I remember your HD story well.  
Serious question:     As good as HD has been for you, do you ever get concerned with being too unbalanced/ leaving that much riding on it?

The wife and I just bought our first home this past year (closed on 11/29). I'm 38, she's 31.  Together we make around $100k/yr.

The house we bought was $231k when we signed the contract last February.  Doable for us, even though we'd have preferred being less than $210k.  

Our home in the same neighborhood, a year later, is now $296k.  We could not have afforded that.

Talk all you want about bootstrapping yourself, the laziness of Millennials, or poor decisions. Something is fundamentally broken in the American economy for a large percentage of our population. If those people feel they will never achieve their goals in the current system, they'll gravitate to whomever promises them a solution.

And who's fault is it that they decided to get a degree in something that has never had much income potential and isn't even relevant to the modern business world in any way?

It was easy compared to degrees with decent earning potential, that is why they took those classes. They partied, drank, F'ed off and still easily graduated.

I remember the kiddo coming home to visit for a weekend, he spent much of it working on school work. His degree wasn't in something easy but he was employed in his field as soon as he graduated.

And you don't tend to get scholarship offers in idiotic fields that are not STEM related.

I have no other account.

Yes, I am the 4th generation owner of a 103 year old family business.

I could comfortably sit on my ass at home and do nothing. Probably making 100k a year if desired.


Instead, I’m our operations officer and lead buyer/logistics manager for the company. I over see all our truck shop and maintenance operations. I spec and buy our new trucks.  I am a member of STLE. I also have a masters degree in sales leadership. Also, I have a Class A CDL, tanker, etc.  

And I’m arfcoms resident shit posting oil SME. (Note: there are people smarter than I, who are in the same industry here. That just don’t post as much as I do.)


I am extremely fortunate. I never said otherwise, I’m beyond even the exception for my age group.

If you ever met me, I’m pretty quiet. I have a farm. My sister calls me a cheap fuck. I live in an old, small, 120 year old house that’s paid off. My daily driver I don’t own. My personal truck is a 2008 that’s been paid off since 2010. And I don’t go out much.

Other than to occasionally help out some arfcommers in times of need:



(Me, my excavator, my ms661 at a members house who was hit by a tornado a few years ago.  I’m about 120lbs lighter today than that picture. )

Being the exception allows me to see where my age group is struggling. As they’re my friends. They’re my social peers.  I get to see what they’re hung up on. While experiencing the benefits of the current economic situation.  And, I get to try to express it here - for better or worse. Because I literally see both sides of the coin.

If you want to discount whatever I say because I’m lucky, well, I cant change your mind. But you’re right: I’ll never be in the “top 40 under 40” group, because of simply who I was born as.

Doesn’t mean I can’t be smarter and harder working than them, even if I’m already more successful by nature.

That.

I don't think I'd want to be their age and starting out right now compared to getting going back in the 80's like I did.  Are some doing great? absolutely, but I can see how things would be an uphill slog relative to some other slots in history.

The cost of schooling went up FOR EVERYONE due to shitty fucking "everyone needs to go to school" policies that opened the flood gates of fannie mae and freddie mac for easy money which drove up prices. Even if you did get a job it will take longer and/or more of your income to pay those loans back which stunts your ability to start saving earlier. Combined with higher healthcare, higher housing prices, inflation, and stagnant wages. It adds up to taking much longer to start generating your own wealth due to being saddled with completely awful economic policies the older generations shoved down the throats of the younger ones.

GenX did this all through the 70’s and 80’s and still it was glorious…

Highlighted for the stubborn who won't drink the fucking water no matter how close we get them to it.

Honestly, it's shared blame, many were following the advice of people they trusted to guide them.

It was hammered into our heads all through middle and high school that you needed a degree to be worth anything.

