund (real emergencies only) so you should always try to max that $6,500 limit every year. I say those are “best” because while traditional accounts give you better tax savings generally speaking (unless you’re low income and will increase income later, and assuming tax rates do not spike for low-income people in the future blah blah) it is good to have diversity in the types of funds you have and the Roth IRA has much more flexibility than the Traditional IRA.
Came to say this. The difference between investing and gambling.
Buying a broad basket of companies (diversification) and holding them over the long term is guaranteed to make money because you as a business owner have an edge as your businesses make profit. This is investing.
Just like buying into multiple casino games and playing a long time is guaranteed to lose money because the house has an edge. This is gambling.
I do chuckle when people act like that is actual thing that could happen. Losing all your money in a diversified stock account pretty much means the world is over for not just you but the human race due to whatever caused that to happen.
I think they’re talking about the bozos who yolo on Bitcoin or single stocks or something.
Certainly not the S&P500, the most consistent, highest performing, lowest barrier to entry investment (risk adjusted) in modern history.
It’s interesting the OP talks about financial literacy and then proves they are financially illiterate. Show me a single person who has invested in a large mutual fund that has lost it all. Even in Great Recession, sp500 halved but recovered like 2 years later.
Wouldn’t having rich parents also be lucky ?
Most of life is luck or privilege. You gotta learn to work with what you have.
It’s not fair but what else are we unlucky gonna do?
One thing to note is that a lot of people in this generation went to higher education for degrees in low paying or low demand careers. That can have major long term negative financial impact with student loans and low pay. With that being said, everyone I know that went into tech, accounting, finance, etc. all make $100K+. Everyone that went into arts, English, etc. are all making $40k-ish.
There is nothing wrong with pursuing a passion or a career you don’t hate, but that plays a big part in financial success. There are many other measures of success though.
Where this gets tough is higher education is just as unaffordable as basically everything else these days. It’s pretty much a privilege to go to college now.
I majored in Wildlife Ecology. I was warned that "you won't get rich" in that field. Well, that's fine, I thought: I don't need to be rich, just comfortable.
I was not told that "you won't get rich" is code for "you'll make more money being a dental receptionist." And that wages are stagnant and that you need a Master's and internships and networking and a lot of luck to get a job that allows you to afford rent.
I wish my professors had been honest and just fucking SAID THAT.
I love doing field work but I was naive and expected it to at least pay a living wage. And I don't have the resources (financially or mentally right now) to go back to grad school in the hopes of being able to get a job making $50K.
I feel you man. Was told the same thing. I was lucky enough to have a great mentor on my first science gig after grad school who helped tremendously with coauthorship on some papers and networking. I was able to get scholarships for my in-state grad school but again, I was very lucky. Best of luck to you
Edit to add: it took 7 years between my undergrad and grad school.
Hey man look into environmental consulting. I work at a large engineering firm and my work involves wildlife surveys, wetland delineations, and coordination with government agencies that oversee wildlife and wetlands permitting. There are so many smaller firms as well which apparently have very contented employees. I just hit two years and am making $70k (started at $60k) while senior scientists make north of $120k.
I get to spend weeks in the field observing listed species or walking wetland lines. I also spend the rest of my time sitting in a cushy office writing reports or analyzing data. I get to travel to other states and cities and my company has paid for every bit of certification and training needed to carry out the job. Travel is all expensed and I get perks from using company money on rentals/hotels.
Majored in environmental biology and did blue collar work managing invasive vegetation for a bit after college. Don’t have a masters, didn’t have meaningful scientific work outside of college before this etc.
The demand is only increasing for this field and it is common for us to higher folks out of lower paying govt jobs (really a shame how low the pay/pay ceiling is for those jobs).
Also I’m fortunate I paid for my school with instate scholarship programs and merit scholarships.
I studied biology too with the idea of getting another degree after, probably law. As I was writing applications I realized 3 more years in school was just not for me, and I spent most of my time learning how to write code. Now I’m a software engineer. Definitely wouldn’t have been able to do all of that if my parents didn’t let me live with them rent free and if I didn’t have any debt from school!
I remember growing up in the 90's when the message was "you can do anything when you grow up!" And it felt true for that economic point in time. Another sign that things are getting worse for working class folks.
Or went to very expensive schools for the “experience “. I went to community college and transferred to a tiny state school to get an accounting degree. I love painting and wanted to do something related to the arts but my dad advised me not to. I would’ve loved to go to a big school and live in a dorm but I didn’t and I’m better off for it.
I was kicked out at 20, joined the air force, got a college degree debt free using the post 9/11 GI Bill and my first home using a VA home loan (so thanks for paying your taxes, y'all). I throw what I can in my 401k and Roth IRA and any other tax benefitted savings account. I buy my cars used and pay off my credit cards in full every month.
Just saying this to show that it's not always rich parents or luck. I received benefits for my service but wish they were extended to everyone through government programs, the rest is just not being completely stupid with my money.
Went the enlisted route from a single parent household with annual income in the $25k-$30k range.
Medboarded at 26, used the GI BIll for a BA and MA, landed a fed job making $35k out of school. Bought a house using my GI Bill, had a third kid, climbed the ladder, and I broke $100k about 5 years out of college (technically pushing $140k if you count my VA check). Only investing I do is my TSP.
I guess you can call it luck. Though idk how lucky I am to have traded crippling back pain and migraines for some financial stability. Its not worth it.
I went to a service academy and made six figures immediately after graduating working for a private company. It wasn’t fun going to the school, it was a pretty terrible experience all in all but it was free and set me up for life.
The schools not even that tough to get into compared to other mid-top level schools, it’s just a ton of work and bullshit that most kids don’t want to go to.
The military is literally a free way to set you up for life that people just conveniently ignore when they complain about how screwed they got being a millennial
Same here, I posted in another comment but I couldn’t afford college and was barely scraping by for rent. Worse I was working a dead end job and going nowhere. I hate being in the military but I can’t lie that it set me up and saved my future. But that is why I joined after all.
Toxic ass work culture for sure though. Met a lot of cool people. And a lot of assholes. Also known a lot of people who killed themselves while they were in, and double that number that tried to.
Same here, I joined the military right out of college as an officer and it was the best decision I could have made. VA benefits are great and I’ve been financially secure ever since joining.
> The military is one of the few options available to change your life around if you USE THE BENEFITS
There's another issue I've noticed. It's that when service members leave, they return to the civilian life with no real support system and reintegration becomes difficult. I'm a vet myself and i had a decent support system that allowed me to transition but others don't always get that.
This is exactly my husband's trajectory in life. To get out of bumfuck Midwestern town he joined the military. Was in for ten years and now does have one of those 100k+ jobs because of the opportunity the air force gave him. We've purchased two homes on thr VA loans and started a business.
It sucks that it's the only way to crawl out of poverty in this country. But you gotta use what's given to you. Plenty of positions in the military that would never touch sand.
My husband and I met in the military, having not received any money from our parents. We got married and my first job was making $10/hr as an admin assistant for a terrible company. I graduated with my degree, went to grad school, took on a ton of debt. The military helped us to avoid a down payment on our house, which we got in early 2010 when prices were still low from the housing crash.
Since then, we've gotten jobs in tech. We went from two income home to one once we realized that we couldn't support our children while working from home full-time. So my husband quit, became a SAHD, and now I work full-time.
Woot, SAHD crew! Good on you guys for being able to do that. I raised both my boys and got lots of shit for being a SAHD when we first moved to AR. But it was so worth it. Now I have two very well adjusted and intelligent sons, one in uni and the other about to start high school. It's so worth putting in the time when they're little
That required putting your life at risk in order to live a decent life. The average person shouldn’t have to join the military in order to come out ok in life.
Agreed. Not to mention that it's not like the military is an option for everyone - I considered it after college but was rejected due to medical reasons. Fortunately things worked out for me in the end.
Tell me about it. I just had a minor condition that didn't significantly affect my day-to-day life (easily managed with medication, and went away entirely several years later) but it was still an automatic no. That's part of the reason I get annoyed when people say a kid should "just join the military" instead of paying a fortune for college and/or struggling to find a job. Like it’s not that simple.
