The world has changed - simple labor that requires a few days of training doesn't pay much. Most jobs, with few exceptions, that require a decade of training, do pay well. That's why there's such a huge gap between Amazon packers and electricians, and an even bigger gap with surgeons.
If you want to do well in the modern economy, you have to choose your specialization wisely. Most simple labor will be automated very soon anyway.
False.
A plumber making $80k (US median seems to be around $60k) isn't going to be able to save up for a down payment if they're paying a typical mid-sized city's rent (~$1.2k a month). Not to mention housing costs going up during this period of saving up.
You have farfetched dreams that government run anything would somehow be not shit. You'd hardly get any coverage and I doubt the deductible would be anywhere sufficient.
I'm not sure everyone knows there's a no free healthcare, we may move in different cicles.
Having lived with socialized healthcare and still paying private insurance in order to access expedient, competent, comfortable care is especially frustrating.
In the US, you won't get the chance to have a bill, because you will be denied care if you're unable to pay for the care or are uninsured. The one exception to this is that emergency rooms are obligated to stabilize patients in crisis, but that type of care is limited. For example, they'll patch you up if you get stabbed and then send you a bill for it, but nobody is getting treatment for non-acute emergencies, like chronic conditions, or the insulin they need to survive diabetes, or life-saving chemo or radiation therapy for cancer.
Your creditors might feel differently about bills not costing you anything when they take you to court to collect on your debt. Those bills might cost you your savings, income and/or assets.
On the private insurer side, if you're prescribed an on-patent medication that has no generics, every insurer I've had has fought me every step of the way for coverage, and some plans just don't cover brand name medication at all. Even when you work with your doctor and insurer to get coverage for specific medications, insurers will decide 4 months later that they don't want to cover it anymore and you have to jump through those hoops all over again.
My "favorite" experience was having to cycle through several medications that I had been prescribed in the past that weren't effective in order to make my insurer happy so that they'd cover the medication that does work. Apparently the private insurer knows how to treat patients better than doctors do. Then I moved and had to switch insurers, and the insurer wanted me to go through the process of taking drugs that don't work all over again. I gave up and just pay for the actually-efficacious prescription out of pocket, and none of those costs go towards my deductible. I now pay $18 per pill for something that costs $34 total for a 30-day supply, which is about a dollar per pill, in other first world countries.
If it was possible, I'd drop my own coverage instantly for Medicaid. Doing so would make my life immeasurably better.
> Doesn't seem like the rest of the world's universal healthcare did any better than ours?
On every metric, other countries' healthcare systems outperform the healthcare system in the US, resulting in higher quality care and patient outcomes, all for much less than the US spends[1].
[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...
I also care for a family member on Medicaid and, while it’s very far from perfect, I agree that in many every-day scenarios it’s remarkably superior to my employer-provided coverage.
Most of the downsides I’ve experienced are issues with getting specialist appointments in a timely fashion and providers creating unexpected reimbursement loopholes - which are thankfully rare, but remarkably abusive when they have occurred.
Eg: Medicaid will get you booked with an allergy clinic four months out and during the appointment they tell you “Oh by the way, Medicaid only covers ~5 basic allergen tests; if you want the standard regional allergen test that’s $150 up front and if you want the full spectrum test that’ll be $300.”
Meanwhile, half a year prior, I went to the same clinic, got my appointment booked for 2-3 weeks out, and wasn’t even asked about the test type - they hit me with the full spectrum and I just had to toss a minor copay on the way out the door.
I guess the overall moral of the story is that our healthcare system is broken and jammed up with perverse incentives at every rung of the ladder.
Where I live, Boise, housing prices have shot up dramatically, over twice. Median house prices in Boise is $536k. So you would really need to make $214K/year to afford the mortgage under the old rules. And nobody makes that kind of money here.
The prices are based on the ability to repay based on the income - with lower interest rates the same income and service a much larger loan, hence the increased prices.
The world has changed, from very high rates to current very low rates, and seems like it might be changing back to middle rates.
You got lucky and bought when it was cheap. Don't act like anyone can do what you did.
Roughly 2/3 of Americans own homes.
If you live in an area where homes are priced like luxury investments, then yes, you'll have a hard time buying when you also cannot afford other luxuries. If you live in an area where they are not, it isn't unattainable at all, especially if you combine income with a marriage partner.
Rural areas also tend not to be great places for LGBT people, either.
That may be true in some areas. I can only speak anecdotally. I brought a couple members of the LGBT community with me to a very rural area that is about as cowboy-midwest as it gets. Everyone has been very civil and even the "Good ol boys" have been very respectful with them to my pleasant surprise. There are plenty of openly LGBT working in the local stores.
All of that said I have advised them against hanging out in the local bars after listening to the scanner a bit. There are a few regular angry drunks. Perhaps I am too overly cautious.
Speaking from experience, they're going to be on good behavior around you and others. It's what happens when they think no one will notice or no one will hold them to account when real discrimination occurs.
I've met plenty of people who claim to be LGBT supporters in public, but have no problem harassing LGBT people, discriminating against them and calling them slurs when they think no one else is looking. Same thing goes for people in power, like bosses and owners, or police and judges. Discrimination doesn't always look like American History X or the Westboro Baptist Church, the vast majority of it is low key and insidious.