I signed up for a half day trade program and on three different occasions the guidance counselor pulled me aside to tell me that my grades were too high and I was too intelligent for that program. I don't consider myself anything more than average intelligence with a knack for being able to learn knew things quickly, I wasn't any kind of academic standout by any means, they just used those programs to ship the dumb kids out of the school for half a day.

Years later I actually got a call from her to go do an estimate at her house. I gave her my normal pricing....they passed because it was too expensive.

At the advice of both my parents and my teachers I ended up getting an AAS at a trade school because "you need some kind of degree". Luckily it only cost me about 10 grand, and I got some lifelong friends out of it, but it was 3 years that I could have been just learning on a job somewhere.

I haven't used that degree once, I didn't even go into the field I trained in.

Loads of my friends got generic business degrees because they had no idea what to do, and a lot of them ended up working construction anyway because they all got out of college right about the time the last recession really kicked off. A lot of those same guys finally circled back around and started their own businesses, one even called me and thanked me for being an example, he was too scared to ever leave his job or do his own thing, and watched me with no money in the bank just say "Fuck it, I quit, I'm going out on my own", and followed suit.

I can believe it. Our day care bill is a mortgage payment in itself. $1500 a month for one kid.

Canada is an example of what happens when you pump easy credit into real estate. We're not quite at their level of absurdity in the real estate market but we're close behind them. And in some cities we actually are ahead of them.

It now takes almost 8x the median household income to afford an avg home in Canada, whereas for boomers it was only 2-4x.

Attached File


Fortunately some Canadian politicians on the right are able to identify the socialist root of the affordability problem and are messaging accordingly.




His message is correct and will resonate better than the boomer message of "don't buy an iPhone, or drink Starbucks if you want to afford a home that is 4x more expensive in real terms than when I purchased mine you lazy millennial fucks"

Ouch!  

But a life of 80 hour work weeks, isn't a life.

It's hard as an employer that cares too.

Last year I was paying my laborer $16/hr, this year I saw a sign at Dunkin while we stopped for coffee that they were paying $15/hr.

I told the kid "Fuck that, we work way harder than them, you'll see $18/hr in your next check".

He made some really good leaps in work ethic this year and ended up finishing the year making $20/hr. I figure he'll be at $22-$23 by the end of next season unless he really shows me something exceptional and I bump him to $25. I was paying a finisher that works part time $30/hr, he asked for more this year so he's at $50/hr now.

I have to pass that cost on to my customers, and it makes my comp rates climb too, and it further devalues the wages below that shelf so it's going to be a constant game of catch up now.

Like I said, I don't want the help struggling to pay the bills, I want them to learn, become better workers, and see that it gets them more earning potential. The kid should be able to take his woman out on a Friday night for dinner, movies, drinks, whatever, and not have to spend 1/2 his check to do it.

People want all the fancy expensive stuff as soon as they graduate college. They don't tend to knock out debt and live cheap, they immediately go out and acquire more. The new SUV, new furnishings, more CC debt, [which they probably already have anyways] skip the starter house and go for the middle life one [which unfortunately tends to be what is mostly available]

Being in debt is just how people nowadays live. And they live that way their entire life. Buy ANYTHING that costs over $500 [hell, less then that in truth] and the first thing you are asked is if you want to put that on credit for XX A month. Does anyone actually save for that occasional big purchase now? I saved a couple years for a new zero turn. And yes, I was asked if I wanted to buy on credit as soon as I made my decision of what model I wanted by the salesman.

Nothing wrong with debt IF that debt can be serviced and can make you money. Most personal debt is not that type of debt and that is where people get into trouble. Some, no issue, college loans + SUV loan + CC debt + a big house loan, that gets people into trouble. Not talking about debt with your partner and not knowing how much they carry or much more they are accruing monthly, big issues down the road which then tends to lead to divorce [money issues are high on the list of why people divorce] which then tends to create even more debt.

If you can't service your debt and save for the future then you have too much debt.

Your post tells everybody reading it that you're likely from the Low IQ Left.  

And your post tells me you haven’t read the thread. At all.