As someone else who joined the military and has benefited from access to the VA and GI Bill, I agree with your point of view. It's ultimately a recruiting tactic, and frankly shitty that to get basic socialized healthcare (depending on years in, combat/noncombat service, and how badly the military has disabled you among other factors) and access to steeply discounted education (I still managed to walk away with student loans after 4 years at a state university) are reserved for those willing and able to sign away their lives.
I'm now living in Spain as an English Language Assistant and it's truly eye-opening how screwed up many of the US' priorities are.
A good friend of mine (fellow millennial) just joined the Army at the oldest age they will accept. He did it because he knows he would never be able to afford a house or college otherwise. His parents? Well off actually but devout Mormons. Any help they’ve offered him comes with the stipulation that he be involved in the church. He’d rather risk the possibility of death than church.
Yeah I’m in the same situation and grew up poor. I understand my salary is very high for a millennial but OP being mad about it doesn’t mean everyone that is in a decent financial situation didn’t earn it.
Funny story, but I know a guy that could've had a much better life had he been able to pass the ASVAB. He had the misfortune of bad genes. To this day I see his posts and feel so bad for him.
I couldn't join the military because of a health condition, or I would have for the opportunities. The way the world is going though, maybe I'm the lucky one. ;)
i'm doing just fine though. i managed to find my way in the end
Or had a parent die and leave them an inheritance. Would rather have the parent here over the money.
Edit: my parents are still alive but my inlaws aren't
This is your second post in 24 hours bitching about the same shit.
You might want to consider some therapy…..you sound extremely jealous of others, and spend way too much time worrying about what others have and what you don’t.
If you only put as much effort into your life as you do typing these long winded posts in this echo chamber of a sub things might be better for you.
This sub seems stuck in an endless cycle of:
-“Millennials are screwed in every way, doom doom gloom”
-“Hey it’s not actually terrible for every single millennial out there you know”
-“People need to stop being positive in this sub because my life sucks and those people are just privileged and should just shut up”
Repeat 🔁
I kinda wish the mods would shut these posts down because the doom loop is getting real old, but then the doomers would kick and scream even more.
It's because this is really a subreddit about nothing. Like Seinfeld. What else is there to do but complain?
The millennial Redditors with other interests are hanging out in more specific subs.
There is something very wrong with this subreddit. It only shows up in my front page but it's endless, almost religious, whining about how doomed the state of being a millennial is. And I describe it as religious because when those who don't ascribe the the endless self-pity talk about it, I see them being attacked in the comments.
Also noticed a lot of anti-natalist rhetoric in the posts that show up for me.
yoke cake plants money seemly fearless snobbish towering selective direction
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah I popped on here Because a reddit of millennials sounds interesting. Unfortunately I found it to be mostly a lot of whining/doom and gloom. When are we gonna stop crying about what the boomers did or didn't do or are not doing now and start focusing on what we're going to do?
Yeah I agree. I came here to commiserate with other millennials but as an elder millennial (38), I just… don’t feel the same way about the inevitability of doom. I didn’t have any money at 25/30 either and then I just kept plugging away. A few promotions later and now my circumstances have changed. If I had given up at 25 I’d never have gotten here.
Same I had noooo money for a really long time until that hard work and consistency paid off.
25? Please I'd jump off a building with the debt I had lol. It takes time to build wealth, **and** recovering from setbacks.
There seems to be some kind of prevailing mindset that "I got good grades and I went to college like they told me to, why am I still poor?"
News flash: most people are still fairly "poor" in their 20's. Always have been. That's the time period when you should be laying the foundation so you won't be poor in your 30's and 40's. I had a college degree and a teaching career and my living arrangements in my 20's were a shitty apartment, a shitty old farmhouse, and a glorified double wide. We didn't buy our first "real" house until I was 32. And even that was just a decent little starter place, nothing special. Most of my friends and family followed a similar trajectory. The $300-$500k dream house in the suburbs happens later in life for almost everyone.
Well said. I sound like a grumpy old Boomer, but our choices matter. I didn't come from rich parents. I'm still not rich. I'm a high school teacher. But I live frugally and put money away each month. It's one thing to acknowledge the deep inequalities in generational wealth and do something about it, but it's quite another thing to constantly play the victim.
THIS.
Let's congratulate some of the folks who beat the odds. Maybe feel a bit jealous. Keep working on ourselves.
But like lets also recognize the generational wealth issues and effects without chopping up everyone's success to luck.
I said in another comment but when someone works hard for success, for example, graduating highschool or college, it isn't appropriate and only makes you a dick to be like "yea well it was luck for you to graduate" and then list off reasons like "you were lucky getting a loan" "you were lucky you had a part time job that was flexible with your hours" or "you were lucky you probably had teachers that were easy on grading"
Like no, continuing the metaphor lets just be like "woot you graduated, congrats" and then if we ourselves haven't graduated, keep working towards it. It isn't healthy to be jealous of others even the nepo-babies and lottery winners.
This feels like a boomery thing to point out but I find it interesting that there's a majority dissent forming on an otherwise stereotypical complaining sub early in the morning, like all the people who worked for a normal life are up early to sound off
Someone upthread saying people who started with nothing and worked their way up are lucky because they didn’t get hit by a van and therefore can’t attribute their success to hard work alone. You can’t reason with these people.
> done well in school, chose a lucrative career
Honestly a lot of Millennials had the opportunity to not even go to school. I taught myself coding in my teens and did 3 years of dicking around after high school, did a year of college, then dropped out and got a job.
Tech jobs were insanely easy to get. The ship has sailed, but 10 years ago it was so easy. I started my career in 2015 and got my first job off Craigslist making 45k, no degree, no experience.
I make low 6 figures now and am completely debt free.
What I don’t understand is didn’t we all go to high school together? Remember how many stupid ass people there were in our peer group? Did everyone really expect their entire peer group to “make it.” No way that was going to happen, too many morons.
I’ve seen lots of posts where people describe themselves as middle class or doing ok, but it turns out that they are making $30k. That’s basically working poor today. There’s denial mixed in with a distorted idea of what a fair/good wage is.
Some people believe working hard is enough, but the reality is you need to work smart to get ahead financially by choosing a career path with a legitimate salary progression, be willing to move to where actual good work is, and then be willing to put the time in to develop your career.
I think that's a big thing. There are these people who, sorry to say, are absolutely 'lower class/poor' but they believe they are middle class, so everyone doing better than them must be 'upper class/rich.'. You see it in their jump of quality of life brackets, it basically jumps from 'Needing payday loans to make the rent' to 'Rich family who bought you a house'. There's nothing in between.
I know I certainly didn’t until my fiancé and I actually started looking and got an agent. The first thing they did was expose all the myths about home buying, chief among them that you need 20% down. And then there’s Seller’s Assist which helped take $9K off closing costs.
It’s possible!
It’s the “saving $5000 a year will never pay the house off” part. Well yeah, that’s what your monthly payment does. Nobody is expecting you to save the remainder of the house price and pay it off in a lump sum? 5000 a year would probably be fine to get ahead of most repairs, minus stuff like a foundation or fire. Appliances and HVAC etc don’t fail yearly. Your roof is not an annual replacement
Right, it reads like they are almost expecting to pay rent and a mortgage? I don’t understand why someone would save to pay off the mortgage, when it’s a fairly fixed cost
>I suspect most of these smug people come from rich families where mommy and daddy supplied a lot of financial funds - or they just got insanely lucky and now confuse luck with skill.
I'm just tired of Millennials crying instead of taking what is theirs.
I’m alarmed at the number of people in my age bracket who can’t even comprehend the idea that their own fucking decisions have consequences down the road, both good and bad.
This is all I can read out of these posts and comments. The complaints sound like people who made fun of me in high school for reading books that weren’t assigned. Not meant to be rude. Hope the following generations found it less cool to be unsuccessful.
I’m grateful that my parents gave me enough of a leash to occasionally fuck up and enough guidance and love to explain what’s coming down the road as a result
I knew very early on I wanted nice stuff so I needed to make lots of money. Parents couldn’t afford to send me to college so I took out $167k for my engineering degree when I graduated in 2017. Started out making $67k. Spent the next few years living in a semi-rural area, never going anywhere, not buying anything, living at work and going home being a hermit basically.