That's the very reason I suggested staying away from the bars. When people are drunk their inhibitions are gone and judgement is very poor. The LGBT hate crime that I know of happened about 23 years ago outside a bar.
People who pick just what’s attractive at the moment are pretty short-sighted and I have no sympathy for them.
What's attractive and what's viable are often two separate things. NYC is not viable for someone making $40k a year, but neither is moving to the Rust Belt where their "options" are working part-time in department stores or literal crime.
Something tells me that this is a situation that can't be won in some people's minds. If someone makes the rational decision to not move somewhere that is not economically viable, in an area that's projected to become even more unviable with time, that's not good enough for some. If someone lives in a shitty area and moves elsewhere for better career prospects, but still can't make ends meet, well, according to posts like this, they should just have moved somewhere shitty instead.
If we applied the same to degrees, I doubt you'd feel the same about all of the "short-sighted" people who chose to study trades or liberal arts at a state school and now have poor economic prospects, instead of choosing what's attractive at the moment like STEM.
Remote work would also have a cascading effect. Say 20 people move to a rural area, well they need food, and their vehicles fixed, and their house maintained, etc. They need to fund their hobbies and generally would bring more money to those areas. Big cities with a lot of power don't want that to happen because they will lose their tax base. I suspect some city governments are incentivizing businesses to bring employees back to the office because of this.
People who chose to study trades would be doing well off, that’s a terrible analogy.
> liberal arts
Liberal arts has pretty much always had terrible prospects. That’s not short sighted, that’s just straight up blind.
In the last year or two a locally-famous lighthouse went up for sale and was bought for cash by some guy from silicon valley. Instead of being turned into an attraction, or a house, or hell even an Airbnb spot, it remains untouched much to the chagrin of the locals. I guess the new owner can't be bothered to come out here and just liked the idea of bragging that he owned it.
Every time the Midwest comes up on this site, you get these laughably stupid takes that it's some bombed-out shithole with no jobs other than crime, and where people kill minorities on sight. At least once every couple weeks, there will be a decently sized comment thread about how it's economically desolate and morally evil, and that no sane person would ever move here.
My only response to that is please don't ever stop believing that. Stay away. Don't come crush the housing market with your $200k+ FAANG salary so you can tut-tut the people that live here about how racist, sexist, classist, etc. they are despite having never actually talked to one of them in your life. For those that got dealt a bad hand in life, there is at least a chance for them in the Midwest. If keeping that chance alive means that somebody living in a coastal city thinks my community is human garbage, so be it.
It isn't as diverse as some other parts of the country, but there's groups of people from all over the world. Within a 2 hour drive from me, you'll find enclaves from Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Mexico and others.
I know an Englishman who lives in an Indonesian village (not an enclave). He is constantly reminded that while his presence is cherished, he isn't, and never will be "one of them." He still loves it, though, so there's that.
What on earth makes you think they are second class citizens? They vote, attend school board meetings, own homes and live just like anyone else.
In my neighborhood I would say at minimum 25% of the home owners are non-white families, if not more.
Bunch of representative bias anecdotes, mostly be people who don’t live there, or haven’t in 20 years.
And yet, if the same environment were to be encountered in another country, it would be “culture”.
There's a few islands of sanity here in the midwest, primarily around college towns. But... prices have doubled since 2016, at least in my area.
We're closing on a house. $375k. I'm one of the lucky ones. Like, super lucky. But it sold back in 2016 for $170k.
For all the cultural likes and dislikes, mass of people is generally moving when they have pragmatic reason to do so.
I lead a team that includes Zoomers and they are making six-figure salaries and are way ahead of where I was (accounting for inflation) when I was at their age.
This is more generational comparison garbage like the claims that Millennials were the downfall of our civilization. Just ignore it and move on.
2) Median house (not a Bay Area house) in 2019 was like 320k. Crazy house valuations are only from the last 1.5-2 years and wouldn't have affected generational norms (and we all know why the suddenly exploded). Even then, the median house is 410k, so all you needed/need you need to save is 65-80k in the /worst/ case.
3) Most people buying houses are/should be dual income, given the size of the median house. And given that you're competing against double income people (don't like it? you'd have to roll back the drive for emancipation/equality :)). If you double the income above you can save for a downpayment in like 3 years. I know families where neither partner probably makes 80k buying houses in boring cities e.g. in Texas - and not a starter house either... How? Dual income + non-coastal prices. And yeah, there are tons of jobs in the area.
Historically, the cost of a house has hovered around 4.5 to 5.5x annual median income. It's currently at the highest level it's ever been, at least according to this graph:
https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco....
For example, when I bought my first home the price was around 4.5x my income. But the interest rate on that first mortgage was 8.25%
In places like the UK we have the same phenomenon but most people are on 2-5 year fixed rates.
The median home price in Canada is $800k and rising, while in the US it is $400k and rising. Housing prices in the US could easily double.
Actually the latest quarter median prices fell in the US, which may continue as interest rates increase.
Broadly speaking though, prices certainly are up over the last couple years.
Even if you ignore first time homeowner benefits and such, the usual thing necessary is not living in the middle of California.
Often if you actually dig into it you find abject refusals to consider locations outside of a particular one, or the famous “spend less on candles. no” type of thing.
Sounds like this was either a long time ago or in city/town where not many people want to live.
