Originally Posted by
Fenelon
Not sure that I agree with the 4.5 vs 13 X scenario. I live rural Kawarthas and bought my first home in 1991 when I was making 40K per year and was 26yrs old. A really nice house, or even a small farm could be had for about $275-300K. I bought a power of sale 8 acre parcel and got the cheapest bungalow I could get built new on the property. Total cost was $115,000. I had saved about 35K of my own money. Unlike my friends who had zero savings, I didn't own a new truck, ATV, boat, skidoo, covered skidoo trailer, Seadoo, etc . I didn't eat out and I didn't go to the tropics in the winter. I made sure I had zero debt, other than my mortgage which was 15%! I've never carried a credit card balance in my life. If you don't have the money saved - you don't buy it! I went without a lot of things. I also trapped during this time and every penny I made went towards the mortgage principle. When I did buy a new truck or car, it was the base economy model. My wife and I had the mortgage paid by the time we were 33, even with the high insurance rates.
Today, the mortgage rates are almost 1/3 of what I paid! My 40K job now pays 89K. You can still get a good starter home for around $550k where I live, so the ratio has not changed in 35 years. WTF are young people doing with their money now? The change is the work ethic and values of the new generations. They feel entitled and aren't prepared to be realistic and do what is needed to own a home. How many 25 year olds have actually scrimped on their lifestyle to put money away in savings? They can thank their helicoptering parents for the defective upbringing that didn't teach them to work hard to get yourself ahead. Starting at 11 and 12 I always had work on farms- haying, ploughing, milking, harvesting. I never had an allowance and I had afterschool jobs from the time I was 13. If I wanted to drive at 16 then I paid the whole shot. My money went into the bank and helped pay for my clothes and education. I tried a couple of years ago to find two teenage 14-16 year old boys who would help hay, pick rocks and cut cedar posts in the bush. A three month job, 40 hrs per week. I was going to pay them $20/hour and feed them. I could not entice a single kid to take the job! The old saying "that kid was as useless as teats on a boar-pig" came to mind. Now you have a generation of kids who are given money, never have to work to pay for anything, mommy and daddy pay their phone bill, gas and insurance to drive the car, and pay for their education. The typical 25 to 30 year old I see now has a leased or purchased BRAND NEW $90,000 truck that will take double that amount of his income to pay out over an 8 year term. What ever happened to the old POS beater that allowed you to save some money. Then the idiot will spend another $8,000 on oversized tires and rims so that everyone thinks his truck is cool. Then they buy a $19,000 skidoo on credit, $10,000 covered trailer on credit, $3000 of colour-matching jackets and helmets on credit. In the summer they've switched the skidoo for the $16,000 atv on credit, or maybe even the $35,000 UTV on credit. Another 3K to insure it. Might as well throw in a few other toys like a seadoo and maybe a boat. They buy stuff on lines of credit and use a credit card to buy things they cannot afford. The same dude hits the bars twice a week and eats out at least six times per month, and lives on expensive take-out or door dash crap. The end of all of this makes my heart bleed piss for the situation they find themselves in. There's no sympathy coming from me.
