A millennial couple who make $250,000 say they can't find a home in their budget: 'We refuse to become house-poor'
A millennial couple who make $250,000 say they can't find a home in their budget: 'We refuse to become house-poor'
A millennial couple who earn $250,000 say they can't find a home in their budget. They're cutting back on retirement savings and childcare.
Paywall removed: https://archive.is/2f1VY
Yeah. I hate the negativity of the Internet, but this is what "life" (at least in the first world) has become: the negative stories are amplified and the positive ones are short.
In a time of great planetary wealth creation, there is still disparity. One of the richest nations on the Earth has packed all of its citizenry onto the "liveable coasts", into cities.
The couple mentioned in the article tried to move away to a more affordable area with more land (Portland is Urban, and Spokane is rural), and were met with boredom and dissatisfaction.
They both earn collectively $250,000/year, which seems like a lot, and to many people in the U.S who earn the median salary of $52-65,000/year, it is.
They mention not wanting to pay more than 30% of their budget to mortgage costs, which they stated with "$5,000 being 50%", which means their real adjusted income is closer to $120,000, not $250,000.
That's still a lot, but more reasonable to the point of Median Salary × 2.
What this average couple demonstrates however, is that the erosion of the "middle class" in the United States is complete: The middle class is dead. They are both educated professionals who are working honestly, and don't make enough money to own a home.
That makes them poor. That makes all of us poor -- and it is a gross failure of the economic system with misplaced incentives and lack of regulations that has led us to this point.
The important thing to remember that this socioeconomic and political atmosphere is wholly contrived.
A better world is possible -- it however requires sacrifices that many people are unable or unwilling to endure. Whatever you are imagining going through your head right now, that's exactly what is necessary to change the first world for the better.
It's not any one individual's fault this happened. The honest working man and woman haven't done anything wrong here, and aren't to blame -- it's precisely because the honest (the just) have enabled the dishonest (the unjust) to continue to run amok, completely unchecked and unchained.
Here is to a better future, and for all the hardship we must all endure, to get there. 🍺
Fuck Private Equity.
For the middle class to be dead, it would have had to be real in the first place, but it has always been an illusion.
There is the owning class and the working class.
If you don't own the means of production (and or a load of property to leech rent off of), you are part of the working class, however uncomfortable that might make someone with the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" mentality feel. The lie exists in the first place to create and feed that mentality, to ensure at least some working class people consistently vote against their own interests.
The middle class historically was the loyal servants of the upper class, whose expertise was needed to maintain the system. While they worked for wages they were allowed income sufficient to accumulate surpluses, property, and a facsimile of financial security.
In the 20th century it seemed possible for labor organizing to grant the privileges of the middle class to everyone in society. People who were definitely working-class were able to live like the middle class.
In the 21st century the rich seem to be starting to operate on the idea that, not only can labor be broken and the working class cast back down into hand-to-mouth poverty, but that vast numbers of people in the professions have been misclassified as essential loyal servants and they, too, can be cast down into poverty. I think the end state is that the middle class is squeezed down to the size it was during the gilded age and return to being an afterthought rather than the central focus of our politics.
One of the richest nations on the Earth has packed all of its citizenry onto the "liveable coasts", into cities.
Packed is a reaaaaal stretch here. Portland's population density is about 1/10th that of notably the lovely and liveable city Paris.
The USA has "cities" that have so much land dedicated to preventing anyone else from owning a home - all that matters is the landowners and their precious fucking "real estate value". And where it's not houses it's car parks.
Everyone in the US who wants to live in a city could live in a city if we just built the requisite housing. We have too many self preserving leeches who refuse to live next to an apartment complex.
Yeah people in the US don't know what housing density actually looks like.
We got a country with a massive amount of land and just decided that the rich should be able to own all of it and if you don't feel like making money rentinf it out to people you rent it out to cars and demolish the house that was there.
We keep pushing further and further into the suburbs though for massive costs of infrastructure for 3 hour commutes to jobs that pay minimum wage though. It feels so unsustainable when I see our farm land being sold to real estate developers to put a massive parking lot and 12 houses on it.
