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Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#291

Post by rukittenme »

api wrote: post #120
rukittenme wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not accounting for the higher interest rates of the 1980s. Which home would you prefer to buy: $150,000 at 15% over 30 years. $350,000 at 4% over 30 years. Hint : they both have approximately the same total loan cost and payment. You can do this calculation with your parents. My home cost $350k at 3.8%. My parents bought my childhood home for $88k at 8%. Adjust my parents' home price for inflation and run the…

Down payments are the monkey wrench here. The requirement to have a down payment means high prices basically lock people out of homeownership, period. That in turn limits ability to build wealth at all, even at a crappy interest rate.

I put $15,000 down or 4.2% of the total loan amount.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#292

Post by natalyarostova »

rubicon33 wrote: post #38

My wife and I are not having kids. If you could sum it up into one short explanation as to why: My wife and I don't believe that the future is going to be a better place. Chief among the reasons are wealth inequality and buying power. If I can barely afford to buy a house now with a great job, I shudder to think what my kids would be faced with.

What regions/times do you wager would have been better than today?

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#293

Post by war1025 »

api wrote: post #120
rukittenme wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not accounting for the higher interest rates of the 1980s. Which home would you prefer to buy: $150,000 at 15% over 30 years. $350,000 at 4% over 30 years. Hint : they both have approximately the same total loan cost and payment. You can do this calculation with your parents. My home cost $350k at 3.8%. My parents bought my childhood home for $88k at 8%. Adjust my parents' home price for inflation and run the…

Down payments are the monkey wrench here. The requirement to have a down payment means high prices basically lock people out of homeownership, period. That in turn limits ability to build wealth at all, even at a crappy interest rate.

The main way that owning a home allows someone to build wealth is that it forces them to put money towards something productive rather than blowing it on stupid things.

My experience from buying a house two years ago is that though I suspected it, I never truly realized how many amenities were covered by my rent. I went from paying $30/month in utilities, etc. to ~$400 /month. I also now live 10 miles further away from where I work / hang out.

Granted, we live in a house that is ~2x as big as our apartment, plus two car garage. But if you factored out strictly the various recurring expenses I now pay from my previous rent, it is extremely close to breaking even. And that isn't including the increased cost of owning / operating two cars that now drive ~60 more miles a day between the two of them.

Our net worth increased much faster while we were renting than now that we have a house.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#294

Post by asdff »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #39

> Less than three in ten Millennials expect to stay at their current job for the next five years. Well yeah. I can stick around my current company for 5 years and get a 2-4% increase each year, or job hop every 2-3 years and get a 20% raise each time. With a market like this, why wouldn't you job hop? Loyalty to a company only inhibits you.

It's hard to job hop if you aren't already in an area with lots of hoppable jobs. That really only covers a handful of metros in the U.S., and if your school doesn't draw recruiters from these places it's all the more difficult to get your foot in the door when these companies have mountains of just as qualified local candidates they can pick through. Then if you do get all these interviews you have to not only take time off, but book travel, potentially burning airline tickets and hotel stays if it doesn't pan out. You almost need a buddy with a free couch if you are job hunting in NYC or LA. That's why I left the midbest as fast as I could, because I know how easily people get trapped out here with very limited prospects and mobility.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#295

Post by itronitron »

tathougies wrote: post #214
crooked-v wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some simple examples, inflation-adjusted home prices have gone up by a factor of 6 and inflation-adjusted education prices have gone up by a factor of 3 over the past few generations [1], while inflation-adjusted average wages have only gone up by $2/hour [2]. That single mom would have had a dramatically easier time providing housing and education for kids even with lower purchasing power for most consumer goods…

Home sizes have also shot up by a significant margin. What's the % change in price per square foot?

price per sq ft is probably going down as home sizes go up, largely due to location. Most new homes are built where land is available, further out from city centers, and therefore have a lower price per square foot despite being larger.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#296

Post by vkou »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #9

Social media's ills, rising wealth and income inequality, rising sea levels, mass extinction event, crumbling roads, shit wages, corruption in government and industry, governments overwhelmingly filled with representatives of other generations with different priorities...there is a huge list of reasons to be pessimistic and they are constantly thrown in our faces online.

The part where pessimism is listed as a problem is the icing on the cake.

Millenials and Gen Z don't want optimism and hope. We want the other generation to be as frustrated and angry as we are.

That'd bring about change. Well, quite recently it did, but change in the wrong direction.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#297

Post by opportune »

jjoonathan wrote: post #236
oldjokes wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The really weird thing about wage stagnation is that there are millions of jobs going unfilled, companies are so desperate for people that they can't find anyone and are just dumping cash into stock buybacks instead of raising wages. Something is fundamentally broken in the labor market, it is not responding to supply & demand forces as it has in the past. I am not sure what terminology to use to describe what's goin…

They don't need people. They always complain about needing people because it's always in their interest to do so, but the fact that they don't just raise wages strongly suggests that they don't know how to profitably employ additional people and that "we need people" is just a bunch of hot air. This dilemma, and many like it, vanish entirely if you stop paying attention to what people say and start paying attention t…

Yes, if you need people, raise prices until you can afford the people that are available. The actual industries that do need people (like tech) have done that.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#298

Post by noxToken »

challenger22 wrote: post #63
syn0byte wrote: post #15

A single mother working as a waitress at Denny's in the 1980's had more spending power than a college educated cubicle drone in 2019; Let's talk about how is social media's fault! Twice in the last 20 years - more than any other time in US history combined - The Presidential election went to the candidate that LOST the popular vote; These generations just lack a proper understanding of civics! The beatings will conti…

If you let sensationalized news stories dominate your worldview, you will give in to apathy. If your strongest moral convictions are about events you cannot influence, redirect those convictions to something that is inside your locus of control. What I urge people is: be conscientious in your day-to-day tasks. If you can see your efforts contributing to people's happiness, the apathy will disappear. Society is built…

Sometimes it's hard for apathy to completely disappear when you're one emergency away from financial ruin. A 2nd year teacher in the US doesn't make that much, but the amount of youth lives impacted can be a huge net positive. It's hard to not be cynical know how much of your personal time and money you put in while receiving peanuts in return.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#299

Post by vkou »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #202
graenxa wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems climate change is well on its way to being solved This is laughable untrue. EMISSIONS may have peaked (I'm not certain that's the case long-term), there's still plenty of carbon in the atmosphere and continuing to be added. The effects of carbon emissions will continue to compound on themselves[0]. We are still well on our way to >2 degree global warming where island nations will be eaten up by the sea, we…

The world is building and deploying solar panels at break-neck speeds. Electric cars and other pollution reduction measures are coming online. I'm well aware of the risks from existing coal burning plants, new plants being built in China/India/etc, shipping, feedback loops with stored CO2 in the ocean, all of it. It's nice to imagine that the world can turn on a dime, but it can't. The global "situation" is going to…

> The world is building and deploying solar panels at break-neck speeds.

It doesn't matter how many solar panels are deployed[1] What matters is how many gasoline cars, coal plants, and gas plants are going dark.

Net-over-net, they aren't.

[1] And this decade of break-neck speeds got us to... 2% solar deployment. We may hit 5% in another decade - and we need to get emissions to net zero in six years, if we want to avoid catastrophe.

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