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Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

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Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#111

Post by hotpotamus »

ejb999 wrote: post #107
hotpotamus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with our medical system, children are like a reverse lottery ticket (to borrow a term I saw elsewhere on HN) - if they're born with a medical issue, they may take millions in care - something I've seen personally happen to coworkers. I've got enough anxiety trying to maintain my own health insurance.

couples with two generous 6 figures salaries are not generally the people worried about unexpected huge medical expenses - they have good jobs, and good insurance.

Tech jobs have had massive layoffs in the last few years. I've literally seen couples at the same employer laid off together. Certainly I've seen many colleagues with young children laid off and scrambling. My coworker literally told me a few weeks ago that her husband was laid off and as a result they had had to switch to our company insurance which was less generous. Tying your family's healthcare to the whims of your employer is one more risk that Americans are expected to endure.

It's merely one factor among many, I'm sure, but don't the results, ever decreasing fertility, speak for themselves?

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#112

Post by throwup238 »

gustavus wrote: post #7
pmg102 wrote: post #2

(2020)

That's a pretty important confounding factor. I wonder if there is anything that happened in 2020 that would've made acquiring new housing more difficult. Seriously any "social science" that was done during the pandemic should probably be thrown out, because of the massive unprecedented alterations to all of society. Even if you found something out not impacted by the pandemic how would you know? Relying on informati…

We need before, during, and after studies. There's no reason to throw out the ones made during the pandemic, they just need to be put into a greater context and compared with what happens next.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#113

Post by ejb999 »

intrasight wrote: post #44
diogenescynic wrote: post #4

I'm in my mid 30s and have always had a decent job with relatively decent income, but the cost of living has always made it impossible to save enough fast enough to get a down payment on a home. Now I finally have one, but with interest rates it seems like a poor financial decision to buy a home when I can rent the same quality of home for half the price. I feel for kids starting out today, I can't see how they will…

Renting makes sense for many reasons. Sounds like it makes sense in your situation. Some people are too quick to buy a house for the wrong reasons. Also. remember that you can refinance if the rates drop.

you might be able to refinance if rates drop - it is not a guarantee.

If you overpay for a house, and then you owe more than it appraises for around the time you want to refinance, you are going to have a very hard time taking advantage of lower interest rates, unless you are also in a position to also pay down the mortgage as part of the re-fi.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#114

Post by camdenlock »

blueridge wrote: post #46

I think learned helplessness is a real problem. We have friends in their late 30's and early 40's who still live with multiple roommates. They're "well educated" but can't seem to hold a job, or stay in a relationship, or pay for anything. They've got subscriptions ticking away that they didn't remember they had, and then they're shocked to learn about an overdraft fee or a big credit card bill. One of them recently…

For 60 years, the machinery of our society has been laser focused on assuring people that they are victims in all avenues of life. Why should we be surprised when they and their children and their children’s children start to believe it?

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#115

Post by diogenescynic »

nradov wrote: post #85
diogenescynic wrote: post #4

I'm in my mid 30s and have always had a decent job with relatively decent income, but the cost of living has always made it impossible to save enough fast enough to get a down payment on a home. Now I finally have one, but with interest rates it seems like a poor financial decision to buy a home when I can rent the same quality of home for half the price. I feel for kids starting out today, I can't see how they will…

Saving for a down payment is largely a fool's game, at least in many areas of the country. Prices tend to rise faster than you can save thus putting you further and further behind. If you want to own your own home (and not everyone does or should) then a better approach is to take advantage of one of the various low down payment mortgage programs. Focus on credit score and cashflow rather than down payment. This is s…

If I had done that in 2015, sure. Doing it now when the Case Schiller index is at an all time high seems like a bad idea. I just don't know how many years it's going to take for things to correct--so it might end up being a waste of years I could have been building equity if prices don't drop more than the amount of equity I could have built in that time.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#116

Post by tibbydudeza »

LASR wrote: post #27

Might be an unpopular opinion, especially in North America, but I think families living together is a great thing. I have a wife and child, and we all live with my parents in a largish 6-bedroom house. They are retired and I support them financially. While they bought this house before I entered the workforce, I now pay the mortgage on this house. A few years ago we did a total rebuild of the house, and it's now a gr…

