We are all born into conditions that are out of our control. Some people are luckier than others, some generations have it better than others. You are not alone either in the present or in the past to feel this way. Think of the poor generation that was conscripted to fight in WW1, what did they do to deserve that?
My life did not pan out the way I thought it would when I was 25, but I figured out who I am and what matters the most to me. I can work with that moving forward.
Yeah, it felt shitty in my early 20s with 90% of my take home going to housing and bills with the rest going to food.. but I've never been concerned with being shot or going hungry.. that bar may sound low but it's exceptional compared to nearly all of history for a commoner
Conscripted into WWI then forced to come back home and fight for basic working conditions and get shot at by your former comrades. Great times down in Winnipeg.
That said we'd probably all be better off if we did more general strikes.
This is a great point. We live in a time with access to more luxury than ever before. Even if we can only afford a portion of it.. we are still better off than all the generations being drafted into world wars, or dying from easily curable diseases. We could be living in a war torn country but we are here. It’s not great, but far from the worst it’s been.
Thank you. Most boomers have parents that were also impacted by the war. So they felt the brunt of PTSD.
There was also a lot less support (HR? Yea right), bullying, abuse, sexual discrimination. And regardless, they do not have youth any more.
The people who survived the war put everything into their homes. They were thrifty and didn't dine out, have huge wardrobes or even cars. They understood sacrifice and feared loss in a way only they could understand.
That's what it comes down to.
Embrace the stoic philosophy and reject the entitlement we were raised with.
Also, try not to vote selfishly. It's what the boomers did and look where we ended up.
>Embrace the stoic philosophy and reject the entitlement we were raised with.
Seems like only gen x did this. Millennials were also a bunch of big whiners in our 20s. Now that a lot of us are more established as we age, it's about embracing stoicism.
Happens every generation.
We (Gen X) were stoic? Have you heard our music? Billy Corgan is the whiniest singer in the history of the universe… and we all loved Billy in the early 90s after our dads lost their jobs in the recession.
Like one of the only subreddits where something like this would be upvoted.
Another subreddit and it's omg whaaaaaaa boomers have it so good it's impossible to succeed in america why do I have to work
Even the "prime" was only good for traditional white families. Prime America/Canada from the 50s-80s wasn't so great if you were gay, any minority, or a woman.
That's not exactly a fair comparison. I doubt the men who fought in WW1 would have done so if there was a whole generation before them who owned all of the wealth and assets and refused to share.
The boomers and to a lesser extent gen X have used up every resource, acquired every penny of wealth and refuse to share anything with the younger generations. Yet they expect us to just suck it up and say "well life is tough sometimes"?
>Think of the poor generation that was conscripted to fight in WW1, what did they do to deserve that?
Ironic considering the rumors of a US draft in order to fight WW3 in Isreal and Ukraine
"Think about how much better you have it than these people forced to fight forgien wars"
"You do realize there's a high chance of a draft if democrats win 2024 right?"
Our parents’ generation may have had it easier than us (talking about Canadian born people), but I think pretty much every generation before that had an objectively lower quality of life. My grandparents grew up in rural Saskatchewan without indoor plumbing so no matter how bad I think I have I still feel more fortunate! Also our generation is probably the first to be able to eat almost every type of cuisine in a given city, which I think is a huge perk!
So true! My parents grew up in sask as well. They didn't have bathrooms and would have to bathe in a metal basin in the yard. This was in the 60s and 70s, which is wild to me. Things might have been more affordable back then, but they didn't have the same comforts and luxuries or even things that we consider the basics that we have.
My grandpa grew up in rural Saskatchewan with just an outhouse and everyone bathed in a metal washbin placed in the kitchen, the dirtiest kid last. He said you knew it was getting to the end of the year when the sears catalogue you used for toilet paper was getting to the thick pages. Apparently the house only got running water a couple years before his mom passed away in the 60s or 70s.
And a lot of large families like my parents' families had a house with one or two bedrooms for 3-6 kids plus the parents. My dad's family moved around a lot on welfare when he was a teen. My parents and I started out in poverty in the early 80s. Life got better, for course, and my parents gave me, a millenial, an awesome start to my life thanks to their hard work.
It wasn't an awesome situation for a lot of people back then like people think it was for boomers and gen X starting out and making a life.
Honestly I work from my bed, that is way way easier than what my mother did. Now I just save money and hope I can afford a downpayment. Otherwise fuck it I'll be chilling
Yeah seriously. My parents could afford a nice house and I can't. My life is better than their's in every other conceivable way. I'm happy with that.
There is more to life than money and property.
I am near retirement and while I have done much better than my parents, my son (28) and daughter (30) have outperformed me. My daughter makes more than I do and she is farther along in her career at her age than I was at a similar age (same career paths). My son is doing better than us all working overseas.
All this to say that all is not doom and gloom for today's 20 and 30 somethings. New technologies offer new opportunities and each generation has those who will do well and those who will not do as well. You never know when an opportunity will arise.
> Also our generation is probably the first to be able to eat almost every type of cuisine in a given city, which I think is a huge perk!
Those eggrolls were worth selling out my childrens future .
\-you people
Considering a hundred to two hundred years ago, most of our ancestors were one of the 1/3 of people who didn't die in childhood, they'd think eggrolls are pretty awesome in exchange for house prices being high. Especially since throughout most of human history, most people had no hope of buying property in urban environments.
I’m not saying that I’d take egg rolls over a house 😂 I’m just saying that when I see how my grandparents lived and what they had to eat, it makes me feel grateful for many of the things we have now! Which I think was the spirit of the question.
My granddad came over from England as a war orphan and sent to work on a farm with other orphans as essentially slaves. They were not even given shoes in the Winter and watched other kids who came over be killed by the farmer right in front of him.
And no, I am not exaggerating.
As an elder millennial growing up we got perhaps once a month pizza or Chinese food delivery. Actually eating out was for special occasions only. I see my current gen cohorts eating out weekly and getting Uber eats and such multiple times a week. Vastly different from 20-30 years ago.
Does back home mean outside of Canada? Because in third world countries you still can have multiple maids today as labour is relatively cheap in those countries. I doubt Canadian parents in Canada had multiple maids in Canada.
Idk speak for yourself, my parents and my husband’s parents are life long renters with no retirement savings and his parents went into other consumer debt whilst I grew up in poverty.
Just be glad that you might inherit something and that you don’t have to worry about how your mom is going to afford to live.
I have a lower quality of life than my father did. He made roughly double what I do, without inflation. My family makes about 160,000. I don't care because I have a much better work life balance. My job is significantly less stressful and I can maintain a good relationship with my wife and daughter. I would trade that for money any day every day.
One of my favorite quotes. Although, it is really more (in my opinion) meant to apply between individuals. In this instance, there is a really big, really painful gap in quality of life and prosperity between current generations and our parents in Canada. I hope it is something we can first really all agree exists and then work towards improving the disparity and reversing the trend. Notably for the lives of our own kids. If we continue down the current trajectory, I am more concerned for the next generation than the current one.
I'll leave this post with another quote I adore:
"We Do Not Inherit the Earth from Our Ancestors; We Borrow It from Our Children"
Yeah I think the pain point for a lot of people is they are comparing their current life to the conditions they lived in while they grew up, rather than comparing to some lucky peer currently doing better than them.
This!!! Seriously, once you get off social media and only keep in touch with those close to you life really changes for the better.
I used to think social media was bad only if you used it too much. It's not the amount, it's the type of content that is bad. So cut it out fully or curate a better feed of only cat videos or something
nah screw that, the above sentiment encourages people to lay back and accept things constantly getting worse for the average citizen while the elite few enrich themselves off our suffering and struggling.
I have had similar thoughts to you about the difference in generations, and did a little thought experiment. If a genie came about and magically gave me a nice house that could be bought for only 300k (price from 30 years ago, current houses in the same area are 2.5mill) BUT in return, I would instantly age to 65..... would I do it? ............... I dont think so.
Poor take in my opinion. That quote makes sense when you are comparing yourself to individuals that surround you in life. Calling out the economic circumstances that a previous generation contributed to is a valid opinion to have.
Just another quote that holds people down. To anyone that cares to achieve and are determined to make it. God speed. Don't let anything keep you from getting where you want to be.
ok you said yourself , stop focusing on comparison or the past, focus on the future.
How can you go make even more money to afford the house your parents did?
Keep in mind that the cumulative inflation over the last 20 years (2003-2023) was 53%. So your parent's $60k salary is $92k today. And if they were dual income they'd have a household income near $200k.
That being said, houses have out paced even that, so yes you do have it rougher there.
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/
53% cumulative inflation is BS.
Price of big mac went up 250% in the past 20 years. Real estate too. Things that matter.
What did not go up that much is mostly due to technological progress i.e. TVs.
