Let me tell you a little secret:  You can BUY plywood,  sheetrock, 2x6 lumber, Tyvek, plywood, Romex,  your choice of plumbing,windows, doors, nails, even furnaces and roofing materials, same place as those contractors get 'em.
First thing though, and THIS is the " Pro Tip "  Here goes:  Acquire LAND- Dirt- A Surface on which to BUILD. Start your dirt buying EARLY, put everything you have into it, until you own enough DIRT to stack building materials on. THEN BUILD a house. Evenings, weekends,  buy  boards, assemble into house, plumb and wire as necessary.
Get your wife to help, if you have one.    Took us 5 months of weekends and evenings to build our house.

I was reading an article that said the whole "We have no future" issue is because of climate change.  Get control of the climate and all fear shall dissipate.  That kind of crap makes me have even less hope.

Nope.  Please allow me to clear it up for You Mr. Mopey:  

Most of that happens to be true.   It’s your environment.   You can’t change it, but you can change, Yourself.

It means you have to work Harder, and Smarter than your competition.    Luckily for you, your competition is busy feeling bad for themselves, getting drunk and getting high.  

Don’t compare yourself to illegal immigrants.   They barely speak english.    Let them have their low paid jobs.   Start a company and employ them.  

Don’t worry about Biden or nuclear war.   Don’t worry about things you can’t control.  

Don’t worry about the soulless whores.   Be a successful man and a good man, and you will find an equally good and worthy female.    

Here’s the secret:   It’s up to You.  Only You.    Nobody else cares.  

You are not inherently deserving of a good life, or a long life, or happiness, or passing on your genes.      You are nothing but a stray cat competing for survival.     We all are.  

Please pay attention now:  I’m not just saying “The world owes you nothing”.  

I’m saying, it doesn’t know you exist.    

Do whatever you will with your life, but in a very literal sense, you only have yourself; to credit, or to blame.

We’ve been conditioned to expect that here in America, but really, it hasn’t worked that way in history very often.     It’s a Hope, but certainly not an expectation, outside of America.  

Also, wealth and success usually doesn’t last through 3 generations.   Essentially, each generation is weaker and a little more spoiled.  

What did your Grandfather do for a living, to afford a million dollar house?

Who in GD ever said that?    Go ahead and post the link.

This

Anyone from any socioeconomic class that buys their own groceries or has access to Zillow can see it

Again, your pointing out obvious things, this time about personal responsibility, none of which i disagree with, but don't really address the point of this thread or the point i was making. If you're advice is "its up to you to make the best of the current environment" when the discussion is centered around the environment itself, your missing the point. Yes, ultimately, taking 100% personal responsibility will lead to the optimal outcome, but that shouldn't bar or negate pointing out the reality of the current economic and social direction our country is headed in.

I can't tell if you're post was directed at me personally or my generation so i will divulge my situation. I'm 31, married, engineering degree, kids on the way. Started working at 12 years old, live below my means, healthy 401K, have one rental property, make 6 figures, stay physically fit, stockpile food/guns/logistics gear, train firearms & fieldcraft, hunt, set goals and work toward them, read about investing & self development, working on developing multiple streams of income (have 3 now), etc.

I'm trying to do everything in my power to get ahead and raise my future children to be solid, productive, conservative Americans. However, when i look to the future and envision the current trends extrapolated and think about what my future children will facing it really worries me.  
Unlike many boomers who envision themselves as rough and tumble frontiersman who carved there living out of raw soil, and work ethic is the 100% determinate to success. I recognize that by the pure luck of being born in America, into a world hegemonic power, with the world reserve currency i have been afforded the ability to achieve good standard of living working a 9-5 job, however those same circumstances will likely not be the same for future generations. I will be able to sit down and have a frank conversation & empathy with my children & younger generations to explain they will likely have to work harder and get less return on investment than I did. Then explain the principles on which this country was founded & led to its success, of which we are currently throwing to the wayside. The same conversation i was lucky enough to have with my father.

In 15 years I plan to retire with my pension, and 401K their better be a future.

We have a lot in common.  I’m as frustrated as you are.  Things are getting harder for our children, and it doesn’t have to be that way.    
90% of this angst and social destruction, is brought on by Inflation.  

All those good lessons you learned from your father?  Pass them on to others of your generation.  A lot of them didn’t have the benefit of a father’s wisdom.

Otoh, We have to be careful we don’t teach our children Negativity.  
My dad was never financially successful, but he taught me to dream, and that’s made all the difference.  