If your typical rent is $1200, that means property values in your area are almost certainly low enough to qualify for FHA loans, which only require 3.5% down due to government subsidies. 3.5% of $450k is $16k - so it only takes about 3 years to save for that down payment.
Home prices are high _because_ FHA loans allow people to have greater purchasing power (among many other reasons like NIMBYism).
> spending $3k a month on day care
It costs $3200/mo to pay someone $20/h for 40 hours a week, in what world does day care (where one caretaker takes care of multiple children!) cost $3000/mo? The average cost of child care in California, which has _the_ highest cost of labor in the US, is $956/mo [2]. If you use the infant care cost it's $1400/mo, still nowhere near $3000. Maybe in the middle of New York City it costs $3000, but that's not a realistic living scenario for a plumber.
If your spouse makes $3000/mo then the rent increase (call it an extra $800/mo to get to $2k/mo) and childcare cost ($1000/mo) are more than covered by their extra income.
Please just look at the data and take a moment to understand what expenses outside of SF/NYC/LA look like.
[1]: https://www.kff.org/report-section/ehbs-2020-summary-of-find...
[2]: https://www.epi.org/child-care-costs-in-the-united-states/#/...
Tell me you have no children without telling me you have no children?
The daycare my child went to is $2500/month. Not quite $3K but I'm not in the most expensive areas. I have no doubt it can go over $3K in SF/Palo Alto/etc.
Not only an ad hominen, but changing topics?
> I just looked and a Platinum plan in CA for a family costs $1400.
I don't know where you looked but it's wrong.
I literally just went to https://www.coveredca.com/ and filled in details for a quote.
A platinum plan with Blue Shield is $2530.04/month.
With Kaiser, it is $2637.23/month.
i'm not a parent and don't want to be one but know enough parents to know that daycare is bloody fucking expensive, usually thousands/mo, unless the parents have a support system, but even then it's a trade-off.
the silver lining of course is that it's a temporary expense.
The link you provided says $1,412. And this shows roughly $2500 in LA County and $3300 in SF County.
https://insightcced.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/INSIGHT_C...
> The average annual cost of infant care in California is $16,945—that’s $1,412 per month. Child care for a 4-year-old costs $11,475, or $956 each month.
$1400 for an infant, $950 for a 4 year old. And that's in _the_ highest cost of living state in the country. If you put Michigan it drops to $905/741.
> And this shows roughly $2500 in LA County and $3300 in SF County
Your link comes off as incredibly biased. In literally the second sentence it says "Black and brown people and women of color experienced profound losses of health, community, income, and business at rates far more severe than white households" There's a clear ultra-left political lean to it.
I also literally said that SF/LA/NYC are not representative of costs in the rest of the country. If you're a plumber in SF you make over 6 figures, easily. A plumber makes $80k in a random Midwest city, not in SF/LA. The state of California reported median plumbers in the East Bay made $115k in 2021 [1]. You are fundamentally trying to mislead by using Midwest wages and San Francisco costs. Not to mention that the inflated cost of living is caused by a housing shortage which subsidizing healthcare and childcare doesn't fix.
[1]: https://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/OccGuides/Summary.asp...
also assumes that you are mentally strong enough to live like a pauper to hopefully afford the bare minimum required to scrounge up a downpayment.
doesn't assume building a maintenance fund (2% of home value per year), closing costs (2% of home value, one-time cost), purchasing stuff to fill the home (like furniture/appliances), etc.
Is that really all your definitive "false" relies on? Hell I know tradesmen that make well over that and live in more rural areas.
The median household income = 67K[0]. >60% of US households own a home.[1] Clearly 80K is more than enough to safe up for a down payment.
[0]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_S...
> The term "home-ownership rate" can also be misleading because it includes households that owe on a mortgage.
Depending on your credit score and your down payment, you can wind up functionally renting a home for many years even if you "own" it on paper. It isn't until the final years of a 30 year mortgage that you actually significantly pay down the principal.
As long as interest rates remain low and the credit requirements are lax, most of America can in fact "own" a home. Expect prices to skyrocket, as buyers become more and more decoupled from the cost.
It's just very silly to find a website, grab a number, and then conclude that saving 200k in 8 years is realistic
My dad was a solider in Latin America, my mom, a nurse. Their job required, at most, 2 years of education beyond High School.
I am a data analyst, with a Bachelor's and a Master's. I earn more than they both did together, adjusted for inflation. My friends are in "specialized jobs" as well -- some even being doctors and lawyers. We still have zero hope of affording a house, let alone retirement.
Edit: for anyone wondering, my education was completely free as in my country college is free and I took my Master's in a Nordic country, where education is also free (I worked there to support myself too).
This is ridiculous. If that’s actually true, move. Lower your expenses. Figure out something else.
Apparently moving countries is good enough for his dad but another city in the US I asking too much?
Manhattan used to be very cheap, but it hasn't been that way for at least 30 years. Too many people want to live there now. Basic economic rules of supply and demand dictate the prices.
The only solution is to not play the game. You want a house, buy it where you can afford. There's no magic fairy that will sell you a standalone house in Manhatten on a cashier's salary.
