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[quote=Anonymous][quote]I'm 30, with young kids, and I mostly agree with you. I think that some of the problem is that people my age are comparing their lives to the way that the 50 to 60 year olds with similar incomes live now. I can make this comparison directly. I grew up in this area, and my parents were a two-fed household, as my husband and I are now. My parents are still working but their kids have long since left the nest. They've paid off their mortgage, they're done paying for college, and their retirement accounts are in good shape. So now they're living it up, and good for them. They're remodeling their house, they go on nice vacations, they eat out when they want to.

But when I was a kid, we rarely ate out, and if we did it was somewhere where kids eat free. We never went on vacation anywhere we couldn't get to by car. We lived in a 1960s split level in a non-fancy suburb. They lived much like my husband and I live now.

I will say that one thing I think has changed is that it is much more difficult and expensive to live close to the city, because people value urban living and walkability much more than they used to. And living further out has gotten more difficult, because the traffic is so much worse than it was, say, 20 years ago. We live in a smaller place than my parents did, because I'm not willing to do that commute. But a generation ago it wasn't so bad. [/quote]

I'm in my mid 20s and I mostly agree with both of you.  I also grew up in this area, and although housing close in was way, way less expensive (my father was a federal attorney, my mom a SAH and then part time and we lived in Chevy Chase DC for half of my childhood).  But the prices my mom remembers for daycare, adjusting for inflation, seems pretty much the same.  Their first house (not in CCDC) was a two bedroom semi-detached rowhouse that was very old and not at all updated and very much a "starter home" which they didn't buy until their early 30s.  I also don't remember going out to eat that much, and when we did, it was usually someplace cheap.  We never had fancy cars, just practical cars like a Ford station wagon that we drove until it died.  Now that my brother and I are out of the house, my parents also do things like remodel the house, go on nice vacations, and go out to eat at really nice restaurants, and splurge on luxury items like nice cars.[/quote]

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