This happened in the US when most folks lived in rural areas and did farming. Families worked and lived together (the executive family) but this all changed due to industrialization and folks moving to cities which gave us the modern nuclear family.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#117

Post by RajT88 »

WalterBright wrote: post #15
diogenescynic wrote: post #4

I'm in my mid 30s and have always had a decent job with relatively decent income, but the cost of living has always made it impossible to save enough fast enough to get a down payment on a home. Now I finally have one, but with interest rates it seems like a poor financial decision to buy a home when I can rent the same quality of home for half the price. I feel for kids starting out today, I can't see how they will…

You never actually own a home anyway. The property taxes rise relentlessly every year (the rent you pay the government). Then there's all the code and zoning laws to greatly restrict what you can do with it.

Property tax is something you have leverage with the government on. You don't have to just deal with what they say you owe them.

You can sue the county to get your fair assessed value lower, in order to lower your property taxes. The HOA of a condo I once owned had to do this, because values plummeted, and the county just insisted values kept going up and we owed them more and more tax.

I know a guy who somehow pays 0 property tax on a $500k USD house (don't ask me how he finagled that, but he comes from a rich family, married into a richer family and is quite shysty).

There's also more esoteric techniques like getting some parcels rezoned as farmland (which carries little to no tax burden).

But to your point (and another commenter's), there's a variety of ways a government can assume ownership of your land, even if you own everything free and clear of any debts or owed taxes. (See: Imminent Domain) In this world, you only really own something if you have the might to defend that ownership.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#118

Post by mmh0000 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #43
LASR wrote: post #27

Might be an unpopular opinion, especially in North America, but I think families living together is a great thing. I have a wife and child, and we all live with my parents in a largish 6-bedroom house. They are retired and I support them financially. While they bought this house before I entered the workforce, I now pay the mortgage on this house. A few years ago we did a total rebuild of the house, and it's now a gr…

Owning a house only to rent it out is part of the problem here. You're adding to the scarcity of housing while being blessed with parents who can house you.

You're blaming the symptom instead of the problem.

Given the current state of affairs, OP is doing the 'most logical' thing. If he sells his rental property, someone else will pick it up and rent it out.

The real problems are the rules that make it very difficult (practically impossible) to build high-density housing where it is needed and tax incentives that benefit owning multiple homes.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#119

Post by AndrewKemendo »

blueridge wrote: post #46

I think learned helplessness is a real problem. We have friends in their late 30's and early 40's who still live with multiple roommates. They're "well educated" but can't seem to hold a job, or stay in a relationship, or pay for anything. They've got subscriptions ticking away that they didn't remember they had, and then they're shocked to learn about an overdraft fee or a big credit card bill. One of them recently…

So now what? Now that you realize that the majority of people are not high performers, which is totally fine by the way, what are you gonna do? No amount of neglect, shame, coercion or otherwise is going to change that. People aren’t dumb (I mean some are) they are reasonably hopeless. And that’s perfectly OK, so what are you gonna do about that? I hear lots of people say we need fewer people or those people just didn’t need to not have kids. OK who? I’m not sure how you make this claim without landing at some kind of insane system which rank values people.

In fact, there is a singular solution, and only one solution. A healthy community that cares about people individually and finding the right place for them in society as their full selves.

There are more than enough people on this planet for us to all take care of each other. The fact that our resources are put primarily towards self gratification is an indictment of the structures that have been created, not a reflection of some foundational natural order.

Re: Nearly half of Americans age 18 to 29 are living with their parents

#120

Post by [deleted] »

notaustinpowers wrote: post #95
philwelch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t say outside of a metro area, I said outside of the West Coast metros. The rest of the country does exist and many of us own homes and have jobs. If you live in San Francisco it’s probably easy to get the impression that everyone who isn’t a multimillionaire either pays $6000 a month to rent a studio apartment or lives in a tent and poops on the sidewalk, but that’s not what the rest of the country is like.

It's a situation that is affecting all metro areas, both West and East Coast. For sure, the West Coast is on a whole other level. But I live an hour and a half outside of a southeastern metro area where the average salary is $17/hr with 1-bedroom apartments going for $1,400/month and minimum wage is still $7.25/hr. Which $17/hr doesn't even qualify for. Just stating that this is heavily affecting East Coast non-metro…

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