Way to be.  

You just made yourself look like a moron.

Buy. A. Smaller. House.

I bought my first house at 19. It was 60k, in CALIFORNIA. It was a piece of shit and needed a complete remodel. I made 80k a year working on offshore drilling rigs. I remodeled it and sold for $215k before the housing market collapsed and got the hell out of California.


Also, this is the biggest issue, the millennial generation doesn’t understand starting small and building.

We all get the same choices, for the most part:

-Get a designated driver, or don’t and get a dui and effectively remove us from some good jobs when young

-wear a condom, or don’t and have a kid before we are ready

-Go to college or go to work

-Continue working a dead end, low wage job, or find something better

-Buy a new truck or buy a piece of crap used one

I’m a millennial too, but just barely and just a touch older than you. FYI.

Didn’t mean to come off snarky, as I’ve always enjoyed your posts and you come off as a humble guy.

In many ways your work ethic is even more admirable given that you had/have options.

TBH the brainlet class in this thread sounds like this:


Attached File


>Slurps
>Chortling gently
>"g'guhh.... ... Avocado Toast hurrrrrrrr"

Sorry lads, pack it up, everyone born decades ago are simply better than the people they raised because, uh, _________________? Reasons.
Checkmate.

My rule is not to take on personal debt at all if it can be avoided.

My debt is always business related, and I expect at minimum the service life of whatever I buy to be double that of the loan term, so once it's paid off it's making me money the rest of the time.

I really want a decked out RZR, but unlike half the people in town, I refuse to take on a $300-$500 monthly payment for a toy that loses value each time I take it on a ride. When it's time for me to get one (when I can afford it without taking away from something else, like our planned addition), I'm walking into the dealer with a check.

That's the thing now, starting small is nearly unobtainable.

I mentioned earlier about paying 70 grand for our house in 2008, it would now list at much higher (we have done some work to it and I added a shop on the property). Earning potential for the same jobs we had at the time has not increased as much as the cost has.

What makes it worse, is a lot of people are going to just pay what they have to and bite the bullet, and the next time the market tanks they are going to be upside down, making it even worse for them because now they have an asset they can't unload without taking a loss.

No, there are degrees in many fields that students know are not decent income earners. Five minutes doing job searches would easily show them that. Other fields, yeah, it's harder to determine, if you are very good you can make a LOT of money from that degree, so so, you'll be scratching for life. [lawyer/law is one of those IMHO]

A generic business degree just means your name is among close to 400K tossed out into the market yearly. Dime a dozen, easy to get,  it can be a great start but you had better be able to make yourself an outlier somehow.

Your last part is the one convenient thing always overlooked in these economic or job threads. Who raised and educated these kids prior to them entering the workforce? Who trained and mentored these kids after they entered the workforce?

*crickets*

Ironic considering the job market now.  If it had been this good when I was a teenager I’d be extremely wealthy by now.

Unrealistic expectations are a REAL problem in modern day America.

You don’t DESERVE anything, you ONLY GET what you earn / work for.  This included good paying jobs, as much as it included expensive houses, and vehicles and lifestyles. You don’t deserve a high paying job, you have to earn it, possibly be lucky as well.

There is no “ normal “ or set standard for what you should have / own / earn etc. being poor is as normal as being rich.

If you work your ass off and make dumb decisions and never have more than a apartment, that’s normal.  If you work hard and make good decisions retiring at 50 and owning multiple houses is normal. If your skilled and motivated succeeding is normal, if your skilled but lazy it’s normal to fail. If you never take responsibility for failing, you will always fail.

Why should we have bought a smaller house?  We can comfortably afford this one, our monthly budget is fine.  

We wanted a cheaper one but that involved buying crappy houses with fairly major issues, or in crappy areas.

Our house isn't even a McMansion, only 1800sqft.  We plan on being here until our kids (when we have them) are grown. So we bought once, cried once.

