A millennial couple who make $250,000 say they can't find a home in their budget: 'We refuse to become house-poor'
A millennial couple who make $250,000 say they can't find a home in their budget: 'We refuse to become house-poor'
A millennial couple who earn $250,000 say they can't find a home in their budget. They're cutting back on retirement savings and childcare.
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I was shocked to find out that over 50% of millennials own their own homes.
I'd venture to say a big chunk of those folks inherited wealth. Most millennial homeowners I know inherited money from grandparents, aunts, uncles, and/or parents.
And like many who inherited wealth, these folks often make up their own little rags to riches story about how they got where they're at.
Roughly 3% of Millennials have inherited money according to the findings in Northwestern Mutual's 2024 Planning & Progress Study.
Misleading statistic. This doesn't include parents/grandparents who buy houses and then put their kids name on the title. Nor does it include when parents pay for all their kids college expenses, or rent, or their cars... etc...
Yeah, my wife and I didn't inherit any money or get any kind of gift for a down payment but we wouldn't be homeowners unless our parents paid tens of thousands into each of our college educations.
My husband and I wouldn't be homeowners if we didn't live with my parents for over a decade saving up. Though I understand not everyone has that available to them.
If we'd had to rent an apartment it would've never happened. We also don't have kids, so that's a contributing factor too.
Even with all that, we could only afford a small, one story fixer upper that was an estate sale in the middle of nowhere. It's a house though, and we were very lucky to get it.
Yeah for sure, a vast majority of people in the United States receive financial help from their family. 70% or so. Less than a third don't.
Which I guess swings us back to the surprising fact that a broad majority of millennials can afford a home and a simple majority already own one. Just seems crazy.
I'm a millenial but not one of those people you're describing, and I have actually paid my condo off.
The keys for me:
- No kids
- I job hopped in (what at least used to be) a high-paying field (tech)
- I moved job markets from a low COL (cost of living) market to a high COL market
- No student loan debt for me (my mommy and daddy paid for my tuition to a local state school 🫶 ), minimal student loan debt from my wife (~5k)...which I paid off after we got married
- I don't give a shit about cars...I drove used cars until I could comfortably buy a new one cash
- We only have one car between the two of us
- I moved rather than paying higher rents, and I often lived in really crappy apartments because they were cheaper (I do not recommend btb)
Healthy helping of luck involved, and definitely support from my parents by way of room and board until I was like 23, tuition, small car loan of ~8k after I graduated. However, I paid them back in full for the car, and I'm the only one of my siblings not to hit up Mommy and Daddy regularly like an ATM. I fucking hate debt with a passion (or even really temporarily owing someone else anything) and have basically never carried large amounts of it outside of when I had my mortgage for my condo.
(My neuroticism around debt is probably why I paid off a historically low rate mortgage...if I would've sunk that into the stock market or something instead of paying it off I probably would've made a fortune.)
Did they though?
Many elderly end up being forced to sell their home and empty their retirements on nursing home costs. Leaving nothing to their descendants.
The ones that die at home or unexpectedly would be the ones that leave something behind in our capitalist wasteland.
It's not impossible to do without inheriting wealth. I put 20k down with my wife in 2018 and we didn't inherit anything. We rented a very small house before that and now we are better off than the people this story is about.
I finished PhD in 2015, married in 2017, buy house 2018. My wife has a professional doctorate as well. We owe a shitload still, but it's for like 2% interest so it isn't that bad.
It's not rags to riches, but it's doing what you can do in the middle of the northernmost southern state and heavily investing in our white collar educations.
I must have missed the part where I said it's impossible to do.
I inherited about $10k when my dad died. It was enough for a 10% down home loan in 2013 (along with my savings). I'll probably never move out of this house at this rate.
Yeah.... Maybe this is one of the ways I should start associating myself with Gen Z but they also have higher home ownership than boomers did at this age cause apparently the covid fire sale left them still with their parents money and cheap houses.
I dunno I really don't know how anyone does it but I have also been homeless 3 times since I started college so not really a great example.