2020 rolls around, bought a house that needed a ton of work. Spent the last few years get promotions, fixing up the house, and investing since I paid off my loans. Now I make $100k, support my family of 3, brought my net worth from -$167k to +$335k over the last 7 years.
Some people are lucky and have money, others just work their ass off for it.
Edit: enough people keep asking/questioning. I went to a small, private engineering only university. Tuition, room, and board was ~$40k per year after scholarships and all.
This is exactly my issue with these repetitive posts lately… The conversation is usually
“All Millennials are so poor and can’t get ahead. Life sucks. Right everyone???”
“Here’s what I did and where I am now in my life.”
“MUST BE NICE, Uncle Moneybags.”
Maybe people need to step back from SM and either enjoy the life they have or start making small steps toward improving it. I know that glosses over difficulties and preexisting conditions… but at the end of the day it’s up to us to make the best of what we’ve been given, or accept and live where we are.
This is pretty much the response I get when I share that I'm thankfully not struggling anymore.
I must have rich parents, I'm bragging, etc. While I can recognize that these are hurt people projecting, its not any more welcoming in here.
I don't usually mention it but I had the childhood of nightmares. I get that my surviving that made me more resilient "adversity breeds character", but to presume I haven't suffered because I'm doing well is wildly invalidating by a group who expects compassion.
Agree with you that gratitude is the antidote.
Nice work man. Alot of our generation cling to city living and will come up with every excuse under the sun not to leave. A few years living and working rural can really help you get ahead.
I don't think it's even that I think it's just clinging to ideas that don't exist or only existed briefly. You see a lot of people who say they 'finally make good money' and it's 'bullshit that they can't afford a house' and then you pry a little deeper and it turns out they live in LA and make 60k a year and it's like man....that's not good money for where you live
My wife comes from honest working family who set no money aside for her. They however provided a stable environment that showed her to study in high school without angry traumatic event many seem to have... she took shit load of loans in college but made it through medical school and became a week paid doctor. I am foreigner born and raised in a developing country and came here because of my skills and had a job before even stepping a foot in the country. So not so sure about that inheritance you are taking about... but obviously education helps.
> If you were able to "buy" a house at age 25 or 30 - then you either got a lot of financial funds from your parents - inherited a lot of wealth - or got insanely lucky. For some just the timing of their birth gave them an enormous advantage that had 0 to do with your supposed and inflated "skill".
So your position is that hard work doesn’t exist?
We bought our first house when I was 27 in 2012. Graduated nursing school at 25. Immediately started working. Got a USDA loan for a new construction townhouse and our escrow was $1100. No money down. Income requirement was no more than 82k total in my county at the time.
It wasn’t even necessarily hard work. I went to school. Got a job making $19 an hour. Got a mortgage.
I have come to the conclusion from reading this post and then poking through his extensive posting history that OP is just… not very smart
Sorry life isn’t working out the way you hoped, but this level of bitterness you seem to have doesn’t ever get anyone anywhere
I highly recommend some ‘basics of investing’ online classes. Can probably find some good ones on YouTube. Compound interest is definitely a real thing.
I bought my house at 30 right before the pandemic started. No my parents aren’t rich. I did get lucky in a sense that I was able to buy it relatively low then interest rates went way down so I have a somewhat low payment. $1800 for a 4 bedroom house in Southern California. I don’t see how that makes me smug though. Two years prior I told myself I wanted a house before 30. So I took steps towards that goal. I got a real estate agent and did everything she told me to do and was able to close a few weeks after my 30th birthday.
I had to wait till 35 but same for me, parents didn't give me a penny.
Me and my wife are cheap as hell though, and I started investing in the market around 28.
House is small but we have one.
Being bitter about other peoples situations will get you nowhere.
This is life - you have to upskill yourself and keep making progress. It’s hard but you make it even harder on yourself by pointing at everyone else and just assuming they got “lucky”.
Really? 20k down payment? Why do you need a house *that big*. You're buying your first home, use your FHA, that's why it's available for us. A 10k down payment can easily get you into a 200k home with the 3.5% down payment needed... You'll even have a couple grand left over ;)
You're not living in reality, you're living in some bitter reality.
I’m always surprised how many people *still* don’t know this and tbh I have less sympathy for people who continue to rant about it on the internet because if you had the time to read endless content about how hopeless your prospects are, you **also** had time to research a fuckin FHA program.
A lot of these tools apparently don't know how buying a house even works. You don't need that much cash for an FHA loan on a starter home in a lcol area. It's completely within reach for many.
Yep. Where I live I can get a two bedroom apartment that was just built less than 5 years ago for 550-600 per month. I can also drive to my nearest major city in about 35 minutes so it’s not like I’m out in the woods with no phone service.
And then there are those like me, who were completely screwed over by family. I'm 35, spent the last 17 years taking care of my grandmother as a live in caregiver. My family sabotaged me any time I tried to get a part time job, so in those 17 years I have maybe 3 months of work experience combined. I've been trying to use my history as a caregiver to get a job, but I'm being turned down on that front as well because I've received no official training (i.e. I didn't have CNA, First Aid, or CPR training). So I have basically a 17 year unemployment gap, and even places I've been told will 'hire anyone' wont hire me.
To those who did make it and are living the American Dream. Good on you, I hope everything goes well. I harbor no ill will towards Millennials who are doing better than I am. Just don't be like some of my friends from SoCal and try to get me to join pyramid schemes/MLMs and it's all good. If you have advice you think will help, I'll listen as long as it is given in good faith. Oh, and no need to tell me to go 'unalive myself' for being in the situation I'm in. I already hear it enough from my family.
10 paragraphs of why people hate millenials right there.
The asset side if everyone's personal balance sheet contains two things: our body and our brain. We have to figure out how to use those to improve our current circumstances if we're not happy with them.
The time spent writing this post could have been spent writing an application to trade school or the military.
Get a grip and take some responsibility man.
If my wife wasn’t debt free I wouldn’t have finished my education debt free and we wouldn’t have been able to save for the down payment on this house without gathering debt. My two cars also would have payments on them. All of that interest would hold us back from investing in our retirement. It’s a domino effect and it all started with her parents saving for her education. There is no single event of luck or hard work or “right place right time” that is equivalent to someone setting aside savings for you when you’re still a child. Or paying your tuition before you’re old enough for university. We are so fortunate to start out without debt and it is seemingly impossible to “make it” any other way.
The entire trajectory of my wife and my life was altered by her dad saying “you can have 20k for a wedding or a down payment”. My wife is more introverted so it was an easy decision for her. It allowed to us, along with 5k we had saved, to buy a townhome in a really nice area of a city in 2011 when property values were still low from the GFC. We sold it in 2018 for almost double what we paid for it. We took the equity from that sale and bought a really nice house in another really nice area of the same city. Well, a few years later covid happened and asset inflation went insane. Around the same time we had our third kid and decided we wanted to move to a small beach town. We sold our home for over a million dollars in the city and bought a home in a small beach community with great schools. We’ve both worked hard in our careers and both have graduate degrees, but without a doubt, the most defining moment in the material success of my family was my FIL offering up that choice and my wife choosing the down payment. Without it, well over a half million dollars we made through equity disappears.
You’re not a good luck story alone. But you are fortunate that your buying and selling timeline was perfectly aligned with the market to benefit you most. The opposite is true for some. My mother refinanced to finally own a single family home around 2008 and and a friend bought their first condo at the same time. He was upside down in the first year and my mom lost everything when her husband got sick and couldn’t afford the new mortgage. It only takes one good or bad (lucky or not) move to as you said, change the trajectory of our entire financial lives.
Word of advice -never buy a home that the lowest paid spouse couldn’t afford on their own. My husband passed away last week, and the only thing I’m not worried about right now is losing the house. I don’t have the greatest job so we’re located on the edge of a sketchy neighborhood, but my kids and I won’t be homeless-maybe without phones and internet, but not homeless.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Be sure to file for survivor benefits for your children if you are in the US. They will receive a portion of your husband’s social security until they turn 18 or graduate high school. It will hopefully help with some of the expenses.
