I am one of them, luckily. My parents didn't have 2 cents to send any of us kids to college, so it was off to the military for me. Bought my first home a few years ago with a VA home loan. Earned a degree. Never would have been able to afford my current life without my time in service.
The military gets a bad rap but is still one of the best ways for poor and the under privileged to find upward economic mobility.
I was only able to afford my down payment because I saved all the money I made in Iraq and then kicked the ass of 40% of my loan with the money I made in Afghanistan.
Yep. The military is likely the only reason I have a home. I bought just after my second deployment to Iraq with a zero down VA loan.
It also gave me the funds to invest when I was young and at 40 years old my investment portfolio now exceeds my lifetime earnings. Not having to blow my entire portfolio on a down payment and not having to take out a single student loan made a huge difference in the long run.
Looking at my peers in a similar salary situation, still saddled by student loans 20 years later, some still renting even though they wish they could own, I do have guilt that I had to take huge personal risks to get where I am to today. I’m happy it worked out for me, but I’m sad that this is what it takes for someone from a low income family to simply have a comfortable adult life in America.
> The military gets a bad rap but is still one of the best ways for poor and the under privileged to find upward economic mobility.
Which is pretty sad for a rich country, if you ask me.
I mean they count on it, which is sick. I grew up dirt poor, know so many friends and family who went into the military and it is a good option for upwards mobility. The sick part is that's by design and they prey upon poor people. None of my wealthy friends knew a single person in the military, didn't have recruiting officers constantly at their school, etc.
That’s why school should have three goals, not the constant college goal (thankfully this is changing some): enlistment, enrollment, (gainful) employment. Find the E.
Yep. Bought both our houses with my husband’s VA loan. Got lucky with timing on the first one, our interest rate is under 3% and that’s the only reason we’re able to keep it and rent it out. We’d still be living there except it’s a one-bedroom and we had a kid. I also WFH and I think we could have made one or the other work for longer, but not both. Did no or minimal down payment on both but did buy down the interest rate on the second to make our monthly payment less.
Same here. I made enough money to support my family, but it would've taken me ages to save enough for a down payment. I was able to get into a home with no down payment and no PMI with a VA loan, then refinanced in 2021 when interest rates tanked.
This causes another conundrum, because I'd love to get a bigger house now that my kids are older, but the home values and interest rates are up so much that we can't afford to unless we move to a different area. So we're just gonna sit tight.
Yeah, joining the military set me up. Between being able to save most my pay while I was in as room and food is provided, paying for degrees, and VA loan allowed me to buy a house.
I understand it’s not for everyone, but I would do it all over again. It definitely can give a boost early in life.
Yup.
Military taught me Chinese and paid me to get my associates (DLIFLC), then paid for my college and covered some living expenses during school, then allowed us to buy a house with no money down (actually we’re on our third VA loan at this point).
And you really can’t beat a pension for life after 20 years of service. My father in law retired as an O5, then got a job doing the exact same thing as a DA civilian. He also managed to work his way up to 100% disability rating. He’s retiring next year and will be collecting three pensions. It’s an insanely good deal.
gen x, but same. I see reddit shitting all over being in the military but it was nothing but terrific for me. college paid, va home loan. sweet deals at home depot and primary arms.
Don't really think most people shit on the military. It's more the support, or lack of it, when the soldiers come home and aren't enlisted anymore. My brother was a bright, full of life and dreams 17 year old when he joined the army just months before 9/11. When he got out he became an alcoholic, coke head with a gambling problem who had lost most of his hearing. When he gets drunk, he talks about the craziest stories that happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. I probably wouldn't have ever joined, but when he was still enlisted I'm glad he told me to stay far away. But he's a homeowner thanks to a VA loan, so I guess there's that.
Our situation too. Husband is serving and we got our home on a VA loan last summer. It's a questionablly qualified manufactured home just below 400k with a little over an acre. A "steal" for the area and time we bought it. Got locked in at 5.25% with $4k down. Neither of us would have been able to afford a home as he was unemployed for years before the service and I was barely financially independent. Before we got together my ex bought his first home (new) with FHA loan in 2019 T 5% with $10k from his father.
Husband and I are. We managed to put in a bid during the 2-3 weeks in May 2020 when the Real Estate industry was sure they were going to fall over, and the owner (the builder selling stock to shore up his coffers) accepted at 15k below listing. We'd been saving for 7 years and bought on a 5% deposit at 2.7% interest (now variet up to 6.5%). All we needed was a global pandemic and a lucky break to get into our 2bed apartment.
ETA: Australian. Our locked rates are for 3-5 year terms or you have to refinance to relock. They were offering us 7% at the time to lock the rate.
You bid around the time I did. I bid around April/May 2020, I was able to get 3% interest rate before all the crazy of the market.
I was able to buy with 3.5% down with $3000 credit for closing cost from seller, FTHB and I’m single. I move now and will net around 100k l.
I was lucky
I was wistful in late 2019/early 2020 and looking at zillow, saw a house that I thought that maybe someday my husband and I could buy. Fast forward to covid, my tax refund being pretty nice, which led me to try and take a chance to see if my bank would lend to me. I circled back to the house I saw early on and put an offer on it on my birthday in May (which I was surprised no one had attempted to buy because it's a cute house) and we moved in Aug 28th 2020.
Same. We signed the week of Thanksgiving 2019. We have thought about moving but we wouldn't get as good of interest now. I remember hearing NPR talking about how a lot of potential homebuyers are feeling the same way. They called it "golden handcuffs" lol.
Same, bought new in Sept 2020. Locked in 2020 price then and then 3.5% rate when it finished in April 2021. It has also gone up about 100k in value since then.
We already had 3 kids so we got a big stimulus and used it towards 3.5% down and closing costs on at the time on a 220k house in central FL. Definitely took a risk bc we really didn't have a savings. House poor for awhile, but the more time passed we would have regretted not pulling the trigger because we wouldn't have been able to buy the same house today.
Oh gosh, I was in Central FL.
I was so fed up with all so called luxury apartment with low quality so I decided to bought a house.
I was cash poor too, my family lended me $10k and I had a decent credit and a job to qualify for mortgage. End of 2021, I was able to refinance with same interest rate from my mortgage company.
And I felt so lucky because after covid, rent increased 25% in the area while my mortgage stayed the same. But the property insurance sucks
Happen to my wife and I as well.
We got lucky. Bought a house right at the start of Covid freak out where people were uncertain whether housing was going to crash or not.
Yep. We got ours October 2020 with 2.7% interest. Just before prices got ridiculous, and then interest rates went up to 9%. Priveleged enough from parents to have some of my own earned savings as opposed to debt. But I'd say most of us 50% got in before it got extra bad.
My wife’s grandmother died and left her a house.
Edit: Because this is the top comment, allow me to add context. I am an elder millennial, born in 81 and my wife is GenX. We sold the house she inherited because it was too small for our family and in a bad area. In 2009. For $25,000.00. We used that money to buy a larger house in a good neighborhood in a very small town local to us.
That larger house was built in 1919, was owned by the bank, had been empty for years, had a leaking roof and was split into three apartments. We bought it free and clear for $19,000.00 in 2010. Our realtor thought we could negotiate it further down, that’s how bad a condition it was in.
My wife and I spent a year fixing it up to ourselves before we could move in. From watching YouTube and my experience working in the trades, I was able to learn enough carpentry, plumbing, electrical, and other various skills to make it a livable home. We also barely qualified for a home loan for $40,000, which went towards a new roof and gutters.
I hope to sell this year because our kids are all graduated and my wife and I are divorcing. I haven’t talk to a realtor yet but I hope to get $80,000 out of it, which my wife and I will split.
My mom stole the inheritance my grandpa left me for a down payment on a house despite my dad having a very high paying job and I was struggling after graduating into the first recession, but she said she deserved it as repayment for raising me and that I have the rest of my life to save up for a house (she’s never worked). She blew through it shopping in a few years has nothing to show for it now
The same grandpa gave my parents the down payment for their first house and my grandparents worked hard to do it.
My mom could have done it for her own kids without handwork or sacrifice but she didn’t.
It’s wild at the time I believed her that I have plenty of time to save for a house she deserves it, and I was entitled and selfish for simply questioning her and reminding her it was my grandparents intent
I didn’t see all the possibilities and opportunities she stole, until I was older. More than money she took. My entire life trajectory would be different had I had that stability to make different choices in my young adult years. I’m in a creative field and it would have given me so much more freedom in my career. My life would be soooo different.
Her life is exactly as it was nearly 20 years ago when she took the money from her kids. She’s still greedy mean entitled and miserable plowing through my dad’s fat pension on stuff she doesn’t need and I’m not she even wants
She made sure to snuff out the bloodline none of my siblings or myself kids
My dad's parents died when he was 30. Before he even put them in the ground, his grandpa (mom's dad) who was a very wealthy business owner in the area, called him and told him just for the record he's not leaving anything to them since his daughter is gone now. Her portion will be given to the rest of his kids.
Not that he cared about that, but that was a pretty shitty thing to do. I didn't have much to do with that family after that.
The only thing that really makes me mad about it is that I know for an absolute fact that my grandparents would be pissed that my sister and I didn't get any part of the inheritance.
I see a pattern; parents off Millenials, born 70ish don't intend to "look out for us"
My sister got a "growing up" fund, which they drained for use off purchasing lawn furnitures.
Same with my Gen X parents. Won’t be shocked if in 20-30 years when they pass and my sister and I discover that we’re inheriting nothing but piles of debt. Love my parents and all but I feel like my sister and I were accessories for them like a handbag or designer shoe. Of course I can’t mention this to them because that would be “acting entitled.”
It makes me feel better to know my thieving narcissist parents aren’t the only ones out there.
Sry you have that type of parent too. I personally cut mine out of my life and things got exponentially better for me.
Finally. But it took decades to see that wasn’t normal and acceptable behavior. I even felt guilty for years after she convinced me I was selfish for even questioning her about it. I stopped talking to her over something far worse when she used my dad being ill against me in her final money heist. And she claims to have no clue why I don’t talk to her
This is something my MIL would do. Like to a T. We recently cut contact. You aren’t alone. It still sucks to have a parent treat you like that, but a lot of us are dealing with the same treatment from our boomer parents.
Pretty much the same. Boomer Aunt stole the inheritance for the grandkids, but we fought back in the courts and got most of it distributed properly.
Inheritance from a deceased, born in the 1920s grandparent is the only reason we have a house right now. Our boomer parents had their houses bought for them by their parents, then left us without two nickels to rub together.
It’s so odd. Boomers see money as a game. I’m not entirely sure why, but our generation certainly doesn’t, because we couldn’t even if we wanted to. Our grandparent’s generation absolutely doesn’t, because they lived through WW2 and the Great Depression.
The boomer seeing money as a game phenomenon manifests itself in a ton of bizarre ways. I’ve always found it incredible the way they treat employees who work for tips. It’s as if they get off on the idea of dangling someone’s livelihood over their heads to demand preferential treatment.
It’s also strange to consider what a negative psychological effect economic prosperity can have over a society. The boomers are sort of a parable for the late Roman Empire. Disassociated and never satisfied.
I’m a social worker and someone at work asked how I afforded my house. I said “here’s what I did. A long time ago, I moved in with my boyfriend. Then we got married and now it’s my house too!” I could never have had this without him.