It should be packed - economics of housing aside. Spread out everywhere is incredibly inefficient in terms of transportation and infrastructure. Look at the San Joaquin valley in California. 1/6th of the land since 1990 after the initial gold rush has been urbanized and they lose 40k acres a year more to urbanization. CA has some of the best farmland in the country and it’s being paved over with housing and the associated businesses.
The American stereotype of the ‘burbs with a standalone house on a piece of land is destructive and inefficient, especially with the shitty way we build homes for max profit and minimum energy efficiency. The unfortunate downside of everyone living in one area is that housing developers and landlords drive rent and sale prices to the extreme.
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.
I can't afford a house where i live in a ghetto essentially because they went from $65,000 pre covid to $360,000 post covid.
The houses are old and will need a lot of work which would be fine but I can't scrounge the $30,000 for a down payment without it being higher than that in a few years when (if cause I keep getting laid off every few years) I have the money and even then the monthly mortgage payments are close to $3,000 a month, and god forbid I live in an HOA area which tacks on an extra $1,000 for them.
I make just over $80,000 but when I lose about 27% to tax that's only about 58,000 and then I have to pay for healthcare on top of that and a retirement plan that doesn't matter cause it will never let me retire anyways.
They mention not wanting to pay more than 30% of their budget to mortgage costs, which they stated with "$5,000 being 50%", which means their real adjusted income is closer to $120,000, not $250,000.
It's entirely possible that after about 30% effective tax, they're left with $175K net and set aside $55K for savings (retirement, college, etc).
They are nowhere near poor they're just not willing to pay what the market demands.
They are not poor.
I repeat they are not poor.
Not being able to afford things you want doesn't make you poor. They can afford a house. They do not want to pay a high price.
Square the two cuz u look like a fool defending these whiners.
That's why they said 'house poor'. They're not poor, read the article they even talk about it. Being unwilling to pay "what the market demand" is a fun way of saying "were priced out of all reasonable choices".
Cost of living is different everywhere. If they made 250k in Indiana or Ohio, they'd have money to spare and a McMansion to boot. But Indiana and Ohio don't pay 250,000 for a lot of things, the salaries don't reach that here for a VAST majority of upper level earners in the state. Take into account cost of living and average wages in a location before you get shitty
In the 70s this couple could have easily owned two houses.
Sure, they're not poor compared to someone in an undeveloped region of Africa, but they are absolutely poor compared to their parents and compared to what is right/just/fair.
And 30% is a sound limit for what you ought to be spending on your mortgage. This isn't them whining about price, it's them recognizing that it's not financially responsible to wage-slave themselves for the sake of buying a home.
Thank you.
Maybe not one individual, but the relatively small number of individuals who are hoarding all the wealth, and buying political influence to keep it this way. Bumping up the funding of the IRS is a start, capping CEO salaries as a percentage of lowest -worker wages, and adding taxes on non-salary income over a million dollars would be a good start, but only if accompanied by a requirement that all military budget increases be balanced by matching amounts for social services.
In a time of great planetary wealth creation, there is still disparity.
There is more disparity, increasing at an accelerating rate.
The middle class is dead.
The middle class was always a fiction designed by the ruling elite to divide and conquer: in reality, there has only ever been the working class and the oppressor class.
This is the biggest reason I haven’t moved. I managed to buy a house in a low cost of living area, with a low interest rate. Any move would force me to throw away my money renting, take a massive size/quality hit, or become house poor. And like them, I make about $250k.
I think your situation is a bit different. They are choosing not to relocate to a place where they can buy, because they tried that and thought it was boring. I am certainly not saying the housing market is fine, but these folks made a decision between buying a house and living in their preferred locale.
Personally, my family made the opposite choice two years ago, leaving the Best Coast and moving to the Midwest in large part so we could afford a house, which we did on less than $250k/yr gross. This locale is not our first choice, but our priorities were different from the priorities of the couple in the story. Money was not their only issue.
But fuck the housing crisis. We need policy changes that highly favor primary place of residence and disincentivize rental properties.
I was shocked to find out that over 50% of millennials own their own homes.