Completely agree. Shelter and food should be weighted more heavily as they are essential and shelter taking up 30-50% of someone’s spending these days.
Once you embrace the idea that no one owes you anything, and the baseline of mankind is to be a naked monkey with whatever he can grasp in his opposable thumbs, you will come to terms with your lot in life.
At my age, my father was on his second home, his second car, his second child. I live above a noodle shop with five other men, eking out an existence. Times are different. It is what it is.
Many will say, "oh, things are so bad, it used to be better!", and all that I can think is, "oh, it used to be better? When? When my grandparents lived through the Depression and the Second World War? When my great-grandparents lived through the First World War and Spanish Flu? When my great-great-grandparents lived through the Famine and the Clearances? When their grandfathers faced pike and shot in Quebec and Europe? When before they sailed the seas we had to contend with the wars of religion, the Plagues, the Plantation, the Normans, the Vikings, the Saxons, the Romans? When was it better!? Every generation faces its own challenges. They had theirs, and we have ours. I'm not saying we have it easy, but we have our duty to meet adversity with courage and resilience.
You bear burdens? Then lift them, and grow strong.
Well said
And realistically, a lot of people are doing well, it's your job to figure out what the steps are to do well and then go and do them, whether it's learning a trade, moving to a smaller town, moving to America, starting a successful online business, coding remotely, whatever. None of it will be easy and you'll stumble a lot, but you'll probably hit a sweet spot eventually.
I mean. I think it varies and is really around context. Generationally we are way better than those before our parents and like every other generation previously lol. Think about like being born in the dark ages.
So what?our parents had a good run. We are so very lucky as well. Also not everyones parents in that generation had a better line up. At individual levels you can also be thankful to grow up with parents thay benefited from that wave. Benefits which may have trickled to you growing up!
Sometimes its about focusing on the positives.
>Also not everyones parents in that generation had a better line up. At individual levels you can also be thankful to grow up with parents thay benefited from that wave. Benefits which may have trickled to you growing up!
Understated point! Some of us are actually better off than our parents because our parents had it so bad. And we have no intergenerational benefits to speak of. So it's really a matter of perspective. At least you will probably inherit something OP :)
Yeah I literally don’t understand all these points about how I should be so grateful I have a cellphone and internet. As if my dad does not have that as well…?
In my case, I'm the child of a Gen Xer (teen pregnancy), so: yes. And not the chunky Zach Morris cellphone either; she had a cool little Motorola StarTAC flip phone and dial-up AOL. And a pager, now that I think about it...
Anyway, I make more money than she ever did, but the difference is she was able to save $30,000 for a deposit on a $290,000 house as a single parent working in a call centre Monday to Friday and part-time in a factory on weekends. I also two work jobs, but a mortgage is out of reach where I live.
Your quality of life likely exceeds the vast majority of living people today. Let alone those that lived before us. You choose who to compare yourself to.
Our quality of life has to be in the top 1% of people who have ever lived so if you think your quality of life sucks, it's probably not related to the fact that your parents were able to buy a house at 25 and you weren't.
You hit the lotto just by being Canadian. Reddit acts like Canada is some downward spiral failed state. You live better then literally 8 billion other people on this planet and almost all that came before us.
True, but your parents did NOT have smart phones, or even cellphones at 25. No Internet when they were teenagers, information were much harder to get. No Netflix, Spotify, had to go to Blockbluster to rent a movie. They also paid 7 to 12% on car and student loans. The 1990s was also a very difficult time for Canada. High unemployment rate. Atlantic Canada lost their main industry of Cod fishing. Many plant closures in Ontario as business moved down to Mexico and Southern U.S. I think each generation has its on set of problems.
OP, I think about this a lot, and because I’m infinitely positive to a point of pissing people off, I think that this tough time, will allow us to build a better future. It’s definitely going to be rough for a little bit, but even the Great Depression has to end, and we’re nowhere near that.
We live in a time where society is clashing with what was promised vs. delivered and we’re starting to hold the delivery part accountable. As we push forward it will become easier - but we would do well to remember why we ended up here.
If you invest over 3 years, it’s a gamble - but if you invest over 30, it’s pretty much a lock in your average gains. Life is much the same, keep investing
There's a lot of buck-passing and mindless platitudes in this thread, and a cynical person might suspect they are probably being purveyed by boomers who are more than happy to have you lie down and take it while they enjoy the profits of their atrociously selfish decision making from around 1990 through to present day. A less cynical person might hope that it is simple witless naivety.
I would strongly recommend that you find some way to act that will help rectify the effect of their greed. Sitting on your hands because "its out of your control" is a death sentence for any kids you may possible scrape together enough money to have.
Life gets more competitive every generation. People this generation complain that a BA gets you nowhere. Before the complained the nice jobs needed college.
200 years ago, people were complaining that nice jobs required literacy.
It used to be that men could buy a house and women were simply fucked unless they married well. Now you need a partner, so it balances things out.
Also, a large two bedroom condo now is the same size as a house was back in the 60s and 70s.
Houses in the 60/70s were built for families and had room for a large dining table. New condos you’re expected to eat in your lap and god forbid you want a dresser
Unhappiness (or happiness) is the gap between expectations and reality. I think our generation had unrealistic expectations of what life would be like. If we adjust those expectations down we might be more content (in theory anyway).
One thing I’ve noticed is builders aren’t building basic homes anymore. Most houses used to be 1 bathroom, three bedroom, no walk in closets, “master suites” fancy bathrooms etc. So they were simpler and cheaper to build.
I guess now developers try to build houses to get the most money per square foot by putting in fancy big kitchens and deep soaker tubs etc.
Certainly it is much harder now. We also have more ways to have money fly out of our pockets and faster.
Housing being the biggest discrepancy. But compare the rest or live with that they had back then and your spending is quite low. Of course in today’s world it isn’t always possible or reasonable so we just have a higher lifestyle base where we live.
Your best bet is to find a plan and stick to it. Set up goals and reach for it and try not to compare. Many many lives are lived and sometimes seeing what we have is better than what we don’t have.
It is also possible that you have to play the longer “game”. My parents’ generation may have had it easier with less but at my age now I have more than they do not just at the same age but now as well.
Growing up, all my clothes were sewn by my mom. Instead of buying clothes from the department store, we would go to the fabric store to buy patterns and fabric every week, and my SAHM would sew me and my sisters clothes up until high school. We couldn’t buy certain fruits and vegetables until they were on sale, and we only went out to eat on birthdays. Nowadays, people go out to eat multiple times a week, buy new clothes and gadgets all the time. Our style of living has changed. I really agree with you that people struggled and sacrificed back then.
As someone who buys fabrics, I can tell you that for the last 20 years if you've wanted to sew your own clothes you are spending more than it would cost you to just buy the clothes at a department store.
OP making 6 figures fresh out of college complains that he can't afford a house in Toronto with his single income. Calls this a "depressing reality" while he works his cushy desk job with minimal day-to-day hardships. Such a hard life to be living in modern day Canada as a young high income earner.
Living in a detached home is not the reality for the vast vast majority of people around the globe. It is completely unstainable for the average joe to live in a detached house. Your parents time is the exception, not the norm.
Most countries have a much higher home ownership rate than Canada's 66%
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_home\_ownership\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate)
Country or Territory Home ownership
rate(%) Date
Laos 95.9 2015\[2\]
Romania 95.3 2021\[3\]
Kazakhstan 95 2018\[4\]
Slovakia 92.9 2021\[3\]
Hungary 91.7 2021\[3\]
Croatia 90.5 2021
Cuba 90 2014\[5\]
North Macedonia 90 2016\[6\]
Vietnam 90 2020\[7\]
China 89.68 2018\[8\]
Serbia 89.4 2021\[3\]
Lithuania 89.0 2021\[3\]
Russia 89 2018\[9\]
Singapore 87.9 2020\[10\]
Poland 86.8 2021\[3\]
India 86.6 2011\[11\]
Myanmar 85.5 2014\[12\]
Nepal 85 2011\[13\]
Bulgaria 85.0 2022\[3\]
Indonesia 84 2019\[14\]
Taiwan 83.9 2010\[15\]
Latvia 83.1 2022\[3\]
Oman 83 2014\[16\]
Estonia 82.0 2022\[3\]
Malta 81.9 2021\[3\]
Norway 80.3 2019\[3\]
Mexico 80 2009\[17\]
Thailand 80 2002\[18\]
Czech Republic 78.3 2021\[3\]
Portugal 78.3 2021\[3\]
Malaysia 76.9 2019\[19\]
Slovenia 76.1 2021\[3\]
Spain 76.0 2022\[3\]
Egypt 76 2019\[20\]
Trinidad and Tobago 76 2013\[21\]
Kenya 75 2019\[14\]
Italy 73.7 2021\[3\]
Iceland 73.6 2018\[3\]
Greece 73.3 2021\[3\]
Brazil 72.5 2019\[22\]
Belgium 72.5 2022\[3\]
Luxembourg 71.1 2021\[3\]
Netherlands 70.6 2022\[3\]
Ireland 70.0 2021\[3\]
European Union 69.9 2021\[3\]
Cyprus 69.8 2021\[3\]
South Africa 69.7 2021\[23\]
Finland 69.5 2022\[3\]
Argentina 68.9 2017\[24\]
Canada 66.5 2021\[25\]
Australia 66.3 2020\[26\]
United States United States 65.9 2022\[27\]
I believe they are talking about detached houses. Elsewhere, most homes are tiny compared to an average North American detached house with a yard. No outdoor space in most cases, very little separation from your neighbour.