Real Estate ownership is the cornerstone of a civil society.

3rd post nails it

Moms worked, got pregnant, dropped out of the workforce until the kids went to school all day, then they went back to work. Lots of younger people have this thought that only one parent worked outside the house almost all the time and they are mistaken, after WW2 the shift to females working outside the house was pretty high. [they started in WW2 due to male labor shortages]

The late 60's, the 70's and early 80's had a LOT of turmoil in them, there really was only a couple entire decades where the economy really was pretty great for US workers as a rule, after WW2 simply because Europe and Asia was trashed and we had a trained workforce AND manufacturing and the early mid 80's after inflation/interest was gotten under reasonable control, not always in the best way though.

It's funny, one thing I hear NO ONE saying a word about is taxes nowadays, be the fed, state, local, property, add on's or anything else. For the actual typical working person,  [and not the welfare crowd]  all taxes, when added together eat up a huge chunk of spending power. Hell, who would have thought their plain old house would have property taxes in the 5 figure range and that's not even all that uncommon in many states.

And inflation hit's every age group pretty equally, just on different things, it's an insidious beast that way to many people never give any thought about.

It's why I am so opposed to ANY govt handouts, giveaways, aid etc for anyone foreign for anything [including their wars] welfare, illegals, student loans, govt contractors, govt employees ad nauseam. Govt overspending causes inflation. PERIOD.

That's not what leap day means but I'm glad it worked out.

I hate doomers. Just can't do it.

But there are some things to be pissed off about.

We can debate about when, where and by whom. But US culture is being replaced. Much easier and faster than I expected, but then again, we don't have long roots.

I don't think you'll get any argument on that from the vast majority of people here. If anything, the gas pedal is to the floor and we are going down a mountain.

It's over-rated AND you feel dirty later. The same thing goes for "rock star."

This is the big duh. People are generally fucking stupid and it’s always never their doing. Then they beg for more .gov to fix it for them.

Destruction of the American dream can be directly attributed to .gov bureaucracy. Home prices are through the roof due restrictions on new development and code requirents for hurricane/tornado/earthquake proof structures, forced energy efficiency, fire codes, electrical codes, plumbing codes, sidewalks, pavement codes, drainage codes.

The price of cars are out of reach due to emissions, gas mileage requirements, crashworthiness, fuel type requirements.

Food prices are impacted by insecticide requirements, and crap like cage free/free range chickens and eggs.

It's financial death by a thousand cuts. The dream is dead.

As parents, all we can do is teach them spiritual discernment. Private schooling at church is a good start.

I'm over 60 and I am pissed off at everything.

Yeah.  Me too.  F*** everything.

Wait so I’m confused, I keep getting told millenials handed out the “trophies” but they simultaneously received them themselves? Also millennials were still in high school ant the age I was doing childhood sports? Also someone in the thread pointed out they’d been seeing them since the 70’s. Your facts ain’t lining up.

He was a lawyer and law-adjacent consultant after working in-house.  I have a similar setup.  I work in-house and consult on the side.  Different fields, same ultimate focus of supporting small business development.  He was more policy based and I'm more tactical.  

In terms of percentiles, I don't know exactly what his income was but I'm in the top 1% of law earners, he was probably more top .1% but beginning in his 50's.

His kid btw never tried to do very well.  Waiting on the inheritance that still hasn't come.  BS jobs, getting high (pot) all the time, etc.  Like the 60's like, never ended, man.

"It's not a bug.  It's a feature"



H

The pulling of bootstraps that benefitted boomers was made possibly in large part by govt intervention though? Their parents never used the GI bill? The GI bill isn't some magically good govt program to jerk off veterans with hero worship. It was a way for the country as a whole to benefit from the massive pool of vetted young men who could be used to intellectually jump start our country's growth from war economy to world economy.

Here's a couple things that can be done:
1)Incentivize zoning and the construction of 'starter' homes for single income families
2)Allow for online college and career certifications and mandate that hiring businesses accept these certifications/degrees (this kills student debt and bankrupts universities)
3)Investigate pricing by hospitals and insurers related to prenatal and childbirth expenses - child birth in the US is highly fucked up relative to the world and we pay out the ass for a quality of care that doesn't measure up statistically speaking
4)Increase child tax credits for certain age brackets - young people need to have babies, cat moms in their 40s who hit their biological clock aren't really what keeps a population afloat. It's young people in their early 20s starting out that should be having lots of kids
5)Link student loan debt relief to child birth - Yeah, you'll get your college loans forgiven, but its going to be because you're having children which will benefit society. It's also proven that left leaning people vote more conservative once they have children, so this is a win-win.