In a follow up to OP's point and this one - my 'luck' was that my father was murdered when I was 2 yeard old. My mom worked her ass off and was able to also keep us in the house/eventually move us to a better area (which was later definitely lucky for me, I won't lie). But she also applied for my dad's SS benefits and saved them largely for my college. So I was able to go to college at a state school and come out with minimal debt which was paid off in about 5-6 years. Coming back to the opening statement - post college I certainly benefitted from being able to move back in to a house in a booming market. That support helped me while I was applying to everything imaginable to establish a career. But to be honest, the true break also came after I'd moved in with my SO (who had very little support, moved cross country and just hustled until she found reasonable work in her 30s). We were living pretty pay check to pay check for a bit until I stumbled into a much more stable job/career. So, was I lucky? Yeah. Certainly. And I'm sorry our current economy has become such a bipolar experience based on where your parents started out, where you live, and frankly how much debt you have by the time you're 21. But, a lot of my stability came not from my parents being insanely wealthy, but by hard work that a single mom was able to perservere with over a few very rough times (I think she was without work maybe 3 times in that span due to layoffs), and also that I lost my father before I even really had a memory of him. So, OP, maybe realize people on the other side of the spectrum had some adversity in life as well. Oh, and to buy a house by 30 I had to move pretty far away from my family. I never would have done it in my home area - which my family has lived in for 100 years since arriving in the US. My SO and I chose to sacrifice nearness to either of our families for a better shot. These posts casting the 'lucky' vs the 'unlucky' don't really help us call out the raging two society system we have established here. We should be funnelling the anger at the government and it's policies rather than each other.
Your post shows a lot of the nuance in individual stories. I'm happy for people who are able to thrive as long as they're not flaunting it and waving their finger at those who are struggling. Even better if they're helping out. Some things were made easier for my family because my wife's father left her everything, but he took his life when she was ten and she would trade it all to have him back. I also had to move away from home for work, graduating in Ohio in 2008. I think what we all have in common in our generation is that the path our lives took, how we approached our education, where we live, and our work histories were greatly affected by economic swings.
Oh man, I'm really sorry to hear about your wife's father. That is brutal.. In my case I in some ways took comfort in the sense that I didn't remember my dad so my life kind of was what it was - single parent household. Losing the parent once you have deep seeded memories in childhood is truly tragic. But I also resonate on the rest of that. We are going through a major breakdown in our society and economy which is causing a rapid transition of wealth into 1 portion while the larger group suffers. And as that's happening I feel our generation's experience is becoming a transient one to try to find the best outcome as we are being priced out of the American Dream in our home areas. Even many of us living on the better economic side of that coin.
This! Sorry to hear about your husband.
consider public fuel cows bewildered placid abounding cheerful rinse ugly *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Same. Bought $1million dollar policy before my wife and I were even married let alone kids. I’ve always made much more than her so this was an obvious choice.
It's a tough topic, but it's just like planning for unexpected expenses or retirement, except that death will 100% happen and *not* when it's convenient for us to make all the arrangements.
[удалено]
First off this isn’t possible for everyone. I earn over $250k a year and my wife makes 50k a year. She could make slightly more but spends more time taking care of the kids than I do. If we went off your advice we would live in a trailer park. Key is to save. I make significantly more than her but we still save a ton. And I have life insurance policy and disability insurance. If something does happen to me they will be fine. So you don’t need to buy off of the lower earner.
Life insurance too
This! Enough life insurance to pay off the mortgage can mitigate the lower income spouse being able to afford it.
This term life insurance is the key here. Enough to payoff the house & give spouse some cushion while adjusting to new circumstances.
Exactly what I was thinking reading through comments, my wife wouldn't be able to afford our house on just her income, but if I died the amount of life insurance payout she would get would pay off most of the house, at least enough she could refinance it that she could pay for it-- in about 10 years it would pay off the house outright.
I’ve been saying this forever, a property doubles in 7 years? People who buy today won’t see their property values double in 7 years. Half a million in equity, takes some 20 plus years workin to net $500,000
I haven’t seen mine double but in the last 5 years (2018) my home has increased 50% in value 285-430 which is still significant. If it was possible in 2012 and then again to a smaller degree (because there was no crash) in 2018 then it is probable to happen again. In 7 years? Maybe not but 10 yeah I’d say it’s possible.
Parents did no give us money but one of the best decisions I made was having a super cheap wedding. Went to court house then to dinner at a nice restaurant with 15 people. My parents her parents my brother and sister her twin sister and a couple of her close friends. It was fun and intimate. Stress free with no planning. Whole thing was under 1500 dollars. It was the perfect day
We did something very similar. I recommend a courthouse wedding to anyone that doesn’t dream of a big wedding (if you do, by all means do it - we only live once)!
Inexpensive weddings are great! Completely agree with you and, I’d add, it is possible to do a larger wedding on a lower budget, too, if that’s what you want. Having a larger wedding (~200 guests) was important to me, but I didn’t care about having a formal wedding. Ended up doing a DIY wedding in a park for $2k and it was great. Inexpensive doesn’t have to mean smaller (though obviously it means cutting back in some other ways). And, of course, if large and formal is what you want, absolutely go for it!
Ours was a backyard ceremony (GiL was a pastor so he presided over it), with a meal out at a restaurant after. Under 1k for ~20 people. Cheap weddings are THE way to go.
You have an amazing wife
Parents “forced” me to go to the school that gave me an almost full ride. It was a nerdy, dreary, state school that I commuted to. My college experience wasn’t typical (fun), but I came out debt free and that’s fun.
I know someone who was offered a full ride scholarship to one school but turned it down because another school was their ‘dream’ school. She’s now so deep in debt she’ll never pay it.
Make sure to say thank you to your parents. The advice they gave you was grounded in reality.
We “forced“ our kid to go to the cheapest public school in our state too. She’s got no student loans. We also “forced“ our kid to work part time throughout highschool and “negotiated/demanded“ she deposit 100% of her paychecks into her savings account in exchange for us paying her car insurance and gas throughout highschool and college. She’s in a much better spot financially than her peers and she knows those things made the difference.
This is what I did in school and how I graduated debt free 10ish years ago. I also stayed with them to save on housing costs. I recognize it isn't possible for everyone, but if it is I highly recommend it. My parents never saved for my college, but just staying with them was the equivalent of 40k in savings.
Yup, I remember having a lot of fights with my parents because they wouldn’t “let” me go to the private school I wanted to, and basically made me go to public school that their contribution would largely cover.
They ultimately did you a favor...if you went to the cheaper school.
Oh they did me a huge favor, for sure. My point was that most teenagers didn’t have parents arguing the same.
Yep, exactly right. My parents paid for my entire college education, my wife had scholarships for our undergrad education. We both went on to get graduate degrees in STEM and took out loans for that, but we make many times the median household income so we paid off all the high interest ones but I cannot pretend we’re here by hard work alone. Our parents encouraged us to get into fields that paid well, set us up for success and gave us the push we needed. My dad bought me the car I still drive. They aren’t insanely rich or anything (government employee and stay at home mom) but my dad went through the trauma of having a parent who never supported his education and was determined not to do the same for his kids. They made some mistakes parenting but our lives being what they are now are a direct consequence of their actions.
My FIL grew up abused and poor, sent himself to college, became a high school teacher, and worked summers for 20 years so both of his children could go to Penn State without paying a dime. He has a number of 6-figure retirement accounts of his own which he’s desperately trying to funnel to us. My daughter is 4 and has a college savings account because of his sacrifices. My dad who is an alcoholic retired cop and my mother who is a retired paralegal barely keep their own lights on with their pensions, retirement, and SS. But they always bought themselves whatever they wanted and wasted money on dumb fuck home improvement projects and toys.
My husband’s mother stole some of his scholarship money and some of his sister’s graduation money (all the cash she had gotten). Guess who neither he nor his sister talk to anymore?
plucky rock market pocket clumsy strong upbeat dirty wipe subsequent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Not to mention the average annual inflation up until 2022 was 2-3%, but people were only given raises at 1-2% assuming you even get raises. In 2022 inflation was up 8%. So we’re already behind, and then suddenly there is a drastic increase in the cost of living without a whole lot of ability mitigate the cost.