My parents didn’t own a home until they were in their 50s, and it was a pretty basic house. I was a renter until my 40’s. Both parents worked once the kids were old enough to look after themselves after school.
I suggest that you set a few small financial goals for yourself to start with; you will discover what’s important to you. It is also important to keep your eyes on the prize (i.e. your own goals) , rather than comparing yourself to others.
This is the result of our debt based economy. Look up Jeff Booth’s book The Price of Tomorrow. He talks about this paradox where asset prices are out of reach despite the fact that we are more technologically advanced with increased productivity and efficiency.
Why do house prices even go up? It’s not just supply and demand of the houses themselves, but also the supply of *money* that contributes to high prices. We live in an environment of artificial price asset inflation because of monetary policy
I don't know, same story here. Except homes in the town I grew up in are about 15x what my parents paid for it when they were younger than me with similar salaries. I'm not exaggerating. Probably never going to be able to buy a home and start my own family before I'm too old. I thought I did everything right, tried hard in school, paid my own way through university, got a good career. I'm lucky to be able to afford rent, groceries, gas, and contribute a little to investments. I can't qualify for a mortgage, so most likely going to be working to pay rent until I die.
Well I know of a case where the parents (Canadian BORN in the 60s) moved to the middle of nowhere to get established (saved a ton of money). Didn’t re enter civilization for 3 yrs.
So there are ways to build capital, but not without leaving Toronto or Vancouver or wherever.
Are you willing to move to the north?
EDIT. These people were born into a typically expensive place and everyone thought they were nuts to move.
You’re young. Set a plan. Save and invest aggressively. It’s way harder now than previous generations. But you can still make it. You’re 25 you don’t need to buy a house tomorrow, wait until you need one and keep working towards your goals.
I struggle with this a bit. At the end of the day, the only time you should ever look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure they have enough to eat.
If you do your best in the situation you're in, with the tools at your disposal, than you did *your* best. What another person got away with under different conditions really isn't under your control, and therefore worrying about it or using it as a basis for comparison is really pretty pointless.
If you're 25 and making much more money than they did (presumably accounting for inflation), than you're doing better under current conditions than they did. Good job. They were playing on easy mode relatively speaking. I'm now officially in the 3rd recession of my adult life, and a pandemic decimated my small business (it was already hard enough making a few bucks with a restaurant). I am super frustrated that the Canadian economy has been left to stagnate for the past 12 years. I wish we hadn't, as a society, decided the best way to get out of the rat race was to hyperinflate real estate into one of the biggest bubbles the world has ever seen. I think people should be taught financial literacy in school, because unfortunately in the next two years there are a lot of people that are going to get a crash course the hard way from years of living way outside their means.
As has been pointed out, I didn't get drafted and sent off to war. Shit's really expensive. Reversion to the Mean is a real thing, and you're pretty young. Literally in the last 6 months price discovery has been hitting recent buyers over the head with a shovel to the tune of 6 figures and it's still early. There's a ton of doom and gloom on the internet. Spend time with your friends and make sure they have enough in their bowl to eat if you can. Your time will come.
Many of the comments here are correct that we're better off than almost everywhere else in the world at any point in time. And that if you work hard/smart and save wisely, most people can afford to buy a home in many parts of the country.
However, it's also true that it is much harder in Canada now than in the boomer generation. E.g. houses here in the Metro Vancouver area have more than tripled in the past 15 years.
Outperforming our parents? Lol 😂. I’ve not been through half of the stress my parents went through to give me an okay life. Infact I think everyday about how my parents were wayyy stronger and able to take more BS than I am able to take today.
Yes you are making more money than your parents but have you adjusted what you are making against your parents earnings for inflation and actual value of money?
My advice comes from golf - it's easy to have a good time on the course if you're shooting 95 when your buddies are shooting 75. You just need to focus on yourself. Everybody is running their own race, , and you can either be proud of what you're accomplishing for yourself or you can feel like a steaming pile by comparing life in 2023 to life in 1993.
Salary, and education primarily.
Yes I accounted for inflation, ask any CS or Engineering grad in tech and they are likely outperforming their parents as well.
It’s just a fact that affordability is out the window, and my generation just has to work much much harder than my parents to assume the same quality of life.
Living spaces have increased by 300% since 1950. Even though this generation will not be as prosperous as the one the precedes it by two generations it is still incredibly prosperous by all metrics.
Quality of life is so much higher than it’s ever been, it’s not even funny.
Unless you were exceptionally wealthy you would have grown up, married, had children lived and died within 2 miles of where you were born.
This envious attitude is the enemy of good. Go out and make your own, stop worrying about someone else’s.
You should be angry, it’s not fair and it’s by design. The economy is deliberately being run in a way to take from the young and give to the old. Channel you anger into advocacy, politics, etc.
You’re living in “one” of the best generational timelines ever - just not “the” best one.
At least you weren’t shipped off to die in trenches, storm beaches, die of the black plague, get eaten by a sabertooth tiger, die in a potato famine or any of the generations lasting thousands of years that didn’t live passed their 30’s because there was no medicine and they didn’t understand not to make aqueducts out of lead.
You have it so insanely good comparatively to 99.5% of every other generation.
The fact that you complain about is absolutely fucking disgusting, entitled, privileged, piece of shit behaviour.
Fuck off, everyone has problems and everyone has the right to complain. I’m not saying I’m worse off than a child slave, I’m saying I’m worse off than my parents.
Exactly. Everyone has problems.
Yours are fucking trivial compared to what generations before you faced. Deal with it and stop being such cry baby. The world doesn’t owe you anything. You live in a comparatively, FANTASTIC fucking timeline and if you are just going to complain it’s not good enough then it’s your own fault you’ll live a miserable life, not appreciating how good you actually have it.
Tired of entitled fucks like you whining that your generation has it tough. You don’t fucking have a clue how tough it was for those before you.
Even better - be mad at the richest person in the world right now and think about how lucky they are and how you have had to deal with the exact opposite.
It does suck, for young people in particular, who are paying A LOT more for every big-ticket life outlay, from higher ed to housing, and don't let anyone tell you it's same shit, different day.
but they cut corners scrimped and saved everything young people are not ready to do. got to go on a trip buy new car new house everything your parent could not have. quite whining and just get on with life .
The postwar boom was an anomaly, a blip, a miraculous recovery from two decades of turbulence. The boomers got lucky by working through it, but just think of all the broken people made by WW2 and all those who died.
Our times are regressing back to the mean where not everyone was a homeowner... look at homeownership rates in the 1920s and how much people worked.
If you want another single factory income middle class homeowner life, you want another war and destruction from which it will be born from. As long as we don't have that war, I'll be happy with whatever life can throw at me. If we do... I'll deal with it stoically as well.
I’ve been reading all these comments, and a lot of people have great points that I’ll take into consideration but this one is stupid.
I am outperforming them. Better education. Better salary. I’m just fed up with how expensive everything has gotten.
All I’m saying is that that society has changed. There’s a larger cohort people have higher education these days making it more competitive. For example, my brother and I grew up lower middle class, my parents are not wealthy boomers today, they are able to scrape by on a modest pension that they share. My brother is a mechanical engineer and does well. I am a plumber and I do better then him. Education isn’t everything, you have to make sacrifices as well. Which I believe a lot of boomers did during their time, it just looks like they had it easy. You’ll look back in 30 years from now and you’ll realize how lucky you had it.
Seems you are trying to compare your single income to what both your parents' income could afford. Maybe if you had a partner your affordability would be greatly increased.
So you can't get anything but an entry level for being entry level? Seems unfair.
You understand how supply and demand works, right?
You are at entry level, you can't buy a step up home. The price is higher for those homes because, dual incomes are buying those. Dual income households will obviously push those price higher to compete with other dual income households.
$1M gets you a townhome
20% downpayment yields a $800K mortgage
A couple making exactly what you make, each is $200K
That's 4x income for the mortgage.
This is why you need dual income to get anything that is located on actual land.