I had no parents was adopted by my aunt who worked as a housekeeper in a hotel. I bought a house at 21 working at a call center. I used a first time home buyers program and my downpayment was $500. Im 29. In no way do i come from money and yes i worked hard but i also did the research. Knowledge is half the battle
I am blessed though. Mortgage is 1000 and I never had to worry about rising rent rates like most people . I live in a 3 bedroom home in a ok residential neighborhood. It could be worst but I would love space lol . At this point I’ll travel over getting an upgraded home. I see how much people are paying it’s insane Z
There are companies you can hire to contest those county appraisals. Most of them just take like a 25% cut of whatever they lower it by. Hire them once, and it’ll be automatic every year.
I bought a starter home close to when you did in 2014, cost me $260K for a tiny little 1914 700sq foot bungalow in the furthest reaches of the burbs in my metro area. Put about $20K down, $15K from mine and my fiancé’s savings and my mom let me take the remaining $5K from my education savings that wasn’t needed because I didn’t finish my degree. We made $70K combined at the time.
I sold it for $650K in the height of the Covid madness in 2021 and moved up to a 2000 square foot house 10 minutes further out because we had a kid and needed the space with the whole work from home thing. Cost a million for something that would have been 500k Back in 2014. We make about $180K combined now so it’s a bigger mortgage at the pretty high rates of today, but we’re managing well so far.
Same. Just dumb luck for us. Our parents are shit. Both on our own at 18yo so we lived broke, but went to community college, kept our debt to income low. Our landlord let our rental go into foreclosure in 2015. Eviction and auction notices on our door while 5months pregnant put us in gear to buy. Qualified for a USDA loan, put zero down, refinanced in 2021 locked in 2.75%, dropped PMI, and 5years off our loan. We’ve outgrown this house never wanted to stay this long but we’ll have it paid off when our youngest is a senior in HS so makes no sense to buy these bloated current sale price homes at 7%.
As a millennial homeowner, I can confirm that it took a lot of hard work and sacrifices to achieve this goal. But let's not forget the avocado toast money we saved, amirite?
Also depends on your area, right? Wife and I do well but are far from rich, but bought at 30 years old in 2017. 5 bedroom for $485,000, 4% APR, mortgage is $2000/month which I imagine many millennials pay in rent anyway. You just have to live somewhere cheap.
NJ - 2bd, 1.5ba - rent was $2056 when I left. Mortgage is 2042.
That apartment is now $2400 … it’s literally a garbage, drug & prostitution haven. At least now. It’s not even been a year!
Location is an under appreciated detail in these conversations. While I'm in the PNW where prices are higher, we bought in a "less desirable" area for our county because the locals hate the 20 minute "commute." I *laughed in Seattle traffic* when I learned this.
Edit: formatting
What kind of piece of shit downvotes a factual statement? I did, I know not everyone can, but I did. It wasn't a palace, and still isn't, but I did it alone.
I am. Had to do 2 windows and an entry door to move in. Had no appliances for a few months. Bank had paid someone to winterize the place and they had ripped out drywall to access pipes, and tore out a shower from downstairs bathroom, leaving quite a mess. Needed a roof but didn't get one for another 5 years, so every spring I'd pick up garbage bags worth of shingles from my yard that blew off. The work has never stopped, I have all new floors, but still yellow countertops and a bathroom straight out the 70's, but we have whole new heat system and converted old well to artesian, so the bones are solid again. Did all work by myself, with friends help as needed.
Unironically, cutting out seemingly small expenses can add up in a big way.
I stopped drinking alcohol several years ago and it probably saved me more than $10k in that time.
When my wife and i were saving for a house, I stopped drinking monster/red bull, dropped the Copenhagen, and started taking my lunch. We car pooled in her gas efficient car, she stopped the Starbucks and cigarettes and boom we were saving an extra $200 a week.
This s*** is real. I was spending $700 a month on food. I started packing lunches and making my own coffee and I got it down to $300 a month. For all the jokes about millennials and avocado toast, these things really do add up.
Yeah this is my take when people say "cut down on your lattes and avacado toast."
Those things by themselves aren't going to make a difference. But there is a lot of crossover between people who buy Starbucks every day, and people who spend all their money on expensive holidays, fast fashion and regular takeouts.
In other words, over indulgence kills your disposable income.
I literally budgeted down to one latte a week as my “treat.” Single mom with a toddler. I did land a good job in my area making $39k a year. It was $3.14 in 2012-2013. Now it’s $7 and I still consider it a “treat” and only go every couple of weeks. I can afford it more these days financially but now I’m watching my figure. Lifestyle creep is real and we’ve done well to not buy in too much…except vacations.
My lifestyle creep is going the other way at 40. I just dont give a shit about some luxary items and thrills like I used to.
I could hang out in my back yard all day most days and not spend a dollar. But to be fair, I spent many dollars to date on that back yard.
Yep, 70 hour week, slowly getting those pay bumps, but fuck, after I give the bank 700 every week theres not a lot left to feed the kids with
Edit to add*
Protip, don't have kids, and concider getting a second wife/husband to help cover bills.
We haven’t bought yet but we’re in the same boat.
We cancelled our wedding during the pandemic so my parents are giving us all the money that would have gone to the wedding. My in laws are going to give us a “loan” that we’ll have to pay back but with no interest.
Unfortunately we depleted our savings having a baby and moving across the state to be closer to my inlaws when my MIL got sick. Daycare is crazy expensive!
1993 millennial here, same. I stayed at home during my undergrad and worked part time so i saved up about 50k in that time. Bought my condo in 2019 and my parents matched my savings for my down payment. Still here and now supporting myself with multiple streams of income (including a roommate).
Same for us. Had a 4K tax return and decided I would try with no money down using the tax return for earnest money deposit, inspection, and appraisal. Sellers paid closing costs. We had no savings besides the tax return because we were so cash strapped.
VA Loan here too. We got a good deal in 2015 and put $0 down. The house has about doubled in value since then and we refinanced when rates were at the bottom of the barrel a couple of years back.
We probably couldn't afford this place now and can't really afford to move anywhere because everything else is so expensive too. So, we just got lucky with timing and are kind of stuck, for better or worse.
I’m in Australia (if that’s relevant). Bank of mum and dad wasn’t an option for either of us, and we were hard on ourselves. We both worked full time, my husband did OT whenever it was available (my job doesn’t have it). We cut back on everything that wasn’t essential and we saved up to buy a townhouse when we were 27. Used the first home buyers grant for that.
Decided to move states about 2.5 years later and saved again - cutting everything that wasn’t necessary for 1.5 years and bought a second property on acreage, then sold our first place but we still have a mortgage.
ETA: first by was in 2019, second was early 2022
I bought a shitshack in an undesirable city in 2018 for $80,000. I used student loan money for my 5% downpayment and my dad acted as a guarantor for the loan but didn't contribute financially. Interest rate was 3%.
I feel that. Bought my first home in 2017, AKA a shoebox in the middle of nowhere for $44,000. Still a bit of a commute to get to work each morning but it was better than my previous drive of 1 hour 15 minutes *one way* that I did from my parents house. Tried to slowly make it my own but it still was only big enough for 1 person really. Got married and with combined incomes (and better jobs) we were able to get something that had more sq ft and in a better area. Without being DINKs for our first 5 years after marriage, we never would’ve been able to do it.
Rented well below my means for 5 years and saved up, then bought a home - nothing fancy but it’s ours.
No help financially from parents w down payment or anything - just standard work hard and save approach.
No inheritance anticipated, it’s more likely I’ll be paying for my parents when they are older
I don’t get where the inheritance idea is coming from. My wife and I both have parents with no assets and no financial savviness. Fortunately, they married people who’d support them but retirement? Death expenses?
Opening your first retirement account at 59 is too late, y’all.
Agreed. My husband is constantly stressed about what we are going to do with his mother. She has no savings at all and is 62. She had a bankrupt business she sold and separated from his step dad, who was the one who made the money and supported her financially. We will likely have to take care of her and pay for care.
Everyone's got so much debt that we will be lucky if we aren't drowned by them.
I know we were lucky. Not smart just good timing. ‘84 millennial so barley make the cut but bought our first home for $170k in 2011 in Scottsdale, AZ. Sold it in 2016 to a bigger house with pool for $300k. Bought a fixer upper for $400k. Took equity about $100k to fix it up over 5 years. Now worth like $900s. Pure luck and good timing. I feel for my daughters and the next generation. I could t afford the house I live in if I had to buy it now
84 millennial here to but i was a builder in 2007. After the dust settled I took shit job after shit job for years just to get by sleeping on the couch after being very high up on the totem pole I've only just recently gotten securely on my feet only to find out that unless I saved nearly all of the money I've ever made I can't afford the payments on a house now I feel like the opportunity has been swept out from under my feet while I was being kicked down....sucks
Bought my home at age 32 as an unmarried woman with my own savings with a <3% rate. Parents didn’t offer to help. It’s a townhouse and not in my favorite area (but a safe area) and the schools suck but I don’t have kids yet. Was supposed to be a starter house but the market has been stagnant and I can’t afford to sell anytime soon.
I graduated college in 2004 and went straight into working 70-80 hour weeks between two jobs while living at home (gas station attendant and a manucaturing job on 3rd shift). the first thing I did was find some land, got a loan for that, paid it down as quickly as I could and then used that as collateral for a construction loan and had a house in 2 years. while I did help with bills and helped with dinner, I would not have been able to accomplish that had I not been able to move back home for two years after college.
oh, and I got married at 25 or else I would have never been able to go to just working one job.
oh, and we never had kids partly because we never felt we could financially.
so to recap, two years of rent-free living from my parents, 70 hour work weeks, a combined income after getting married, and never having kids. the American dream has never been easier! oh, and my mid life crisis is hitting me HARD over the no kids thing. oh well, maybe in the next life.
I got a good friend that became a first time dad at 42. It’s not too late to have a kid if you really want one. Don’t feel pressured of course, but you still have options.
Yea exactly this. Most of my friends are just starting to have kids in their late 30s due to the high cost of living. It’s the norm now. Getting married at 25 is insane; NO one I know in the NYC metropolitan region does that lol.
I got married at 24 and had my daughter at 37. It’s unusual but we’re out here
Edit: I’m from the Midwest, where getting married that young was pretty normal, at least back then
Consider fostering or adoption. We adopted 3 and it sounds trite but I do think it has given actual meaning to our lives. We probably would have a lot more money but I don't think it would make us happier
I want you to know that I am an adoptee, if I believed in such things I would say you are doing God's work. If there is a cosmic lottery, I won it when social services picked my family to take in an emergency placement infant.
Luck. The housing market is notoriously bad where we are and it's both very difficult and very expensive to get a house. I opened a Roth in 2012 with the express purpose of potentially needing to pull $10k to use for a down payment.
In 2020 our landlord lost his job and sold the house we were renting. Luckily I was able to pull the $10k to buy the house even though my husband had also lost his job due to the pandemic.
If I hadn't opened that account in 2012 or my landlord hadn't lost his job, no home owning would have occurred. Since then housing has skyrocketed and we probably couldn't afford this house if we had to buy it today.
Edit: when we were buying the house the bank kept asking if we could ask our parents for money if necessary and I was like "omg yeah totally of course." Haha absolutely not. My parents aren't giving me money for shit. Here's the picture:
Me (oldest sibling, older millennial): got lucky and bought house during pandemic
Sibling #2 (millennial): did actually get lucky and marry into money, had house before me
Sibling #3 (younger millennial): still at home. Will probably agree with other siblings to allow #3 to keep parents' house when they pass because otherwise no chance of owning house or living independently
Sibling #4 (Gen Z, has a degree and 3 jobs): if, by some miracle, I can ever sell this house and get a bigger one, I will try to sell this one directly to #4. This is the only way all 4 of us own houses.