I'd venture to say a big chunk of those folks inherited wealth. Most millennial homeowners I know inherited money from grandparents, aunts, uncles, and/or parents.
And like many who inherited wealth, these folks often make up their own little rags to riches story about how they got where they're at.
Roughly 3% of Millennials have inherited money according to the findings in Northwestern Mutual's 2024 Planning & Progress Study.
I'm a millenial but not one of those people you're describing, and I have actually paid my condo off.
The keys for me:
- No kids
- I job hopped in (what at least used to be) a high-paying field (tech)
- I moved job markets from a low COL (cost of living) market to a high COL market
- No student loan debt for me (my mommy and daddy paid for my tuition to a local state school 🫶 ), minimal student loan debt from my wife (~5k)...which I paid off after we got married
- I don't give a shit about cars...I drove used cars until I could comfortably buy a new one cash
- We only have one car between the two of us
- I moved rather than paying higher rents, and I often lived in really crappy apartments because they were cheaper (I do not recommend btb)
Healthy helping of luck involved, and definitely support from my parents by way of room and board until I was like 23, tuition, small car loan of ~8k after I graduated. However, I paid them back in full for the car, and I'm the only one of my siblings not to hit up Mommy and Daddy regularly like an ATM. I fucking hate debt with a passion (or even really temporarily owing someone else anything) and have basically never carried large amounts of it outside of when I had my mortgage for my condo.
(My neuroticism around debt is probably why I paid off a historically low rate mortgage...if I would've sunk that into the stock market or something instead of paying it off I probably would've made a fortune.)
Did they though?
Many elderly end up being forced to sell their home and empty their retirements on nursing home costs. Leaving nothing to their descendants.
The ones that die at home or unexpectedly would be the ones that leave something behind in our capitalist wasteland.
It's not impossible to do without inheriting wealth. I put 20k down with my wife in 2018 and we didn't inherit anything. We rented a very small house before that and now we are better off than the people this story is about.
I finished PhD in 2015, married in 2017, buy house 2018. My wife has a professional doctorate as well. We owe a shitload still, but it's for like 2% interest so it isn't that bad.
It's not rags to riches, but it's doing what you can do in the middle of the northernmost southern state and heavily investing in our white collar educations.
I inherited about $10k when my dad died. It was enough for a 10% down home loan in 2013 (along with my savings). I'll probably never move out of this house at this rate.
Yeah.... Maybe this is one of the ways I should start associating myself with Gen Z but they also have higher home ownership than boomers did at this age cause apparently the covid fire sale left them still with their parents money and cheap houses.
I dunno I really don't know how anyone does it but I have also been homeless 3 times since I started college so not really a great example.
I'm not sure I understand the math in this article. At current interest rates, a $550000 is closer to a 3.5k mortgage, not 5k.
At 250k a year, they're making roughly 20k per month. If they're willing to pay 30% of their income to a mortgage, that's 6k. Even post-tax, that's still more than 3.5k.
I agree that the cost of housing is ridiculous. This sounds more like they have exceptionally bad credit or they're looking at homes that are way above their budget.
So it sounds like they had a house in a reasonable area...
Her old boss called her up in 2021 offering double what she got paid last time...
And they never thought to check why she was being offered twice her salary to do the same job?
It's likely because everyone moved away due to housing prices if they weren't insanely wealthy. Shouldn't have sold the home they owned before they even googled the price of homes where they were moving.
Also makes me think it's likely they have exceptionally bad credit like you said. They got two kids, and apparently do zero planning for huge life decisions and complain when shit doesn't work out. Other families raise kids on legit 1/10th of the money this family has...
And she's a financial specialist?
I find that professions means kinda Jack shit in the modern age.
Financial specialists I know are drowning in gambling debt and crypto they can't sell but "debt is good"
Therapists I know are the epitome of perpetual children mindset and complain that people are being rude to them all the time if asked to do anything.
Project managers I know just forward emails and ask me to help keep them on track.
Maybe it's all burnout but I think people went for the job titles and positions they could get through connections not what they are good at and people have just been pretending and faking their way through our crumbling facade of an existence for the past couple decades.