Rent in my town is one of the cheapest among bigger cities and I already live very frugally (public transit, only shop for groceries on sale and healthy food, don't go out to parties, don't drink, no addictions, no online subscriptions, only free hobbies + gym). GenXers and Boomers left a shitty world for Gen Z and, for some, life is just not the fairy tale you are used to - sorry mate.
It's not so much a solution as it is a sneering dismissal of real problems that they don't want to hear about anymore.
How, exactly, are we going to supply all of that to the firehose of people graduating with mostly-useless degrees and job skills?
All the fruits are going to small number of people in the top. You say mostly useless degrees… what about all the mostly useless things - the lamborghinis? the never ending houses? the gimmicks, gadgets, iphones every 6 months…
Why do we supply that and dont supply basic living conditions to everyone?
Why? Because the medium of exchange function stops the moment economic growth stops growing at the rate of productivity. This is because the richest individuals are hoarding employment opportunities and get to save money against the will of the rest of the population. If one guy is doing the work of two, then one person has nothing to do. We grow the economy two fold, so there is enough to do for everyone, even though there are enough products and services for everyone. It's that stupid.
You’re not forced to live in a bigger city.
You weren’t forced to uselessly over-educate yourself.
You aren’t forced to stay where you are, in a dead-end, complaining about how it’s everyone’s fault but your own.
Either way, telling people to pull themselves up by their bootstrap when a house costs over a million dollars and wages have stagnated for decades is very uncharitable.
I live in Canada, at this rate owning a house is a dream long gone for many people include me.
Go on Zillow and do some basic research.
My education is none of your concern, especially because I actually got paid both for my Bachelors and Masters, due to academic performance scholarships. It cost me nothing and still paid better than most jobs.
I’m not in a deadend, I do very well, I just have zero prospects of retiring or owning a house. I’m not complaining though, I got it better than many people. I’m grateful for that, and especially even more grateful for not having to be someone so bitter like you. Have fun dying soon of old age in your rich life, with no friends or family bc none can stand your boomer personality :)
I think the key for me is the fact I choose not to incur educational debt getting a BS and/or MS, I also choose to live in a non-coastal region that does not have crazy housing prices. I also had lots of support from my parents* when I was younger so establish myself financially (like enabling me to be able to save for the down payment on this home)
I worked very hard and now make a pretty decent wage after decades of working lower wage jobs.
* To be clear this is just basic support like a stable roof over my head, the were lower middle class as well, their combined income was less than 6 figures, we had a basic home, food, etc but no luxuries, no vacations, one of the reasons I did not go to college was I did not want debt, and the family had no money for tuition
Over the course of a few years that's well into 6 figures of support
We are a "normal" midwest 2 parent household, in the 50th percentile of income band for the region.
My over arching point is there has to be some personal accountability. it is easy to be a victim, blame the system, blame rich people, blame everyone but yourself for your own circumstances.
Life is hard and often unfair, and I freely admit I am one serious illness away from bankruptcy, there are things we need to do change the system in many ways
However alot of the talk I see about "solutions" will in reality just make things worse and further push victim culture that i see today.
I don't have all the answer, but "woe is me, life is soo hard and unfair" attitude I see I can assure people is not a solution
When you are one major accident or illness away from losing everything you have saved is kind of makes sense to blame those who have fought so hard to make sure typical people don't have access to effective health care at a reasonable cost.
Medical costs however would not the cause of my problems as even in the worst case I would be protected by bankruptcy laws would would allow me to discharge my medical debt while keeping my primary home, and a significant chunk of my personal possessions.
The problem is that most people don't get to choose. There are few of these high paying jobs, so by definition most people are excluded. Either because they're not "smart" enough to get into elite training programs (e.g. medical school) or because they don't have enough money to spend years in training with zero or negative income.
What doesn't pay well is zero-effort required jobs like Starbucks barista or social media influencer (is this even a job?). If anyone can do it with no pain required to pass some sort of schooling then it's not going to pay well. Nursing pays well because people are too lazy to make it through 4 years of schooling.
If you're going to come in and claim life circumstances prevent people from getting a 4 year degree, a public school costs at most $120k including living expenses for 4 years. Even if you get _no_ financial aid - which doesn't happen as FAFSA exists - $120k is an entirely manageable sum to pay off over the course of 20 years. And that calculation assumes you don't work at all during summers or during the school year.
Where are you getting this number, that is not even remotely close to any of the nurses and lower level health practitioners I know
in Germany even if you're poor you can go to the University and succeed
my friends all studied and they were from normal working-class families
everyone gets a chance and all you need is put some effort
Except in the US there are enclaves of destitute poverty, generational poverty, extreme levels of incarceration, job prohibitions for low-level convicts (which can be 1/2 the men in some areas), high crime, schools with low graduation rates, weak access to things like dental care, poor transit options for medical care, pollution, insufficient care for the elderly, lack of mental health care, opioid addiction, children with high rates of lead poisoning, etc. Those people have the deck stacked against them.
you'd need to study 3 years to get your Abitur, however (which is only 1 year more than Gymnasium folks would)
ps. this may be different by state
Moreover, bohemian literally means "a socially unconventional person, especially one who is involved in the arts". I am guessing you probably misread it as "gypsy" or "roma" where such stereotype might exist (tho negative stereotypes about them are much different nowdays afaik, but were be like that in past)
"Bohemian" got that meaning because French aristocratic youth saw Roma gypsy immegrants and just called them whatever the closest east European neighbors they thought of.
