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A millennial couple who make $250,000 say they can't find a home in their budget: 'We refuse to become house-poor'
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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I make just north of 50k a year and my wife just over half that and we bought a house. Yes it was built in 1962, it's not large, it's not in the middle of a large city. But 250k a year? I'd be able to clear my mortgage in under 10 years.
So either the housing market in the US is much more messed up than the one in Europe, or we aren't taking into account that buying a house with compromise is better than no house at all.
It's both, the housing market is a disaster here, but they also could easily buy a house in a less popular, less desirable area. Now maybe that $250K combined salary is also only possible because of the very high cost of living area they live in. I have a friend that was making $150K in CA that had to live in small an apartment with a roommate, and that was nearly a decade ago. It still blows my mind, but that salary simply wasn't a lot in that area.
It amazes me that some folks will just say 'everything is more expensive, raise the minimum wage'. Salaries are going through the roof everywhere and cost is following suit.
If companies would stop counting 150-200% overhead on goods and services for employees' salaries we wouldn't need to all be millionaires in order to get by. If we were to source more stuff locally transport costs would be much lower. If we used our goods longer, tried to get by with less, we could do longer with our cash.
But we all see these hyper rich folks and we want to be like them, live like them, have what they have. It's not a sustainable situation.
Salaries are not "going through the roof", that's ridiculous. Salaries haven't come close to staying in line with the cost of living, and especially house prices, for decades. It's been thoroughly shown companies have been lying about employee compensation being the main cause for inflation and high prices. The real reason is corporate greed.
Is that not what I said? My point was that 50 years ago 75k was more than enough money to buy a house. Salaries have increased, but prices have increased much more because companies charge 150-200% for every unit of currency off labour put into goods and services. Increasing the minimum wage would only fortify this effect unless companies are held accountable for this.