this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
733 points (97.4% liked)

News

23423 readers
4501 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Few milestones in life mean as much to the American Dream as owning a home. And millennials have encountered the kind of trouble totally befitting their generation, which largely graduated into the teeth of the disastrous post-2008 job market. Just as they entered peak homebuying and household formation age, housing affordability is at 40-year lows, and mortgage rates are near 40-year highs.

The anxiety this generation feels about the prospect of never owning their own home affects their entire perception of their finances and the economy, says Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi.

“If they feel like they’re locked out of owning a home it colors their perceptions about everything else going on in their financial lives,” Zandi says.

Millennials have long been dogged by a brutal housing market. They faced not one, but two, cataclysmic economic events—the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 and the pandemic in 2020. Both of which left them reeling financially and struggling to afford a home. The Great Recession decimated the real estate market as the economy nearly collapsed under the weight of tenuous mortgage backed securities. While the pandemic brought with it a remote work boom that caused millions of citydwellers to flee to the suburbs, sending housing prices soaring.

Archive link

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] FlyingSquid 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Cool. We don't have anything left to save. If you can save $700 a month by only going out to eat twice in a year, you must be going to extremely expensive restaurants.

But hey, maybe you're not thousands of dollars in medical debt. We are. I'm looking forward to you telling me that that's my fault for getting sick.

[–] pixxelkick -3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That sucks mate, the US Healthcare system is fucked.

$700/month in savings is very solid though, and that's after paying off existing loans as part of our budget.

[–] FlyingSquid 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Great, but your claim was better budgeting software was the problem. It's not the problem for many, many people. Debt is the problem. So is the fact that over 60% of Americans can't afford to save anything because all of their money is gone to pay bills, rent and debts once they get paid. And better budgeting software won't pay off debt if you aren't paid enough to do it. Nor will it pay inflated rent. And it certainly won't get you a house.

We're lucky enough to already have a house and we still had to take out a HELOC on our mortgage just so we could cover other costs.

We don't buy endless luxuries. We don't buy the latest goods. My computer is from 2015 and was a gift. My phone is from 2018. My car is from 2016 and I only bought it (used) because my 2002 car's engine block cracked. Our kitchen is not filled with high-end brand name foods. Yes, we very occasionally do something fun as a family. Should my child never get to have fun just so we can somehow magically save $700 a month through budgeting software?

[–] pixxelkick -2 points 9 months ago

If you use budgeting software and truly can't find any highlighted costs you can actually cut, and despite that can't afford to save money, then you have my sympathy, that sounds shitty and challenging.

My point is and continues to be if you complain about cost of living but you don't use freely available budgeting tools, I won't sympathize with you (yet), because every grown adult should just be doing that. It's a basic part of life and being an adult that people just don't bother doing.

Itd be the equivalent of someone complaining their car doesn't work but then admitting they've never checked their oil.

If you talk to any financial advisor, having a budget system is always step 1, so if a person hasnt dine that yet, their complaints just sound like whining to me as the person hasn't even done the absolute bare minimum step 1 yet to try and address or even understand the problem.

I assume such a person doesn't want to put any work in to get out of the hole they dug themselves into.

IF they do have a budget and their costs simply are just that bad, and they've already cut every single cost they can, then they have my sympathy as that means they actually are trying.

But unfortunately, after working with a LOT of people in various industries who complain about these issues, it has become abundantly clear that most people just want to complain and not actually do anything about it, and just keep wasting money.

I don't know your situation, but I've worked with so many people and so so so few of them even could hold a convo about budgeting, let alone talk about what tool(s) they use and tracking solutions they leverage.

So I now, after many many years of seeing how awful everyone seems to be at budgeting, just assume the average person is completely incompetent when it comes to managing money as the default.

For every 1 person I meet who has preferred budgeting tools, I have met dozens and dozens that couldn't even explain what a tax bracket actually means or is.

So I just assume the average person is at that level for finances. No hate, it's just facts that most people just... don't know or care to know how money works, they have other priorities in life, like family and their jobs and hobbies, /shrug