I plugged in the median millennial income of $47,000, the median home price of $375,000 and increased the down payment until PITI was less than 28% of interest. That was at almost 60%. 60% down to get a payment that you should be taking on. At 20% down the $1800 payment would murder the finances of someone making $4,000 a month and the bank would turn you away.

My current home is what most would call a starter home, for my area. I bought it and remodeled it as an investment and am poised to make $150,000 on it in 27 months. It’s impossible for the median household to make the payment after 20 or 30% doen, let alone the median person.

The generation that told them they had to get a degree in order to progress in life. The generation that insisted on college degrees for hiring entry level positions. The generation that told the rest of us, it doesnt matter what your degree is in, just go get one.

Good for you. My first house was a condo that I paid $144,000 for. I sold in 2009 for a loss, the guy that bought it sold it at a los for $52,000.

It finally got back to what I paid for it in 2020 and now it is worth $195,000.

For a one bedroom condo in Arizona.

I think kids are being told that a lot more now though.

At the time you could hop online, see some job postings and the required degree and say "Yeah, that sounds interesting" and the guidance counselor was basically a pimp for the colleges, ushering kids into any program and saying "This will help you get a good job".

Looking back now it was obvious, but as naive teens, hearing from every angle that we needed to go to college for anything, just pick something, we didn't have any real voices of reason stepping in.

Like I said though, it's shared blame, we should have done more research beyond just the primitive internet of the time.

See once upon a time, a man that was 5'7", 160lbs dripping wet, and had NEVER set foot in a gym and didn't have a gym body - could at 18 years old and without serious money, secure mating rights to a virgin woman who is fertile, and never had a ho phase.
He didn't have to be a professional comedian and he had no fear of being me-too'd if she decided he was a big meanie-head after the fact.

With his highschool educaiton he could gain lifetime employment, get his life rolling in his 20s, get married, have kids, buy a home, have transportation that wasn't the bus, send his kids to college, etc.

And that wasn't how kings lived. That was an expected norm for some seriously average people, with some seriously average brains.

Oh um, nevermind. The world has not changed AT ALL, not socially, not economically - everyone back then was better, despite the fact that by their own descriptors they'd be basically totally uncompetitive and unmarried in today's landscape.

Right? it was a race to the bottom in the early 2000's when looking for work.

You basically took what was offered and that was that.

Anyone entering the job market in the last two years is at a major advantage to leverage for wages. I bet it really pisses off some of the old guard too, watching fresh faces come in, demand more than they make, and actually get it just so they can get positions filled.

GD Boomer preparing to tell a Millenial Zoomer they need to cut back on their nut coal consumption and eat avacado toast raw if they want to make it as gooderer as they did - Colorized Circa 2022.

I don't think most parents told their kids to take stupid courses and get degrees in idiotic fields.

I wouldn't have helped my kid out financially with even a dime if he had decided lesbian basket weaving philosophy was the degree he wanted. I'd have bought a Corvette instead.

Exactly. Huge swaths of millennials followed directions as prescribed by every parent, person of status, and authority figure in their lives.

Advice for Millennials to Make It*:
Go to college
It doesn't matter what for
The paper is what matters
If you want to be worth anything, you must go to college
Success is dependent on having a degree
Anything less is for the dumb kids
(*results may vary, but probably not. Trust us)

The reality:
Lots of people went to college that shouldn't have
To pay for this, requirements were adjusted/eliminated, government backed the loans, resulting in easily available money
Easily available money to large numbers of people in a "required" pursuit resulted in prices rising
Under this degree "requirement to have a middle class life at minimum", people that shouldn't have been there, needed simplified degrees. Additionally colleges wanted to maintain this revenue stream.
School admin obliged, as well as giving leeway to out there professors to develop degree programs to fill gaps, so you end up with far out useless degrees.
"Immigration" continued, adding to labor pool, depressing wages across a significant portion of the board as well as increasing demand for housing and all associated needs, with the added bonus of a shifting electorate
People graduated with a degree, any degree, as that was what was said to do.
Reality did not agree with the previously given advice.