The fact that you think it is a lifestyle and not a people shows just how much history is lost. Somehow king Wenceslas got turned into a Christmas carol, but that's about it.
And I don't just "think" it is lifestyle. I checked multiple dictionaries and they all refer to it as lifestyle. And the way it was used, it was always used as lifestyle. I never even seen it being used for either czechs or gypsies.
It just ... exists. And contains capital.
And the word in English means what I wrote and not whatever you imagine it to mean.
To be clear, I am not saying that the word bohemian is used as a slur. I am merely finding it ironic that people who have qualms about things like "master" in git or "microagressions" have no problem using a word that was used in France to make light of any genetic eastern Europeans. "bohemian" as an artsy, free living, dirt poor hippy utterly erases centuries of history of a real people (not even the people they thought it applied to).
It's not clear if there's a simple correlation between "training required" and "automation ready". For example, people have been talking about automating radiology for years, although I'm currently finishing up a study on one such system and we certainly aren't there yet. Meanwhile, the relatively "low skill" job of construction is considered very difficult to automate due to the high variability in environments and materials.
This uncertainty means that reluctance to join professions that "may" be automated in the coming years might be interpreted as a result of risk-aversion, and that risk is higher when the job training is longer.
> It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.
> By business I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
Continuing to play the “optimize myself based upon some meta game as see it” is not a viable strategy.
There is no science that says Musk is certainly on the right path to human longevity.
None of the rich are infallibly and unassailably correct; pointing at them as correct is an appeal to authority which is ludicrous when we have plenty of evidence to show politics is corrupted such that elites are “too big to fail.”
I’m not obligated to make choices based upon your view of the problem and your solution is more of the same “boot straps”.
This culture is a joke. Moral relativism it is; if my choices screw any of you, oh well. Free market.
I kinda gave up on that dream, being priced out. So I quit, either to make a TC which can afford that life (>$200K/yr) or to live the rest of my days in a hedonistic manner. Current plan is to grind leetcode/sys design and apply to high-TC companies over and over until I can afford the life I want, or die trying.
On topic: I have the same feeling. I'm trying to get a dev job, that would be a huge jump of income for me. But I'm 34, how much should I grind just to get "entry-level" stuff?
I was pretty unmativated in my job, just coasting by and pretty much doing the bare minimum that allowed me to be in peace with myself. Remote work increased my productivity and my hapiness overall, but it's still insufficient to buy a home, I'm basically a rent slave.
If I get a dev job, it will probably mean 30-40k to me, here in Spain. Maybe 50K if I manage to climb the ladder, given I'm 34.
With that income I can buy a flat (not a house) in my mid-sized spanish city, but that's about it.
Source: https://amp.thecalifornian.com/amp/4625295002
The national percentile doesn’t really matter when your income is not portable, and you can’t just move and take it with you.
As another post said, it’s doable on $135k but it’s not easy in the SF Bay Area.
With remote work, it's a lot more portable than you might think.
Best of luck, whatever you decide.
I have not too much experience in that sector, but I would say earning 30k-50k is only possible if you live in a city with good communications with the bigger ones, like Alcalá de Henares (near to Madrid, or Manresa (near to Barcelona). In some places with lower COL, like Andalucía, this is really difficult.
I think becoming a software engineer is totally possible for you, you are only in your mid-30s. However, I think you need to like the field, at least a bit. Do you enjoy it?
When I see experienced people in videos etc they do everything so much quicker. I know this is normal but it feels that it will take me a lot of time to get there.
I'm currently in a self-paced bootcamp (open-bootcamp) and so far I'm happy. I went with beginner knowledge on Git, CSS, JS and Python, and I improved a lot of my OOP understanding which was very lacking, and their full-stack path touches also Java. I plan to take some compiled languages too, purely out of interest.
They also have projects, although I'm not sure how they structure that, but I hope that takes me up to speed to be productive.
Hate to break it to you, but many, many people raise kids and own a home with way less than $135k, even in your area. If you don’t want to attempt it because it’ll be hard, stressful, risky, etc.; maybe that’s worth reflecting on? Sometimes your standards/expectations are what need to change.
And also simultaneously, especially American culture is super judgemental of people whonhave kids and struggle financially in any way. It is big in personal responsibility in relation to having them, paying health care or ensuring school or even supervising etc. I find it unfair that in same environment people end up blamed for having too high standards when they internalize all that and insist on being responsible and financially well off.
(Of course this is different if the intention is "buy a place, wait until it rises in value, flip it, and repeat")
That said, you need to want to put down roots, and you need to like where you're putting those down. I love Vancouver, I've been here 20 years, I left for 5, and came back. This is where I want to raise my kids. But this is a highly privileged perspective backed by having a good well-paying job that lets me afford to live here (in a 3-bedroom condo in east van).
Still, travelling the world for 5 years sounds like a fantastic plan to figure out what you want to do in life and scouting out parts of the world that you can imagine living. That could mean finding something more rural, or finding a city more off the beaten path that you identify with that doesn't have international prestige and ridiculous VHCOL.
not everyone has dreams of planting roots
Rent, travel and see the world, and be free!
