Anonymous wrote:It's just the entitlement generation. They've been raised given everything. They happened to grow up at a time when their parents had money, "stuff" got cheaper, and luxurious living came to the masses. Unlike previous generations, the houses their parents bought came with bedrooms with their own bathrooms, media rooms, gourmet kitchens, etc. So this is what they grew up with and what they expect now.

They grew up watching reality shows were teens sit around in their California mansions, have their fancy cars and gadgets.

And just think about everything else. Think about what a luxury purchase it was back 15 years ago to have a big screen TV. Very few people could afford them. So many things were like that in the pre-China era. We take it all for granted now.

The difference here is that many of the baby boomers have the nice houses, cars, and other toys, but they worked for it. They had good jobs and were able to afford them at the end of their working years. But young people expect all of that from the start today. There is no sense of sacrifice. If sh*t hit the fan in this country with some catastrophic event, I'd really fear for the young people. They have no survival skills, having been coddled their entire lives. Thanks to the internet, cell phones, and constant sources of entertainment, they lack the ability to even be alone in their own thoughts.

Now get off my lawn!!! lol

The problem with this thinking, IMO, is that the qualilty (or ability/availibility to have more things and luxury items) of life has gone up with every generation. My 90yo grandmother tells me how her mother thought she was crazy and frivoulous for having a dishwasher, washer/dryer and ice maker installed in her house in 1952. Then, when they bought an additional tv sets, my great grandmother hit the roof and thought they were going to go broke for being so "flashy". This is the same grandmother today who thinks that my parents are crazy for the way that they live, i.e. having 2 cars (even though they live in way the outer burbs and need both cars). I think every generation has problems with the next generation.

Anonymous wrote:
I hate to say that things seem like they were much easier for the boomers, but, financially, it seems that they were, looking at how life played out for my parents and their friends.

Why do you hate to say this? This is absolutely true. There were pensions, good and affordable health insurance, cheap college degrees that didn't put you in debt up to your eyeballs for the rest of your life, much cheaper housing. The Generations before X and Y were a lot more secure than we ever will be.

My husband and I have to cover retirement completely out of pocket after-tax - we don't have benefits other than health insurance through our jobs. And honestly, we're thankful for that ONE benefit, because I'd hate to try to live without health insurance or to try to get private insurance to the tune of $1500/month. And good luck putting your little lovelies through college on your own in 15 years - even state schools are going to require $100K+.

And like it or not, taxes are going to go up at some point - there are no other options, no matter what the insane Congress and Presidential Candidates like to tell us.

Good luck with all these things out of your own pocket that many previous generations didn't worry so much about...

OP, maybe your friends have a 203K mortgage. If so, they're pretty smart!

Anonymous wrote:Related to this is how SO MANY single young people in their 20s insist on buying a house. They've been so brainwashed about how renting is throwing your money away, that so many buy. And they are not thinking about what they are going to do with that 1-bed condo when they get married and either 1) their spouse works far away and needs to live somewhere else 2) they start having kids 3) the spouse doesn't want to live in that condo anyway because it's looking moving into the other's house instead of it being "their" house.

People still have no idea the power of renting. Renting means you can easily pack up and move at anytime for the reasonable cost of the penalty for breaking your lease. You are not stuck with the property that you cannot sell without taking a loss.

This is very true. I am the pp who is a gen Y that bought a house with my DH that we will slowly fix up. we didn't buy until after we had been married for almost 3 years and have been together a total of 9 years. We are probably npt typical. Hell, when we were engaged and in grad school, we lived in a big row house with roommates and stayed in that house for our first year of marriage becaue rent was SO cheap and DH was still finishing up school.