Lots of people bought into a system (college degree at any cost) that was sold as the only way to make it. Now they're shackled to a wagon full of rocks to pull up a hill with more rocks continually filling the wagon and the people that sold them the wagon and shackles are laughing at them.

Back in those days good skilled jobs were readily available. Those jobs have largely gone to Asia now.

Man my concern is for those boys who are turning 18-20 now. They enter a world where Google^TM was always a thing.

I got to see glimpses of the world when it was normal, not the cultural rot we live in now. Like the child in Dark Knight Rises, they were "born in the prison"

I'm worried about them. If it's too late for us, okay, but if it's devolving, we've got a problem on our hands.

If we don't return to REAL free markets and real capitalism, we will get "haha that wasn't REAL communism!!!!"

So if you don’t go to Starbucks for 30 years you can put a down payment on a house?

Everyone wants to be a first time home buyer at 50.

This is the ugly truth that denial won't remedy. Fact is, most of us are working hard to significantly benefit select others over ourselves, which is fine if you can come out with a worthwhile financial picture for the effort, but more & more across the board, the "system" seems to be awfully rigged to favor the "big guys" at the expense of the little guys. Wages have been stagnant for a long time, with the recent labor shortages only just starting to bring them up, but we'll see if that holds or is temporary to the situation. Regardless, if so many see the current system not meeting their needs or prospective goals, they will turn to something that does seem more promising, be it true or false.

Frankly, the way I see big money getting bailed out by small money while small money takes it up the ass, I don't blame anyone for losing faith. We have a crony corporate-political system running this country, not free markets, & it's no bueno.



Indeed.

Let me clue you in on a secret.  Almost nobody ever has enough money to get what they want in life, and this has been true for every person who has ever lived.  The more you have, the more you will find that you need.  Every one of us, at every level of wealth, is largely making do and living with compromises.

The choice that all successful people must make, and make young, is to defer gratification.  Our civilization has become so overwhelmed with wealth that young people no longer understand that being young means being poor.  No young person has ever been able to afford what his parents can.

Unfortunately, the way it works is that when you're young, if you ever want to become successful, you have to work.  Hard.  Not hard like you think you are working, I mean 80-hours-a-week hard.  You can do it when you're young because you don't have any money to do anything fun with, you have the energy to work, and you don't have any kids whose many demands will come to dominate your schedule.

When you spend your 20s working your ass off, and saving as much of it as you can, you'll reach your 30s in a position where you can afford to have kids.  You'll have so much work experience behind you that you will be able to work fewer hours, but make more money, because all that hard work will have turned out to be an investment in yourself -- that experience will make you so much more valuable to employers than your peers who squandered their 20s seeking nothing but self-gratification.

Then in your 30s you continue the grind, and now you have to save for things your kids will need, like clothes, school supplies, braces, and money for activities, and (if you can) money for college.

So, when do you finally get to spend your money on self-gratification?  You get to do that once the kids have left the nest, and you've given them at least as good a start in life as the one your parents gave to you.  Or I suppose if you're gay and don't have kids, you can start with the self-gratification in your 30s!  (Where do you think the term "gay" came from?  They have so much disposable income!)

Can you defer self-gratification that long?  Or do you think you are entitled to have your self-gratification funded by the theft-through-taxation of people who have?  People of the latter kind are responsible for growing the government into the wealth-destroying Leviathan that it has become.  So sure, we have to do something to shrink the damn government.  But you also have to do your part to succeed.

The world has always been changing, adapt and overcome. Have you ever wondered why many folks no matter what gen they are from make it in life?

BTW before the "ok boomer" reply I'm far from a boomer and might be a millennial depending on who you ask or what stupid chart one looks at. Generations mean nothing to those that are determined.

I get financial advice from poor people all the time, and I ignore it.

Let me put it another way.  It is a LOT easier to stay rich than it is to become rich.

