“Interest rates mostly hurt people who have big loans” is news now?
Yeah, I get that there’s a real issue now, mostly driven by wage stagnation, but younger people have always had to do more being tightening than older people, at least as long as I’ve been alive. When I first got married, we had to buy the cheapest food we could while my parents and their friends were going to Hawaii, and that was in the 80s.
A big difference, however, is that houses in the 80s were 3-4 times the average income. Now that ratio is about 10x.
Younger generations always need to work harder than older people, yes, but the major difference is that working hard these days doesn’t provide the same rewards that it once did.
yeah but how old were you when you got married?
How old were your parents?
At my age (45), my parents had paid off their house. Me? I just managed to get the mortgage going last year. And I earn a fuckton more than they did.
When I got married the first time, I was 22 and my parents were in their late 50s. Strangely, it was getting divorced four years later that helped me out because, even though it wiped out all my savings, I ended up living very cheaply as a single person and I was making good money (late 80s now, before wage stagnation was bad). By the time I got married again in 96, with a small amount of help from my parents (and because real estate crashed around then), I was able to afford a down payment for a reasonable mortgage.
