well Great Depression era tactics should still apply….
The average Trump supporter basically does think you can self finance your way out of this: Electricity and a/c isn’t a necessity for living and people lived without that stuff 100 years ago. Internet isn’t a necessity and neither is having a cell phone. Owning a vehicle isn’t a necessity, simply walk or add 3+ hours a day you don’t have to your commute waiting on public transportation. The average person is always fighting weight gain, so cut food costs with controlled
starvationrationing. Deodorant, toilet paper and hygiene isn’t a necessity either. Needless to say no one deserves to be happy and you should be spending no money on video games, eating out, or anything fun. But spend money on dating and having kids because our society definitely deserves you give them more workers. Also, privacy isn’t a necessity too so if you aren’t sharing a studio apartment with 4 other people you have nothing to complain about. If this is an issue than you should have chosen to get lucky and be rich, maybe pray about it too because God knows best.This is unironically my boomer evangelical mother’s opinion.
So someone is renting it out. It’s all supply and demand?? I don’t think landlord just leave their apartment empty unless someone comes with 1600 bucks rents.
In Denver here, it’s hard to find apartment and 2 bed 2 bath close to boulder is 2500 bucks minimum. But people still want to stay close to boulder rather than living on cheaper town.
Hot take, but it’s both. I make $40k in a major american city, and while it sucks I have a decent amount saved up, I live alone, and I’ve paid off all my debt (although I’ll probably never be able to afford a home).
To be clear, I don’t think anyone should have to cut the corners I do to live with financial security, and not everyone can (my partner is disabled, financial security is a pipe dream for them), but it isn’t impossible for most people.
I make $40k in a major american city
I hope you have healthcare, because that sounds terrifying.
I do, I actually have very good insurance and a pretty-alright 401k. My partner doesn’t, and it’s… brutal. They’ve got several serious health conditions that they just hope aren’t going to kill them in the next decade or so.
Nobody should be subjected to that.
Landlords are not greedy. They are inherently parasitic.
Adam Smith would agree with you.
My own mother has been talking about leaving town and rather then selling her house, her plan is to rent the house out survive off the rent she collects.
on its own that wouldnt be outrageous, if it werent for the fact my mother is extremely irresponsible with money and her lifestyle and bad habits are essentially going to be paid for by someone else.
its opened my eyes on landlords… a lot of them dont work, and they dont even do the minimum for their tenants. they just expect to get paid.
I paid $750 for a 2br 30 years ago. I pay $850 for a 3br now. I used to live outside San Francisco, now I’m in Ohio.
Not living in Ohio is worth at least $1k a month, so that tracks.
Yeah places with really low rents, there’s always a reason. But sometimes it’s still an option.
Ha, I was just being snarky. I’ve never liked the few parts of Ohio I’ve been at, but I’m guessing there are some good places there.
Having taken the point of this post as it was intended, we can also recognize that learning how to manage your money is in fact always a good thing. Will basic hygiene undo generations of economics? No, but we certainly shouldn’t NOT teach young people to manage their money.
Nobody on earth has suggested we stop teaching economic literacy. We should however stop pretending it is sufficient. We require systemic change.
I wish I felt confident in that. But you can almost hear it right in this tweet. The mere suggestion of financial literacy is borderline offensive.
It’s similar to how the notion of reducing your personal environmental impact is actively shit upon these days. Say anything about it and someone will shout you down about how corporations pollute more.
It’s very similar: there are larger forces polluting the environment that make your personal behaviors insufficient to solve the problem.
All true.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do what you can personally.
My mortgage is close to 1600 a month. Plus HOA fees on top of that.
I dont think rent being at that price range is always greedy landlords.
What’s your interest rate? That plays a huge factor in what your monthly payments are.
Look at what it would cost to rent a similar house in your area in terms of sq footage and location. Note a house not an apartment I shouldn’t be surprised if its closer to $3500
I have the same mortgage and a property manager I talked to said my house would rent for $2300. Major American city.
Actually there’s an influx of similar properties around here that are just asking for 1600ish per month.
There’s a famous Agatha Christie quote where she mentions that when she was young, she never imagined she’d be rich enough to own an automobile or poor enough to not have servants in her house. At some point, the affordability of one shot way past the other.