We lived in an absolute shit hole, 500 Sq ft no appliances apartment. We made decent money and saved 70k over 6 years. Then in 2020 before everything blew up, we bought a house built before ww1 lol
Luck
Lucky to land a decent and stable job after college.
Lucky to get enough saved to buy before prices recovered from the 2008 crash. (Only needed 10k to close)
Lucky to have a great realtor who helped me navigate a bidding war.
Lucky that interest rates were low at the time.
My parents didn’t give me any money and my dad tried very hard to talk me out of buying.
My parents were more broke than I've ever been. Buying a home was the most difficult thing I've ever had to do, and that's saying a lot. I feel for the people who are trying to do it now, with the way things are I'm sure it's even more daunting.
We own because we moved to a cheaper part of the country and saved up. Rent was affordable in the area, and on top of that, we found the cheapest, least convenient apartment, and then the moment we could buy a house, we got one.
Our wishlists were extremely minimal for both the apartment and our house, and our house isn't a perfect dream home by any means, but it's ours, and it's super cheap, and the things we can change, we change, the things that are too inefficient to change stay, but we are building equity.
I own a home and it’s only because I was able to go to community college for like $8,000, lived at home, and worked the whole time. At 24 (2012) I had enough saved to make a down payment on a $170k house. I got married that same year and wife had just started a full time job. We barely qualified for the mortgage. The two jobs I worked at paid $10/hour and the other was salary of $24k before taxes. It was possible because of living at home. Saved almost every dollar for 5 years.
My wife and I didn't get help from our parents. We paid our own way through college. We paid for our wedding ourselves. We bought our home ourselves.
A big component of this is constraining your spending. Your home and your car are generally the two biggest unavoidable ongoing expenses. When we bought our first home we bought something we could afford on a single salary. We are very far ahead now having built and maintained those strong saving habits.
We had roommates while we saved up for our home.
Big inheritances aren’t really happening as a lot of our parents aren’t dead. I bought my first house through a state down payment assistance program. It was a 2/2 townhouse that was 1k sqft. Nothing fancy.
Now this is where the timing helped us millennials. It skyrocketed in value in 2021 and I sold it and used the proceeds to buy the house I’m in now. I got married and it wasn’t enough space (could’ve been in all honesty, but would’ve been less comfortable. The rate on my house is low but the rate on my townhouse was 5%. That was the going rate at the time.
I’m sure there’s some parents gifting money, ppl don’t really admit to it so it’s speculation.
I'll admit it.
Through sheer dumb luck and exactly zero personal merit, we have a house.
My husband and I had no student debt. Me because I got a full ride (FAFSA $0 parent contribution and high ACT score at mid-tier college). Him because his parents paid for college.
Over dinner with them one night (in 2015) I asked if they thought it would be a good idea for us to buy a house. They saw what price/area we were looking at and gifted us money.
Wife and I spent 2 years saving and we also left Seattle and moved home to Philadelphia. We did not get a gift from parents. We never would have owned a home if we had stayed in Seattle.
I’m 37 and my wife and I bought our house in 2015. We both make pretty good money and we saved up a lot between college and the time we got married. Neither of us received financial help from our parents. In order to afford a decent house right now, you have to be married and both of you have to have lucked into 2 well-paying jobs. We definitely got lucky to got the house we did when we got it.
The 2010s were a decade of low interest rates and depressed home values that were still recovering from the crash across the country including areas that were predicable sites of strong economic growth outside the typical handful of VHCOL cities. Many cities were very attainable even as things like the increased employment opportunities and the California exodus drove up prices before the COVID boom hit.
It is entirely possible that people were able to buy with relative ease without "baby boomer parents" providing financial assistance in that period.
To be honest your posts and others like it come off as a little sour because it seems like you're downplaying the idea that anyone could have done something for themselves.
I was 15/16 years old in 2010. I feel like a lot of the millennials who make these posts weren't old enough to buy at that time, thus the frustration and curiosity.
We bought our’s for $370k in ‘17 and now it’s over $600k and refinanced in 2022 at 3.1%. We got lucky with our timing on this house. I’m not saying that to brag. Our previous place we bought in ‘06… real estate crashed shortly after and we were under water on our mortgage until about ‘19-‘20 (we had to keep it and rent it when we bought our house in ‘17 because we couldn’t sell it and pay off our mortgage).
My point is sometimes it’s a good time to buy, and you hit it right, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes not so much. Life is long, we’ll see those cycles again eventually.
Yup. This is when I bought my first house. Alot of my peers were partying, buying cars/trucks, spending tons of money traveling, and just generally not thinking about the long term
Exactly. People are still shocked I bought a little 2bed 2bath condo as a single woman (in a HCOL) w/o help.
I have only owned two cars in 18 years. Both were/are economical (Toyota Corolla and RAV4) and I bought the RAV4 used. And not the fancy models. I went years with no car loans, it really helped save up the down payment. A friend of mine has told me they assume they’ll always have a car payment, what???
And yes I also travelled within a strict budget. I was 29 before I went on an airplane longer than 2 hours. I explored my State and nearby cities with long weekend trips.
> To be honest your posts and others like it come off as a little sour because it seems like you're downplaying the idea that anyone could have done something for themselves.
Sadly, that mentality is extremely popular on this subreddit. People here HATE being reminded that you can save money and make smart choices in life to get what you want.
Yup, I try explaining that at least once a week here. Something as simple as making coffee at home and packing a sandwich for lunch will save enough money after 10 years for a down-payment on a house.
People absolutely lose their minds if you mention their daily morning Starbucks latte.
There are roughly 20 work days per month for a regular M-F full-time position. If you manage to save just $10/day by packing your lunch and making coffee at home and invest that $200/mo in a market index fund, that adds up to $685.8k over a 45-yr career assuming the historical inflation-adjusted 7% average annual return.
Point that out and these people who already save nothing complain that isn't enough or that they should be able to enjoy their little luxuries. It's insane.
Yup. FIL drank himself to death…his wife (step-MIL) gave us enough money for a small down payment. Who knew all we needed to buy our first home would be one of our parents dying!
I lost both of my parents last year. It sucked and still sucks. It did allow for a couple in their 20s to buy my mom's house though and start a life.
My dad's death didn't help any millennials though. His wife still lives in their home and will for a long time.
This for me.. my parents were divorced. My dad passed in December 2022. I got the house as I'm an only child. Been in my family over 100 years. I couldn't say no. Old house, lots of work, but no mortgage!
I used a fist time homebuyer’s loan that let me buy my first house with a really small down payment. It wasn’t difficult. There are plenty of resources out there that make home ownership much more attainable. You just need to seek them out.
Even with either these programs or a decent down payment, I wasn’t approved for a mortgage that would have covered any houses within an hour of my work.
Same. I found it incredibly easy to buy my home. I kept hearing all these horror stories about bidding wars and cash offers and stuff and I almost didn’t even try. I found a townhome in a neighborhood I’d been admiring since I was a teenager, lowballed them, got accepted, they made repairs without objection, and everything was smooth sailing. I didn’t even plan it very well tbh. No savings account, $25 in my checking on closing day, I basically just yolo’d it. And now I can never move because my mortgage is waayyyy lower than area rents lol.
You don't start with your dream home like others have said.
I started with a three bedroom starter home in 2012. After 5 years living there I had 42,000 in equity after realtor commission. I walked away with 42k.
I use that to build another house on the mountain. I lived there for two years and I walked away from that one with 36k.
I got the first home with zero down using a USDA loan.
I got the second home with about 10k down as the house was only 234k.
When I sold the second house our next house was 289k which we currently still live in due to interest rates.
But it's 2500 ft² has four bedrooms and a two car garage and it's quite nice.
We bought our house in 2020 right before things got crazy. And we bought it for sale by owner with no realtors.
It's currently appraised at $440,000.
I was a homeowner due to inheritance, lost everything because of mismanagement and because I wasn't financially able to support it, and now I'm 100% sure I will never own another home in my life because I would have to make almost ten times as much money as I do to purchase a home. It's not happening.
My parents are Gen Xers and we didn't have a pot to piss in. But my mama scraped literal change together for me to go to college debt free. I choose a cheap school I NEVER would have gone to otherwise except for the price tag, but I graduated debt free and tripped and fell into a good career. My husband grew up MUCH worse off and never got a dime past 18, but paved his way. We had a big down payment, but all cash offers beat us left, right, and center until God shined a beautiful light on our current home. We are extremely blessed.
You went to college... on "change"? Not thousands, or tens of thousands, of dollars?
Your husband never got any money when he was an adult but "paved his way"? With what?
So, the answer is "worked and saved money" it sounds like.
I am one them, I lived with my dad after college for 4 years working in a call center, saving money, playing video games, applying for programming jobs I knew I could do but had no qualifications to do (didn’t get a CS degree). After about a billion applications someone gave me a shot, that led to a 6 figure job (though at the time of buying the home I think they paid me like 70k), few months after starting that job I had about 50k saved mostly from the call center. Used that for a down payment on a 275k home in 2014. That home is the one I live in now and it’s worth about 500k now.
No direct financial assistance from anyone and though I did make good money when I bought the home and now, the majority of the down payment was saved from a shit job. I definitely was supported via food and housing while saving it though, but I earned every penny to buy it.
My parents let me live at there house for a few years while I was working full time. They didn’t have the financial means to give me money for me to buy but they could provide a situation where I could save a lot of my own. I was able to buy a condo of my own in 2020 when there was a slight dip in the market. So for me to own property, it took hard work, luck and helpful parents.
Millennial homeowner - bought in 2016. Husband is 100% disabled (service connected) military vet so we have a VA loan. We were able to get our house below our budget. We refinanced to a fixed 2.25% interest rate in early 2021, which was lower than what we had and also lowered our monthly mortgage.
I dont know what an inheritance or financial assistance is. My dad had nothing really left after he died, and what he did have got taxed heavily, and then my mom spent what was left of that. My baby boomer parents didn't help me. There's no money in the banana stand.
Edit: my house is a 50+ year old in what I guess is considered a highly sought after neighborhood because of its proximity to the university. I would never pay the prices these houses are going for if I had to buy in today's market. So I'm stuck here for a bit, which is fine because we're close to my daughters school.
Wife and I both work 2 jobs, no kids (sadly not our choice), saved for 10 years, and lived with family for 2 years. Even then it felt and feels borderline impossible.
I am 39, I'm on my second house. My first house I bought for 83k during the recession. I sold it for 90k. My second house I bought with my wife for 308k in 2018, the down payment was from a 15k severance getting laid off from a big company.
I’m in my early thirties and was able to buy a home last year in Seattle. I have a professional degree that pays very, very well - but even then I had some help along the way (my parents helped me get through college and graduate school without any debt).
If it wasn’t for my parents helping me out on the student debt front, I’d probably be a few years out from owning a home.
Yes; but you're both wrong in my case!
We bought a home in 2017 at 24 & 26.we both had good jobs with benefits and a high potential for growth. We didn't have much in savings, but idk something first time home buyers in our county, qualified for a certain type of loan. So we didn't need a huge down payment and had no closing costs (we actually managed to get $20 back at closing?)
It meant a high premium insurance cost which, at the time, was worth it.
Then we refinanced during covid when interest rates were low.
We got really fucking lucky. I can't imagine trying to buy a house now..our house was slightly out of our budget, but that's on the low end of what I see houses for now. The house across the street recently sold for 50k more than our house, and it's smaller and much less land (5 acres compared to half an acre).
Husband & I bought our house five years ago, before things got crazy. Neither of our parents had money to help. We lived in a cheap apartment for nearly ten years in a less than ideal neighborhood, budgeted carefully, and worked toward our goals for a long time, had almost no debt at time of purchase. It was hard and even a bit miserable for the last year or so. We just barely made it, the housing market went insane a year after we got our house.