Moving is an option (my partner has restrictions: No states with anti-abortion laws, which removes many inexpensive places), if I go remote. Seems like every other dev has the same idea and that's helping drive prices up everywhere - along with other factors, of course.
Even staying just in the State of Oregon finds places under $200k (perhaps not the most desirable of building types, but certainly above a mobile home). But that may really put you in the "sticks" - south middle of Oregon is some of the most unpopulated land in the USA.
Rent-control may end up trapping you in another way; fear to move because of your current deal. Had a friend stay in a three-bedroom apartment long after he should have moved up to a house for just this reason.
Also, this type of stuff is costly to deal with, in terms of emotional and physical health, and probably even monetary costs:
https://www.thecut.com/2022/04/texas-woman-charged-with-murd...
> She miscarried at a hospital and allegedly confided to hospital staff that she had attempted to induce her own abortion and she was reported to the authorities by hospital administration or staff,”
Here, you have precedent being set that a woman should play it safe and withhold information from their healthcare provider, lest they be put through an ordeal like this.
Of course, just don't expect me to care about your housing costs if that is your reason you choose to stay in a high COL area.
And I'm not sure what precedent that example sets relevant to me because nobody I know would try and induce their own abortion in an anti-abortion state instead of just driving out of state and going to a professional clinic.
It’s possible but not easy (and harder now), and you have to be patient and careful and a bit lucky.
That I can remember of: Vercel, Gatsby, Gitlab, and much more.
Move to somewhere cheaper if you can?
This anecdote is presented as the norm, but it’s actually far from it.
“Minimum wage” is the tip off that the journalist went out searching for the most extreme anecdote they could find. For all the talk about minimum wage jobs, only around 1% of jobs actually pay federal minimum wage. That number is falling rapidly as it becomes trivial for anyone to walk into a $15/hr job with benefits almost anywhere except the smallest towns.
Of course it’s not possible for someone earning minimum wage to save up money and buy a house in their 20s. Minimum wage jobs are literally the lowest paying jobs a person could possibly find. Anchoring expectations that no job should exist unless it pays enough to buy a house in your 20s in any city you want is blatantly unrealistic.
I see this stat a lot and it leaves me wondering how many people are within, say, 50 cents or 5%[0] of minimum wage. The percent of workers earning minimum wage doesn't seem that useful (and I guess neither would the figures returned for my request).
In any case I'd find hours required to live alone within ~30 minutes of work a more compelling statistic. It adjusts for CoL and represents a reasonable lifestyle to shoot for.
0: not suggesting these are equivalent figures
* Person A is making minimum wage, but with good benefits, consistent hours, and a reasonable cost to live within walking distance of the job.
* Person B is making minimum wage plus a buck per hour, but is technically not a full-time employee so no benefits at all. Shifts are often changed with little notice, sometimes to hours that are not very transit-friendly, and living within walking distance is utterly off the table for anyone short of a rich techie.
Who's really better off? It's easy for full-time internet commentators to look at simplistic stats and draw simplistic (self serving) conclusions, but your metric is much better and closer to the ones used by people who actually study issues such as poverty.
That is incorrect. There are whole categories of jobs that are exempt from minimum wage, and that doesn't even count gig work.
I'm presuming you're talking about tipped jobs? It seems reasonable to presume that they earn close to minimum wage when factoring in tips, otherwise people would switch to non-exempt jobs.
But we're seeing this in the US, between covid restaurant layoffs and closures; Tipped dining service is struggling to recruit.
Having said that, most tipped employees are doing much, much better…which is why they aren’t clamoring to go wash dishes in the back.
https://www.minimum-wage.org/articles/minimum-wage-exemption...
It seems like younger generations view of their parents times are getting rosier and rosier.
I think so. Next will be Gen Alpha (apparently) who will complain about how easy Gen Z had it or maybe they'll blame Millenials.
I'm Gen X and in a small town I was never able to afford a home. And now rent is nuts people are being kicked out for "reno-victions". My parents born in '43 and '44 managed to buy a house but with help a program similar to Habitat for Humanity only a local organization. And then the early 80s inflation hit but they had a locked in mortgage but many people lost their homes.
It's always the same thing history repeats. But now people have so much more opportunities with the Internet they can choose almost any job. Even for me working from home was futuristic fantasy if it was even that. I think the trend to dehumanize and blame previous generations for the current generations' problems is a dangerous trend.
It's been going on since as long as I've been alive. I'm mid-late GenX and I remember the news constantly telling me my generation is lazy. I remember them doing the same thing with GenY, and now GenZ, neither of which was true outside the norms of every generation. Modern news is a blight on society.
The reason for that is the same and will stay the same, for the entirety of humanity. Land is a finite resource that must be shared with other humans. Money is a public utility that must be shared with other humans. Humans don't like sharing these exclusive types of things.
You have these people complaining that India should "fix poverty" instead of doing a miniscule (by international standards) space program. The solution to homelessness requires existing landowners to give up their land. They don't want to give up their land, so instead, homelessness acts as the pressure relief valve/externality. In fact, homelessness is considered a price worth paying.
The same is true with money. People like having more money than they actually need. The ability to save against the wishes of other people and thereby indebt them is exactly what they want, the resulting unemployment is considered a price worth paying.