In my lifetime, I’ve seen huge cost increases in housing, and huge cost decreases in most technological products. When I was a kid, the normal TV size was something like 20 inches, and cost more than a month’s rent for a typical apartment. In 1990, the average rent was $447, according to this. I found a Sears catalog from 1989 with a 25 inch TV selling for $549, and a 20 inch TV for $318. It would be hard to convince someone from 1990 that one day the cheapest, shittiest apartments in the poorest neighborhoods would rent for more than a 60-inch TV per month. Or that the typical ambulance ride costs something like a month’s salary of a factory worker.
That’s the real problem with old people’s sense of money. The human tendency is to assume that all products cost the same multiple of those products prices in their early adulthood, so the luxury products of their youth remain the luxury products of today. These old people are stuck in some kind of Agatha Christie style of cost comparison, without the self awareness, and thinking that someone who owns a cell phone should be able to afford to buy a single family detached house, or couldn’t possibly be bankrupted by a single Emergency Room visit.
Please stop blaming “old people”. It’s a divide and conquer tactic. I have grown children that are struggling with housing costs, and I absolutely understand why. Because greedy wealthy people/corporations are buying up all the property. If “old people” are pulling the avocado toast argument—they’re probably wealthy. Young wealthy people use the same argument. Something to think about regarding TVs. They were expensive back in the day, but they lasted 30+ years. ✌️ ☮️
It is absolutely OK to assign accurate blame and this basic misunderstanding absolutely afflicts people who aren’t rich. The kind of person who bought their house when it’s cheap and thinks the $2000 they pay in property taxes per year are murderous whilst ignoring the fact that folks around them are paying $2000 a month in rent.
I don’t know where you live, but property taxes are sky rocketing as well. And, thanks to global warming, house insurance is also sky rocketing. A lot of people who own their home are facing difficulties. There are communities in British Columbia where insurance companies refuse to offer fire coverage. There are communities in British Columbia where insurance companies refuse to offer flood insurance. These same insurance companies used to. You know why they won’t now?? Because the Oligarchs own the insurance companies, and they know what’s coming.
Please stop blaming “old people”.
I’m not “blaming” anyone. I’m pointing out the mechanism that causes a portion of old people to be out of touch on these things. They rely on their own experiences to draw inferences that don’t actually apply to others.
"That’s the real problem with old people’s sense of money”. That is blaming old people.
“Blame” means to attribute for some negative result. There’s no assigning fault here, just an observation, and an explanation behind that observation.
If I said “Bob is a fucking idiot,” that’s not blaming Bob for anything.
So yeah, I stand by my explanation behind the observation in OP’s screenshot: that people tend to draw on past experiences even when those experiences are no longer as relevant, or are even actively misleading. And that the phenomenon I describe (that not all prices inflate at the same rate or preserve the same ratios to each other) exacerbates the problem.
OK. I’m seeing “the real problem with old people”. So, de facto, there’s a problem with old people.
The topic of the original posted screenshot is about inter-generational financial advice. I’m pointing out the need for intellectual humility when talking to a younger generation, by identifying a specific cognitive bias that tends to trip people up. And because this particular bias forms through experience, it tends to apply more to people with longer experience (that is, people who are older).
I thought my original comment wasn’t judgmental, and didn’t even purport to claim that all (or most) old people actually fall victim to the bias, to where they’re acting upon that bias. I’m just pointing out that it’s something to look out for, and to keep in mind, if you’re ever in the position to be giving younger generations financial advice.
Coming in here and trying to defend old people against an imagined attack is, frankly, off topic and not particularly helpful.
I totally agree with you that this is true, but I think it’s more a problem with reactionary thinking than anything else. The way I see it, the type of thinking that leads to reactionary comments is individualistic solutions to social and economic problems because you’re not allowed to question affordability.
People of all ages pull this shit. I can’t count how many times some millennial on reddit made unwanted suggestions for a poor person’s budgeting or grocery purchases. It is obviously difficult for older folks to understand things they’re not experiencing, but I don’t think that’s the primary issue.
Ask any traitor lunatic under 40 what to do about high prices, they’ll tell you exactly.
I definitely see this a lot. Any time someone complains about the unaffordability of life you get a swarm of people prying into their personal details desperately trying to figure out how that person’s situation is their own fault.
You can’t get there buying cars and phones you can’t afford either.
The highest priced iPhone, all max specs, is $1600.
If you get a new one every year, and trade in the previous year’s, you’ll probably get around $600 trade in value. So we’re talking $1000/year for the highest priced phone.
On a monthly basis, we’re talking $83/month. That’s like a rounding error on rent, utilities, and food, much less transportation and health care.