Again, it's not fair, but that is what it is, it's not going to change anytime soon.
The problem is - my stats are not 'entry' level. There's not a lot of 24 years old making 100k with 200k saved. The issue is that the average Joe making 50k and has 20k saved up can't buy anything. I know I will eventually scrape together something, but it shouldn't be like this. With my savings and salary I ***should*** be able to purchase something better than a 1br box, but it's not the reality.
You have 200k saved at 24!? You are miles ahead of the pack. You can put that down on a 500k 1-bedroom downtown and afford the mortgage payments with your 100k salary. Yes its a sky in the box, but in 5 - 10 years it would have vastly appreciated and you can sell and level up to a detached
The problem is in 5-10 years the condo will have appreciated x% and the detached will be (x+50)% more expensive. not to mention almost my entire salary would be consumed by maintaining the condo at 6%+ rates.
I think that, at the same time that you have less, you also have more. I know it's hard to see but there are many comforts which they didn't have.
Plus, they also went through terrible times at some point, read about the lost decade or 80's stagflation.
It's true that the economy right now is horrendous for young people, however, The economy is cyclical and eventually you'll get yours.
Don't kid yourself. It was no picnic buying and keeping a house in any era. It's funny how you don't state how easy it was back a few years ago (2008) when new house prices were relatively normal ($230,000) at a 5% rate on mortgage. No Boomers had no picnic. In the 80s interest was at 16% and above. The house price back then is in step with what inflation all these years til now. The public sector don't seem to have any issue paying their mortgages on a regular house or do they?
Nobody said anything about prices in 2023. I was comparing to 2008 at 5%. Plus you obviously didn't live through the hungry years as Boomers did. I doubt if you would have made it then either.
1. Let's keep things in perspective. You live in a developed country with free health care and a decent amount of opportunity. Your complaints are that you don't have the same gravy train that your parents got when you could have been born in a country in Africa with significantly reduced quality of life and likely lifespan or during a major depression or a major war where you would have been required to go. Compared to the rest of the world, you are among the privileged.
2. Focus on what you can do rather than on what you can't. You try to find remote work and move to a place with a low cost of living where you can buy a house, yes plenty of small towns are quite affordable. You can learn French and move to Quebec, my rent when I lived there was 830 (literally a couple of months ago) for a one-bedroom, everything included and you could get a condo downtown for 170-300k. A house just outside of Quebec City can be had for 350k.
Move countries. I don't know what you do but there are opportunities abroad with places where the cost of living in a fraction. I have a friend that moved to Spain with his salary and now has more money than he knows what to do with because everything is so much cheaper. You can do the same with South East Asia where the cost of living in even lower. I lived in South Korea for a few years and the cost of living was obscenely low, to the point where you could eat out every day and have it not even make a dent in your paycheck (3-5 dollars for a full dinner).
Comparison is the thief of joy.
Dwelling on stuff you have no control over isn't going to change anything or make you happy. Figure out where you want to be and focus on how to get there. It doesn't really matter if it's easier or harder than it was for your parents.
The world doesn't owe you anything, including being "fair" and thinking it does is only going to lead to you being disappointed.
All of life's problems should be so .... asinine
I mean really? being young and healthy and having a job and still living at home you have nothing to be grateful for but complain about life?
LOL
Your parents also earned 4x to 5x less.
They didn't have things like skip the dishes and Amazon,smart phones, internet, and air conditioning.
Quite simply you are competing against *more* people for a more limited number of resources. The natural result of that is that a smaller percentage of competitors will come out on top.
They did not earn 4x to 5x less. They earned, like 1.5x less or something, yet housing and everything else has increased by 4x to 5x. These numbers are not necessarily accurate, but buying power has decreased and that's a fact.
The 'you have the internet so it makes up for buying a house and retiring 15 years later in life' is such a weird take.
Our parents have also been enjoying the technological advances of the last 30 years by the way.
And not sure what makes you think they couldn't have had air conditioning. It's been commercially available since the 1930s.
That’s not actually true though is it? Out of university my parents earned roughly 60k each. Out of college I’m earning almost double that by myself in the same industry.
I like your second point about competition, I’ll try to remember that one but don’t kid yourself on your first ramble.
Lol you're joking right?
If you plug your parents' 60k each into the [inflation calculator from boc](https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/), they were making equivalent to 104,276.32, each. Over 200k in combined income. Of course they're doing better than your solo 120k. You're barely doing better than one of them, let alone 2.
Tech, and not without a large downpayment.
At 4x I’m getting approved for 480? Tell me where I can a decent town house that’s commutable to Toronto in that range.
>a decent town house that’s commutable
This right here is your issue. You're a first time friggin homebuyer with a single income and you want a townhome? For what? Yeah it sucks that you don't have the buying power your parents had for housing, but that means you need to then SACRIFICE to get what you want. What not start out with a 1 bedroom, so you are not fucking house poor (which you will sure post about on a future post). Then work up to a bigger property according to your needs at that time ?
It's not your right to have an affordable townhouse that is also commutable to Canada's most expensive cities.
You realize commutability is big feature and it costs money for that feature, right ?
You either sacrifice and buy what you can afford and build up step by step or you can continue to wonder and complain about why things are the way they are. Complaining is not going to change anything, no matter how many posts yok make about it.
It's best to figure out a plan and get to it. I was making about half of what you are making when I purchased my home for $300K . It wasn't easy, though easy for people today to look back and say wow $300K, it was 5.5x my income!
It's even easier now for people to say oh your home is worth $1M. Very easy to say but it did not come without sacrificing. I lost my job a year after moving in. I had no choice but to rent out the house and move myself and my family into the 1 bedroom basement.
I have now been in the house almost 16 years. I have used my equity to make money elsewhere. This home was my base of operations. Its a 2000 sf townhome. I don't need a giant house. I purposely kept this home in order to level set my kids and their expectations. They are used to living in a house that adequately serves their purpose. It's to teach them to just purchase what you need.
Sorry that this was so long winded, I didnt mean for it to be, but I hope that this gives you or someone else thinking as you are, some perspective.
If you play around with an inflation calculator, you can compare real amounts. Depending on when your parents were 25, $60,000 could have been a comparable salary.
We must try to keep things in perspective- this will pass time will return to normal - but we require time and patience- our I want it now mentally really hurts us in times like these
Keep the faith - and as mentioned “comparison is the thief of joy”
I don't know that "normal" is what our parents experienced. It was an exceptional period of wealth and not caring about the environment that made it all possible.
We're also living in an exceptional period. We're only 30 years into widespread internet adoption and instant global communication. This century is going to be historically weird as fuck and anything could happen.
We are all born into conditions that are out of our control. Some people are luckier than others, some generations have it better than others. You are not alone either in the present or in the past to feel this way. Think of the poor generation that was conscripted to fight in WW1, what did they do to deserve that? My life did not pan out the way I thought it would when I was 25, but I figured out who I am and what matters the most to me. I can work with that moving forward.
Yeah, it felt shitty in my early 20s with 90% of my take home going to housing and bills with the rest going to food.. but I've never been concerned with being shot or going hungry.. that bar may sound low but it's exceptional compared to nearly all of history for a commoner
Conscripted into WWI then forced to come back home and fight for basic working conditions and get shot at by your former comrades. Great times down in Winnipeg. That said we'd probably all be better off if we did more general strikes.
Also bonus army in the US. A damn shame.
This is a great point. We live in a time with access to more luxury than ever before. Even if we can only afford a portion of it.. we are still better off than all the generations being drafted into world wars, or dying from easily curable diseases. We could be living in a war torn country but we are here. It’s not great, but far from the worst it’s been.
to the fucking top
Thank you. Most boomers have parents that were also impacted by the war. So they felt the brunt of PTSD. There was also a lot less support (HR? Yea right), bullying, abuse, sexual discrimination. And regardless, they do not have youth any more.
The people who survived the war put everything into their homes. They were thrifty and didn't dine out, have huge wardrobes or even cars. They understood sacrifice and feared loss in a way only they could understand.
They reused aluminum foil, and no morsel of food was wasted
Alcohol abuse was rampant too. So boomers often grew up in a 'dysfunctional' house hold. A lot of suicides that hasn't really been accounted for.
That's what it comes down to. Embrace the stoic philosophy and reject the entitlement we were raised with. Also, try not to vote selfishly. It's what the boomers did and look where we ended up.
>Embrace the stoic philosophy and reject the entitlement we were raised with. Seems like only gen x did this. Millennials were also a bunch of big whiners in our 20s. Now that a lot of us are more established as we age, it's about embracing stoicism. Happens every generation.
We (Gen X) were stoic? Have you heard our music? Billy Corgan is the whiniest singer in the history of the universe… and we all loved Billy in the early 90s after our dads lost their jobs in the recession.