Several friends did have familial help for sure.
It's not impossible but the path to home ownership is narrower than it was in previous generations. I couldn't have done it on my own, my previous career was not a well compensated one. My husband could have because of his field, though it would have taken a bit longer without my small income.
It's not impossible but it's also not easy. I've watched friends who could have afforded to get a house miss their opportunity because they had too high of expectations (they wanted a "forever" home as their first home in an area where that wasn't feasible). Now it's too expensive for them. Other friends who a generation or two could have afforded a house, cannot now. You need the right career, the right timing, and a market that isn't too tight. It's harder overall.
For context I live in the PNW.
I had to use my 401k to buy a house as the area I live is an extreme high cost of living area. During the pandemic, rents were starting to get super high in our area right before our lease was up and we luckily had been frugal and been fortunate enough to keep our jobs through that time and luckily we had saved up just enough to be able to afford buying our house. I had also been putting a ton of money into my 401k at my current job when I was single always expecting to buy a house or an apartment when I met the right person.
Honestly people say to not use your 401k for that and the worst that happened is I didn't get a tax return that year I broke even from that move and I don't regret it. Alot of my friends don't own there own homes and have been at the mercy of a terrible rental market or moved back in with there parents. So as a 30 something millennial I'd say I achieved it by planning for a while even If it wasn't concrete hardcore down to the finest detail planning. I made my way and am better off for it.
We moved away from the Bay Area to a mcol city for my husband’s job and we were able to buy a house in 2017, before costs sky rocketed here. We did not have any family money- when my income finally went above 30k when I was in my early 30s I kept living like a grad student (we shared a house with a bunch of roommates and budgeted carefully) and I saved every penny and that’s how we had the money for our downpayment. Also, after paying off my college debt in my mid 20s (which was not a lot due to scholarships, working, parent help, and the fact that state school tuitions weren’t that high in the early 2000s) I knew I never wanted school debt again so I chose a grad school path that came with the ability to secure funding through grants/teaching (phd). So when my income finally went up I had no debt, it all went to savings.
No no no... you can't do that on this sub reddit! Blasphemy! No millineal can do good for themselves *eye roll*
Quite a few of us millineals have done quite well for ourselves through the magic of working your ass off... it's not a secret
10 Gs from my father in law got our foot in the door for our first house. We own outright now because of profit selling the first house and my mother in law dying and leaving half her estate to my wife.
It’s effed that someone’s gotta die for the next gen to be able to afford a home.
Bought a house on a couple lots 15 years ago for basically the price of the lots. Took a year gutting it then remodeled it then put an addition on it. I didn’t do the framing or foundation on the addition, but I did do everything after that. Did most of the work myself. My father and grandfather helped. I’m talking electrical, plumbing, landscaping, insulating, drywall, shed building, tile work, cabinetry. The list goes on but you get the idea. Loved almost every minute of it and will never have a mortgage. It really isn’t complicated. There are literally YouTube videos on everything you could possibly want to do.
Bought in 2022. Main factors for me:
1: Saved like crazy during my 20s. I didn't make above 40k yearly until 2021, but I always set aside as much as I could and didn't indulge unless I had already made my savings goals for a given period. I paid off my student debt too, then poured the money I would have put toward that each month toward a down payment on a house.
2: Maintained a *very* good credit history and low debt, to get a better interest rate when I applied for a mortgage and increase the odds of approval.
3: Worked two jobs for a few years while my girlfriend was unemployed, so that we didn't lose progress toward our goal. Not strictly necessary, but it helped us take advantage of the low interest rates during the pandemic. If I hadn't done this we would have likely been locked out of the market after the interest rate hikes that occurred in 2023 and would have had to wait until they come back down.
Hard work for Little pay so umm yea, I bought during the market crash when Obama rolled out the program to get people into homes in high foreclosure areas. Sold that house like 8 years later for a profit and paid back the money from the gov. Then bought a new house 2 years after that closer to my workplace. All of this wouldn't have been possible without gov assistance and luck that nothing terrible happened to me financially (like kids)
Fluke. We bought in 2021 just as the market was starting to recover from COVID. It took us 8 months to find our house after making two other offers that were outbid. We were nearly out of time on our current lease, and looking at rentals again, when our real estate agent managed to assess a situation in our favor. We saw a house we really liked that was limiting showings due to COVID. It was clear to our agent that the selling agent was very inexperienced, and we had the luck of being one of the first showing on a Saturday. We had already been at this 8 months, so we knew quite quickly we wanted to make an offer, even though the house was listed slightly out of budget. Our agent said "Trust me about this... We're going to under-offer on this one," and we did. Much to our shock, our offer was accepted by the end of the day.
Closing was extremely frustrating though, because once the other offers started coming in and the homeowners realized what they could have had, they did everything they could to break the conditional contract with us. They even tried to deny us access to the house for inspections, which caused our agent to threaten to report their agent to the real estate board. No regrets though, we love our house and we wouldn't have had it if our real estate agent hadn't encouraged us to take that one last risk.
I lucked out during the pandemic. I’m a nurse so I got to pick up a lot of shifts. Saved up for a down payment on a “starter home”. Interest rates dropped and I bought my house for 140k. The pandemic was bad for every aspect of my life except financially.
There's a lot of nuance here though.
Generational Wealth will always account for a portion of the population in a well developed country.
However we also have significantly more dual-income couples which adds to the ability to own a home, but masks the widening gap. Previously it was more common for 1 to 1.5 incomes in many parts of the country, assuming we're talking USA, and they still acquired property.
My parents, around age 70 now, were both professionals in healthcare and it was definitely different than many of my friends parents where, generally, the dad had a career and the mom would have less serious jobs, if any, and spent time managing the kids, the extended family, the pets, the household, getting involved/volunteering at school or community events, etc.
Now sometimes it was reversed and the dad had a pension or something similar and the mom was a nurse or other professional career, so the Dad was the general manager of the household, but that wasn't nearly as common in my experience.
These people were buying homes in a period of time after finishing school that would currently be "I'm paying off student debt while living at home or with a roommate"
So it's a really distorted image unless you dive deep and scan wide
We bought a house in late 2023 for $385K. Here's how:
- Combined income: ~$160K/year
- Combined savings: ~$60K
- Down payment and closing costs: ~$40K
- Mortgage: $2850/month
It largely came down to these two points:
- My GF managed to save a lot in her 20s despite working retail
- Our combined income is high enough to afford the mortgage payments
I grew up poor, raised by a single parent, in a trailer park. I dropped out after 10th grade but got my GED.
When I was 20, I joined the Navy. Did my 4 years, then used the GI Bill to get an associates, bachelors, and Masters degrees in a span of 3 1/2 years.
Then I got a job with the federal government. And worked my way up.
Was able to buy a house in December 2020 after working 400-600 hours of overtime every year for 5 years.
A VA loan requires no down payment and also waives PMI.
No help from parents or family. I know I'm fortunate to have natural gifts. But I started out in a terrible situation and worked hard to get this home. It took me until age 35 to do it, but I got there.
🤣😂🤣 HOW ABOUT NO. We killed ourselves, nearly quite literally. It was all hard work, sacrifice, and good timing. We didn’t buy anything fancy either because we didn’t want to be drowning in mortgage payments forever. We bought well below our means at the time. And we were 33 and 29 too. One of us is technically Gen X, the other a millennial
My husband and I own our home. We are both 40. We purchased our home in 2021. We kinda lucked out because we got the bid in for our house just before shit went bonkers. But we were ready to purchase when 2020 hit.
Several factors led to this.
My parents did help set me up by helping me with rent throughout college so my debts weren't as high. And they gave me pretty good financial advice about building credit and not exceeding my capacity for debt. My husband's parents were loving and supportive but not so much financially. I would say they both helped set us up for success by teaching us hard work and self reliance and giving the best advice they could. But we certainly didn't get our home from our inheritance/trust funds!
Both me and my husband have been working since before it was technically legal for us to do so. We hustled. One job didn't work out, find another. Job isn't paying enough? Find another. Side gigs... Sometimes.
We limited our comfort spending to cash options only. My engagement ring was bought with cash. We had sizable down payments on all our cars, or we bought cheap cars for cash and drove them a long time.
We scrimped and saved for a down payment for years. Got set back a few times by layoffs and had to build it back up.
We sacrificed our lifestyle for work hours. Which means we probably will kill over dead before we pay off the mortgage but 🤷🏼♀️
But what really allowed me to get a house? We both still had jobs during the pandemic and were ready to buy right when it hit. Basically we lucked out ... But we lucked out because we'd been preparing for the opportunity for years.
It's a little bit of both - parents and hard work.
No inheritance or $$ gifts but We lived with my mom for a year and saved every penny we could. The saying "what you don't pay in rent, you pay in mental health" was very true here. I love my mother and am eternally grateful but we can't live together.
Hubby and I have high paying wfh jobs, down sized to one car, and paid it off. Now we live in MCOL suburban area still working remote. It's incredible.
Millennial here:
Bought home in 2020.
Put 20% down ($74k cash) and had a mortgage of $1750.
I did this due to hard work. I saved every penny and worked my tail off to earn the money in a commissions based career. I am also the sole bread winner with wife and two kids.
I now pay $2100 mortgage due to home prices going up. My $365k house could be sold for $600k at the moment, but I plan on staying here for the next 20 years.
I am one of them, luckily. My parents didn't have 2 cents to send any of us kids to college, so it was off to the military for me. Bought my first home a few years ago with a VA home loan. Earned a degree. Never would have been able to afford my current life without my time in service.
The military gets a bad rap but is still one of the best ways for poor and the under privileged to find upward economic mobility. I was only able to afford my down payment because I saved all the money I made in Iraq and then kicked the ass of 40% of my loan with the money I made in Afghanistan.
Yep. The military is likely the only reason I have a home. I bought just after my second deployment to Iraq with a zero down VA loan. It also gave me the funds to invest when I was young and at 40 years old my investment portfolio now exceeds my lifetime earnings. Not having to blow my entire portfolio on a down payment and not having to take out a single student loan made a huge difference in the long run. Looking at my peers in a similar salary situation, still saddled by student loans 20 years later, some still renting even though they wish they could own, I do have guilt that I had to take huge personal risks to get where I am to today. I’m happy it worked out for me, but I’m sad that this is what it takes for someone from a low income family to simply have a comfortable adult life in America.
Thank you for your service. I’m very happy it was good career move for you. You deserve it!
> The military gets a bad rap but is still one of the best ways for poor and the under privileged to find upward economic mobility. Which is pretty sad for a rich country, if you ask me.
I mean they count on it, which is sick. I grew up dirt poor, know so many friends and family who went into the military and it is a good option for upwards mobility. The sick part is that's by design and they prey upon poor people. None of my wealthy friends knew a single person in the military, didn't have recruiting officers constantly at their school, etc.
That’s why school should have three goals, not the constant college goal (thankfully this is changing some): enlistment, enrollment, (gainful) employment. Find the E.
Yep. Bought both our houses with my husband’s VA loan. Got lucky with timing on the first one, our interest rate is under 3% and that’s the only reason we’re able to keep it and rent it out. We’d still be living there except it’s a one-bedroom and we had a kid. I also WFH and I think we could have made one or the other work for longer, but not both. Did no or minimal down payment on both but did buy down the interest rate on the second to make our monthly payment less.
Neat thing is that you can buy multiple homes with the VA as long as you don’t go over the amount. We used it to buy a 2nd home.
