This is the biggest reason I haven’t moved. I managed to buy a house in a low cost of living area, with a low interest rate. Any move would force me to throw away my money renting, take a massive size/quality hit, or become house poor. And like them, I make about $250k.
I think your situation is a bit different. They are choosing not to relocate to a place where they can buy, because they tried that and thought it was boring. I am certainly not saying the housing market is fine, but these folks made a decision between buying a house and living in their preferred locale.
Personally, my family made the opposite choice two years ago, leaving the Best Coast and moving to the Midwest in large part so we could afford a house, which we did on less than $250k/yr gross. This locale is not our first choice, but our priorities were different from the priorities of the couple in the story. Money was not their only issue.
But fuck the housing crisis. We need policy changes that highly favor primary place of residence and disincentivize rental properties.
He's not complaining about his income. He's saying "I've reached a level of income that SHOULD entitle me to the American dream, but even at this amount I too am barred"
When we say 'eat the rich' we don't mean 'shit on what is effectively what's left of the middle class'.
Thank you. You’re spot on with my thoughts. I used to consider myself “upper middle class” with the mobility to do what I wanted. However if I’m having trouble, and I know what the median income is, I know for a fact it’s 100x worse for someone in that bracket. It’s just plain gotten out of control.
Honestly the measure of what I use for “are you rich?” Is “can I survive a long term medical issue (or any other “big” issue) without it causing an impact to my current quality of living?” and for 99%+ of this county that is no longer possible.
Yeah I don't make nearly 250 but im surprised at how high a quartile I am considering how poorly I have to live. I totally realize how lucky I am and how sad that is.
Yup the answer for costs that look like years of medical debt and no functional income generation is gonna be old-yellering us starting in the next couple years
Maybe we can go to work camps first to get some last profit and call it some kind of final solution to ending the drain on society that the piors inflict on the strong morally superior income brackets
There's another side of this though, which is that his "American dream" single family home should simply not exist in large numbers in the location he wants. It should be prohibitively expensive to own an entire acre in such areas, because that acre should house somewhere between a dozen or a few hundred people depending on the density. The attitude of "I want a single family home within walking distance of the subway" is ridiculous. If detached housing is your priority you should absolutely need to move farther out into the suburbs.