One thing I'd say is you need to be really careful about is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Yeah, a bunch of these boomers are totally wrong on the math of owning a home. I had it happen to me just yesterday where a coworker was going off on how everyone needs to buy a house no matter what because it can only go up and it can only be good for your financial situation. When you're looking at an average house price of $850,000 as we were in Canada for a little while (and it's still pretty high, and in the 2 most populous cities it's still in the million plus range) and mortgage rates are at 7%, the amount you pay for interest alone is as much as a decent full-time job before you even touch the principal. Handing $60,000 to the bank is not good financial sense and anyone with a brain ought to know this isn't good financial sense.
On the other hand, other parts of the advice are good. You should create a budget. You should watch your expenses. You should try to set aside some amount of money for long-term savings & investment. Deferring gratification has been a key strategy forever and that hasn't changed. What's changed is that the boomer million dollar house isn't the investment that it was when it was a ten thousand dollar house.
To give the devil his due, the boomers had some tailwinds, but they've also had some really bad headwinds. They came of age into an era of massive inflation and constant recessions, which means that while their houses might have gotten more expensive, many of them lost their jobs or even their careers. We're choking on 7% mortgages, they had up to 30% mortgages which means the principal on their homes may have been massively smaller but their payments were often similar in size even without accounting for inflation. The rust belt was hollowed out, factories shut down, and they had to figure out how to survive. During the entirety of the boomers lifetime, wages as a % share of GDP have been dropping.
Yeah, a bunch of these boomers are totally wrong on the math of owning a home. I had it happen to me just yesterday where a coworker was going off on how everyone needs to buy a house no matter what because it can only go up and it can only be good for your financial situation. When you're looking at an average house price of $850,000 as we were in Canada for a little while (and it's still pretty high, and in the 2 most populous cities it's still in the million plus range) and mortgage rates are at 7%, the amount you pay for interest alone is as much as a decent full-time job before you even touch the principal. Handing $60,000 to the bank is not good financial sense and anyone with a brain ought to know this isn't good financial sense.
On the other hand, other parts of the advice are good. You should create a budget. You should watch your expenses. You should try to set aside some amount of money for long-term savings & investment. Deferring gratification has been a key strategy forever and that hasn't changed. What's changed is that the boomer million dollar house isn't the investment that it was when it was a ten thousand dollar house.
To give the devil his due, the boomers had some tailwinds, but they've also had some really bad headwinds. They came of age into an era of massive inflation and constant recessions, which means that while their houses might have gotten more expensive, many of them lost their jobs or even their careers. We're choking on 7% mortgages, they had up to 30% mortgages which means the principal on their homes may have been massively smaller but their payments were often similar in size even without accounting for inflation. The rust belt was hollowed out, factories shut down, and they had to figure out how to survive. During the entirety of the boomers lifetime, wages as a % share of GDP have been dropping.
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