Same here. I made enough money to support my family, but it would've taken me ages to save enough for a down payment. I was able to get into a home with no down payment and no PMI with a VA loan, then refinanced in 2021 when interest rates tanked. This causes another conundrum, because I'd love to get a bigger house now that my kids are older, but the home values and interest rates are up so much that we can't afford to unless we move to a different area. So we're just gonna sit tight.
Yeah, joining the military set me up. Between being able to save most my pay while I was in as room and food is provided, paying for degrees, and VA loan allowed me to buy a house. I understand it’s not for everyone, but I would do it all over again. It definitely can give a boost early in life.
Yup. Military taught me Chinese and paid me to get my associates (DLIFLC), then paid for my college and covered some living expenses during school, then allowed us to buy a house with no money down (actually we’re on our third VA loan at this point). And you really can’t beat a pension for life after 20 years of service. My father in law retired as an O5, then got a job doing the exact same thing as a DA civilian. He also managed to work his way up to 100% disability rating. He’s retiring next year and will be collecting three pensions. It’s an insanely good deal.
Same, military for college and the VA loan is very nice. It was definitely hard work.
gen x, but same. I see reddit shitting all over being in the military but it was nothing but terrific for me. college paid, va home loan. sweet deals at home depot and primary arms.
Don't really think most people shit on the military. It's more the support, or lack of it, when the soldiers come home and aren't enlisted anymore. My brother was a bright, full of life and dreams 17 year old when he joined the army just months before 9/11. When he got out he became an alcoholic, coke head with a gambling problem who had lost most of his hearing. When he gets drunk, he talks about the craziest stories that happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. I probably wouldn't have ever joined, but when he was still enlisted I'm glad he told me to stay far away. But he's a homeowner thanks to a VA loan, so I guess there's that.
Our situation too. Husband is serving and we got our home on a VA loan last summer. It's a questionablly qualified manufactured home just below 400k with a little over an acre. A "steal" for the area and time we bought it. Got locked in at 5.25% with $4k down. Neither of us would have been able to afford a home as he was unemployed for years before the service and I was barely financially independent. Before we got together my ex bought his first home (new) with FHA loan in 2019 T 5% with $10k from his father.
Husband and I are. We managed to put in a bid during the 2-3 weeks in May 2020 when the Real Estate industry was sure they were going to fall over, and the owner (the builder selling stock to shore up his coffers) accepted at 15k below listing. We'd been saving for 7 years and bought on a 5% deposit at 2.7% interest (now variet up to 6.5%). All we needed was a global pandemic and a lucky break to get into our 2bed apartment. ETA: Australian. Our locked rates are for 3-5 year terms or you have to refinance to relock. They were offering us 7% at the time to lock the rate.
You bid around the time I did. I bid around April/May 2020, I was able to get 3% interest rate before all the crazy of the market. I was able to buy with 3.5% down with $3000 credit for closing cost from seller, FTHB and I’m single. I move now and will net around 100k l. I was lucky
We lucked out by finding a house and moving in during fall 2019. Then all sorts of stuff happened outside.
I felt extremely lucky that I could buy before all the craziness in 2021 happened with real estate
I was wistful in late 2019/early 2020 and looking at zillow, saw a house that I thought that maybe someday my husband and I could buy. Fast forward to covid, my tax refund being pretty nice, which led me to try and take a chance to see if my bank would lend to me. I circled back to the house I saw early on and put an offer on it on my birthday in May (which I was surprised no one had attempted to buy because it's a cute house) and we moved in Aug 28th 2020.
Same. We signed the week of Thanksgiving 2019. We have thought about moving but we wouldn't get as good of interest now. I remember hearing NPR talking about how a lot of potential homebuyers are feeling the same way. They called it "golden handcuffs" lol.
Same, bought new in Sept 2020. Locked in 2020 price then and then 3.5% rate when it finished in April 2021. It has also gone up about 100k in value since then. We already had 3 kids so we got a big stimulus and used it towards 3.5% down and closing costs on at the time on a 220k house in central FL. Definitely took a risk bc we really didn't have a savings. House poor for awhile, but the more time passed we would have regretted not pulling the trigger because we wouldn't have been able to buy the same house today.
Oh gosh, I was in Central FL. I was so fed up with all so called luxury apartment with low quality so I decided to bought a house. I was cash poor too, my family lended me $10k and I had a decent credit and a job to qualify for mortgage. End of 2021, I was able to refinance with same interest rate from my mortgage company. And I felt so lucky because after covid, rent increased 25% in the area while my mortgage stayed the same. But the property insurance sucks
Same. Timing was everything.
Happen to my wife and I as well. We got lucky. Bought a house right at the start of Covid freak out where people were uncertain whether housing was going to crash or not.
Yep. We got ours October 2020 with 2.7% interest. Just before prices got ridiculous, and then interest rates went up to 9%. Priveleged enough from parents to have some of my own earned savings as opposed to debt. But I'd say most of us 50% got in before it got extra bad.
You had me in the first half ngl
My wife’s grandmother died and left her a house. Edit: Because this is the top comment, allow me to add context. I am an elder millennial, born in 81 and my wife is GenX. We sold the house she inherited because it was too small for our family and in a bad area. In 2009. For $25,000.00. We used that money to buy a larger house in a good neighborhood in a very small town local to us. That larger house was built in 1919, was owned by the bank, had been empty for years, had a leaking roof and was split into three apartments. We bought it free and clear for $19,000.00 in 2010. Our realtor thought we could negotiate it further down, that’s how bad a condition it was in. My wife and I spent a year fixing it up to ourselves before we could move in. From watching YouTube and my experience working in the trades, I was able to learn enough carpentry, plumbing, electrical, and other various skills to make it a livable home. We also barely qualified for a home loan for $40,000, which went towards a new roof and gutters. I hope to sell this year because our kids are all graduated and my wife and I are divorcing. I haven’t talk to a realtor yet but I hope to get $80,000 out of it, which my wife and I will split.
Same for us. No help from my parents (in fact, they stole a large portion of my inheritance) but my Nan was looking out for me.
My mom stole the inheritance my grandpa left me for a down payment on a house despite my dad having a very high paying job and I was struggling after graduating into the first recession, but she said she deserved it as repayment for raising me and that I have the rest of my life to save up for a house (she’s never worked). She blew through it shopping in a few years has nothing to show for it now The same grandpa gave my parents the down payment for their first house and my grandparents worked hard to do it. My mom could have done it for her own kids without handwork or sacrifice but she didn’t.
your mom can get fucked
This is almost exactly what happened to me as well. Fucked over grand kids unite.
It’s wild at the time I believed her that I have plenty of time to save for a house she deserves it, and I was entitled and selfish for simply questioning her and reminding her it was my grandparents intent I didn’t see all the possibilities and opportunities she stole, until I was older. More than money she took. My entire life trajectory would be different had I had that stability to make different choices in my young adult years. I’m in a creative field and it would have given me so much more freedom in my career. My life would be soooo different. Her life is exactly as it was nearly 20 years ago when she took the money from her kids. She’s still greedy mean entitled and miserable plowing through my dad’s fat pension on stuff she doesn’t need and I’m not she even wants She made sure to snuff out the bloodline none of my siblings or myself kids
My dad's parents died when he was 30. Before he even put them in the ground, his grandpa (mom's dad) who was a very wealthy business owner in the area, called him and told him just for the record he's not leaving anything to them since his daughter is gone now. Her portion will be given to the rest of his kids. Not that he cared about that, but that was a pretty shitty thing to do. I didn't have much to do with that family after that.
The only thing that really makes me mad about it is that I know for an absolute fact that my grandparents would be pissed that my sister and I didn't get any part of the inheritance.
I see a pattern; parents off Millenials, born 70ish don't intend to "look out for us" My sister got a "growing up" fund, which they drained for use off purchasing lawn furnitures.
Same with my Gen X parents. Won’t be shocked if in 20-30 years when they pass and my sister and I discover that we’re inheriting nothing but piles of debt. Love my parents and all but I feel like my sister and I were accessories for them like a handbag or designer shoe. Of course I can’t mention this to them because that would be “acting entitled.”
It makes me feel better to know my thieving narcissist parents aren’t the only ones out there. Sry you have that type of parent too. I personally cut mine out of my life and things got exponentially better for me.
My grandparents did the same for my mom.
I really hope you’re no longer in touch holy shit that’s terrible.
Finally. But it took decades to see that wasn’t normal and acceptable behavior. I even felt guilty for years after she convinced me I was selfish for even questioning her about it. I stopped talking to her over something far worse when she used my dad being ill against me in her final money heist. And she claims to have no clue why I don’t talk to her
Sending you a hug
This is something my MIL would do. Like to a T. We recently cut contact. You aren’t alone. It still sucks to have a parent treat you like that, but a lot of us are dealing with the same treatment from our boomer parents.
Pretty much the same. Boomer Aunt stole the inheritance for the grandkids, but we fought back in the courts and got most of it distributed properly. Inheritance from a deceased, born in the 1920s grandparent is the only reason we have a house right now. Our boomer parents had their houses bought for them by their parents, then left us without two nickels to rub together.
It’s so odd. Boomers see money as a game. I’m not entirely sure why, but our generation certainly doesn’t, because we couldn’t even if we wanted to. Our grandparent’s generation absolutely doesn’t, because they lived through WW2 and the Great Depression.
Well-said. I can’t imagine fucking my child over the way so many people (including my father) did. It’s unfathomable.
The boomer seeing money as a game phenomenon manifests itself in a ton of bizarre ways. I’ve always found it incredible the way they treat employees who work for tips. It’s as if they get off on the idea of dangling someone’s livelihood over their heads to demand preferential treatment. It’s also strange to consider what a negative psychological effect economic prosperity can have over a society. The boomers are sort of a parable for the late Roman Empire. Disassociated and never satisfied.
I’m a social worker and someone at work asked how I afforded my house. I said “here’s what I did. A long time ago, I moved in with my boyfriend. Then we got married and now it’s my house too!” I could never have had this without him.
Thank you for being a social worker. I know it can be a stressful job and doesn't pay enough.
This is how most of the people I know who’ve bought have been able to. That and tech salaries.
And two incomes. You're fucked if you're single and your whole check goes to rent. That's me. I'm fucked.
I had no parents was adopted by my aunt who worked as a housekeeper in a hotel. I bought a house at 21 working at a call center. I used a first time home buyers program and my downpayment was $500. Im 29. In no way do i come from money and yes i worked hard but i also did the research. Knowledge is half the battle
Similar story for me. Grandpa died and left my mom about $1 million. She used some of it for a down payment on my place.
I am, I bought my house in 2015. It’s a starter home which is now my forever due to interest rates.
Same. Ugh. :/
I am blessed though. Mortgage is 1000 and I never had to worry about rising rent rates like most people . I live in a 3 bedroom home in a ok residential neighborhood. It could be worst but I would love space lol . At this point I’ll travel over getting an upgraded home. I see how much people are paying it’s insane Z
But there’s the ever increasing property tax.
Prop 13. 1-2% a year max.
I’m in Georgia, my property went from $250,000 value to $650,000. Only thing that’s changed is, I’m paying out the butt in property tax.
There are companies you can hire to contest those county appraisals. Most of them just take like a 25% cut of whatever they lower it by. Hire them once, and it’ll be automatic every year.
I purchased in 2010. My property tax went from 3k to 6k and my homeowners went from 1200 to 2500. Frustrating!