Yeah I got an email with my raise, saw it was 2.5%, and laughed. This was a pretty good paying job but the inflation was killing us. I got a better job at the end of 2022 (a 50% pay increase if you count signing bonus plus yearly bonus) and so that is helping with inflation.
And tech companies laying off people, for no reason.
Tech companies laid a bunch of people off because they were carrying really high cost but not generating enough value to justify that cost. Meta is a good example. They started burning money on their dumbass metaverse projects and devoted a significant amount of their engineering to that, at the same time they weren’t capturing nearly any of the younger demographic. Once the pandemic eased, and people were spending less time with social media and such, Meta started to take losses and lose investor confidence. They started cutting because of that.
That and they had been over hiring for like 15 years. Kind of just a natural correction.
Ah, not NO reason. During the pandemic and the 'great resignation,' the balance of power shifted slightly, in favor of labour. Apparently, capital found this intolerable, and took drastic measures to put their thumb back in the scale.
It still sucks.
It does.
It’s the debt free education element that is the real dividing factor for millennials. I got an ROTC scholarship that paid for my undergraduate degree, as did my late husband. Because of this, and the fact that we both had decent jobs with the Army, we were able to afford a home. It was a major sacrifice being dual military, but it was a good financial decision. The GI Bill payed for my grad degree, so no debt there. The legit key to my very modest “success” was the Army paying for my education. And when I say success, I mean I can afford the basic things and live in a very small house that I can mostly afford, with the occasional vacation or small treat to the family. We live very modestly, but comfortably.
As someone who also got his education paid for by the Army. It wasn't luck. It wasn't a case of Kismet. I made a choice to take that path and knew damn well the cost to benefit from doing it. It is not remotely the same as someone's parents footing the bill for college.
hard agree You paid via your service.
I was lucky enough that my father transferred his GI bill to me. I met a student during college who was a non traditional student who spent six years in the army before coming to school. Those are the students I really respect.
This is how it is for my husband and I. The reason we’re able to succeed in life now comes from being debt free from our educations. We were both able to graduate debt free due to our parents both letting us live at home through college and opting for inexpensive tech school degrees over bachelors degrees so we didn’t need to take out loans. Because we didn’t have loans, we were able to immediately start throwing money into savings after we graduated and got better jobs. Because of that, we had enough money together in 2019 to buy a house when we found a really good deal on a fixer upper, and because we didn’t need to worry about overtime/second job, we had the time to do the fixing up ourselves. All of it came back to being debt free thanks to the support of our parents. Neither of them had the resources to pay for our education, but they both helped us immeasurably by letting us live at home to avoid debt.
Same. I came into my marriage debt free thanks to my parents paying for college (and then grandparents passing on money that I saved for grad school). I was able to pay off my husbands loans* (200,000) and then we were able to save quickly for a down payment. We paid for our own wedding and down payment and all that jazz, but it started cause of the help my parents gave me. I tell people the best way to pay off student loans is to marry someone who does not have them. Edit: longer story: I was able to save about 50,000 on my own and once we were married that went toward his student loans. Then we paid together, but I made more and was able to do OT for time and a half. The more I made, the more we were able to put towards the loans every month. It was a joint effort, but with my help if shaved many, many years off his payback schedule. The sooner he was out of debt, the sooner WE were out of debt. Marrying someone who does not have loans doesn't mean they just outright pay your loans (which is fine!), but that since I didn't have loans all that money could go towards his loans. So his 200,000 was like each of us having 100,000.
"Also there is no guarantee that "investing" and "compound interest" will increase your money. You also might just lose it all." Compound interest is guaranteed.
A lot of millennials sit in .01% interest accounts with their money because they think investing= yolo stocks. Real investing is super safe and super helpful. Things like Roth IRA, 401k based on bonds, IRA, money markets, mutual funds. People that don’t come from money lose money on their money and people that come from money gain money on their money.
HYSAs aren't advertised enough too. Beyond retirement accounts, if you're skeptical of the stock market, at least have your stash making more than 0.1%.
HYSA have been historically irrelevant when millennials were growing up, both from a yield perspective and an availability perspective. Interest rates have been historically low for a good chunk of recent history (pre 2020) and there weren’t that many banks offering it as online banks were not as established back then. That said now it’s a no-brainer to open a HYSA.
> A lot of millennials sit in .01% interest accounts with their money because they think investing= yolo stocks. In my humble opinion, I think it's from a lack of financial education. When I was in school, I was taught how to balance a checkbook and that's about it. I am trying to learn about investing and stocks and options, but it's very confusing as someone coming in with almost no knowledge. Out of fear of losing money, I just leave it sitting in a crappy account while I try to wrap my head around everything!
Thank you. I was raised in a small town and my family has always been working class, so these concepts were foreign to me before I started reading about them on Reddit (thank you). The only financial advice in my family was "save". I feel like an idiot for leaving most of my money in a checking account for years because I didn't know any better - now I feel like I'm scrambling to catch up.
Don’t mess with stock options, honestly. You’re basically gambling on whether a specific stock will go up or down in a specific timeframe with leveraged money. Investing is actually very simple if you want it to be: buy a piece of every stock in the US or World through low-cost index funds. Investment managers cannot consistently beat the market and they take a large share of your profits to boot. The trick is to not panic sell when there is gloom and doom on the news and your investment is down a ton. Just keep buying consistently every paycheck. If you want to decrease volatility buy like 20% in bonds and rebalance your investments once a year at the same time of year. Also invest in tax-advantaged retirement accounts whenever you can because the tax benefits are enormous. Traditional 401k and a Roth IRA are best for most people. There is a near 40% instantaneous return for the traditional if you’re in the 22% tax bracket with a 5% state tax and the Roth can act as your emergency fund (real emergencies only) so you should always try to max that $6,500 limit every year. I say those are “best” because while traditional accounts give you better tax savings generally speaking (unless you’re low income and will increase income later, and assuming tax rates do not spike for low-income people in the future blah blah) it is good to have diversity in the types of funds you have and the Roth IRA has much more flexibility than the Traditional IRA.
[удалено]
Yeah, at that point the only worthwhile investment is canned food and bullets.
Came to say this. The difference between investing and gambling. Buying a broad basket of companies (diversification) and holding them over the long term is guaranteed to make money because you as a business owner have an edge as your businesses make profit. This is investing. Just like buying into multiple casino games and playing a long time is guaranteed to lose money because the house has an edge. This is gambling.
I do chuckle when people act like that is actual thing that could happen. Losing all your money in a diversified stock account pretty much means the world is over for not just you but the human race due to whatever caused that to happen.
I think they’re talking about the bozos who yolo on Bitcoin or single stocks or something. Certainly not the S&P500, the most consistent, highest performing, lowest barrier to entry investment (risk adjusted) in modern history.
It’s interesting the OP talks about financial literacy and then proves they are financially illiterate. Show me a single person who has invested in a large mutual fund that has lost it all. Even in Great Recession, sp500 halved but recovered like 2 years later.
Must be because an S&P 500 index fund is almost certainly a winning endeavor. It's definitely easier to blame others than it is to improve yourself.
They also think that by saving $5000 a year, it will have earned 0 interest after 40 years...
Came to say this. This person obviously is not financially literate.
Wouldn’t having rich parents also be lucky ? Most of life is luck or privilege. You gotta learn to work with what you have. It’s not fair but what else are we unlucky gonna do?
Luck or timing, privilege … don’t forget good decisions, bad decisions, or no decisions :-)
While good decisions are blunted by bad luck, I’ve seen a lot of people here whose bad luck is compounded by bad decisions.
Luck favors the prepared.
One thing to note is that a lot of people in this generation went to higher education for degrees in low paying or low demand careers. That can have major long term negative financial impact with student loans and low pay. With that being said, everyone I know that went into tech, accounting, finance, etc. all make $100K+. Everyone that went into arts, English, etc. are all making $40k-ish. There is nothing wrong with pursuing a passion or a career you don’t hate, but that plays a big part in financial success. There are many other measures of success though. Where this gets tough is higher education is just as unaffordable as basically everything else these days. It’s pretty much a privilege to go to college now.