And, more realistically, people are buying $800 phones once every 2 years, maybe seeing something like a $600 net expense spread over 24 months, for $25/month.
Phones are like the one thing that are cheaper in 2025 than in 1985.
Hell yeah, grind away for basic necessities. Bet you’re a dream to talk to at parties.
As you type this, people in poverty who had their state-sponsored cheap telephones so they could get callbacks for work and take care of their families, are getting notified that the program has been canceled and they have to now somehow pay for their own phones on top of every other fee and expense that increases when you’re poor.
It’s also kind of hard to not pay for your car when you live in it. Speaking from experience.
That’s truly terrible but I don’t know what that has to do with money management, which is the only point I’m trying to make. I agree on the rest of all of this.
I don’t know what that has to do with money management,
That’s because I don’t think you actually understand the conversation. We’re talking about the difficulty of poverty, you’re thinking “money management” and that REEKS of someone who’s never actually been poor. You do not get it. You should be ASKING QUESTIONS and not dispensing life-advice about money to people who have been through actual hardships you clown.
Nice strawman you got there, goes well with all the avocado toast I buy instead of using it for a mortgage payment.
The phone that you use every day, that is required to function in daily society, and is the NUMBER ONE priority when you’re homeless, aside from maybe obtaining legal documentation?
That cell phone?
OMG, would people get off the friggin cell phone thing already. People buy all kinds of things they can’t afford. Money management would help with that. That was my only point. But if we HAVE to talk cell phones then fine. High end phones are over $1k. I just bought one for $200. To a person with little money, yeah cell phones too.
That argument is stupid, because usually people need a reason to save for. Now rent is so high that people can barely save, and houses are so expensive that even if they do and get a credit with their staggering student debt, they’ll never be able to afford it.
So what do people do? they just enjoy the small things, because they know they’ll never have the big ones.
It’s not stupid, you’ve just stupidly misinterpreted it.
I believe you’ve mistakenly interpreted it to mean that I disagree with the premise that people have been priced out of the things we’ve come to believe are the standard of living now. That’s not what I was objecting to.
My point is that money should ALWAYS be managed. If you have no money, then, well I guess it manages itself. But if you have very little money, you shouldn’t be buying s $60k car you can’t afford. You buy a $3k car you can. Saying, I can’t afford a house so I’m going to go into massive amounts of debt to buy a car to make up for it, is the REASON you need to manage money.
The Sam Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness, often called simply the boots theory: “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”
Your take only gets stupider the more you try to explain it.
My point is that money should ALWAYS be managed.
Is that what you think people are talking about in here? money management?
You are truly too dense for any of this. Fortunately for you, you probably have never been touched by actual hardship and I hope that continues for you. The rest of us have had to deal with the very worst our nation can throw at us.
Ok. Troll go ahead and keep believing what you want. You will always be right.
Troll
You don’t even know how words work huh?
A troll is someone who doesn’t believe what they say they’re just trying to make you mad.
I believe STRONGLY that you’re too dense/young for this conversation and I WHOLHEARTEDLY believe that you should back out of this topic and learn more about other humans and how civics works and a host of other broad topics so you can be a better person and not get your ass kicked someday for saying some offensive shit around people who have lived a lot more than you.
This isn’t trolling, it’s actual advice, you need to get your head on better. Nobody cares about your stupid “life philosophies” about money. Put that shit on a wooden carved sign hanging over the kitchen sink, but out here in the real world, it’s far more complicated and people face a lot more problems than your stupid phrases and 2-dimensional witticisms. Lose literally fucking everything to some medical bills then get back to me, let me know how fair the system is then.
No, your take is very stupid
you just avocado toast even harder. Now you not only over generalized people, and willfully ignore the cause of the problem.
You then turn items that are essential to life in society into irresponsible luxuries. If you can’t afford to rent there is no such thing as an affordable phone/car.
The point of the post is that it’s not merely impulsive spending and you went, “nah, it is just that”
A $60k car and a $1600 cell phone are NOT essential for life and I didn’t just “nah, it is just that,” the argument. You’re just having reading comprehension problems.
Let’s drop to your level. Are you stupid enough to believe that people don’t buy things they can’t afford? If you only have even $10 to your name and you need food, you go to the most economical grocery store you can get to and maximize your purchases. You don’t walk into Starbucks and order a latte. The OP implied that because there is as larger economic problem at hand, money management isn’t an issue. They are ALWAYS both an issue.