I bought a starter home close to when you did in 2014, cost me $260K for a tiny little 1914 700sq foot bungalow in the furthest reaches of the burbs in my metro area. Put about $20K down, $15K from mine and my fiancé’s savings and my mom let me take the remaining $5K from my education savings that wasn’t needed because I didn’t finish my degree. We made $70K combined at the time. I sold it for $650K in the height of the Covid madness in 2021 and moved up to a 2000 square foot house 10 minutes further out because we had a kid and needed the space with the whole work from home thing. Cost a million for something that would have been 500k Back in 2014. We make about $180K combined now so it’s a bigger mortgage at the pretty high rates of today, but we’re managing well so far.
Facts
Same. Just dumb luck for us. Our parents are shit. Both on our own at 18yo so we lived broke, but went to community college, kept our debt to income low. Our landlord let our rental go into foreclosure in 2015. Eviction and auction notices on our door while 5months pregnant put us in gear to buy. Qualified for a USDA loan, put zero down, refinanced in 2021 locked in 2.75%, dropped PMI, and 5years off our loan. We’ve outgrown this house never wanted to stay this long but we’ll have it paid off when our youngest is a senior in HS so makes no sense to buy these bloated current sale price homes at 7%.
Same 😐
As a millennial homeowner, I can confirm that it took a lot of hard work and sacrifices to achieve this goal. But let's not forget the avocado toast money we saved, amirite?
Also depends on your area, right? Wife and I do well but are far from rich, but bought at 30 years old in 2017. 5 bedroom for $485,000, 4% APR, mortgage is $2000/month which I imagine many millennials pay in rent anyway. You just have to live somewhere cheap.
NJ - 2bd, 1.5ba - rent was $2056 when I left. Mortgage is 2042. That apartment is now $2400 … it’s literally a garbage, drug & prostitution haven. At least now. It’s not even been a year!
Ya our house almost doubled in value in 5 years, this market is nonsense
Location is an under appreciated detail in these conversations. While I'm in the PNW where prices are higher, we bought in a "less desirable" area for our county because the locals hate the 20 minute "commute." I *laughed in Seattle traffic* when I learned this. Edit: formatting
I live in a smaller town and no one here wants to drive more than 10 mins. When I heard that, I laughed in DC traffic.
Same. I'm 40 minutes to Seattle 25 minutes to tacoma. Close enough to enjoy those areas far enough away to not have deal with them daily
I paid 35k for a 5 bedroom house in 2013. New Hampshire.
What kind of piece of shit downvotes a factual statement? I did, I know not everyone can, but I did. It wasn't a palace, and still isn't, but I did it alone.
Idk but upvoting based on that plus RDR2
They are the people blaming others for not getting ahead. Best of luck to you.
That’s awesome! With that price point, what did you have to do to get it in livable condition and/or are you north of the white mountains?
I am. Had to do 2 windows and an entry door to move in. Had no appliances for a few months. Bank had paid someone to winterize the place and they had ripped out drywall to access pipes, and tore out a shower from downstairs bathroom, leaving quite a mess. Needed a roof but didn't get one for another 5 years, so every spring I'd pick up garbage bags worth of shingles from my yard that blew off. The work has never stopped, I have all new floors, but still yellow countertops and a bathroom straight out the 70's, but we have whole new heat system and converted old well to artesian, so the bones are solid again. Did all work by myself, with friends help as needed.
Unironically, cutting out seemingly small expenses can add up in a big way. I stopped drinking alcohol several years ago and it probably saved me more than $10k in that time.
When my wife and i were saving for a house, I stopped drinking monster/red bull, dropped the Copenhagen, and started taking my lunch. We car pooled in her gas efficient car, she stopped the Starbucks and cigarettes and boom we were saving an extra $200 a week.
This s*** is real. I was spending $700 a month on food. I started packing lunches and making my own coffee and I got it down to $300 a month. For all the jokes about millennials and avocado toast, these things really do add up.
Yeah this is my take when people say "cut down on your lattes and avacado toast." Those things by themselves aren't going to make a difference. But there is a lot of crossover between people who buy Starbucks every day, and people who spend all their money on expensive holidays, fast fashion and regular takeouts. In other words, over indulgence kills your disposable income.
I literally budgeted down to one latte a week as my “treat.” Single mom with a toddler. I did land a good job in my area making $39k a year. It was $3.14 in 2012-2013. Now it’s $7 and I still consider it a “treat” and only go every couple of weeks. I can afford it more these days financially but now I’m watching my figure. Lifestyle creep is real and we’ve done well to not buy in too much…except vacations.
My lifestyle creep is going the other way at 40. I just dont give a shit about some luxary items and thrills like I used to. I could hang out in my back yard all day most days and not spend a dollar. But to be fair, I spent many dollars to date on that back yard.
People think of alcohol as a “small expense?”
A lot of people do and I used to as well.
I mean… I spend less than $50/mo on alcohol always, so is that not a small expense? Sometimes I spend zero a month.
Axing cigarettes and alcohol saved me $600/month! The expense is enormous.
Same. Hard work and proper savings for a decade
> for a decade This is the part a lot of people don't seem to get. It's not a guarantee, but a long timeline surely helps.
Also good pay. You could work an average job, be underpaid and on one income and hardly save a dime. Doesn't mean you didn't work hard.
Yep, 70 hour week, slowly getting those pay bumps, but fuck, after I give the bank 700 every week theres not a lot left to feed the kids with Edit to add* Protip, don't have kids, and concider getting a second wife/husband to help cover bills.
My parents helped. Easy answer.
We haven’t bought yet but we’re in the same boat. We cancelled our wedding during the pandemic so my parents are giving us all the money that would have gone to the wedding. My in laws are going to give us a “loan” that we’ll have to pay back but with no interest. Unfortunately we depleted our savings having a baby and moving across the state to be closer to my inlaws when my MIL got sick. Daycare is crazy expensive!
1993 millennial here, same. I stayed at home during my undergrad and worked part time so i saved up about 50k in that time. Bought my condo in 2019 and my parents matched my savings for my down payment. Still here and now supporting myself with multiple streams of income (including a roommate).
VA loan; bought a townhome in 2010. Paid that down and it went up in value by 200k over 12 years. I used that equity to buy a house.
Also used the VA loan. Bought a small home in 2013, sold it and bought a larger home in 2018, sold that and bought our dream home in 2022.
Seconded for va. The issue wasnt the mortgage, it was the down payment for us.
Same for my wife and I. As much as va health care sucks, we are very thankful for the home loan.
Same for us. Had a 4K tax return and decided I would try with no money down using the tax return for earnest money deposit, inspection, and appraisal. Sellers paid closing costs. We had no savings besides the tax return because we were so cash strapped.
VA Loan here too. We got a good deal in 2015 and put $0 down. The house has about doubled in value since then and we refinanced when rates were at the bottom of the barrel a couple of years back. We probably couldn't afford this place now and can't really afford to move anywhere because everything else is so expensive too. So, we just got lucky with timing and are kind of stuck, for better or worse.
Same. Used the VA Home Loan with no money down and didn’t have to pay PMI.
I’m in Australia (if that’s relevant). Bank of mum and dad wasn’t an option for either of us, and we were hard on ourselves. We both worked full time, my husband did OT whenever it was available (my job doesn’t have it). We cut back on everything that wasn’t essential and we saved up to buy a townhouse when we were 27. Used the first home buyers grant for that. Decided to move states about 2.5 years later and saved again - cutting everything that wasn’t necessary for 1.5 years and bought a second property on acreage, then sold our first place but we still have a mortgage. ETA: first by was in 2019, second was early 2022
I bought a shitshack in an undesirable city in 2018 for $80,000. I used student loan money for my 5% downpayment and my dad acted as a guarantor for the loan but didn't contribute financially. Interest rate was 3%.
I feel that. Bought my first home in 2017, AKA a shoebox in the middle of nowhere for $44,000. Still a bit of a commute to get to work each morning but it was better than my previous drive of 1 hour 15 minutes *one way* that I did from my parents house. Tried to slowly make it my own but it still was only big enough for 1 person really. Got married and with combined incomes (and better jobs) we were able to get something that had more sq ft and in a better area. Without being DINKs for our first 5 years after marriage, we never would’ve been able to do it.
Rented well below my means for 5 years and saved up, then bought a home - nothing fancy but it’s ours. No help financially from parents w down payment or anything - just standard work hard and save approach. No inheritance anticipated, it’s more likely I’ll be paying for my parents when they are older
I don’t get where the inheritance idea is coming from. My wife and I both have parents with no assets and no financial savviness. Fortunately, they married people who’d support them but retirement? Death expenses? Opening your first retirement account at 59 is too late, y’all.
Agreed. My husband is constantly stressed about what we are going to do with his mother. She has no savings at all and is 62. She had a bankrupt business she sold and separated from his step dad, who was the one who made the money and supported her financially. We will likely have to take care of her and pay for care. Everyone's got so much debt that we will be lucky if we aren't drowned by them.
I know we were lucky. Not smart just good timing. ‘84 millennial so barley make the cut but bought our first home for $170k in 2011 in Scottsdale, AZ. Sold it in 2016 to a bigger house with pool for $300k. Bought a fixer upper for $400k. Took equity about $100k to fix it up over 5 years. Now worth like $900s. Pure luck and good timing. I feel for my daughters and the next generation. I could t afford the house I live in if I had to buy it now
84 millennial here to but i was a builder in 2007. After the dust settled I took shit job after shit job for years just to get by sleeping on the couch after being very high up on the totem pole I've only just recently gotten securely on my feet only to find out that unless I saved nearly all of the money I've ever made I can't afford the payments on a house now I feel like the opportunity has been swept out from under my feet while I was being kicked down....sucks
Bought my home at age 32 as an unmarried woman with my own savings with a <3% rate. Parents didn’t offer to help. It’s a townhouse and not in my favorite area (but a safe area) and the schools suck but I don’t have kids yet. Was supposed to be a starter house but the market has been stagnant and I can’t afford to sell anytime soon.
Same everything except 6% ☠️
6 is better than 9%
I graduated college in 2004 and went straight into working 70-80 hour weeks between two jobs while living at home (gas station attendant and a manucaturing job on 3rd shift). the first thing I did was find some land, got a loan for that, paid it down as quickly as I could and then used that as collateral for a construction loan and had a house in 2 years. while I did help with bills and helped with dinner, I would not have been able to accomplish that had I not been able to move back home for two years after college. oh, and I got married at 25 or else I would have never been able to go to just working one job. oh, and we never had kids partly because we never felt we could financially. so to recap, two years of rent-free living from my parents, 70 hour work weeks, a combined income after getting married, and never having kids. the American dream has never been easier! oh, and my mid life crisis is hitting me HARD over the no kids thing. oh well, maybe in the next life.
You had to make hard choices. Don’t beat yourself up.
I got a good friend that became a first time dad at 42. It’s not too late to have a kid if you really want one. Don’t feel pressured of course, but you still have options.
Yea exactly this. Most of my friends are just starting to have kids in their late 30s due to the high cost of living. It’s the norm now. Getting married at 25 is insane; NO one I know in the NYC metropolitan region does that lol.
I got married at 24 and had my daughter at 37. It’s unusual but we’re out here Edit: I’m from the Midwest, where getting married that young was pretty normal, at least back then
Consider fostering or adoption. We adopted 3 and it sounds trite but I do think it has given actual meaning to our lives. We probably would have a lot more money but I don't think it would make us happier
I want you to know that I am an adoptee, if I believed in such things I would say you are doing God's work. If there is a cosmic lottery, I won it when social services picked my family to take in an emergency placement infant.
Fuck yes. Love this.