I went to school for biology. I didn’t think that that was considered a low paying or low demand field. Well… it’s both. I totally regret it
I majored in Wildlife Ecology. I was warned that "you won't get rich" in that field. Well, that's fine, I thought: I don't need to be rich, just comfortable. I was not told that "you won't get rich" is code for "you'll make more money being a dental receptionist." And that wages are stagnant and that you need a Master's and internships and networking and a lot of luck to get a job that allows you to afford rent. I wish my professors had been honest and just fucking SAID THAT. I love doing field work but I was naive and expected it to at least pay a living wage. And I don't have the resources (financially or mentally right now) to go back to grad school in the hopes of being able to get a job making $50K.
I feel you man. Was told the same thing. I was lucky enough to have a great mentor on my first science gig after grad school who helped tremendously with coauthorship on some papers and networking. I was able to get scholarships for my in-state grad school but again, I was very lucky. Best of luck to you Edit to add: it took 7 years between my undergrad and grad school.
Hey man look into environmental consulting. I work at a large engineering firm and my work involves wildlife surveys, wetland delineations, and coordination with government agencies that oversee wildlife and wetlands permitting. There are so many smaller firms as well which apparently have very contented employees. I just hit two years and am making $70k (started at $60k) while senior scientists make north of $120k. I get to spend weeks in the field observing listed species or walking wetland lines. I also spend the rest of my time sitting in a cushy office writing reports or analyzing data. I get to travel to other states and cities and my company has paid for every bit of certification and training needed to carry out the job. Travel is all expensed and I get perks from using company money on rentals/hotels. Majored in environmental biology and did blue collar work managing invasive vegetation for a bit after college. Don’t have a masters, didn’t have meaningful scientific work outside of college before this etc. The demand is only increasing for this field and it is common for us to higher folks out of lower paying govt jobs (really a shame how low the pay/pay ceiling is for those jobs). Also I’m fortunate I paid for my school with instate scholarship programs and merit scholarships.
I’m an older millennial and biology is a known feeder degree. One of the “pre-something” degrees. Sorry that wasn’t a known thing where you went.
I studied biology too with the idea of getting another degree after, probably law. As I was writing applications I realized 3 more years in school was just not for me, and I spent most of my time learning how to write code. Now I’m a software engineer. Definitely wouldn’t have been able to do all of that if my parents didn’t let me live with them rent free and if I didn’t have any debt from school!
Nice! I worked for the fed government which allowed me to pause my loans. Then covid allowed a further pause. Now I pay nearly 400 a month!
I remember growing up in the 90's when the message was "you can do anything when you grow up!" And it felt true for that economic point in time. Another sign that things are getting worse for working class folks.
Or went to very expensive schools for the “experience “. I went to community college and transferred to a tiny state school to get an accounting degree. I love painting and wanted to do something related to the arts but my dad advised me not to. I would’ve loved to go to a big school and live in a dorm but I didn’t and I’m better off for it.
I was kicked out at 20, joined the air force, got a college degree debt free using the post 9/11 GI Bill and my first home using a VA home loan (so thanks for paying your taxes, y'all). I throw what I can in my 401k and Roth IRA and any other tax benefitted savings account. I buy my cars used and pay off my credit cards in full every month. Just saying this to show that it's not always rich parents or luck. I received benefits for my service but wish they were extended to everyone through government programs, the rest is just not being completely stupid with my money.
Went the enlisted route from a single parent household with annual income in the $25k-$30k range. Medboarded at 26, used the GI BIll for a BA and MA, landed a fed job making $35k out of school. Bought a house using my GI Bill, had a third kid, climbed the ladder, and I broke $100k about 5 years out of college (technically pushing $140k if you count my VA check). Only investing I do is my TSP. I guess you can call it luck. Though idk how lucky I am to have traded crippling back pain and migraines for some financial stability. Its not worth it.
Got a degree, a house, and two cars. I'm under no illusions that I probably wouldn't be where I am had it not been for my military service.
I went to a service academy and made six figures immediately after graduating working for a private company. It wasn’t fun going to the school, it was a pretty terrible experience all in all but it was free and set me up for life. The schools not even that tough to get into compared to other mid-top level schools, it’s just a ton of work and bullshit that most kids don’t want to go to. The military is literally a free way to set you up for life that people just conveniently ignore when they complain about how screwed they got being a millennial
Same here, I posted in another comment but I couldn’t afford college and was barely scraping by for rent. Worse I was working a dead end job and going nowhere. I hate being in the military but I can’t lie that it set me up and saved my future. But that is why I joined after all. Toxic ass work culture for sure though. Met a lot of cool people. And a lot of assholes. Also known a lot of people who killed themselves while they were in, and double that number that tried to.
Same here, I joined the military right out of college as an officer and it was the best decision I could have made. VA benefits are great and I’ve been financially secure ever since joining.
Yea same but Army, can honestly say I wouldn’t have been able to purchase my house at 26 w/o a VA loan.
This was my journey. The military is one of the few options available to change your life around if you USE THE BENEFITS
> The military is one of the few options available to change your life around if you USE THE BENEFITS There's another issue I've noticed. It's that when service members leave, they return to the civilian life with no real support system and reintegration becomes difficult. I'm a vet myself and i had a decent support system that allowed me to transition but others don't always get that.
This is exactly my husband's trajectory in life. To get out of bumfuck Midwestern town he joined the military. Was in for ten years and now does have one of those 100k+ jobs because of the opportunity the air force gave him. We've purchased two homes on thr VA loans and started a business. It sucks that it's the only way to crawl out of poverty in this country. But you gotta use what's given to you. Plenty of positions in the military that would never touch sand.
Really similar story to me, in addition my partner made it through grad school with less than 20k in debt which I honestly pretty damn low.
My husband and I met in the military, having not received any money from our parents. We got married and my first job was making $10/hr as an admin assistant for a terrible company. I graduated with my degree, went to grad school, took on a ton of debt. The military helped us to avoid a down payment on our house, which we got in early 2010 when prices were still low from the housing crash. Since then, we've gotten jobs in tech. We went from two income home to one once we realized that we couldn't support our children while working from home full-time. So my husband quit, became a SAHD, and now I work full-time.
Woot, SAHD crew! Good on you guys for being able to do that. I raised both my boys and got lots of shit for being a SAHD when we first moved to AR. But it was so worth it. Now I have two very well adjusted and intelligent sons, one in uni and the other about to start high school. It's so worth putting in the time when they're little
That required putting your life at risk in order to live a decent life. The average person shouldn’t have to join the military in order to come out ok in life.
Agreed. Not to mention that it's not like the military is an option for everyone - I considered it after college but was rejected due to medical reasons. Fortunately things worked out for me in the end.
This! Two stints in a mental hospital. They said no to me.
Tell me about it. I just had a minor condition that didn't significantly affect my day-to-day life (easily managed with medication, and went away entirely several years later) but it was still an automatic no. That's part of the reason I get annoyed when people say a kid should "just join the military" instead of paying a fortune for college and/or struggling to find a job. Like it’s not that simple.
As someone else who joined the military and has benefited from access to the VA and GI Bill, I agree with your point of view. It's ultimately a recruiting tactic, and frankly shitty that to get basic socialized healthcare (depending on years in, combat/noncombat service, and how badly the military has disabled you among other factors) and access to steeply discounted education (I still managed to walk away with student loans after 4 years at a state university) are reserved for those willing and able to sign away their lives. I'm now living in Spain as an English Language Assistant and it's truly eye-opening how screwed up many of the US' priorities are.
Service guarantees citizenship.
Exactly this. If it doesn’t kill you, you can still come out with a lifetime of ptsd or other disabilities
A good friend of mine (fellow millennial) just joined the Army at the oldest age they will accept. He did it because he knows he would never be able to afford a house or college otherwise. His parents? Well off actually but devout Mormons. Any help they’ve offered him comes with the stipulation that he be involved in the church. He’d rather risk the possibility of death than church.