As someone who will have to dedicate 60-70% of their income to own a small, run down home, i really dont have a lot of sympathy for them. 30% of your income to housing is considered affordable, however that metric has likely been impossible for most people to reach over the past decade, most people can't even rent for 30% of their income these days.
Im not supporting high housing and rent costs, i just think compared to average American right now, this couple shouldn't really be considered "struggling" or "poor"
As someone living in Germany, what pissed me off most was when they mentioned that they never imagined raising their kids in an apartment. Like an apartment is beneath them. It is 2024. Don't we all know that heating single family homes and the sheer extra space they require is absolutely disproportionate? Everyone wants a cheap huge single family house in the middle of the city and no cars and no climate change. Like, yeah, that won't happen. Can we please start normalizing living in apartments? We just moved to a much cheaper city and hope to buy a 3-4 room apartment here one day. This will still cost us about 600k and we make less than 50k combined. But even if we had the money to pay over 1.5 mil for a house here, I wouldn't want to live in a house, unless I'd have like 6 kids.
Where i live, a decent 1500SF is easily $1M+. Renovated? Probably $1.2M.
20k a month? you think they pay 10k a year in taxes at 250k???
Thank you for doing the math on this. I ran the numbers through an amortization schedule and was scratching my head when they said they couldn't afford a $550,000 mortgage because it was $5k a month. For being a financial analyst, she's not very good at basic finance.
Also, lots of people will jump to say that a $250k household income is middle class and I've seen a few in this thread, but I personally don't know how anyone could arrive at that conclusion. Median household income in the US is more like $105k. A household income of $155k is enough to put you in the top 20%. $200k will put you in the top 12%. $250k gets you to the top 8%. When 92% of people are able to make do with less, it really just seems like people such as the ones in the article don't understand what it is to live within their means and don't understand how much better off they are than most everyone else.
Middle class is a very arbitrary term. But if you expect it to be defined by something close to median income as the starting point, then that's setting the bar very low. The lifestyle of a household making gross 250k and 100k isn't drastically different. The big differences would be that the higher income household will have a little more options for children, daycare, education, retirement, or a couple more vacations per year. The lower income family would be doing any of those tasks at the expense of another. And even the 250k household will not effectively be able to check all the boxes off. One is going to be much more comfortable, but they will likely be working comparable hours to do it. Nothing about that screams rich. Instead of saying that people making that much aren't middle class, we should steer the focus to how low the median income is.
Assuming your numbers are correct, if going from 155k to 250k moves you from top 20% to top 8%, that really just shows off how income is heavily skewed towards that top 0.001% more than anything since the slope beyond 1% is nearly a straight line up. I've more than doubled my income over the last 10 years and am making over $150k now, but I live the same life I have 10 years ago with a little more breathing room and realization I can actually retire. To me, it's less about what I gained making more money. It's about how little I had when I started around $40k. I have friends who make about half of my salary but arguably have a more lavish lifestyle and own nicer things. They sacrifice retirement for that choice. I still sacrifice living in a home at my income because I'm choosing saving for retirement over raising a family. My coworkers who make more than me have families and a house and their math doesn't have a comfortable retirement on the table. It's just that expensive.
All this middle class labelling serves is to drive this artificial resentment towards people of similar financial working class against relatively small margins. The couple in the article listed out very simple goals for what their housing costs should be and have struggles to stay in that budget. It speaks volumes to the housing issue we have today but also the expectations for what housing is. It's going to be difficult to visualize a world where everyone can get that picturesque house with property and a coupe cars without some serious growth in development. But the only way to do that is through making terrible choices in city planning.
Housing should be affordable, but the idea that every family can own a big house just feels like a carrot on a stick that isn't attainable within today's parameters.
I've been house browsing in the Portland area for a couple years and am losing hope of ever being able to afford one. Last year I saw a frame of a house, basically a roof on studs with tarp and plywood as the "walls" being listed for sale. They were asking for $300k.
As someone who lives here:
This is real.
It has the audacity to include that listing as "a new home".
Wow.
A 5 bedroom, 2 bath with so much natural light! What a steal!