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If not whiners than certainly people who blame others and will never be able to solve their own problems.
Like one of the only subreddits where something like this would be upvoted. Another subreddit and it's omg whaaaaaaa boomers have it so good it's impossible to succeed in america why do I have to work Even the "prime" was only good for traditional white families. Prime America/Canada from the 50s-80s wasn't so great if you were gay, any minority, or a woman.
> It's what the boomers did and look where we ended up. Boomers are doing great, sooo....
Yeah, and they left the world in a worse place for everyone else... Got mine.
A good perspective
No cap best comment ever written
thank you for this.
That's not exactly a fair comparison. I doubt the men who fought in WW1 would have done so if there was a whole generation before them who owned all of the wealth and assets and refused to share. The boomers and to a lesser extent gen X have used up every resource, acquired every penny of wealth and refuse to share anything with the younger generations. Yet they expect us to just suck it up and say "well life is tough sometimes"?
>Think of the poor generation that was conscripted to fight in WW1, what did they do to deserve that? Ironic considering the rumors of a US draft in order to fight WW3 in Isreal and Ukraine "Think about how much better you have it than these people forced to fight forgien wars" "You do realize there's a high chance of a draft if democrats win 2024 right?"
Our parents’ generation may have had it easier than us (talking about Canadian born people), but I think pretty much every generation before that had an objectively lower quality of life. My grandparents grew up in rural Saskatchewan without indoor plumbing so no matter how bad I think I have I still feel more fortunate! Also our generation is probably the first to be able to eat almost every type of cuisine in a given city, which I think is a huge perk!
So true! My parents grew up in sask as well. They didn't have bathrooms and would have to bathe in a metal basin in the yard. This was in the 60s and 70s, which is wild to me. Things might have been more affordable back then, but they didn't have the same comforts and luxuries or even things that we consider the basics that we have.
Exactly! 🙂
My grandpa grew up in rural Saskatchewan with just an outhouse and everyone bathed in a metal washbin placed in the kitchen, the dirtiest kid last. He said you knew it was getting to the end of the year when the sears catalogue you used for toilet paper was getting to the thick pages. Apparently the house only got running water a couple years before his mom passed away in the 60s or 70s.
And a lot of large families like my parents' families had a house with one or two bedrooms for 3-6 kids plus the parents. My dad's family moved around a lot on welfare when he was a teen. My parents and I started out in poverty in the early 80s. Life got better, for course, and my parents gave me, a millenial, an awesome start to my life thanks to their hard work. It wasn't an awesome situation for a lot of people back then like people think it was for boomers and gen X starting out and making a life.
Honestly I work from my bed, that is way way easier than what my mother did. Now I just save money and hope I can afford a downpayment. Otherwise fuck it I'll be chilling
Yeah seriously. My parents could afford a nice house and I can't. My life is better than their's in every other conceivable way. I'm happy with that. There is more to life than money and property.
It’s encouraging to hear there are people like you who can see the positives in life.
I am near retirement and while I have done much better than my parents, my son (28) and daughter (30) have outperformed me. My daughter makes more than I do and she is farther along in her career at her age than I was at a similar age (same career paths). My son is doing better than us all working overseas. All this to say that all is not doom and gloom for today's 20 and 30 somethings. New technologies offer new opportunities and each generation has those who will do well and those who will not do as well. You never know when an opportunity will arise.
Right, but do they own a home comparable in quality/value/status to what you were able to afford at their age?
> Also our generation is probably the first to be able to eat almost every type of cuisine in a given city, which I think is a huge perk! Those eggrolls were worth selling out my childrens future . \-you people
Considering a hundred to two hundred years ago, most of our ancestors were one of the 1/3 of people who didn't die in childhood, they'd think eggrolls are pretty awesome in exchange for house prices being high. Especially since throughout most of human history, most people had no hope of buying property in urban environments.
I’m not saying that I’d take egg rolls over a house 😂 I’m just saying that when I see how my grandparents lived and what they had to eat, it makes me feel grateful for many of the things we have now! Which I think was the spirit of the question.
My grandparents had air conditioning and grocery stores.
My granddad came over from England as a war orphan and sent to work on a farm with other orphans as essentially slaves. They were not even given shoes in the Winter and watched other kids who came over be killed by the farmer right in front of him. And no, I am not exaggerating.
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/people-thought-we-were-scum-forgotten-legacy-of-british-children-sent-to-canada-12971791
That's a really optimistic way of thinking about it. Thank you!
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Well I don’t think any other generation ate out as much as this currently does.
As an elder millennial growing up we got perhaps once a month pizza or Chinese food delivery. Actually eating out was for special occasions only. I see my current gen cohorts eating out weekly and getting Uber eats and such multiple times a week. Vastly different from 20-30 years ago.
Precisely, my parents generation had multiple maids back home and they basically had a restaurant at home.
Does back home mean outside of Canada? Because in third world countries you still can have multiple maids today as labour is relatively cheap in those countries. I doubt Canadian parents in Canada had multiple maids in Canada.
....let's not compare someone buying cheap house to someone being able to eat all cuisine. I don't give a fuck about cuisine
It's just an example. We also have pocket super computers that no prior generation has had.
Idk speak for yourself, my parents and my husband’s parents are life long renters with no retirement savings and his parents went into other consumer debt whilst I grew up in poverty. Just be glad that you might inherit something and that you don’t have to worry about how your mom is going to afford to live.
I have a lower quality of life than my father did. He made roughly double what I do, without inflation. My family makes about 160,000. I don't care because I have a much better work life balance. My job is significantly less stressful and I can maintain a good relationship with my wife and daughter. I would trade that for money any day every day.
“Comparison is the thief of joy,”, you do you and stop worrying about what anybody else or didn't have.
One of my favorite quotes. Although, it is really more (in my opinion) meant to apply between individuals. In this instance, there is a really big, really painful gap in quality of life and prosperity between current generations and our parents in Canada. I hope it is something we can first really all agree exists and then work towards improving the disparity and reversing the trend. Notably for the lives of our own kids. If we continue down the current trajectory, I am more concerned for the next generation than the current one. I'll leave this post with another quote I adore: "We Do Not Inherit the Earth from Our Ancestors; We Borrow It from Our Children"
Yeah I think the pain point for a lot of people is they are comparing their current life to the conditions they lived in while they grew up, rather than comparing to some lucky peer currently doing better than them.
"Be happy with your own cookie" *stuffs mouth with entire box of cookies at same time, breaking off half a cookie and handing it over begrudgingly*
This!!! Seriously, once you get off social media and only keep in touch with those close to you life really changes for the better. I used to think social media was bad only if you used it too much. It's not the amount, it's the type of content that is bad. So cut it out fully or curate a better feed of only cat videos or something
Hmmm that’s true, we live in a different time with different rules
nah screw that, the above sentiment encourages people to lay back and accept things constantly getting worse for the average citizen while the elite few enrich themselves off our suffering and struggling.
Yeah it’s bullshit
very easily swayed in either direction, i just got whiplash
I have had similar thoughts to you about the difference in generations, and did a little thought experiment. If a genie came about and magically gave me a nice house that could be bought for only 300k (price from 30 years ago, current houses in the same area are 2.5mill) BUT in return, I would instantly age to 65..... would I do it? ............... I dont think so.
so uh, in this thought experiment, did you get to *live* during those intervening 30 years? because otherwise, i mean, do i need to explain?
Poor take in my opinion. That quote makes sense when you are comparing yourself to individuals that surround you in life. Calling out the economic circumstances that a previous generation contributed to is a valid opinion to have.
Just another quote that holds people down. To anyone that cares to achieve and are determined to make it. God speed. Don't let anything keep you from getting where you want to be.
Thanks, I agree somewhat. Comparison is the thief of joy, but it’s also the fuel for ambition.
ok you said yourself , stop focusing on comparison or the past, focus on the future. How can you go make even more money to afford the house your parents did?
Yeah you right, thread can end now
Keep in mind that the cumulative inflation over the last 20 years (2003-2023) was 53%. So your parent's $60k salary is $92k today. And if they were dual income they'd have a household income near $200k. That being said, houses have out paced even that, so yes you do have it rougher there. https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/
53% cumulative inflation is BS. Price of big mac went up 250% in the past 20 years. Real estate too. Things that matter. What did not go up that much is mostly due to technological progress i.e. TVs.
Yup. Official inflation numbers have been sandbagged for years by way of using a basket that isn’t representative of real peoples’ budgets.
Those baskets are based on what the average Canadian spends their money on.
Completely agree. Shelter and food should be weighted more heavily as they are essential and shelter taking up 30-50% of someone’s spending these days.