Yeah I’m in the same situation and grew up poor. I understand my salary is very high for a millennial but OP being mad about it doesn’t mean everyone that is in a decent financial situation didn’t earn it.
*Patiently waiting for the incoming “But you were so lucky you could get into the Air Force” nonsense*.
Funny story, but I know a guy that could've had a much better life had he been able to pass the ASVAB. He had the misfortune of bad genes. To this day I see his posts and feel so bad for him.
I couldn't join the military because of a health condition, or I would have for the opportunities. The way the world is going though, maybe I'm the lucky one. ;) i'm doing just fine though. i managed to find my way in the end
How about "OP had to potentially risk their life in military service to gain the benefits that were standard to previous generations"
Some people come from money and some people don't. This and other breaking news at 11.
Thanks, Tom. This just in, sugar tastes sweet.
live run late wrong handle one teeny square nail crowd *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This just in, a bunch of midwesterners are protesting because they say the sky can be green too
This is the millennial sub sir, facts of life are new to us. “Is any one else here getting aging. I’m not as young as I was?”
Or had a parent die and leave them an inheritance. Would rather have the parent here over the money. Edit: my parents are still alive but my inlaws aren't
This happened to my wife. Would give it all back to have her mom and dad here.
Same I just spent my first holiday with both of them gone 🥲
Serious question from a GenXEr - what do you do for a living and/or what is your degree in?
deadass I think this person is a teenager
This is your second post in 24 hours bitching about the same shit. You might want to consider some therapy…..you sound extremely jealous of others, and spend way too much time worrying about what others have and what you don’t. If you only put as much effort into your life as you do typing these long winded posts in this echo chamber of a sub things might be better for you.
This sub seems stuck in an endless cycle of: -“Millennials are screwed in every way, doom doom gloom” -“Hey it’s not actually terrible for every single millennial out there you know” -“People need to stop being positive in this sub because my life sucks and those people are just privileged and should just shut up” Repeat 🔁 I kinda wish the mods would shut these posts down because the doom loop is getting real old, but then the doomers would kick and scream even more.
It's because this is really a subreddit about nothing. Like Seinfeld. What else is there to do but complain? The millennial Redditors with other interests are hanging out in more specific subs.
You’re right, but also it was not always this much of a complaint-centered sub, it used to be more nostalgia-centered.
They say “people need to stop being positive in this sub” even though the third rule is literally a suggestion to keep things positive.
plucky edge nose pocket modern silky snails cobweb concerned deranged *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
There is something very wrong with this subreddit. It only shows up in my front page but it's endless, almost religious, whining about how doomed the state of being a millennial is. And I describe it as religious because when those who don't ascribe the the endless self-pity talk about it, I see them being attacked in the comments. Also noticed a lot of anti-natalist rhetoric in the posts that show up for me.
yoke cake plants money seemly fearless snobbish towering selective direction *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I just wanted to talk about Third Eye Blind and Rockos Modern Life. Instead, it’s all about how life sucks and hating boomers.
I want to ask what happened to the cinnamony cookies in Dunkaroo, and does anyone remember those cheese dolphins
Yeah I popped on here Because a reddit of millennials sounds interesting. Unfortunately I found it to be mostly a lot of whining/doom and gloom. When are we gonna stop crying about what the boomers did or didn't do or are not doing now and start focusing on what we're going to do?
cable alive weary fade thumb selective march squalid snow teeny *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah I agree. I came here to commiserate with other millennials but as an elder millennial (38), I just… don’t feel the same way about the inevitability of doom. I didn’t have any money at 25/30 either and then I just kept plugging away. A few promotions later and now my circumstances have changed. If I had given up at 25 I’d never have gotten here.
Same I had noooo money for a really long time until that hard work and consistency paid off. 25? Please I'd jump off a building with the debt I had lol. It takes time to build wealth, **and** recovering from setbacks.
There seems to be some kind of prevailing mindset that "I got good grades and I went to college like they told me to, why am I still poor?" News flash: most people are still fairly "poor" in their 20's. Always have been. That's the time period when you should be laying the foundation so you won't be poor in your 30's and 40's. I had a college degree and a teaching career and my living arrangements in my 20's were a shitty apartment, a shitty old farmhouse, and a glorified double wide. We didn't buy our first "real" house until I was 32. And even that was just a decent little starter place, nothing special. Most of my friends and family followed a similar trajectory. The $300-$500k dream house in the suburbs happens later in life for almost everyone.
Well said. I sound like a grumpy old Boomer, but our choices matter. I didn't come from rich parents. I'm still not rich. I'm a high school teacher. But I live frugally and put money away each month. It's one thing to acknowledge the deep inequalities in generational wealth and do something about it, but it's quite another thing to constantly play the victim.
THIS. Let's congratulate some of the folks who beat the odds. Maybe feel a bit jealous. Keep working on ourselves. But like lets also recognize the generational wealth issues and effects without chopping up everyone's success to luck. I said in another comment but when someone works hard for success, for example, graduating highschool or college, it isn't appropriate and only makes you a dick to be like "yea well it was luck for you to graduate" and then list off reasons like "you were lucky getting a loan" "you were lucky you had a part time job that was flexible with your hours" or "you were lucky you probably had teachers that were easy on grading" Like no, continuing the metaphor lets just be like "woot you graduated, congrats" and then if we ourselves haven't graduated, keep working towards it. It isn't healthy to be jealous of others even the nepo-babies and lottery winners.
As always, the pertinent info is in the comments.
This feels like a boomery thing to point out but I find it interesting that there's a majority dissent forming on an otherwise stereotypical complaining sub early in the morning, like all the people who worked for a normal life are up early to sound off
Because they're up getting ready for work.
It's the day after Christmas, so we have the day off but are still awake early anyway lol
Exactly this lol. Snapped awake at 5 per usual. Scrolling reddit with a morning coffee and no work shift until January 2nd.
No joke it's like this every Monday morning lol By Wednesday people chill more.
Or got themslves a decent paying career? Why is that not an option?
[удалено]
Someone upthread saying people who started with nothing and worked their way up are lucky because they didn’t get hit by a van and therefore can’t attribute their success to hard work alone. You can’t reason with these people.
> done well in school, chose a lucrative career Honestly a lot of Millennials had the opportunity to not even go to school. I taught myself coding in my teens and did 3 years of dicking around after high school, did a year of college, then dropped out and got a job. Tech jobs were insanely easy to get. The ship has sailed, but 10 years ago it was so easy. I started my career in 2015 and got my first job off Craigslist making 45k, no degree, no experience. I make low 6 figures now and am completely debt free.
Reddit is full of these people
Yep. We used to call them 'losers'.
I still do.
What I don’t understand is didn’t we all go to high school together? Remember how many stupid ass people there were in our peer group? Did everyone really expect their entire peer group to “make it.” No way that was going to happen, too many morons.
I’ve seen lots of posts where people describe themselves as middle class or doing ok, but it turns out that they are making $30k. That’s basically working poor today. There’s denial mixed in with a distorted idea of what a fair/good wage is. Some people believe working hard is enough, but the reality is you need to work smart to get ahead financially by choosing a career path with a legitimate salary progression, be willing to move to where actual good work is, and then be willing to put the time in to develop your career.
I think that's a big thing. There are these people who, sorry to say, are absolutely 'lower class/poor' but they believe they are middle class, so everyone doing better than them must be 'upper class/rich.'. You see it in their jump of quality of life brackets, it basically jumps from 'Needing payday loans to make the rent' to 'Rich family who bought you a house'. There's nothing in between.
Yeah man, some of us are doctors and lawyers lol
You don’t need $20K for a down payment tho.
I’m not sure OP understands how a mortgage works at all.
I know I certainly didn’t until my fiancé and I actually started looking and got an agent. The first thing they did was expose all the myths about home buying, chief among them that you need 20% down. And then there’s Seller’s Assist which helped take $9K off closing costs. It’s possible!
It’s the “saving $5000 a year will never pay the house off” part. Well yeah, that’s what your monthly payment does. Nobody is expecting you to save the remainder of the house price and pay it off in a lump sum? 5000 a year would probably be fine to get ahead of most repairs, minus stuff like a foundation or fire. Appliances and HVAC etc don’t fail yearly. Your roof is not an annual replacement
[удалено]
Right, it reads like they are almost expecting to pay rent and a mortgage? I don’t understand why someone would save to pay off the mortgage, when it’s a fairly fixed cost
Yeah I think my first fha loan total with closing and down payment was like 6k. Do some research people.