1. Women entering the workforce, essentially doubling the labor pool.
2. Immigration - at least a million a year, every year.
3. Globalization - instead of local workforce, many companies can now outsource labor to cheaper countries without regulation.
4. Manufacturing - due to NAFTA, companies who once manufactured in the US can now get much cheaper labor to Mexico. This is related to #3.
5. Automation - The amount of labor needed to perform a task has been greatly reduced.
Simply put, because the alternative is worse. What is your BANTA? Living in destitution? You don't have to go extreme into the "enjoy life now" end either; it's a balance.
Suppose you have a credit card that is not yet at its limit, and you are not accumulating late fees... you can buy a $200 TV in exchange for paying $5/mo in perpetuity, at a 30% APR. Interest rates connect the indefinite future back to the past and in fact they set an equivalent time horizon. So you can phrase the exact problem as asking what cancelling an unused $5/mo Netflix account is really worth to you, and the answer is again $200. The indefinite future of payments is just 1/r, a conversion factor of 40 months in this case.
If you are getting into late fees those can triple interest or so, you might have a time horizon only a year off. Or if you are into payday loans and 400%/year interest, the indefinite future is literally only 3 months away, you cannot rationally “think past tomorrow.” At 30%/year your rational time horizon is a little over 3 years. If you then have debt paid back and a retirement account in an S&P index fund and we call that 10% year on year, your indefinite future is 10 years away.
“People are willing to save and/or hustle for 5-10 years” indeed, 5-10 years is financial eternity for most people!
Half the issue is that people have been indoctrinated to expect home ownership and long for some golden age seen on TV that never existed.
Home ownership was never universal in the US. It has been within a few percent of 65% since the 1960s[1]. It was always out of reach for the lowest earners, like those that make minimum wage.
Some people whos parents owned houses will inevitably be unable to afford them themselves. Some people whos parents couldn't will.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_S...
Expecting to own the building and land on which you live and from which you contribute to society is a product of indoctrination? That makes sense if you're completely against land-ownership (which is, on the surface, a reasonable idea), but surely accepting the only current alternative (paying rent) is the product of an even more sinister form of indoctrination?
https://dqydj.com/historical-homeownership-rate-united-state...
Counter narrative: Nigerians come to the US and have excellent upward mobility. The ones I know are willing to work hard, defer gratification, and sacrifice for their children.
And I wonder what percentage of Starbucks managers started out as Starbucks wage-slaves.
I believe store managers do tend to come from on the floor staff but there is likely no path from store manager to Starbucks corporate.
Programming is almost uniquely privileged where you end up interacting with higher up corporate positions frequently and you will pretty easily be able to learn their jobs and jump over if you want.
While retail workers don’t see at all what goes on in an office separate to them. They just get instructions dictated down.
I've heard this about pretty much every place, at this point.
("Move somewhere cheaper!" … and get "geographic multiplier"'d into a lower salary, and you're right back where you started.)
0: https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/north-carolina/ashevill...
This job is truly an anomaly. There are very few careers where you can earn top 1% income with no degree, no physical exertion, under 8 hours a day "on the clock", the freedom to quit any time and have multiple new offers within days, etc, etc.
Out of the hundreds I’ve had this conversation with, two that I’m aware of took my advice and just tried to start making stuff. One now runs a dev shop, the other is at alphabet making bank.
I think, more than anything else, learned helplessness is crippling people. so many are mollycoddled from cradle to grave and never understand their own capabilities.
I was able to excel at CS in college because my parents shoved a DOS computer in front of me when I was 5 and challenged me with math and general problem solving at every opportunity. My whole childhood was basically debugging and critical thinking. If you didn't have that growing up, it's really hard to start learning the skills when you're 30.
Anyone talented at something thinks everyone is like them. Some singers think this too, they’ll say all you have to do is X, Y and Z and you’ll be a great singer like me, easy!
It’s like saying “I don’t understand why not everyone is fit, all you need is to eat less and go walk outside for free”.
I have taught a few people programming and almost everyone started picking up the basics and moving along well but some would just completely give up once no one was prodding them. This usually correlates with other things like health and general life situation. Some people just aren’t motivated to get up, go run, eat healthy, and learn a valuable skill.
The market is flooded with coders, which is why you see coveted companies have the exhausting interview processes that they do. And that's where the big bucks are made.
Smaller companies with low or inexistent barriers to entry may appear appealing to your average bootcamp coder that lacks deep understanding that comes with a CS degree and/or years of experience, but they come with their own severe drawbacks one of them being the fallacy that one can jump from these to the FAANGs, another being the veneer of a career while in reality you're as expendable and replaceable as a minimum wage worker.
If more software developers used examples like those, maybe more people would consider software as a career? If nothing else, seems like I should give it a go when I have those conversations with people.
[0] Adafruit have an image of a 1967 article in Cosmopolitan, which quotes Hopper. https://blog.adafruit.com/2021/03/12/a-1967-cosmopolitan-art...
If you are motivated and have the right material to learn from, you can do basically anything. This seems pretty true for me. I haven’t found any skill I can’t just grind through learning if I put the time in.
let me guess: because not anybody wants to be a programmer? different people have different ambitions, not anybody needs to be a coder
and life would be pretty mundane if all people were doing is writing code
Almost anybody who works in retail, manual labor, etc would jump on a job offer for 5x more money, better hours, and better working conditions. The reason they don't is they can't get the offers because the skills are hard to learn.
