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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Oh my god, yes.  Let's let them cry it out.  I'm older Gen X with Gen Y kids.

Graduating from college (attended on a merit scholarship) into a recession (1990) where I was grateful to find a job, I made $24,000 out of school, paid 40% of my pitiful after-tax income for my room in a DC apartment, and ate out once a month.  I certainly didn't travel and  entertainment was renting a VHS movie.  Healthcare was too expensive so I didn't see a doctor until I was having kids.  My parents took pity on me and helped with some work clothes and a set of tires for my car.  At 27, I took a job I hated because they paid me a $20,000 starting bonus and I used that as the downpayment on my first crappy home with a very crappy mortgage.  My mortgage payment was 60% of my take-home pay but I made it work because I wanted to build wealth.  Over the last 30 years, we have worked 70-80 hours a week and made sacrifices to build our lives and give everything to our kids.  I have never had the option to work from home.  It has been a hard slog.

I can only imagine my young adult son living like I did.  He'll never know because we're easing his journey far more than he or anyone of his generation deserves.

Wake up, you spoiled brats.  Your parents had challenges and made contributions to society that are benefitting you.  If you're expecting them to go quietly die someplace to get out of your way, I really hope they leave all their money to a worthy nonprofit.  [/quote]

$25,000 in 1990 is worth $58,471.88 today. Not exactly low.
I started work in the mid-2000s for 25K and felt lucky, also graduating into a recession.

Signing bonus?? If 20K gave you a 10-20% downpayment, that means the house was 100-200K. Hooray....median house prices in DC have tripled over that time. Also, what a damn windfall! Some of us would have had to take that $20K to pay off the student loans we had to take to go to second tier colleges. My parents didn't have money to send me for tires. Salaries have NO WHERE NEAR caught up, and 60% mortgage is still typica.. And many of us ALSO have worked 70-80 hours/week yet are raising our children to know how much we are easing their journey.

Also: older families have continuously (except the run up and blip arounf the financial crisis) gotten richer and richer and younger families have NOT seen the same growth. Which means, a family headed by a 25-35 year old in 1989 (so you) had a median wealth of $27K versus a family headed by a 65-75 year old had a median wealth of 179K.

Yet today -- a family headed by a 25-35 year old in 2019 had a median wealth of $24K versus a family headed by a 65-75 year old had a median wealth of 269K. That inequality is growing.

Cite: https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2020/december/has-wealth-inequality-changed-over-time-key-statistics

Graph: https://imgur.com/a/LJhMJZo

[quote]Of course, the people in these groups change over time. In 1989, the younger group was made up of younger baby boomer families. In 2019, those in the younger group were millennial families. They had $24,000 in median wealth, or 9 cents per dollar of the $269,000 in median wealth held by older, mainly boomer families.

While inflation-adjusted younger family wealth barely budged between 1989 and 2019, older families in 2019 had much more median wealth than older families in 1989.[/quote][/quote]

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