Seems cheap for land. You must be in a low cost area. I’m reading your post as $300k for a buildable lot in a major city.
Last time I renewed my homeowners insurance, they put full replacement value of my house under $200k, despite the tiny plot of land and overall purchase price being several times that. I wish my town outside Boston had a buildable lot for only $300k, but the reality is much worse and the house itself is only a fraction of the value
It all seems beyond insane to me considering that records show houses in my modest, outer-city neighborhood were selling for around $50k in the early 2000s that now have a market value of over $800k.
If you own a vehicle maybe venture out of the city a little ways. Bonus points if there is any type of public transportation to take you to the city.
No, I've lived in suburbs for much of my adult life and I have no interest in that lifestyle. Much like the family in the article, I make enough to rent in the city. But it sucks knowing that living where I want to be comes at the cost of spending the money I could be using to invest in my community and improve the home I'm living in instead to line the pockets of somebody who was either lucky enough to own the land before property hyperinflation or wealthy enough to purchase it after the fact.
If the house goes for a million an investor could buy it up build a new house for half a mil sell it for 1 mil and profit 200k...
It's crazy.
It's high time we get over this notion that in America, you rent for a couple years, save money, and then buy a house. It is simply not possible anymore. The only people buying houses are people that have a house to sell.
We are lifetime renters and we live in a community with lifetime renters. Some of us even have GASP kids in an apartment.
Which is especially fucked up considering how large the US / Canada is and how much space there is.
Politicans are artificially keeping supply low which fucks all the young people, but appeases the Boomers.
I totally get how they feel.
I got lucky with some investments I made in 2020 that appreciated post-covid and was able to pay off my student loans and put a down-payment on a condo.
If you're a wage earner, at least here in the US, the prevailing political thought seems to be that it's perfectly acceptable for you to live on gruel in your grossly expensive rented apartment. I wish I could hope that voting changed anything about that, but I don't think it matters who we elect anymore, at least beyond the local level.
Seriously.
I realize, daily, that I've very much lucked my way into my station in life. Two kids, a 4bed/1.5 bath house in the suburbs. Decent steady job. 200k household gross income.
My house is "worth" a half a million dollars. At least. But so is any other house that is maybe a sidestep. There is no moving to another town...we can't manage to accumulate any significant savings before something happens to take it all away. Even if we could swing the cash necessary to start buying a house, we were able to refi during the pandemic....so moving to a similar-priced house now will mean a significantly higher mortgage due to the higher interest.
I'm on the other end of the spectrum for the most part. I was born into a huge family and actually started my adult life 3k in the hole (on top of those student loans) because I let my parents use a credit card in my name which they didn't pay back, but yeah, I've been lucky in a big way these last several years.
I have everything I need and some of what I want, and in today's America, that's as close as you get to the American dream if you're not born wealthy in the first place.
Over the past three years, the couple, who are both 36 and live in a suburb of Portland, Oregon, have been looking for a home.
Yeah, it be like that here. Most houses are costing around 1,000,000 in the Portland area due to wealthy techbros moving from San Fran.
Sure, but it's also harder to have that pay in areas that don't charge that much. It's like real estate keeps rising prices right until it uses up almost all your money...
There's also a trend of hedge funds purchasing land and homes with the sole purpose of renting or using them as Airbnb's as a method of "investing".
Renting for life, this is exactly what the landowning class, much of whom are now giant hedge funds that have been soaking up houses and properties for cash on the barrel head, in this country want.
We desperately need national legislation to put an end to people and corporations owning large swaths of homes in this country otherwise we will end up with fiefdoms and are in danger of returning to a world of medieval nobility in land ownership.
didn't they get the memo: houses are for the 1% now. 250K might sound like
a lotenough, but you're still a peasant to the people who own youYou raise a great point.
To the Owning Class, those working for money are nothing and replaceable. Rise up with the poor.
As I mentioned elsewhere, over half of millennials own their own home. So it's more like houses are for the 53%, but I take your point.
Bringing in 17k+ per month after tax and cannot afford a home?? I call bullshit. A $750k home is 5k per month including HOA/tax/insurance. That’s less than 30% of their take home.