I have tons of friends who bought 1br or studio condos in Dupont, U street, Logan circle becaue of the pressure to buy. People are made to feel like they are a failure if they don't start putting down roots. Also, the fact that people marry much later exacerbates it, think. 20 years ago, people got married so much younger and bought houses younger, and stfarted building wealth younger. now, people feel like they are not doing something right if they don't find a spouse and still rent until they are 35. I hate to say that things seem like they were much easier for the boomers, but, financially, it seems that they were, looking at how life played out for my parents and their friends.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have done it both ways and it is definitely less expensive over all to do renovations at once time before moving in. It might seem counterintuitive, but there are significant cost advantages if you have the cash or a low interest line of credit to hiring one contractor, getting his or her full attention, looking inside of walls and seeing what the real state of the house is so that you can fix minor problems before they become major problems. Plus, it is significantly less disruptive to get major areas done when not living in a house.

BTW, I am a Gen X'er. I don't think it is a generational thing. If these people have friends or family who have renovated houses, they may be getting good advice about how to maximize a renovation budget.

I do. I'm a Baby Boomer and DH and I are still living with our run-down, pink-tiled original 1952 master bath, 12 years after buying. Our HHI is close to $200K but we are saving aggressively for retirement and college. As long as the bathroom is functional, we're not remodeling.

We re-did our kitchen 10 years ago, but kept most of the cabinets and chose very modest materials for everything else.

Generational for sure IMO.

Aren't baby boomers born prior to 1954? So at youngest, you are 58 years old. I would say that maybe in this case it is generational, you could easily be the parent of a Gen X/Y'er. My parents didn't gut their kitchen either, it's just not the thing baby boomers do.

It's just the entitlement generation. They've been raised given everything. They happened to grow up at a time when their parents had money, "stuff" got cheaper, and luxurious living came to the masses. Unlike previous generations, the houses their parents bought came with bedrooms with their own bathrooms, media rooms, gourmet kitchens, etc. So this is what they grew up with and what they expect now.

They grew up watching reality shows were teens sit around in their California mansions, have their fancy cars and gadgets.

And just think about everything else. Think about what a luxury purchase it was back 15 years ago to have a big screen TV. Very few people could afford them. So many things were like that in the pre-China era. We take it all for granted now.

The difference here is that many of the baby boomers have the nice houses, cars, and other toys, but they worked for it. They had good jobs and were able to afford them at the end of their working years. But young people expect all of that from the start today. There is no sense of sacrifice. If sh*t hit the fan in this country with some catastrophic event, I'd really fear for the young people. They have no survival skills, having been coddled their entire lives. Thanks to the internet, cell phones, and constant sources of entertainment, they lack the ability to even be alone in their own thoughts.

Now get off my lawn!!! lol

Related to this is how SO MANY single young people in their 20s insist on buying a house. They've been so brainwashed about how renting is throwing your money away, that so many buy. And they are not thinking about what they are going to do with that 1-bed condo when they get married and either 1) their spouse works far away and needs to live somewhere else 2) they start having kids 3) the spouse doesn't want to live in that condo anyway because it's looking moving into the other's house instead of it being "their" house.

People still have no idea the power of renting. Renting means you can easily pack up and move at anytime for the reasonable cost of the penalty for breaking your lease. You are not stuck with the property that you cannot sell without taking a loss.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it has to do with instant gratification. Everything is just so much faster. The idea of plodding along, slowly saving until you can pay in cash is foreign to this generation. BTW, I think that a lot of parents of these children enable this attitude as well. I know of several couples whose parents are helping to foot the bill for the first homes/renovations and whose mothers, in particular, are providing guidance on renos.

So, where is the line drawn between what is reasonable and what is bratty gen Y behavior?

Here's our story: DH and I are 29 and 30. We bought a completely unrenovated 1950s rambler last year. 3br/1ba in a modest neighborhood with schools that many DCUMers poopoo and many are ok with. We had our apartment for almost two months after closing, so we painted every room and redid the bathroom because there were giants cracks in the tub's pink enamel that grossed me out. Simple job, reglazed the tub, new tile floor that we put in ourselves and a new sink from home depot. Otherwise, we didn't do any other work before moving in.

The kitchen is a dump with peeling laminate countertops, really gross laminate flooring that is gray no matter how hard I scrub on hands and knees and very old bisque appliances that work well, sometimes. We will fix that once we save enough for it.

I think some on this thread would call DH and i bratty gen Yers for not being able to live with that bathroom. What's the consensus? Do we suck?