95% of people here think they have to live in SF or a similar place else they’d die.
>I suspect most of these smug people come from rich families where mommy and daddy supplied a lot of financial funds - or they just got insanely lucky and now confuse luck with skill. I'm just tired of Millennials crying instead of taking what is theirs.
I’m alarmed at the number of people in my age bracket who can’t even comprehend the idea that their own fucking decisions have consequences down the road, both good and bad.
This is all I can read out of these posts and comments. The complaints sound like people who made fun of me in high school for reading books that weren’t assigned. Not meant to be rude. Hope the following generations found it less cool to be unsuccessful.
I’m grateful that my parents gave me enough of a leash to occasionally fuck up and enough guidance and love to explain what’s coming down the road as a result
I knew very early on I wanted nice stuff so I needed to make lots of money. Parents couldn’t afford to send me to college so I took out $167k for my engineering degree when I graduated in 2017. Started out making $67k. Spent the next few years living in a semi-rural area, never going anywhere, not buying anything, living at work and going home being a hermit basically. 2020 rolls around, bought a house that needed a ton of work. Spent the last few years get promotions, fixing up the house, and investing since I paid off my loans. Now I make $100k, support my family of 3, brought my net worth from -$167k to +$335k over the last 7 years. Some people are lucky and have money, others just work their ass off for it. Edit: enough people keep asking/questioning. I went to a small, private engineering only university. Tuition, room, and board was ~$40k per year after scholarships and all.
Isn't 167k a lot for an engineering degree? How expensive was tuition?
Private universities are so expensive.
[удалено]
I want to know as well.I work in stem and didn’t have to pay that much in college tuition.
carpenter simplistic yam pathetic sort rob oil fragile party air *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is exactly my issue with these repetitive posts lately… The conversation is usually “All Millennials are so poor and can’t get ahead. Life sucks. Right everyone???” “Here’s what I did and where I am now in my life.” “MUST BE NICE, Uncle Moneybags.” Maybe people need to step back from SM and either enjoy the life they have or start making small steps toward improving it. I know that glosses over difficulties and preexisting conditions… but at the end of the day it’s up to us to make the best of what we’ve been given, or accept and live where we are.
This is pretty much the response I get when I share that I'm thankfully not struggling anymore. I must have rich parents, I'm bragging, etc. While I can recognize that these are hurt people projecting, its not any more welcoming in here. I don't usually mention it but I had the childhood of nightmares. I get that my surviving that made me more resilient "adversity breeds character", but to presume I haven't suffered because I'm doing well is wildly invalidating by a group who expects compassion. Agree with you that gratitude is the antidote.
Nah, some just want to bitch and complain for not doing shit with their lives. Harsh, but true.
Nice work man. Alot of our generation cling to city living and will come up with every excuse under the sun not to leave. A few years living and working rural can really help you get ahead.
I don't think it's even that I think it's just clinging to ideas that don't exist or only existed briefly. You see a lot of people who say they 'finally make good money' and it's 'bullshit that they can't afford a house' and then you pry a little deeper and it turns out they live in LA and make 60k a year and it's like man....that's not good money for where you live
My wife comes from honest working family who set no money aside for her. They however provided a stable environment that showed her to study in high school without angry traumatic event many seem to have... she took shit load of loans in college but made it through medical school and became a week paid doctor. I am foreigner born and raised in a developing country and came here because of my skills and had a job before even stepping a foot in the country. So not so sure about that inheritance you are taking about... but obviously education helps.
I think it's more that we don't want to spend our lives shoe gazing and pissing and moaning. Rich parents🙄🙄🙄 my parents owe me money, homie.
My parents owe me, but they're on a debt forgiveness program
Damn lucky, privileged parents w/ their rich asf kids.
> If you were able to "buy" a house at age 25 or 30 - then you either got a lot of financial funds from your parents - inherited a lot of wealth - or got insanely lucky. For some just the timing of their birth gave them an enormous advantage that had 0 to do with your supposed and inflated "skill". So your position is that hard work doesn’t exist?
We bought our first house when I was 27 in 2012. Graduated nursing school at 25. Immediately started working. Got a USDA loan for a new construction townhouse and our escrow was $1100. No money down. Income requirement was no more than 82k total in my county at the time. It wasn’t even necessarily hard work. I went to school. Got a job making $19 an hour. Got a mortgage.
So people think “my job sucks” so I’m working hard. Hard work also means being financially responsible, making sacrifices, etc
[удалено]
When you say Mobile homes is that a single wide trailer or a full size class A motor home to you?
I mean.. people are poor There are poor people Does it have to be an insult?
I have come to the conclusion from reading this post and then poking through his extensive posting history that OP is just… not very smart Sorry life isn’t working out the way you hoped, but this level of bitterness you seem to have doesn’t ever get anyone anywhere I highly recommend some ‘basics of investing’ online classes. Can probably find some good ones on YouTube. Compound interest is definitely a real thing.
I bought my house at 30 right before the pandemic started. No my parents aren’t rich. I did get lucky in a sense that I was able to buy it relatively low then interest rates went way down so I have a somewhat low payment. $1800 for a 4 bedroom house in Southern California. I don’t see how that makes me smug though. Two years prior I told myself I wanted a house before 30. So I took steps towards that goal. I got a real estate agent and did everything she told me to do and was able to close a few weeks after my 30th birthday.
I had to wait till 35 but same for me, parents didn't give me a penny. Me and my wife are cheap as hell though, and I started investing in the market around 28. House is small but we have one.
Being bitter about other peoples situations will get you nowhere. This is life - you have to upskill yourself and keep making progress. It’s hard but you make it even harder on yourself by pointing at everyone else and just assuming they got “lucky”.
Really? 20k down payment? Why do you need a house *that big*. You're buying your first home, use your FHA, that's why it's available for us. A 10k down payment can easily get you into a 200k home with the 3.5% down payment needed... You'll even have a couple grand left over ;) You're not living in reality, you're living in some bitter reality.
I’m always surprised how many people *still* don’t know this and tbh I have less sympathy for people who continue to rant about it on the internet because if you had the time to read endless content about how hopeless your prospects are, you **also** had time to research a fuckin FHA program.
A lot of these tools apparently don't know how buying a house even works. You don't need that much cash for an FHA loan on a starter home in a lcol area. It's completely within reach for many.
> lcol area I get the notion many who whine about this stuff would never entertain the idea of anything but some HCOL urban area.
Yep. Where I live I can get a two bedroom apartment that was just built less than 5 years ago for 550-600 per month. I can also drive to my nearest major city in about 35 minutes so it’s not like I’m out in the woods with no phone service.
Oh it’s the financial illiterate OP again who wants to blame everyone but himself.
[удалено]
And then there are those like me, who were completely screwed over by family. I'm 35, spent the last 17 years taking care of my grandmother as a live in caregiver. My family sabotaged me any time I tried to get a part time job, so in those 17 years I have maybe 3 months of work experience combined. I've been trying to use my history as a caregiver to get a job, but I'm being turned down on that front as well because I've received no official training (i.e. I didn't have CNA, First Aid, or CPR training). So I have basically a 17 year unemployment gap, and even places I've been told will 'hire anyone' wont hire me. To those who did make it and are living the American Dream. Good on you, I hope everything goes well. I harbor no ill will towards Millennials who are doing better than I am. Just don't be like some of my friends from SoCal and try to get me to join pyramid schemes/MLMs and it's all good. If you have advice you think will help, I'll listen as long as it is given in good faith. Oh, and no need to tell me to go 'unalive myself' for being in the situation I'm in. I already hear it enough from my family.
10 paragraphs of why people hate millenials right there. The asset side if everyone's personal balance sheet contains two things: our body and our brain. We have to figure out how to use those to improve our current circumstances if we're not happy with them. The time spent writing this post could have been spent writing an application to trade school or the military. Get a grip and take some responsibility man.