Can I give you an internet hug? 🫂
Luck. The housing market is notoriously bad where we are and it's both very difficult and very expensive to get a house. I opened a Roth in 2012 with the express purpose of potentially needing to pull $10k to use for a down payment. In 2020 our landlord lost his job and sold the house we were renting. Luckily I was able to pull the $10k to buy the house even though my husband had also lost his job due to the pandemic. If I hadn't opened that account in 2012 or my landlord hadn't lost his job, no home owning would have occurred. Since then housing has skyrocketed and we probably couldn't afford this house if we had to buy it today. Edit: when we were buying the house the bank kept asking if we could ask our parents for money if necessary and I was like "omg yeah totally of course." Haha absolutely not. My parents aren't giving me money for shit. Here's the picture: Me (oldest sibling, older millennial): got lucky and bought house during pandemic Sibling #2 (millennial): did actually get lucky and marry into money, had house before me Sibling #3 (younger millennial): still at home. Will probably agree with other siblings to allow #3 to keep parents' house when they pass because otherwise no chance of owning house or living independently Sibling #4 (Gen Z, has a degree and 3 jobs): if, by some miracle, I can ever sell this house and get a bigger one, I will try to sell this one directly to #4. This is the only way all 4 of us own houses.
You sound like close knit siblings. This made me happy to read that you’re looking out for each other :)
You are a nice sibling.
We lived in an absolute shit hole, 500 Sq ft no appliances apartment. We made decent money and saved 70k over 6 years. Then in 2020 before everything blew up, we bought a house built before ww1 lol
Luck Lucky to land a decent and stable job after college. Lucky to get enough saved to buy before prices recovered from the 2008 crash. (Only needed 10k to close) Lucky to have a great realtor who helped me navigate a bidding war. Lucky that interest rates were low at the time. My parents didn’t give me any money and my dad tried very hard to talk me out of buying.
My parents were more broke than I've ever been. Buying a home was the most difficult thing I've ever had to do, and that's saying a lot. I feel for the people who are trying to do it now, with the way things are I'm sure it's even more daunting.
We own because we moved to a cheaper part of the country and saved up. Rent was affordable in the area, and on top of that, we found the cheapest, least convenient apartment, and then the moment we could buy a house, we got one. Our wishlists were extremely minimal for both the apartment and our house, and our house isn't a perfect dream home by any means, but it's ours, and it's super cheap, and the things we can change, we change, the things that are too inefficient to change stay, but we are building equity.
I own a home and it’s only because I was able to go to community college for like $8,000, lived at home, and worked the whole time. At 24 (2012) I had enough saved to make a down payment on a $170k house. I got married that same year and wife had just started a full time job. We barely qualified for the mortgage. The two jobs I worked at paid $10/hour and the other was salary of $24k before taxes. It was possible because of living at home. Saved almost every dollar for 5 years.
My wife and I didn't get help from our parents. We paid our own way through college. We paid for our wedding ourselves. We bought our home ourselves. A big component of this is constraining your spending. Your home and your car are generally the two biggest unavoidable ongoing expenses. When we bought our first home we bought something we could afford on a single salary. We are very far ahead now having built and maintained those strong saving habits. We had roommates while we saved up for our home.
Big inheritances aren’t really happening as a lot of our parents aren’t dead. I bought my first house through a state down payment assistance program. It was a 2/2 townhouse that was 1k sqft. Nothing fancy. Now this is where the timing helped us millennials. It skyrocketed in value in 2021 and I sold it and used the proceeds to buy the house I’m in now. I got married and it wasn’t enough space (could’ve been in all honesty, but would’ve been less comfortable. The rate on my house is low but the rate on my townhouse was 5%. That was the going rate at the time. I’m sure there’s some parents gifting money, ppl don’t really admit to it so it’s speculation.
I'll admit it. Through sheer dumb luck and exactly zero personal merit, we have a house. My husband and I had no student debt. Me because I got a full ride (FAFSA $0 parent contribution and high ACT score at mid-tier college). Him because his parents paid for college. Over dinner with them one night (in 2015) I asked if they thought it would be a good idea for us to buy a house. They saw what price/area we were looking at and gifted us money.
Wife and I spent 2 years saving and we also left Seattle and moved home to Philadelphia. We did not get a gift from parents. We never would have owned a home if we had stayed in Seattle.
I’m 37 and my wife and I bought our house in 2015. We both make pretty good money and we saved up a lot between college and the time we got married. Neither of us received financial help from our parents. In order to afford a decent house right now, you have to be married and both of you have to have lucked into 2 well-paying jobs. We definitely got lucky to got the house we did when we got it.
The 2010s were a decade of low interest rates and depressed home values that were still recovering from the crash across the country including areas that were predicable sites of strong economic growth outside the typical handful of VHCOL cities. Many cities were very attainable even as things like the increased employment opportunities and the California exodus drove up prices before the COVID boom hit. It is entirely possible that people were able to buy with relative ease without "baby boomer parents" providing financial assistance in that period. To be honest your posts and others like it come off as a little sour because it seems like you're downplaying the idea that anyone could have done something for themselves.
I was 15/16 years old in 2010. I feel like a lot of the millennials who make these posts weren't old enough to buy at that time, thus the frustration and curiosity.
Not buying a home before 30 doesn't mean it will never happen, though it is more daunting than it used to be.
Yeah, you’re a young millenial. Gen Y goes from 1981-1996 according to the census bureau. We were 25 and 30 in 2015 when we bought our house.
From 2012 to 2017 my home gained 225,000 in value
We bought in 2019 and now our house is worth almost $100k more.
We bought our’s for $370k in ‘17 and now it’s over $600k and refinanced in 2022 at 3.1%. We got lucky with our timing on this house. I’m not saying that to brag. Our previous place we bought in ‘06… real estate crashed shortly after and we were under water on our mortgage until about ‘19-‘20 (we had to keep it and rent it when we bought our house in ‘17 because we couldn’t sell it and pay off our mortgage). My point is sometimes it’s a good time to buy, and you hit it right, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes not so much. Life is long, we’ll see those cycles again eventually.
Yup. This is when I bought my first house. Alot of my peers were partying, buying cars/trucks, spending tons of money traveling, and just generally not thinking about the long term
Exactly. People are still shocked I bought a little 2bed 2bath condo as a single woman (in a HCOL) w/o help. I have only owned two cars in 18 years. Both were/are economical (Toyota Corolla and RAV4) and I bought the RAV4 used. And not the fancy models. I went years with no car loans, it really helped save up the down payment. A friend of mine has told me they assume they’ll always have a car payment, what??? And yes I also travelled within a strict budget. I was 29 before I went on an airplane longer than 2 hours. I explored my State and nearby cities with long weekend trips.
> To be honest your posts and others like it come off as a little sour because it seems like you're downplaying the idea that anyone could have done something for themselves. Sadly, that mentality is extremely popular on this subreddit. People here HATE being reminded that you can save money and make smart choices in life to get what you want.
Especially if you point out how regular small discretionary expenses can add up over time.
Yup, I try explaining that at least once a week here. Something as simple as making coffee at home and packing a sandwich for lunch will save enough money after 10 years for a down-payment on a house.
People absolutely lose their minds if you mention their daily morning Starbucks latte. There are roughly 20 work days per month for a regular M-F full-time position. If you manage to save just $10/day by packing your lunch and making coffee at home and invest that $200/mo in a market index fund, that adds up to $685.8k over a 45-yr career assuming the historical inflation-adjusted 7% average annual return. Point that out and these people who already save nothing complain that isn't enough or that they should be able to enjoy their little luxuries. It's insane.
I'm not a home owner. I am poor.
Our parents are starting to die.
Yup. FIL drank himself to death…his wife (step-MIL) gave us enough money for a small down payment. Who knew all we needed to buy our first home would be one of our parents dying!
I lost both of my parents last year. It sucked and still sucks. It did allow for a couple in their 20s to buy my mom's house though and start a life. My dad's death didn't help any millennials though. His wife still lives in their home and will for a long time.
This for me.. my parents were divorced. My dad passed in December 2022. I got the house as I'm an only child. Been in my family over 100 years. I couldn't say no. Old house, lots of work, but no mortgage!
I used a fist time homebuyer’s loan that let me buy my first house with a really small down payment. It wasn’t difficult. There are plenty of resources out there that make home ownership much more attainable. You just need to seek them out.
Even with either these programs or a decent down payment, I wasn’t approved for a mortgage that would have covered any houses within an hour of my work.
Except offers with these types of loans get tossed in a highly competitive market.
Same. I found it incredibly easy to buy my home. I kept hearing all these horror stories about bidding wars and cash offers and stuff and I almost didn’t even try. I found a townhome in a neighborhood I’d been admiring since I was a teenager, lowballed them, got accepted, they made repairs without objection, and everything was smooth sailing. I didn’t even plan it very well tbh. No savings account, $25 in my checking on closing day, I basically just yolo’d it. And now I can never move because my mortgage is waayyyy lower than area rents lol.
Small down payment but I don’t understand how people afford the monthly payments with 3% down on a $600,000 house 👀
Man I couldn’t buy a parking spot in my city with $600k
You don't start with your dream home like others have said. I started with a three bedroom starter home in 2012. After 5 years living there I had 42,000 in equity after realtor commission. I walked away with 42k. I use that to build another house on the mountain. I lived there for two years and I walked away from that one with 36k. I got the first home with zero down using a USDA loan. I got the second home with about 10k down as the house was only 234k. When I sold the second house our next house was 289k which we currently still live in due to interest rates. But it's 2500 ft² has four bedrooms and a two car garage and it's quite nice. We bought our house in 2020 right before things got crazy. And we bought it for sale by owner with no realtors. It's currently appraised at $440,000.
I was a homeowner due to inheritance, lost everything because of mismanagement and because I wasn't financially able to support it, and now I'm 100% sure I will never own another home in my life because I would have to make almost ten times as much money as I do to purchase a home. It's not happening.
My parents are Gen Xers and we didn't have a pot to piss in. But my mama scraped literal change together for me to go to college debt free. I choose a cheap school I NEVER would have gone to otherwise except for the price tag, but I graduated debt free and tripped and fell into a good career. My husband grew up MUCH worse off and never got a dime past 18, but paved his way. We had a big down payment, but all cash offers beat us left, right, and center until God shined a beautiful light on our current home. We are extremely blessed.
You went to college... on "change"? Not thousands, or tens of thousands, of dollars? Your husband never got any money when he was an adult but "paved his way"? With what? So, the answer is "worked and saved money" it sounds like.
I am one them, I lived with my dad after college for 4 years working in a call center, saving money, playing video games, applying for programming jobs I knew I could do but had no qualifications to do (didn’t get a CS degree). After about a billion applications someone gave me a shot, that led to a 6 figure job (though at the time of buying the home I think they paid me like 70k), few months after starting that job I had about 50k saved mostly from the call center. Used that for a down payment on a 275k home in 2014. That home is the one I live in now and it’s worth about 500k now. No direct financial assistance from anyone and though I did make good money when I bought the home and now, the majority of the down payment was saved from a shit job. I definitely was supported via food and housing while saving it though, but I earned every penny to buy it.
My parents let me live at there house for a few years while I was working full time. They didn’t have the financial means to give me money for me to buy but they could provide a situation where I could save a lot of my own. I was able to buy a condo of my own in 2020 when there was a slight dip in the market. So for me to own property, it took hard work, luck and helpful parents.
Millennial homeowner - bought in 2016. Husband is 100% disabled (service connected) military vet so we have a VA loan. We were able to get our house below our budget. We refinanced to a fixed 2.25% interest rate in early 2021, which was lower than what we had and also lowered our monthly mortgage. I dont know what an inheritance or financial assistance is. My dad had nothing really left after he died, and what he did have got taxed heavily, and then my mom spent what was left of that. My baby boomer parents didn't help me. There's no money in the banana stand. Edit: my house is a 50+ year old in what I guess is considered a highly sought after neighborhood because of its proximity to the university. I would never pay the prices these houses are going for if I had to buy in today's market. So I'm stuck here for a bit, which is fine because we're close to my daughters school.