Those are just 5 things that don't involve the govt fixing wages or prices, and really only 2 of them are govt intervention into the economy at all, and arguably those are to rectify mistakes that the govt already previously intervened to create.

A lot of moms didn’t drop out of the work force for the toddler years. Many kept working because costs necessitated a two income household. When the kids went to all day school, they were entrusted with other boomers to “teach” them.

I got into many vigorous debates with the liberal teachers. But yet others wonder the younger folks think like they do. They believe what they were told because both parents were working all the time and weren’t around.

As for taxes, they only serve to punish certain segments of the population. There hasn’t been a true balanced budget in my entire lifetime.

To be fair, most of GD is pissed off at everything. and doesn't see a future either.

41, there is no future. Decay even in the rich areas. Whole country has economic cancer. The people responsible exist.

Yes, that is exactly what we need more wounded people. With this surplus of money 700,000 more people requiring medical treatments and surgeries would be a non-issue

those in charge keep lowering the bar for the peasants while enriching themselves off our lives. The worst part is the mfers who got their home for $25k while the dollar was worth .90 yelling others to work harder to get a $250k house while the dollar is at. 30

I am 60.

In my 20s……I was appropriately poor.  I didn’t have shit and I scavenged to get by.  I wasn’t pissed, jealous , or defeated.  
However, I was confident that if I worked hard……I could put together a successful future.  

My 4 kids are in their mid-late 20s.  They are all successful and thriving.  I believe they feel the same.

In my 20s, I possessed a unconscious confidence in the United States…….as a whole.  This is gone.  This is gone.  I fear my own government more than any foreign entity.  My children feel the same.  This is the difference…….as far as I can tell.

My old man would've smacked the shit out of me for saying the shit some of you say.

Fucking whah.

When they're brought up as coddled little shits where everyone gets a participation trophy and life smacks them in the face, they don't know what to do.  Everything bad that happens to them is someone else's fault.

Just wait till the next generation who has drag queen story telling sessions "grows" up.


And yes the third post nailed it.

I can see why their wealth has been given to foreign governments and immigrants. Imagine America's wealth without foreign wars and reasonable immigration policy....

Back in the day, many peeps would buy dirt and pour a basement, put roofing on the grade level floor and live in it until they could afford to build a house on the base.  A good friend of mine did that.  He ended up living in the basement and his adult kids lived up stairs.

In my 20's, as a poor Marine from Missouri, I went to a Marine friend's parent's house in Beverly Hills for a weekend.  We went to another friend's parent's mansion in BH for a huge party.  This was my first exposure to entitled rich kids.  It sure opened my eyes.  I was never jealous, just surprised at how much of a cunt people could be who could afford anything, and had not earned it.

My Marine friend was estranged from his parents and was kicked out of the house for shoplifting.  I pretty much forced him to go talk to his Dad and make things right. I had no idea how wealthy some people were.

Those who excel will be the ones who put down the phones, step away from the computers, and get to work pursuing their ambitions.  Most of today's discontent stems from allowing one's self to be inundated by doom propaganda.

Just say no to doom propaganda.

My ganrdparents late 70s house, on land, was somewhere around $70k (1900ish sq ft), now valued around $500k even with minimal updates.

60 year old houses in my neighborhood on 1/4ac lots with no updates are going for $350k+

Rent on 1200sq ft is around $2000

It's not sustainable

Fantastic. I would love nothing more, however, plots of land are ridiculously expensive in my area for 1. Number 2 they are usually cash only. NO. 3, I probably have to build it to spec for hurricanes which means concrete instead of wood. Not sure how much more that wood be.

Oh look, another thread where GD extrapolates details and applies them across the board!

Nobody claims America is lost, that you can't work hard and be successful, that there is no hope, or that America is no longer the best nation in the world.
But it is undeniable that the conditions are less favorable for young people now than in the past.  

The simple fact that college and housing costs have far outpaced earnings for a decade or two is all the evidence you need.  

Like everything else, fault lies with "the system" that has distorted the free market, and by "system" I mean uncle sugar - government guaranteed student loans have fueled college tuition growth, government keeping interest rates low fueled housing costs, and government printing money and handing it out has fueled inflation.  

I'm 21yrs and pretty optimistic about the future, like yea the economy might be in the toilet but I'm determined to get what I want out of life. 5$ milk gallons and 6$ egg dozens arnt going to make me give up