And yes I understand that the problem is that people have to manage $10 now instead of $1000. It was not my intention to minimalize that.
You invent a scenario, and applied that to all people who struggle then? Context be dammed? Damn, sounds like a bad take.
The OP context is “older generations say that things are easy, when they had it easy. But here is an example that shows that things are not equal by a long shot.
Then you show up with a ‘if people would just stop eating avocado toast, they would have it just as easy’ ignoring the message in the OP and the systemic issues that not only make owning both your stated items a necessary component of life, but makes everything much more expensive.
A stupid take. Do struggling people own $1300 phones or expensive cars? Maybe there are some but not a lot. You fucking just dammed everyone struggling over just the possibility, inventing a character flaw on an entire class of people.
A very, very stupid take.
People who come into posts about struggles of poverty preaching “money management” are people who have never had to actually survive a day in their life and have always had an allowance or income they could depend on. I appreciate you mercilessly calling this user’s BS out.
There is no such thing as a $3k car, those days are gone. If it’s going to be something that is expected to start and drive every day without major repairs that are overdue, you need to spend closer to $10k.
I know this because I recently bought my sons some used cars. Used 2006 Volvo was $6k in about as good of condition it could be for the age and miles. Still needed a bunch of little things that quickly added up. New tires ($800), PCV breather system ($120 did myself), new ignition coils ($200, did myself), brakes ($80, did myself), etc. If I wasn’t doing my own work, it would have been 3x the cost.
I also bought a 2013, nearly identical car to the 06. It needs far less, put tires on it, still has an evaporative emissions leak causing a check engine light. Not going to fix that.
I buy $1k cars sometimes, but they usually don’t run. A $3k car will be usable if you know how to turn wrenches, have space to work, and own multiple other cars for when it breaks down.
$10k barely buys a reliable car in most markets these days.
There is no such thing as a $3k car,
Yes there is …
My 2009 honda fit cost me 5k 3 years ago and has needed no repairs at all… You can go lower pretty easily…
Used car markets are highly localized markets and depending on demand in the area can fluctuate wildly, just because you got a steal on a 14 year old car 3 years ago doesn’t mean other people aren’t struggling to find an affordable used car now.
The Ratio says it’s actually pretty stupid. The percentage of people who can’t afford a home purely because they bought a $60k car is going to be absolutely minuscule, but it’s a great dog whistle for trying to lay the blame at the feet of personal responsibility.
It’s a whole lot more than you think.
It’s a whole lot less than you think.
No, it’s not. It’s not measured in the decimals of percentages, so it’s significant.
Avocado toast is a big fat waste of money and I don’t take anyone seriously who buys it then complains they need more.
“Have you tried simply having more money?”
Life’s really easy when you’re born rich and white.
If you’re born rich it doesn’t matter what color you are. The difference is probably being born middle class and white, that’s probably where you reap the most benefit from systemic racism. Being born poor, doesn’t matter, the cards are forever stacked against you.
“Greedy landlords” is an easy cope out. Instead we should realize the system that’s built to continously inflate the economy whereas our wages stagnate at best.
I bought my house in 2014, $224k at 4% APR, my monthly payment including taxes is $1400/mo.
It’s only been 11 years, inflation is up ~35% in that time, so buying the same house now should be ~$1900/mo. Actual price if I were to buy it now? ~$3500/mo. And wages have barely budged. No wonder young people entering the workforce can’t buy houses anymore.
Interestingly, though, that huge run-up in price is also half the reason why people think they need to own homes. We need to stop looking to homes to be the “engine of wealth creation” or we’re only asking for more of this.
The other half of the equation, of course, is wanting to have a stable home that you can control. And that’s still as valid as ever.
But homeownership isn’t necessarily the best choice for everyone. It reduces your mobility and optionality and it carries some risks and hidden costs.
But as long as everyone looks at it as the gateway to wealth, and feels like everyone is getting a piece of that action except them, it will contribute to the continuation of hyperinflation.
This is exactly right. I don’t believe in property ownership anyway, but even if you do, it is still irrational to chase this from a social and economic planning model. Life should be affordable for everyone. Period.
We bought a house in Tampa Florida area in 2018, our monthly cost was $1400/month. Moved to Washington in 2022 and bought a house and the house is smaller and our monthly payment is $3k. Area matters of course, but comparably I’d imagine we’re in similar situations.