This thread could go on forever.

There are definitely some younger dipshits jacking life up from multiple angles, deeds, expectations, etc.

But there are also some solid, hardworking, traditional American values ones doing all the right things.

And the reality is for the youngest millenials and the older Gen Z coming out of school, undergrad, professional and graduate education, and fairly early on those or other career paths-
Is a very different job market, economy, and outlook than we boomers and x-ers had.

I don’t give a crap about some whiny, lazy, can’t cut it young adult.

But the ones with all the brains, effort, work, sense, etc. of previous generations are kind of getting the shaft.

The rules and the game are very different.

The cold hard fact is a lot of older posters here are mediocre losers that crushed it due to luck and circumstances and different times, who would not even get on the porch, let alone a foot in the door under current circumstances.

Did a guy graduating with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, etc. graduate to such massive educational costs, relative lack of ability scholarships, bullshit that would get them fired, depressed starting salaries / wage stagnation due to H1Bs, cancellation of projects, rescinded job offers, etc. that one that graduated in 2021 did? With disproportionate housing costs, transportation costs, insurance, etc.  No.  It’s totally different.

The last guy I was trying to explain it to in person-
Literally talking about his grandson not hitting the pavement and getting his resume out there- a kid who went to the same school as one of mine with a construction management degree- who graduated to a state with like a 90% hold/stop on commercial buildings- like it was the kids fault two of his job offers got cancelled due to COViD…
His response-
“Well, you know, in my day, well, we could have been sent of the Vietnam…”

I just fucking walked off.  

People went off to WWII for years of their lives.
Some men were in horrible conditions to be fighting in in Korea.
X-ERs were flying off to war since they were teens in the 80s and millenials were filling the ranks for GWOT for over a decade, sometimes with x-ERs twice their age on target with them hitting objectives at night.

When it happens we'll just say the election was stolen.

Maybe 5% of millenials will ever amount to a pile of beans in life, and I'm saying that as a millenial who employs millenials. I absolutely loath my generation as an employer, most of them are worthless lazy fucks that can't think past their nose. I just had one such millenial quit a job with no notice. This person, when hired, was made aware that more responsibility and tasks could be added to their plate with additional salary if they wanted it. They ended up not being able to hack the job and did less than 50% of the same work a 60 yr old man was doing before they retired.

If you weren't a kid graduating high school in the 2000-2008 time frame, it's hard to understand.  Literally everyone told us we would be failures if we didn't go to college.  Many of our parents didn't go and they preached it to us because it was preached to them.  "Your kids have to get a degree if you want them to be better off than you."  I actually chose not to go to a traditional college when I graduated. I started off deciding to go to a two year tech school.  I caught so much shit from so many people that it convinced me to transfer to a private school.

It all worked out for me now. I've been extremely fortunate the last 5 years (especially the last two years).  Many people weren't so fortunate though.

I bought a 1500sqft house at the end of last year.  It needs some work and I'll have to put a decent chunk of money into it.  That house cost almost $150,000 in bum fuck OH/WV/PA area.  I have a work from home job for a large company that pays pretty damn good.  The median household income for this area is something like $35-40k (Mistake made, median household income is $50k). HOUSEHOLD income.  Houses under $100k aren't too great around here.  I'd rather not own one.  They'd suck all the money out of you.

The thing is, thats the only way anyone has anything when they retire.  If everyone spent everything they made, nobody would have anything in the bank, or in stocks, or real estate.  They would just have bigger houses and fancier cars, and take more and better vacations.

If you can exercise the self control necessary to manage a little bit of money to make more of it, why can't you do it with a lot of money?

That one rare quality is the difference between lotto winners who go broke, and ones who stay rich.  If you invest the winnings to pay you a regular investment income instead of spending them directly, they can be a sustainable oncome over your lifetime.  If you keep spending the principal until it's gone, then you're just another broke lotto winner-loser.

How do You define “Rich”?