I had a few good weeks!

Doesn’t anybody want to point out that there was a comma between “too” and “many boomers “?

Years back homes weren't McMansions. They were in the 1,000 to 1,200 square foot range and usually had no garage. The young people now want 3,000+ feet with a 2 or 3 car garage. Marble or granite counter tops, custom cabinets, hard wood flooring and on and on. All that costs mega bucks. A bunch of years back I sold real estate. The son and daughter-in-law of a friend had been married for a couple years and were living in an apartment. I found them a 2 year old house for $25,000 that was in excellent condition. It was 1,000 square feet, 3 small bedrooms, 1 and a half bath, with no garage on a small lot. You buy less than the maximum the mortgage company says you can borrow.

There is no possible way to verify those numbers, 47 times is just not true.
Perhaps it came from a grocery store check out line magazine

Sooooooo happy (& lucky) there was no internet, cell phones, etc., when I was growing up. All that evidence. :ohdear:

When I bought my first home it was $19,000. And I didn't have the total I needed for a down payment. So I scheduled the closing for the afternoon and went to another bank in the morning and borrowed $1,000 so I could cover it and it would not show up on my credit report.

I had just got out of college and started working for IBM and made $8,500 a year. So I did have a decent jobs, made about 40% of the home cost and thought I had signed our life away with a 20 year mortgage. Today the ratio between salary and home cost is a bigger gap in most places, but mortgage loans now are 30 years. And the houses are bigger. Mine was a 4 room cape, no garage, unfinished up stairs. I finished the upper level myself, added some fencing and landscape and sold it 2 years later for $26,900 and thought I made a killing. By then I was over $10,000, my wife was a school teacher making $5,000 so we bought a bigger house for $45,000. Even had a 2 car garage. And the journey was on.

Going out on a limb assuming the government numbers are correct, it's really not too hard to believe. The youth (being generous here) lives paycheck to paycheck, saves nothing, and spends every dime on 65 inch flat screen TVs, latest iPhone, and BMWs, and is left with $10 in his wallet. Before retiring I worked with many of these people and understood their pecuniary behaviors quite well. Doing the math: $10 times 47 equals $470. Yup, makes sense to me. This is a total non-issue.

I remember compound interest back before the Savings and Loans went away, but where can you receive that kind of compound interest today? I remember back in the mid seventies 7% compounded daily saving accounts and mortgages at 8%. I thought the only ones with compound interest daily were the charges on credit card balances? Please let me know what bank I can receive compound interest on a daily or monthly timeline? I find it very unfortunate that the younger generation barely receives 1% on a savings account for their future retirement. Little incentive to save when the cost of living is at least double that. Of course financial investment companies can promise the world away to receive their money, the collapses of 2001 and 2008 can eliminate, and did, what they had invested. Of course the investment companies never lose their money and have a curious way of maintaining their wealth (ours). The lower middle class has not seen the raises in their wages as the upper middle class and above. I am still employed 40 hours a week and making the same as I was in 1985. This class divide is growing worse each year and the pensions that many enjoy will not be there for them. I pray for those that are younger that they will have as much as we have been blessed with.

Wish it was true but not... back in the day when just starting out making $20000 was good. Nowadays these kids seem to be starting with 6 figure salaries.

We were both 22. He made $2.05 an hour and I made $33 a week. We had dated and saved for four years and had the required down payment for a conventional loan on a brand new home.(12K) One car garage, three bedroom, basement, one bath.

How we managed was me cutting our hair, having one car, carefully planning to cook cheap meals and carrying lunch and not buying foolish things...even not buying some needed things. We did without and we were very careful with our money. We never got money from our folks.

I'd like to see their definition of net worth. If you go to most net worth calculators on line, they ignore both pensions and social security. If you have a $1,000.00 per month pension, its net present value in today's dollars is a relatively big number, depending on your age. Same for social security. These should both be considered assets and included in any reasonable net worth calculation, which will drive the number pretty high. IMHO.

A $1,000/mth pension at age 70 is worth less than $150,000 NPV. Not a big number.

I default to the old safe withdrawal rule of 4%. Thus the 12,000 per year is worth 300,000. Actually more if it pays for your lifetime and if it has a spouse payment after you die worth even more. I consider it a part of the bond portfolio in a balance portfolio so a rough estimate works for me.

That's not the math.......... DPV over the life expectancy.

Even though my pension is a fixed income, from a risk perspective I consider it as stock within my overall portfolio. That’s because the assets backing my pension are heavily invested in stocks and as a result the funding status of my pension is subject to fluctuations in the stock market. Obviously the NPV of a pension is subject to some key assumptions such as mortality and the rate used to discount future cash flows.