Oh, and my mom and dad advise me ALL the time on house stuff. Because, you know, they have experience and all, but it makes me a brat to ask them for advice, instead of my gen Y friends whose only knowledge of such things come from HGTV and young house love. Consulting my parents, who have renovated a Victorian, a 1960 split level and a bad 80s beach cottage makes me very, very immature.

The real question is, can you afford what you have on your own? Or not? Did you purchase a home with a mortgage that you can afford on your salaries while still paying off student loans or are you going into debt, or living paycheck to paycheck without building up any savings/emergency funds/life happens funds because you bought more than you can afford? If you bought within your means and live within your means and still save up (like for future kitchen repairs), then kudos to you. You are doing things right. However, too many of your generation get a down payment from mom & dad, purchase more house than they can realistically afford on their incomes, live paycheck to paycheck, or put off paying student loan debt to fund $25K of kitchen and bath repairs on the new house before they move in.

If you are living responsibly, I commend you. But too many of your generation are not. And their parents are bailing them out so that they can live like they are my generation (Gen X) without our salaries to support their live style.

W are living pretty responsibly. We bought a very small house with potential that we could afford comfortably, while still putting about $3k per month into savings plus retirement and aggressively paying off student loans. We've got a cash emergency fund that is 13 months of all living expenses/loans/etc. We could deplete our saving and get rid of the loans, but we're afraid to have no savings. We currently have no credit card debt. We got no downpayment help from either set of parents. we are very fortunate to have decent salaries that allow us to live this way, and we don't live large.

I also know plenty of friends who are gen X and beyond who live the way you mentioned. I know people love to hate on my generation, but honestly, there are plenty of people who are much older that are just as bad. Was it gen Y who bought all these houses on jumbo mortgages that went belly up in the crash? Heck no, many of gen Y were still in college/grad school at that time.

Anonymous wrote:It cracks me up when people create a post for the sole purpose of patting themselves on the back (and/or getting other people to support their judgy resentment of their friends). It's just so.....small. Do what works for you, OP. Life's too short to spend your time worrying about other people's choices. If you're that concerned about government spending (LOL), there are much more intelligent ways to get involved.

This. Just b/c your broke ass can't afford to update your house doesn't mean you have to be bitter and judgmental. But I do love your "government spending" line - very creative.

Gen x and y got crapped on by the older generation which bought before 2003.

I have expounded on my boomer hatred in several threads here, but wanted to point out that my husband and I are solidly gen X (born 1971 and 1972) and we bought in 1999. Lots of Xers bought before the crisis.

People don't stay in their homes for decades anymore, especially the younger generations. So, whenever you buy a house you also have to think about its resale value as you might need to move out a few short years later. So, many new buyers start worrying about the resale value while they are in the process of looking for the right home. Remodeling an old home adds value to it and will facilitate the resale should this be necessary. Doing remodeling before moving in is much more practical if you still have a place to live than doing it when you are already living there especially if having kids. It will take less time and eventually should cost you less than doing it piecemeal after moving in. I personally hate remodeling while living in a place, even painting is a PITA, having to work harder because you must move things around, protect things and live in discomfort while the basic areas you need to use every day like kitchen or a bathroom are getting worked on.

As far as financing is concerned, you can usually figure out how much the remodeled homes in the neighborhood go for and how much money you have to work with to be able to resell later without a loss. That is our thinking, we are 38 years old and lived all over, moved frequently and had our fair share of dingy living arrangements with dated kitchens and baths, so even if I am willing to live with a dated kitchen, I surely won't want to have to hurry up and remodel it the next person just to have my house show well for resale. I'd rather put the money in now and enjoy the fruits of my labor right away.

FWIW, the world is a different place now, there is a lot less stability especially for the young. People must be able to sometimes pick up and move to a new place just to get a job or to keep it.

This whole thread is full of stereotypes.

Those older than Gen X: you paid 1/2 or less the prices of the current market in DC. Salaries have not increased on pace with home prices. In addition, college costs for Gen X and especially Gen Y have risen faster than inflation as well. So you get this perfect storm of debt, debt, and more debt. Right and left people offer credit cards, etc. you have to. E very saavy to stay away from the temptation to over leverage your assets to debt ratio because lenders encourage ppl to borrow more and save less.