They could double their payment and pay it off in 5 years, with 7k per month to live on, then they live rent free for the rest of their lives.
This article feels like propaganda. Homes are over priced but 250k per year is a lot of money.
They want to keep their monthly mortgage payment between $3,000 and $3,500 — or around 30% of their monthly take-home income of about $11,000.
This makes it seem like they only take home a little more than half their wages.
Something doesn't add up. The only issue I see is one might be an independent contractor. Or they're excluding health insurance and 401k.
Edit: some quick digging. First issue is the definition of take home pay.
Take-home pay is the net amount of income received after the deduction of taxes, benefits, and voluntary contributions from a paycheck. It is the difference resulting from the subtraction of all deductions from gross income. Deductions include federal, state and local income tax, Social Security and Medicare contributions, retirement account contributions, and medical, dental and other insurance premiums. The net amount or take-home pay is what the employee receives.
But the bigger issue is the 30% rule. 30% is on gross and not take home. This would give them a out 7k per month. I bet they're following the advice of someone like a Dave Ramsey. These people are not victims.
It's Business Insider, always read whatever they say with spoonfuls of salt
Well, they are saying they bring home $11k, not $17k a month, not sure where you got that number. With $11k of income, spending $5k on mortgage is less appealing. Especially if you consider a risk of layoff.
The headline says they make 250k, or around 21k gross. 17k was my estimate of net. Article doesn’t match the headline.
Not to mention savings, retirement, saving for your kid's college, paying for their school (depending on whether or not the public system is good or not where they live), car payments, medical bills, student loans...
Don't know what OP is smoking, but nothing he says makes sense.
These stories are always bullshit. They can't afford a 3000sqft single family home on an acre inside the beltway of a HCOL city. Anyone making $250k can easily afford a condo or townhome anywhere in the US. If you really need useless interior volume or wasteful yard space then you can move farther out and afford that.
Wasteful yard space? Do you enjoy playing Frisbee buddy? How about just running around with your kids.
Out of curiosity I checked how much a 3000 sq ft home on 1 acre lot is in my area. The only thing under $4m was a $2.4m fixer-upper.
Rough math after maxing 2 401ks, taxes and paying 1000 a month for insurance they should be making around 12k take home a month. Even with only 5% down they should be able to get into a 7-800k house and still have 4k-5k a month for other expenses. I found 25 results under 700k in the greater Portland area some as low as 479k (actually in Portland) for 2.5k sf min 4+ bedrooms 2 bath min 1/4 acre lot.
I'm in Canada. The outskirts of Miami are exactly the same price as Swift Current, Saskatchewan. 300 grand American or 400 Canadian. Exact same, except the canadian housing market is so fucked that a place in the literal center of buttfuck nowhere everyone is depressed suicide rate 27x national average....is Miami priced.
You forgot a likely $1000 a month in after tax student loan payments.
Well that's always going to depend on what commute length you feel is acceptable. What's your range? An hour each way? Two?
I beg you to show me what you can find in the Portland OR area for 250K. Even if you look outside about an hours drive there isn't much. The best I could find was a 2 Bed 2 Bath with about 1000 sq/f. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7545-N-Olin-Ave-201-Portland-OR-97203/350854324_zpid/
Please don't disparage others situations or minimize a situation because you have the benefit of living in a place you can afford with a job that lets you live there.
Mortgage == death pledge
If you can skip the mortgage, you also dodge the compulsory insurance as well as all that interest rate bullshit.
Location location location. Gotta expand your horizons.
I don't care about these rich people.
Cared enough to stop and waste your time commenting.
Correct.
🤏🎻
I don't feel bad for these people
Why? Do you think you’re better than them, or positioned better financially?
You realize you’re equally the victim here too right?
I'm guessing they think that they're wealthy because they make 250k but they are squarely middle class, and even then what matters more is that they are working class.
I guess I'm lucky that I don't get bored easily because I can afford a house quite easily since I don't have to live somewhere "fun."
With "fun" do you mean places where there are jobs?
They sound like the kind of couple whose phones beep all day with social media bollocks because they can't bear to not feel a dopamine hit for ten seconds.