Anyone else who will likely never be a home owner?
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Anonymous
+1 Most of us had the same recessions, lay offs, etc. yet we still managed to get back on our feet and save to buy a home. People like the pp you're responding to have a million reasons why it's not their fault that they didn't make good financial decisions. |
Anonymous
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These threads are such a Rorschach test for people because there is no way to talk about it in generalities without people getting into specifics.
So many people want to believe that it was all their hard work and/or frugality that got them their great lifestyle/house/etc. And when they talk about those who struggle, they fixate on people they perceive as spendthrifts. Then there are the people who struggle who fixate on the friend who got family money to help, the people who lucked into extremely high paying jobs, etc. The truth seems to be that if you managed to get on the property ownership ladder in this area (or similar places where property values sky rocketed) years ago, you have made enormous amounts of money on appreciation that you had little or nothing to do with. So, yes, you might have scrimped for a few years to get your foot in the door, but those high prices you realized when you sold had to be paid by someone else, and surely you noticed that it was people wealthier than you were when you bought your house. There is simply no denying that close-in DC suburbs and parts of DC are just way more expensive, and the people who live there have way more money. So, yes, people can still afford to buy much further out, but that is a lower standard of living. The people who can't or won't realize that, and insult those people, are falling into the Boomer mindset that is so obnoxious. I say this as someone who makes a lot of money and has a nice house close in. Yes, I work hard and have for years. Yes, I am pretty conservative about spending money. And yes, a lot of that is luck on many fronts, including being born in the mid 1970s. |
Anonymous
Gen Xer here who graduated college in a recession and spent years underwater on a condo during the Great Recession of 2008. I also had unpaid parental leave and had to pay 100% of my student loans even though I’ve spent my career in public service. |
Anonymous
What recession did you graduate from college in? |
Anonymous
DP... although I straddle generations, I graduated undergrad in 2001 and grad school in 2010, so I'm sure you can see that even us non-millennials have seen our share of harder periods. |
Anonymous
Gen-X here -- graduated during early 90's. Could not get a job. PhDs were driving cabs. Look it up |
Anonymous
+1 plus no work during COVID |
Anonymous
Early 1990s was a huge recession with really terrible employment opportunities for recent college grads. I knew Ivy League grads working in retail for 1-2 years. |
Anonymous
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Honestly, it doesn’t matter what financial decisions were made previously. You may have had student loans to make big payments on, had a lower income and saving wasn’t possible, spent extra money on experiences while you were young and capable, had family members to support, had big medical expenses to cover, prefunded a lot of extra money into retirement accounts and now can’t access it without big penalties, etc. What matters is NOW and going forward. If owning a house is something really important to you, it simply may require moving to a different COL area or moving further out in the DMV for a bigger house/better neighborhood and schools, maybe changing jobs to one closer to that location so the commute isn’t as long. It really is that simple. Biting the bullet and just doing it.
This spring/summer will tell a lot in terms of inventory, pricing and interest rates. The fed will make decisions on interest rate increases or drops based on what happens with real estate and other market drivers upcoming. We won’t know for sure until those months unfold. You can watch and see what happens, then make your decision on what to do next on where you live/buy. Owning a home absolutely is possible. It likely will just mean some changes in where you live and work. Since owning a home sounds like something very important to you, the move would be worth it. |
Anonymous
Lol, what a drama queen. Here is how wikipedia describes that "huge recession": "After the lengthy peacetime expansion of the 1980s, inflation began to increase and the Federal Reserve responded by raising interest rates from 1986 to 1989. This weakened but did not stop growth, but some combination of the subsequent 1990 oil price shock, the debt accumulation of the 1980s, and growing consumer pessimism combined with the weakened economy to produce a brief recession." Some of us are old enough to remember these times and know that this is not even close to what the younger generations (and I am a Gen Xer) have gone through. |
Anonymous
It's like PP didn't see Reality Bites. |
Anonymous
What? |
Anonymous
Comparing the early 90s Reality Bites recession to the 2008 recession is like comparing a log flume to a tsunami. Not even close. Even the early 2000s recession was worse than the 1990s one. |
Anonymous
I graduated from college in 1991 and had my first job two days after graduation because I majored in biochemistry at a mid-level state school. We used to turn away Ivy League girls who had alumnae connections but really couldn't do anything useful. |
Anonymous
yep! I graduated in 1990, had to work two retail jobs to pay the bills. |