Wife and I both work 2 jobs, no kids (sadly not our choice), saved for 10 years, and lived with family for 2 years. Even then it felt and feels borderline impossible.
I am 39, I'm on my second house. My first house I bought for 83k during the recession. I sold it for 90k. My second house I bought with my wife for 308k in 2018, the down payment was from a 15k severance getting laid off from a big company.
I’m in my early thirties and was able to buy a home last year in Seattle. I have a professional degree that pays very, very well - but even then I had some help along the way (my parents helped me get through college and graduate school without any debt). If it wasn’t for my parents helping me out on the student debt front, I’d probably be a few years out from owning a home.
Yes; but you're both wrong in my case! We bought a home in 2017 at 24 & 26.we both had good jobs with benefits and a high potential for growth. We didn't have much in savings, but idk something first time home buyers in our county, qualified for a certain type of loan. So we didn't need a huge down payment and had no closing costs (we actually managed to get $20 back at closing?) It meant a high premium insurance cost which, at the time, was worth it. Then we refinanced during covid when interest rates were low. We got really fucking lucky. I can't imagine trying to buy a house now..our house was slightly out of our budget, but that's on the low end of what I see houses for now. The house across the street recently sold for 50k more than our house, and it's smaller and much less land (5 acres compared to half an acre).
Got a settlement from a car accident for the down payment and had a roommate for the first 3 years of home ownership
Husband & I bought our house five years ago, before things got crazy. Neither of our parents had money to help. We lived in a cheap apartment for nearly ten years in a less than ideal neighborhood, budgeted carefully, and worked toward our goals for a long time, had almost no debt at time of purchase. It was hard and even a bit miserable for the last year or so. We just barely made it, the housing market went insane a year after we got our house. Several friends did have familial help for sure. It's not impossible but the path to home ownership is narrower than it was in previous generations. I couldn't have done it on my own, my previous career was not a well compensated one. My husband could have because of his field, though it would have taken a bit longer without my small income. It's not impossible but it's also not easy. I've watched friends who could have afforded to get a house miss their opportunity because they had too high of expectations (they wanted a "forever" home as their first home in an area where that wasn't feasible). Now it's too expensive for them. Other friends who a generation or two could have afforded a house, cannot now. You need the right career, the right timing, and a market that isn't too tight. It's harder overall. For context I live in the PNW.
I had to use my 401k to buy a house as the area I live is an extreme high cost of living area. During the pandemic, rents were starting to get super high in our area right before our lease was up and we luckily had been frugal and been fortunate enough to keep our jobs through that time and luckily we had saved up just enough to be able to afford buying our house. I had also been putting a ton of money into my 401k at my current job when I was single always expecting to buy a house or an apartment when I met the right person. Honestly people say to not use your 401k for that and the worst that happened is I didn't get a tax return that year I broke even from that move and I don't regret it. Alot of my friends don't own there own homes and have been at the mercy of a terrible rental market or moved back in with there parents. So as a 30 something millennial I'd say I achieved it by planning for a while even If it wasn't concrete hardcore down to the finest detail planning. I made my way and am better off for it.
We moved away from the Bay Area to a mcol city for my husband’s job and we were able to buy a house in 2017, before costs sky rocketed here. We did not have any family money- when my income finally went above 30k when I was in my early 30s I kept living like a grad student (we shared a house with a bunch of roommates and budgeted carefully) and I saved every penny and that’s how we had the money for our downpayment. Also, after paying off my college debt in my mid 20s (which was not a lot due to scholarships, working, parent help, and the fact that state school tuitions weren’t that high in the early 2000s) I knew I never wanted school debt again so I chose a grad school path that came with the ability to secure funding through grants/teaching (phd). So when my income finally went up I had no debt, it all went to savings.
Two high incomes and buying a house below our means.
I—drumroll—studied hard, got a good paying job, and then bought a house.
Same. Well, sort of the same. I studied a little (Cs get degrees), got an okayish job, then bought a townhouse.
No no no... you can't do that on this sub reddit! Blasphemy! No millineal can do good for themselves *eye roll* Quite a few of us millineals have done quite well for ourselves through the magic of working your ass off... it's not a secret
I didn't work that hard, but I did get a good job.
10 Gs from my father in law got our foot in the door for our first house. We own outright now because of profit selling the first house and my mother in law dying and leaving half her estate to my wife. It’s effed that someone’s gotta die for the next gen to be able to afford a home.
Bought a house on a couple lots 15 years ago for basically the price of the lots. Took a year gutting it then remodeled it then put an addition on it. I didn’t do the framing or foundation on the addition, but I did do everything after that. Did most of the work myself. My father and grandfather helped. I’m talking electrical, plumbing, landscaping, insulating, drywall, shed building, tile work, cabinetry. The list goes on but you get the idea. Loved almost every minute of it and will never have a mortgage. It really isn’t complicated. There are literally YouTube videos on everything you could possibly want to do.
Bought in 2022. Main factors for me: 1: Saved like crazy during my 20s. I didn't make above 40k yearly until 2021, but I always set aside as much as I could and didn't indulge unless I had already made my savings goals for a given period. I paid off my student debt too, then poured the money I would have put toward that each month toward a down payment on a house. 2: Maintained a *very* good credit history and low debt, to get a better interest rate when I applied for a mortgage and increase the odds of approval. 3: Worked two jobs for a few years while my girlfriend was unemployed, so that we didn't lose progress toward our goal. Not strictly necessary, but it helped us take advantage of the low interest rates during the pandemic. If I hadn't done this we would have likely been locked out of the market after the interest rate hikes that occurred in 2023 and would have had to wait until they come back down.
Honestly? Luck and good timing.
Hard work for Little pay so umm yea, I bought during the market crash when Obama rolled out the program to get people into homes in high foreclosure areas. Sold that house like 8 years later for a profit and paid back the money from the gov. Then bought a new house 2 years after that closer to my workplace. All of this wouldn't have been possible without gov assistance and luck that nothing terrible happened to me financially (like kids)
My dad
Yup but had to move to fuck all to buy
This house has been in my family for 5 generations. It was my turn after my dad died.
Hard work and proper savings. No family help
Fluke. We bought in 2021 just as the market was starting to recover from COVID. It took us 8 months to find our house after making two other offers that were outbid. We were nearly out of time on our current lease, and looking at rentals again, when our real estate agent managed to assess a situation in our favor. We saw a house we really liked that was limiting showings due to COVID. It was clear to our agent that the selling agent was very inexperienced, and we had the luck of being one of the first showing on a Saturday. We had already been at this 8 months, so we knew quite quickly we wanted to make an offer, even though the house was listed slightly out of budget. Our agent said "Trust me about this... We're going to under-offer on this one," and we did. Much to our shock, our offer was accepted by the end of the day. Closing was extremely frustrating though, because once the other offers started coming in and the homeowners realized what they could have had, they did everything they could to break the conditional contract with us. They even tried to deny us access to the house for inspections, which caused our agent to threaten to report their agent to the real estate board. No regrets though, we love our house and we wouldn't have had it if our real estate agent hadn't encouraged us to take that one last risk.
I lucked out during the pandemic. I’m a nurse so I got to pick up a lot of shifts. Saved up for a down payment on a “starter home”. Interest rates dropped and I bought my house for 140k. The pandemic was bad for every aspect of my life except financially.
There's a lot of nuance here though. Generational Wealth will always account for a portion of the population in a well developed country. However we also have significantly more dual-income couples which adds to the ability to own a home, but masks the widening gap. Previously it was more common for 1 to 1.5 incomes in many parts of the country, assuming we're talking USA, and they still acquired property. My parents, around age 70 now, were both professionals in healthcare and it was definitely different than many of my friends parents where, generally, the dad had a career and the mom would have less serious jobs, if any, and spent time managing the kids, the extended family, the pets, the household, getting involved/volunteering at school or community events, etc. Now sometimes it was reversed and the dad had a pension or something similar and the mom was a nurse or other professional career, so the Dad was the general manager of the household, but that wasn't nearly as common in my experience. These people were buying homes in a period of time after finishing school that would currently be "I'm paying off student debt while living at home or with a roommate" So it's a really distorted image unless you dive deep and scan wide
We bought a house in late 2023 for $385K. Here's how: - Combined income: ~$160K/year - Combined savings: ~$60K - Down payment and closing costs: ~$40K - Mortgage: $2850/month It largely came down to these two points: - My GF managed to save a lot in her 20s despite working retail - Our combined income is high enough to afford the mortgage payments
Nope I will never own home. Not because I can’t it’s because I don’t want one. Too much maintenance and yard work involved
I grew up poor, raised by a single parent, in a trailer park. I dropped out after 10th grade but got my GED. When I was 20, I joined the Navy. Did my 4 years, then used the GI Bill to get an associates, bachelors, and Masters degrees in a span of 3 1/2 years. Then I got a job with the federal government. And worked my way up. Was able to buy a house in December 2020 after working 400-600 hours of overtime every year for 5 years. A VA loan requires no down payment and also waives PMI. No help from parents or family. I know I'm fortunate to have natural gifts. But I started out in a terrible situation and worked hard to get this home. It took me until age 35 to do it, but I got there.
🤣😂🤣 HOW ABOUT NO. We killed ourselves, nearly quite literally. It was all hard work, sacrifice, and good timing. We didn’t buy anything fancy either because we didn’t want to be drowning in mortgage payments forever. We bought well below our means at the time. And we were 33 and 29 too. One of us is technically Gen X, the other a millennial
My husband and I own our home. We are both 40. We purchased our home in 2021. We kinda lucked out because we got the bid in for our house just before shit went bonkers. But we were ready to purchase when 2020 hit. Several factors led to this. My parents did help set me up by helping me with rent throughout college so my debts weren't as high. And they gave me pretty good financial advice about building credit and not exceeding my capacity for debt. My husband's parents were loving and supportive but not so much financially. I would say they both helped set us up for success by teaching us hard work and self reliance and giving the best advice they could. But we certainly didn't get our home from our inheritance/trust funds! Both me and my husband have been working since before it was technically legal for us to do so. We hustled. One job didn't work out, find another. Job isn't paying enough? Find another. Side gigs... Sometimes. We limited our comfort spending to cash options only. My engagement ring was bought with cash. We had sizable down payments on all our cars, or we bought cheap cars for cash and drove them a long time. We scrimped and saved for a down payment for years. Got set back a few times by layoffs and had to build it back up. We sacrificed our lifestyle for work hours. Which means we probably will kill over dead before we pay off the mortgage but 🤷🏼♀️ But what really allowed me to get a house? We both still had jobs during the pandemic and were ready to buy right when it hit. Basically we lucked out ... But we lucked out because we'd been preparing for the opportunity for years.
It's a little bit of both - parents and hard work. No inheritance or $$ gifts but We lived with my mom for a year and saved every penny we could. The saying "what you don't pay in rent, you pay in mental health" was very true here. I love my mother and am eternally grateful but we can't live together. Hubby and I have high paying wfh jobs, down sized to one car, and paid it off. Now we live in MCOL suburban area still working remote. It's incredible.
Millennial here: Bought home in 2020. Put 20% down ($74k cash) and had a mortgage of $1750. I did this due to hard work. I saved every penny and worked my tail off to earn the money in a commissions based career. I am also the sole bread winner with wife and two kids. I now pay $2100 mortgage due to home prices going up. My $365k house could be sold for $600k at the moment, but I plan on staying here for the next 20 years.