Are millennials under 25 in the DC area priced out of getting married, having kids, owning a home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My niece and her husbands. She is doing residency and he works from home in finance. Just had a baby and bought a 1 million house in Eckington. I about fell over. No parental help. So some 27 and 28 year olds do have money.

If your credit is good, you only need to put together a little over $100,000 to buy a 1 million dollar home. It is completely doable to save that in a finance job over the course of 5-6 working years. They probably haven't been spending much while she's been in medical school, because of her schedule.

I also wouldn't rule out parental help, even if they explicitly told you that they didn't get help. Very few people with 100% middle class backgrounds end up in a well-paying job in finance in their 20s, because it is never put on their radar as a possible career field. I have two close friends who inherited their down payments from an obscure relative, and lie about it, even though no one was asking or cared. (Side note - how do I get one of these relatives? ) The one friend had her cover blown at a party by her drunken mother. The other friend, around the time she was buying her house, as bragging about how hard her husband works...almost like she was trying to get ahead off any possible curiosity about how they were able to afford more grad school, plus a 250 person fancy wedding, plus a baby, plus a house all in a matter of 8 months.

In my experience, those who go proactively advertise "no parental help" might be doing so because they just want you to think that. And if you're basing the "no parental help" assumption on conversations with their own parents, they could be lying too. It doesn't matter, but the point is that I wouldn't be so sure you know what someone might have.