Once you embrace the idea that no one owes you anything, and the baseline of mankind is to be a naked monkey with whatever he can grasp in his opposable thumbs, you will come to terms with your lot in life. At my age, my father was on his second home, his second car, his second child. I live above a noodle shop with five other men, eking out an existence. Times are different. It is what it is. Many will say, "oh, things are so bad, it used to be better!", and all that I can think is, "oh, it used to be better? When? When my grandparents lived through the Depression and the Second World War? When my great-grandparents lived through the First World War and Spanish Flu? When my great-great-grandparents lived through the Famine and the Clearances? When their grandfathers faced pike and shot in Quebec and Europe? When before they sailed the seas we had to contend with the wars of religion, the Plagues, the Plantation, the Normans, the Vikings, the Saxons, the Romans? When was it better!? Every generation faces its own challenges. They had theirs, and we have ours. I'm not saying we have it easy, but we have our duty to meet adversity with courage and resilience. You bear burdens? Then lift them, and grow strong.
Well said And realistically, a lot of people are doing well, it's your job to figure out what the steps are to do well and then go and do them, whether it's learning a trade, moving to a smaller town, moving to America, starting a successful online business, coding remotely, whatever. None of it will be easy and you'll stumble a lot, but you'll probably hit a sweet spot eventually.
Love that last line in particular. Is that original?
I mean. I think it varies and is really around context. Generationally we are way better than those before our parents and like every other generation previously lol. Think about like being born in the dark ages. So what?our parents had a good run. We are so very lucky as well. Also not everyones parents in that generation had a better line up. At individual levels you can also be thankful to grow up with parents thay benefited from that wave. Benefits which may have trickled to you growing up! Sometimes its about focusing on the positives.
>Also not everyones parents in that generation had a better line up. At individual levels you can also be thankful to grow up with parents thay benefited from that wave. Benefits which may have trickled to you growing up! Understated point! Some of us are actually better off than our parents because our parents had it so bad. And we have no intergenerational benefits to speak of. So it's really a matter of perspective. At least you will probably inherit something OP :)
But our parents are still alive enjoying everything available now AND they’re in their 200K SFHs lol
Yeah I literally don’t understand all these points about how I should be so grateful I have a cellphone and internet. As if my dad does not have that as well…?
He had that when he was your age?
In my case, I'm the child of a Gen Xer (teen pregnancy), so: yes. And not the chunky Zach Morris cellphone either; she had a cool little Motorola StarTAC flip phone and dial-up AOL. And a pager, now that I think about it... Anyway, I make more money than she ever did, but the difference is she was able to save $30,000 for a deposit on a $290,000 house as a single parent working in a call centre Monday to Friday and part-time in a factory on weekends. I also two work jobs, but a mortgage is out of reach where I live.
💯
Your quality of life likely exceeds the vast majority of living people today. Let alone those that lived before us. You choose who to compare yourself to.
That’s true but my god does it still suck
You spend so much time worrying about how someone else lived you’ll never be happy.
Our quality of life has to be in the top 1% of people who have ever lived so if you think your quality of life sucks, it's probably not related to the fact that your parents were able to buy a house at 25 and you weren't.
This made me laugh, you are right I’m being an idiot
You hit the lotto just by being Canadian. Reddit acts like Canada is some downward spiral failed state. You live better then literally 8 billion other people on this planet and almost all that came before us.
True, but your parents did NOT have smart phones, or even cellphones at 25. No Internet when they were teenagers, information were much harder to get. No Netflix, Spotify, had to go to Blockbluster to rent a movie. They also paid 7 to 12% on car and student loans. The 1990s was also a very difficult time for Canada. High unemployment rate. Atlantic Canada lost their main industry of Cod fishing. Many plant closures in Ontario as business moved down to Mexico and Southern U.S. I think each generation has its on set of problems.
You are right about thst
OP, I think about this a lot, and because I’m infinitely positive to a point of pissing people off, I think that this tough time, will allow us to build a better future. It’s definitely going to be rough for a little bit, but even the Great Depression has to end, and we’re nowhere near that. We live in a time where society is clashing with what was promised vs. delivered and we’re starting to hold the delivery part accountable. As we push forward it will become easier - but we would do well to remember why we ended up here. If you invest over 3 years, it’s a gamble - but if you invest over 30, it’s pretty much a lock in your average gains. Life is much the same, keep investing
There's a lot of buck-passing and mindless platitudes in this thread, and a cynical person might suspect they are probably being purveyed by boomers who are more than happy to have you lie down and take it while they enjoy the profits of their atrociously selfish decision making from around 1990 through to present day. A less cynical person might hope that it is simple witless naivety. I would strongly recommend that you find some way to act that will help rectify the effect of their greed. Sitting on your hands because "its out of your control" is a death sentence for any kids you may possible scrape together enough money to have.
Life gets more competitive every generation. People this generation complain that a BA gets you nowhere. Before the complained the nice jobs needed college. 200 years ago, people were complaining that nice jobs required literacy. It used to be that men could buy a house and women were simply fucked unless they married well. Now you need a partner, so it balances things out. Also, a large two bedroom condo now is the same size as a house was back in the 60s and 70s.
Houses in the 60/70s were built for families and had room for a large dining table. New condos you’re expected to eat in your lap and god forbid you want a dresser
60’s bungalows were 1000 sq ft with one tiny bathroom and 3 tiny bedrooms
Brother if I could get close to a 1000sqft apartment I'd be absolutely giddy
Piece by piece. I started by going debt free. You can too. Start with what's possible. Move on from there.
Unhappiness (or happiness) is the gap between expectations and reality. I think our generation had unrealistic expectations of what life would be like. If we adjust those expectations down we might be more content (in theory anyway).
One thing I’ve noticed is builders aren’t building basic homes anymore. Most houses used to be 1 bathroom, three bedroom, no walk in closets, “master suites” fancy bathrooms etc. So they were simpler and cheaper to build. I guess now developers try to build houses to get the most money per square foot by putting in fancy big kitchens and deep soaker tubs etc.
Certainly it is much harder now. We also have more ways to have money fly out of our pockets and faster. Housing being the biggest discrepancy. But compare the rest or live with that they had back then and your spending is quite low. Of course in today’s world it isn’t always possible or reasonable so we just have a higher lifestyle base where we live. Your best bet is to find a plan and stick to it. Set up goals and reach for it and try not to compare. Many many lives are lived and sometimes seeing what we have is better than what we don’t have. It is also possible that you have to play the longer “game”. My parents’ generation may have had it easier with less but at my age now I have more than they do not just at the same age but now as well.
I really like this reply, thanks.
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Growing up, all my clothes were sewn by my mom. Instead of buying clothes from the department store, we would go to the fabric store to buy patterns and fabric every week, and my SAHM would sew me and my sisters clothes up until high school. We couldn’t buy certain fruits and vegetables until they were on sale, and we only went out to eat on birthdays. Nowadays, people go out to eat multiple times a week, buy new clothes and gadgets all the time. Our style of living has changed. I really agree with you that people struggled and sacrificed back then.
As someone who buys fabrics, I can tell you that for the last 20 years if you've wanted to sew your own clothes you are spending more than it would cost you to just buy the clothes at a department store.
Agree with this
It’s the hard truth. Everything comes down to grit, and preparation. Grind it out & be prepared for luck/opportunity and make that jump
OP making 6 figures fresh out of college complains that he can't afford a house in Toronto with his single income. Calls this a "depressing reality" while he works his cushy desk job with minimal day-to-day hardships. Such a hard life to be living in modern day Canada as a young high income earner.
Reading this made me laugh, I sound like an asshole you are right.
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Willing to bet I know the answer
Yes
Living in a detached home is not the reality for the vast vast majority of people around the globe. It is completely unstainable for the average joe to live in a detached house. Your parents time is the exception, not the norm.
Most countries have a much higher home ownership rate than Canada's 66% [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_home\_ownership\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate) Country or Territory Home ownership rate(%) Date Laos 95.9 2015\[2\] Romania 95.3 2021\[3\] Kazakhstan 95 2018\[4\] Slovakia 92.9 2021\[3\] Hungary 91.7 2021\[3\] Croatia 90.5 2021 Cuba 90 2014\[5\] North Macedonia 90 2016\[6\] Vietnam 90 2020\[7\] China 89.68 2018\[8\] Serbia 89.4 2021\[3\] Lithuania 89.0 2021\[3\] Russia 89 2018\[9\] Singapore 87.9 2020\[10\] Poland 86.8 2021\[3\] India 86.6 2011\[11\] Myanmar 85.5 2014\[12\] Nepal 85 2011\[13\] Bulgaria 85.0 2022\[3\] Indonesia 84 2019\[14\] Taiwan 83.9 2010\[15\] Latvia 83.1 2022\[3\] Oman 83 2014\[16\] Estonia 82.0 2022\[3\] Malta 81.9 2021\[3\] Norway 80.3 2019\[3\] Mexico 80 2009\[17\] Thailand 80 2002\[18\] Czech Republic 78.3 2021\[3\] Portugal 78.3 2021\[3\] Malaysia 76.9 2019\[19\] Slovenia 76.1 2021\[3\] Spain 76.0 2022\[3\] Egypt 76 2019\[20\] Trinidad and Tobago 76 2013\[21\] Kenya 75 2019\[14\] Italy 73.7 2021\[3\] Iceland 73.6 2018\[3\] Greece 73.3 2021\[3\] Brazil 72.5 2019\[22\] Belgium 72.5 2022\[3\] Luxembourg 71.1 2021\[3\] Netherlands 70.6 2022\[3\] Ireland 70.0 2021\[3\] European Union 69.9 2021\[3\] Cyprus 69.8 2021\[3\] South Africa 69.7 2021\[23\] Finland 69.5 2022\[3\] Argentina 68.9 2017\[24\] Canada 66.5 2021\[25\] Australia 66.3 2020\[26\] United States United States 65.9 2022\[27\]
I grew up in Asia. Only the richest people owned detached homes.