So it may not be apparent in the older generations some with cushy jobs and pensions and a no educational debt, cheap house. It's easy to say when there were choices to spend less instead of just buy/borrow or don't there is no inexpensive option.

In every generation there are people that are bad with money. My Dad (boomer) cashed out $250K in retirement savings and lost it in the stock market.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, I am married to a financial planner and most would advise you that student loan and mortgage debt is good debt. It is often better to be in debt than cash-poor. What you don't want is credit card debt.

Actually, there's been a lot of talk about this "good" debt and "bad" debt concept. At this point the general consensus is there's no such thing as good debt. All debt is bad.

Just because you claim this doesn't mean you are right. Debt is just a tool and you can use it well or you can make mistakes with it. Worse than making payments on a house is owning it outright when you need liquid assets. If you pay your mortgage early but then you lose your job, your bank isn't going to give that money back.

Anonymous wrote:

I do. I'm a Baby Boomer and DH and I are still living with our run-down, pink-tiled original 1952 master bath, 12 years after buying. Our HHI is close to $200K but we are saving aggressively for retirement and college. As long as the bathroom is functional, we're not remodeling.

We re-did our kitchen 10 years ago, but kept most of the cabinets and chose very modest materials for everything else.

Generational for sure IMO.

So, because you did something one way, and you are a Boomer, all Boomers do the same thing? And any variation by younger people from how you do things is BECAUSE they are younger?

Did they not teach (in your one room schoolhouse, by candlelight) logic to you in school? Or did you have to leave early that day to feed the oxen before your Pa started plowing?

Repeat after me - the plural of anecdote is not data.

PWNED.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it has to do with instant gratification. Everything is just so much faster. The idea of plodding along, slowly saving until you can pay in cash is foreign to this generation. BTW, I think that a lot of parents of these children enable this attitude as well. I know of several couples whose parents are helping to foot the bill for the first homes/renovations and whose mothers, in particular, are providing guidance on renos.

So, where is the line drawn between what is reasonable and what is bratty gen Y behavior?

Here's our story: DH and I are 29 and 30. We bought a completely unrenovated 1950s rambler last year. 3br/1ba in a modest neighborhood with schools that many DCUMers poopoo and many are ok with. We had our apartment for almost two months after closing, so we painted every room and redid the bathroom because there were giants cracks in the tub's pink enamel that grossed me out. Simple job, reglazed the tub, new tile floor that we put in ourselves and a new sink from home depot. Otherwise, we didn't do any other work before moving in.

The kitchen is a dump with peeling laminate countertops, really gross laminate flooring that is gray no matter how hard I scrub on hands and knees and very old bisque appliances that work well, sometimes. We will fix that once we save enough for it.

I think some on this thread would call DH and i bratty gen Yers for not being able to live with that bathroom. What's the consensus? Do we suck?

Oh, and my mom and dad advise me ALL the time on house stuff. Because, you know, they have experience and all, but it makes me a brat to ask them for advice, instead of my gen Y friends whose only knowledge of such things come from HGTV and young house love. Consulting my parents, who have renovated a Victorian, a 1960 split level and a bad 80s beach cottage makes me very, very immature.

The real question is, can you afford what you have on your own? Or not? Did you purchase a home with a mortgage that you can afford on your salaries while still paying off student loans or are you going into debt, or living paycheck to paycheck without building up any savings/emergency funds/life happens funds because you bought more than you can afford? If you bought within your means and live within your means and still save up (like for future kitchen repairs), then kudos to you. You are doing things right. However, too many of your generation get a down payment from mom & dad, purchase more house than they can realistically afford on their incomes, live paycheck to paycheck, or put off paying student loan debt to fund $25K of kitchen and bath repairs on the new house before they move in.

If you are living responsibly, I commend you. But too many of your generation are not. And their parents are bailing them out so that they can live like they are my generation (Gen X) without our salaries to support their live style.