Every year inflation goes up more than my wages. It’s not so bad for me because our mortgage is nearly paid off. But for youngsters renting or trying to buy it’s tough.
My Dad puts it like this. When he bought his first house his mortgage was one weeks wages.
When I bought mine it was two weeks wages.
Now days it’s three or worse. Rents are higher.
When my parents bought my childhood home in 92, it cost $90k and my dad was making around $90k a year. For 1992, he was doing very well for himself as a federal govt. employee.
Now, my parents house has been appraised at almost half a million dollars.
For my wife and I to get a house for roughly the same square footage, we would have to shell out at least $30k as a down payment.
Here's the fun part:
HALF of my yearly salary for the past 4 years....
HALF...has been going towards rent of our apartment.
I might be in the minority of this thought but I'm convinced that this "inflation" that we're still feeling is all made up and artificial. In the past 4 years (if not longer), multi-billion dollar companies have raked in trillions, gotten tax breaks that they dont need and their CEO's are making absurd amounts of money. They have the gaul to raise their prices of every product they make BUT refuse to pay their employees a living wage.
What's the result? Home prices have been artificially inflated (price gouged) in order to cater to a very specific 0.00001% of the world's populace so that owning a home is now a subscription (just like everything else) as ownership is no longer a reality. The average worker makes just enough money to "rent" a home but will have no hope of paying it off thanks to the insane interest rates. People are draining their savings accounts, 401K's and any other piggybank they have just to have a snow balls chance in hell of actually owning a home.
Anytime I hear folks of an older generation say "Youre not working hard enough", my blood boils. My wife and I are working two full time jobs, double the hours they did and are making LESS money thanks to inflation but yet, being just above the poverty line is somehow our fault because the best time to buy a house was when we were still in grade school.
Between getting screwed out real, cost of living raises the past 4 years, insane interest rates on my student loans, living off of credit cards and having half of my yearly take home salary go towards a building that I will never own...I'm more in favor of just burning everything to the ground and starting from scratch.