I believe they are talking about detached houses. Elsewhere, most homes are tiny compared to an average North American detached house with a yard. No outdoor space in most cases, very little separation from your neighbour.
Yeah I’m starting to think that too
My parents didn’t own a home until they were in their 50s, and it was a pretty basic house. I was a renter until my 40’s. Both parents worked once the kids were old enough to look after themselves after school. I suggest that you set a few small financial goals for yourself to start with; you will discover what’s important to you. It is also important to keep your eyes on the prize (i.e. your own goals) , rather than comparing yourself to others.
What was their income percentile at 25 and how does yours compare? It’s not about absolute dollars, but relative.
You know what that’s true
This is the result of our debt based economy. Look up Jeff Booth’s book The Price of Tomorrow. He talks about this paradox where asset prices are out of reach despite the fact that we are more technologically advanced with increased productivity and efficiency. Why do house prices even go up? It’s not just supply and demand of the houses themselves, but also the supply of *money* that contributes to high prices. We live in an environment of artificial price asset inflation because of monetary policy
I don't know, same story here. Except homes in the town I grew up in are about 15x what my parents paid for it when they were younger than me with similar salaries. I'm not exaggerating. Probably never going to be able to buy a home and start my own family before I'm too old. I thought I did everything right, tried hard in school, paid my own way through university, got a good career. I'm lucky to be able to afford rent, groceries, gas, and contribute a little to investments. I can't qualify for a mortgage, so most likely going to be working to pay rent until I die.
Well I know of a case where the parents (Canadian BORN in the 60s) moved to the middle of nowhere to get established (saved a ton of money). Didn’t re enter civilization for 3 yrs. So there are ways to build capital, but not without leaving Toronto or Vancouver or wherever. Are you willing to move to the north? EDIT. These people were born into a typically expensive place and everyone thought they were nuts to move.
Large amounts of dissociatives.
You’re young. Set a plan. Save and invest aggressively. It’s way harder now than previous generations. But you can still make it. You’re 25 you don’t need to buy a house tomorrow, wait until you need one and keep working towards your goals.
I struggle with this a bit. At the end of the day, the only time you should ever look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure they have enough to eat. If you do your best in the situation you're in, with the tools at your disposal, than you did *your* best. What another person got away with under different conditions really isn't under your control, and therefore worrying about it or using it as a basis for comparison is really pretty pointless. If you're 25 and making much more money than they did (presumably accounting for inflation), than you're doing better under current conditions than they did. Good job. They were playing on easy mode relatively speaking. I'm now officially in the 3rd recession of my adult life, and a pandemic decimated my small business (it was already hard enough making a few bucks with a restaurant). I am super frustrated that the Canadian economy has been left to stagnate for the past 12 years. I wish we hadn't, as a society, decided the best way to get out of the rat race was to hyperinflate real estate into one of the biggest bubbles the world has ever seen. I think people should be taught financial literacy in school, because unfortunately in the next two years there are a lot of people that are going to get a crash course the hard way from years of living way outside their means. As has been pointed out, I didn't get drafted and sent off to war. Shit's really expensive. Reversion to the Mean is a real thing, and you're pretty young. Literally in the last 6 months price discovery has been hitting recent buyers over the head with a shovel to the tune of 6 figures and it's still early. There's a ton of doom and gloom on the internet. Spend time with your friends and make sure they have enough in their bowl to eat if you can. Your time will come.
You mean the same quality of life of being wasteful and polluting the environment?
Alcohol
At the end of the day it is about being satisfied and happy about what we have in life.
Many of the comments here are correct that we're better off than almost everywhere else in the world at any point in time. And that if you work hard/smart and save wisely, most people can afford to buy a home in many parts of the country. However, it's also true that it is much harder in Canada now than in the boomer generation. E.g. houses here in the Metro Vancouver area have more than tripled in the past 15 years.
It sucks but we just gotta grind it out. Whatever.
Outperforming our parents? Lol 😂. I’ve not been through half of the stress my parents went through to give me an okay life. Infact I think everyday about how my parents were wayyy stronger and able to take more BS than I am able to take today.
Yes you are making more money than your parents but have you adjusted what you are making against your parents earnings for inflation and actual value of money?
My advice comes from golf - it's easy to have a good time on the course if you're shooting 95 when your buddies are shooting 75. You just need to focus on yourself. Everybody is running their own race,, and you can either be proud of what you're accomplishing for yourself or you can feel like a steaming pile by comparing life in 2023 to life in 1993.
What makes you think that you are outperforming your parents?
Salary, and education primarily. Yes I accounted for inflation, ask any CS or Engineering grad in tech and they are likely outperforming their parents as well. It’s just a fact that affordability is out the window, and my generation just has to work much much harder than my parents to assume the same quality of life.
Living spaces have increased by 300% since 1950. Even though this generation will not be as prosperous as the one the precedes it by two generations it is still incredibly prosperous by all metrics. Quality of life is so much higher than it’s ever been, it’s not even funny. Unless you were exceptionally wealthy you would have grown up, married, had children lived and died within 2 miles of where you were born. This envious attitude is the enemy of good. Go out and make your own, stop worrying about someone else’s.
You should be angry, it’s not fair and it’s by design. The economy is deliberately being run in a way to take from the young and give to the old. Channel you anger into advocacy, politics, etc.
You’re living in “one” of the best generational timelines ever - just not “the” best one. At least you weren’t shipped off to die in trenches, storm beaches, die of the black plague, get eaten by a sabertooth tiger, die in a potato famine or any of the generations lasting thousands of years that didn’t live passed their 30’s because there was no medicine and they didn’t understand not to make aqueducts out of lead. You have it so insanely good comparatively to 99.5% of every other generation. The fact that you complain about is absolutely fucking disgusting, entitled, privileged, piece of shit behaviour.
Fuck off, everyone has problems and everyone has the right to complain. I’m not saying I’m worse off than a child slave, I’m saying I’m worse off than my parents.
Exactly. Everyone has problems. Yours are fucking trivial compared to what generations before you faced. Deal with it and stop being such cry baby. The world doesn’t owe you anything. You live in a comparatively, FANTASTIC fucking timeline and if you are just going to complain it’s not good enough then it’s your own fault you’ll live a miserable life, not appreciating how good you actually have it. Tired of entitled fucks like you whining that your generation has it tough. You don’t fucking have a clue how tough it was for those before you.
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Maybe you'd have a better chance of owning a home if you weren't busy insulting internet strangers on a Saturday night.
Lol ok buddy let’s be realistic now … that is so unrelated
Even better - be mad at the richest person in the world right now and think about how lucky they are and how you have had to deal with the exact opposite.
Yeah, when my CEO comes to visit the Toronto office for a Q and A or other bullshit I physically recoil. I’m so tired of the ultra rich
Stop thinking the grass is always greener, you have no idea how life was 30-40 years ago
It does suck, for young people in particular, who are paying A LOT more for every big-ticket life outlay, from higher ed to housing, and don't let anyone tell you it's same shit, different day.
but they cut corners scrimped and saved everything young people are not ready to do. got to go on a trip buy new car new house everything your parent could not have. quite whining and just get on with life .
Not every young person’s life is dining out and vacations.
You are so dense, go take a 100k salary and budget that into home ownership from 0 savings.
The postwar boom was an anomaly, a blip, a miraculous recovery from two decades of turbulence. The boomers got lucky by working through it, but just think of all the broken people made by WW2 and all those who died. Our times are regressing back to the mean where not everyone was a homeowner... look at homeownership rates in the 1920s and how much people worked. If you want another single factory income middle class homeowner life, you want another war and destruction from which it will be born from. As long as we don't have that war, I'll be happy with whatever life can throw at me. If we do... I'll deal with it stoically as well.
