average US house now requires a salary of $106k-a-year - $50k more than in 2020

[Shortfuze]

Simple. Use the inflation to your advantage with salary gains, then play good defense on your expenses while investing the rest into the bull market. I've never had more $$$ both net worth and to invest each month.

The amount I spend annually on myself has only increased maybe 5-10% total in the last decade.

keep rent low (this is easy, I pay less now than I did out of college and never paid more than $1,100 for rent)
dont eat out often and when you do dont get stuff like drinks. Fast food in this market is a killer
Keep transportation costs low. If you can commute to work via walk/public transport/bike then do it
Dont spend money financing cars like a plebe
have inexpensive hobbies. Many fitness related ones are like this

Oh yea and cut dumb chit like cable and unnecessary streaming services.


Isnt hard to make it in 2024 but those that want excuses will always find them. Im in my early to mid 30s and people have been complaining about how unfair the economy is since the dawn of phucking time. Today is no different.

What? Live like a peasant? Restrict lifestyle to bare bones?! This is America! What's the point of living if you can't indulge!?

[AlexxVann]

People 30 and younger are cucks and won't fight back, huge inflation and mandated to get an experimental vaccine in order to go to college, maintain a job when here was zero data indicating the direct advantage. Keep taking it on the chin guys, you deserve it.

They'll continue to travel, party, have fun, they won't save, they'll rent, they'lldo all the things you wish you did while you were young. But instead you were financially smart, probably bought a house young, rode the market and sitting on a nice little retirement nest egg?

Funniest part, they'll get it all when you die and probably blow away your entire lives work on the same meaningless sh!t they're blowing their money on now.

What a bitter pill to swallow lmao.

[r32gojirra]

If you were to buy now for 3x or even 4x what you would have payed in 2019 or 2020, like on that Fort Myers house, and prices just return to pre-covid levels, I don't see how that's not a worse situation than renting in the coming years, especially if you put 20% down. How much more can that $120k house go up from $410k? Who that can afford a $410k house wants to live in a shoebox from the 60s and be surrounded by people who pay a fraction of what you do, and that's all they can afford. You're a lawyer or a doctor, whatever, and they work at 7/11. Bad schools, more crime and that kind of thing.

I would have 100% agreed with you guys before covid, but I just can't wrap my mind around why houses in undesirable areas should suddenly cost several times more over the span of a few short years, and how this is sustainable long term, unless they reset the dollar or something, people don't earn enough for this.

If the paper value of your house goes down, you're still stuck making those massive paper monthly payments for something that's worth a fraction of what you owe, for 30 years. Your $3k monthly payment vs your neighbor's $700 for the same thing, again, for 30 years!

When weighing up competing risks you need to consider both the consequence and the probability. The probability of significant reductions in capital value on entry level properties is historically low. The probability of ongoing increases is rents is almost certain.

[FAPhaggot]

What? Live like a peasant? Restrict lifestyle to bare bones?! This is America! What's the point of living if you can't indulge!?

Misc frames it as a motivational hustle story, because this is a bodybuilding forum. But needing to spend a higher percentage of your income on necessities like shelter vs previous years is the definition of standard-of-living decline.

[r32gojirra]

Misc frames it as a motivational hustle story, because this is a bodybuilding forum. But needing to spend a higher percentage of your income on necessities like shelter vs previous years is the definition of standard-of-living decline.

^^^especially given that, for the most part, it is the same decaying housing stock being flipped back and forth for increasing dollars

In reality, the value of your labour (wage) is being systematically eroded because it now takes far more of your labour hours to buy the exact same house

[meanstringbean]

Imagine though you buy now at all time historic highs, by far, we're at least 2x higher than the last peak (2008) in a lot of markets around the country, and the market corrects. RIP

Doesnt matter if you buy responsibly for the purpose of living in a house (instead of wild FOMO or speculation).


House purchases aren't something you try to 'time'. It's a house, you either can afford the mortgage or you cant.

[meanstringbean]

Misc frames it as a motivational hustle story, because this is a bodybuilding forum. But needing to spend a higher percentage of your income on necessities like shelter vs previous years is the definition of standard-of-living decline.

The difference being compare a house people live in today to the ones boomers grew up in. Plebes always point to how unaffordable a house is, when in fact it's their tastes that make it so.

-brb state of the art massive appliances
- brb granite countertops
- brb finished basement
- brb nice deck/porch
- brb a fuarking SPARE bedroom
- brb massive garage
- brb 50% more square feet.


Look at the median household income in 1980 or 1970 compared to the median household price of a home in 1980 or 1970. Now do the same with 2024 but hold the quality and size of the house constant.

The ratios are virtually the same. Difference is now you need 2 incomes and the mom is working out of the home instead of in it, but housing is still affordable. People just dont want to give up their 5 star amentities.

There will always be something to cry about.