As a millennial in my 30s I was fortunate to be able to break in and start earning a nice paycheck without a college degree, but even that possibility is deteriorating now due to a sudden flood of entry level applicants. Companies are now seeking mid-level-to-senior candidates almost exclusively because they don’t want to bother with training and mentoring a newbie, they want someone who can hit the ground running. There are still some possibilities for one to get one’s foot in the door with barely paid or unpaid college internships but from my perspective the gates are slowly closing.
> I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still struggle be able to afford such “entry level” things as a house or even a new car.
This makes sense if the father were also a receptionist in a similar sized company.
The average house sold today costs $374K. The median salary is $51K.
You can argue that those houses that were sold back then were smaller, but they were also made of vastly better materials than modern home construction, and it's not like people even have the opportunity of buying those smaller homes unless they want to live in a slum.
> The average house sold in 1946 cost 1.75X. The median salary was X.
> The average house sold in 2022 cost 7.33Y. The median salary is Y.
Its clear from all the communications, unionizations, Great Resignation, and more that wages are completely broken.
And that above shows what it looks like.
We're one of the lucky ones. We're finalizing our recent house purchase. First time homebuyer. $375k , which was at the top of our budget. I make $150k, which is still a 2.5 factor differential... Which is .75 ABOVE what it would have been in the post-war boom 1946.
Im in my 40's, and its taken me 20+ years to actually get enough of a footing to even look at a proper house. I feel immensely sad for all younger. Can't afford a $600/mo mortgage so they're stuck with $1000 rents.
Loans are for people to borrow money when they don't need money.
I think GP is just trying to make sure we're comparing apples to apples. To me it almost comes across as you cherry picking data (average house price vs median salary).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=OBTh only has data for median house prices from 1963, and household income from the mid '80s. The spread growing isn't heartening.
The median house price so far this year is over $390K, by the way. The earlier value was for last year.
First you're getting a vastly different product today than in 1946. Consumer demands are far higher too.
Also to compare affordability the metric for most people would be the median percentage case of mortgage payments vs the persons take home pay. When measured this way it's been hovering around 30% for the past 40 years in the UK.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-house-prices-unlikely-cra...
Horseshit. Homes built in 1946 are selling for millions of dollars, even if they're going to be torn down and rebuilt for marginal cost. You're not buying a house, you're buying the land and taking responsibility for everything on it.
And even then, the lumber you get out of such an old house is quite valuable virgin oldgrowth, a better quality product than you can buy at a lumber yard today.
And, to pick a nit... comparing the median income to median house price is an examination of relative price, not absolute.
To compare the 1946 houses location you need to pick something with the same level of amenity, which will be probably a country town.
That $150k house in the boonies, even if it was built yesterday, has less value, because the community it is in is in the process of dying and has no opportunity. That same house in the same town sold for $60k in 1989, while that very town was much more functional, alive, and happy than it is now.
Is that true? Something like 40% of the UK housing stock was built pre-WW2. Sure they’ll no longer have a coal bunker and they most likely have had insulation upgrades etc. but a pre-WW2 house in 1946 is still a pre-WW2 house today. The modern build will have less living space, predominately through smaller room sizes but should be cheaper to heat.
>> Also to compare affordability the metric for most people would be the median percentage case of mortgage payments vs the persons take home pay
That lops off all the people who can’t afford a mortgage so i dont think that logic works.
Are you? You're getting a place to live and property you own.
No way this is even close to being true. Newer houses with all the advancements in materials and construction science are much better than the post-war garbage that was spewed out.
I made a small fortune in my early 20s fixing and renovating those post-war houses. They're almost universally junk in comparison.
Let's test that theory. So assuming that person in their 20's doesn't want to move to the Bay Area/Seattle/Austin/NYC they can find a nice house in a metro area within a 20-30 minute drive of plenty of medium-high paying jobs, for around $200k.
So assuming they're smart enough to put 20% down on that house, they need to save around $40k. In your 5-10 year time frame that means they need to save $4-$8k per year.
So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the generation dropping $1,200 on iPhones and having an average of 50 games in their Steam account can probably save like $5k per year if they really try.
Maybe in 2000. I don't think that's true in any major metropolitan area (say over 1 million). Which is also coincidentally where most people live.
But yeah, within the hour and a half commute zone of a metro area, you can find affordable housing.
Nope, again using the Detroit example you have Warren, Oak Park, Southfield etc literally sharing its border and within a 20-30 minute drive of anywhere in downtown Detroit or further out in ritzy Oakland county. Same goes for Arlington, Irving and several other suburbs of Dallas. I'd keep going down the list, but you get the point. Pretty much every major metro areas has housing under $200k with less than a 30-minute drive of downtown or major job centers in suburbs.
I know California is a different world, and that's fine. But the US is quite large with many large cities where you can find good careers and affordable housing. It just may not look as cool to post on Instagram...which I guess is the bigger problem.
I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still struggle be able to afford such “entry level” things as a house or even a new car. People are willing to save and/or hustle for 5-10 years to get material rewards, but beyond that it feels pointless. Why be miserable grinding for two decades just so you can get one hand on the ladder? Instead people look for ways to have a life they find interesting or satisfying now.