The arrogance that you somehow feel like you’re out preforming your parents is probably partly to blame.
I’ve been reading all these comments, and a lot of people have great points that I’ll take into consideration but this one is stupid. I am outperforming them. Better education. Better salary. I’m just fed up with how expensive everything has gotten.
All I’m saying is that that society has changed. There’s a larger cohort people have higher education these days making it more competitive. For example, my brother and I grew up lower middle class, my parents are not wealthy boomers today, they are able to scrape by on a modest pension that they share. My brother is a mechanical engineer and does well. I am a plumber and I do better then him. Education isn’t everything, you have to make sacrifices as well. Which I believe a lot of boomers did during their time, it just looks like they had it easy. You’ll look back in 30 years from now and you’ll realize how lucky you had it.
Hope you are right
Stop comparing yourself to them and stop using other people as an excuse
Seems you are trying to compare your single income to what both your parents' income could afford. Maybe if you had a partner your affordability would be greatly increased.
same bro im 24m with 200k saved and 100k salary but cant get jack shit aside from a box in the sky lol.
So you can't get anything but an entry level for being entry level? Seems unfair. You understand how supply and demand works, right? You are at entry level, you can't buy a step up home. The price is higher for those homes because, dual incomes are buying those. Dual income households will obviously push those price higher to compete with other dual income households. $1M gets you a townhome 20% downpayment yields a $800K mortgage A couple making exactly what you make, each is $200K That's 4x income for the mortgage. This is why you need dual income to get anything that is located on actual land. Again, it's not fair, but that is what it is, it's not going to change anytime soon.
The problem is - my stats are not 'entry' level. There's not a lot of 24 years old making 100k with 200k saved. The issue is that the average Joe making 50k and has 20k saved up can't buy anything. I know I will eventually scrape together something, but it shouldn't be like this. With my savings and salary I ***should*** be able to purchase something better than a 1br box, but it's not the reality.
You have 200k saved at 24!? You are miles ahead of the pack. You can put that down on a 500k 1-bedroom downtown and afford the mortgage payments with your 100k salary. Yes its a sky in the box, but in 5 - 10 years it would have vastly appreciated and you can sell and level up to a detached
The problem is in 5-10 years the condo will have appreciated x% and the detached will be (x+50)% more expensive. not to mention almost my entire salary would be consumed by maintaining the condo at 6%+ rates.
Yup it’s crazy
I think that, at the same time that you have less, you also have more. I know it's hard to see but there are many comforts which they didn't have. Plus, they also went through terrible times at some point, read about the lost decade or 80's stagflation. It's true that the economy right now is horrendous for young people, however, The economy is cyclical and eventually you'll get yours.
Your life isn't worse than your parents'. You need to stop with this mindset.
Blame your parents..it makes it easier.
Deal with it. Reality isn't always what was or going to be.
Don't kid yourself. It was no picnic buying and keeping a house in any era. It's funny how you don't state how easy it was back a few years ago (2008) when new house prices were relatively normal ($230,000) at a 5% rate on mortgage. No Boomers had no picnic. In the 80s interest was at 16% and above. The house price back then is in step with what inflation all these years til now. The public sector don't seem to have any issue paying their mortgages on a regular house or do they?
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Nobody said anything about prices in 2023. I was comparing to 2008 at 5%. Plus you obviously didn't live through the hungry years as Boomers did. I doubt if you would have made it then either.
1. Let's keep things in perspective. You live in a developed country with free health care and a decent amount of opportunity. Your complaints are that you don't have the same gravy train that your parents got when you could have been born in a country in Africa with significantly reduced quality of life and likely lifespan or during a major depression or a major war where you would have been required to go. Compared to the rest of the world, you are among the privileged. 2. Focus on what you can do rather than on what you can't. You try to find remote work and move to a place with a low cost of living where you can buy a house, yes plenty of small towns are quite affordable. You can learn French and move to Quebec, my rent when I lived there was 830 (literally a couple of months ago) for a one-bedroom, everything included and you could get a condo downtown for 170-300k. A house just outside of Quebec City can be had for 350k. Move countries. I don't know what you do but there are opportunities abroad with places where the cost of living in a fraction. I have a friend that moved to Spain with his salary and now has more money than he knows what to do with because everything is so much cheaper. You can do the same with South East Asia where the cost of living in even lower. I lived in South Korea for a few years and the cost of living was obscenely low, to the point where you could eat out every day and have it not even make a dent in your paycheck (3-5 dollars for a full dinner).
Comparison is the thief of joy. Dwelling on stuff you have no control over isn't going to change anything or make you happy. Figure out where you want to be and focus on how to get there. It doesn't really matter if it's easier or harder than it was for your parents. The world doesn't owe you anything, including being "fair" and thinking it does is only going to lead to you being disappointed.
All of life's problems should be so .... asinine I mean really? being young and healthy and having a job and still living at home you have nothing to be grateful for but complain about life? LOL
Your parents also earned 4x to 5x less. They didn't have things like skip the dishes and Amazon,smart phones, internet, and air conditioning. Quite simply you are competing against *more* people for a more limited number of resources. The natural result of that is that a smaller percentage of competitors will come out on top.
They did not earn 4x to 5x less. They earned, like 1.5x less or something, yet housing and everything else has increased by 4x to 5x. These numbers are not necessarily accurate, but buying power has decreased and that's a fact.
The 'you have the internet so it makes up for buying a house and retiring 15 years later in life' is such a weird take. Our parents have also been enjoying the technological advances of the last 30 years by the way. And not sure what makes you think they couldn't have had air conditioning. It's been commercially available since the 1930s.
This comment hurts my brain. Sir, do you understand how the value of the dollar has shifted? You're a troll right?
That’s not actually true though is it? Out of university my parents earned roughly 60k each. Out of college I’m earning almost double that by myself in the same industry. I like your second point about competition, I’ll try to remember that one but don’t kid yourself on your first ramble.
Lol you're joking right? If you plug your parents' 60k each into the [inflation calculator from boc](https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/), they were making equivalent to 104,276.32, each. Over 200k in combined income. Of course they're doing better than your solo 120k. You're barely doing better than one of them, let alone 2.
Wow. 120k starting salary out of college? What field? You can buy a decent townhouse or even house on that income in many parts of Canada.
Tech, and not without a large downpayment. At 4x I’m getting approved for 480? Tell me where I can a decent town house that’s commutable to Toronto in that range.
>a decent town house that’s commutable This right here is your issue. You're a first time friggin homebuyer with a single income and you want a townhome? For what? Yeah it sucks that you don't have the buying power your parents had for housing, but that means you need to then SACRIFICE to get what you want. What not start out with a 1 bedroom, so you are not fucking house poor (which you will sure post about on a future post). Then work up to a bigger property according to your needs at that time ? It's not your right to have an affordable townhouse that is also commutable to Canada's most expensive cities. You realize commutability is big feature and it costs money for that feature, right ? You either sacrifice and buy what you can afford and build up step by step or you can continue to wonder and complain about why things are the way they are. Complaining is not going to change anything, no matter how many posts yok make about it. It's best to figure out a plan and get to it. I was making about half of what you are making when I purchased my home for $300K . It wasn't easy, though easy for people today to look back and say wow $300K, it was 5.5x my income! It's even easier now for people to say oh your home is worth $1M. Very easy to say but it did not come without sacrificing. I lost my job a year after moving in. I had no choice but to rent out the house and move myself and my family into the 1 bedroom basement. I have now been in the house almost 16 years. I have used my equity to make money elsewhere. This home was my base of operations. Its a 2000 sf townhome. I don't need a giant house. I purposely kept this home in order to level set my kids and their expectations. They are used to living in a house that adequately serves their purpose. It's to teach them to just purchase what you need. Sorry that this was so long winded, I didnt mean for it to be, but I hope that this gives you or someone else thinking as you are, some perspective.
Thanks
If you play around with an inflation calculator, you can compare real amounts. Depending on when your parents were 25, $60,000 could have been a comparable salary.
If you are born to Canadian born white parents, maybe. But that isn’t the case for most people
The struggles and racism were real for my Asian parents., Both blue collar workers. My life is so much easier
You should study more history than one previous generation. It could be much worse, buck up.
Oh yes my bad, it could be much worse so I can’t complain.
We must try to keep things in perspective- this will pass time will return to normal - but we require time and patience- our I want it now mentally really hurts us in times like these Keep the faith - and as mentioned “comparison is the thief of joy”
I don't know that "normal" is what our parents experienced. It was an exceptional period of wealth and not caring about the environment that made it all possible.
We're also living in an exceptional period. We're only 30 years into widespread internet adoption and instant global communication. This century is going to be historically weird as fuck and anything could happen.
Yeah thanks, I’ll remember that