Quote:
Originally Posted by JMintzer
Exactly. My middle daughter and her husband both have good jobs (both 6 figures +), save like crazy and have a very nice nest egg set aside to buy a home. No student debt for either of them, both funding their 401Ks for retirement...
Unfortunately, they are looking in Arlington, VA, where a "fixer upper" is $750-$1 million...
Yes, they could afford the low end of that, but their mortgage payments would be $6K/month... And that doesn't include remodeling of the very dated homes...
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I am not directing my observations specifically at your offspring, but having observed mine, and those of close relatives and friends, I see many of them feeling put out by how hard it is to become wealthy. However, I see a lot of decisions being made that are making it harder than it needs to be.
Included among these are choices to live in high cost-of-living areas. True, the jobs pay more than they might in lower cost-of-living areas, but by the time you factor in costs of commuting, in time and money, and how much of that extra income gets chewed up in taxes and real estate costs, one might often do better living somewhere else.
More obvious to me is the tendency to refuse to "do without". I know young people who aren't saving a nickel for retirement, but must drive late-model Audis, or BMWs, and whose kids must participate in expensive activities, and they absolutely must take vacations to Disney World, and must "upgrade" the home they could barely afford in the first place,,,etc etc you get the point.
I know this makes me sound like my depression era dad, but living within one's means means occasionally saying "nope, can't do that"...and a lot of young people complaining about how hard it is to grow wealth simply haven't learned how to do that.