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Sounds like you're working in either a very large metro area or an island paradise. Sorry, but you should have known what you could expect for a salary and balanced that with the typical cost of living in areas with the type of jobs you qualify for.
I work in IT... ever since the shift to the service economy, professionals have been moving to the cities.
The problem is that at some point cities were affordable. Now they're not. This is the main problem here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KathrynAragon
Where I live, many young adults are able to afford to own homes.
So those numbers and graph about average person in the USA paying more and more income towards housing and transportation just lies?
The average cost for a degree today in the US is $15,000 a year which INCLUDES room and board (and any adult needs to understand that they are going to have room and board as expenses whether they're in or out of school). Sorry - that's just not unobtainable, between part time work, grants, scholarships, and small loans.
And EVERYONE has been put through the financial wringer over the past 6 years or so. People don't work till they're 75 or 80 years old because they want to, generally speaking. But many people had to rebuild their retirement funds, or try to recover from staggering losses on their homes.
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The cost for one year of tuition and fees varies widely among colleges. According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2013–2014 school year was $30,094at private colleges, $8,893 for state residents at public colleges, and $22,203 for out-of-state residents attending public ...
this is not a degree, just one year with out food/ board books etc etc.
Most student that owe student loans owe more than all the credit card debt together!
No, not more and more roommates, just a sensible number. If an apartment costs $500k, then the easy solution is to not buy one, but to shack with 2-3 others and split the rent.
and that's what people are doing but you can't do this forever. Our productive population as a whole is still paying more towards housing than ever before. This isn't normal.
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The cost for one year of tuition and fees varies widely among colleges. According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2013–2014 school year was $30,094at private colleges, $8,893 for state residents at public colleges, and $22,203 for out-of-state residents attending public ...
this is not a degree, just one year with out food/ board books etc etc.
Most student that owe student loans owe more than all the credit card debt together!
I already posted the study from the US Census Bureau so I won't look it up and post it again, but according to the US Census Bureau, the AVERAGE cost for one year of college tuition, room and board is about $15,000.
Of course colleges vary widely when it comes to costs, just as different regions of the US vary widely when it comes to cost of living.
People should pursue a college education at an institution they can afford. They need to look at their return on their investment BEFORE they make the investment and see if that degree from that particular school is going to probably pay off for them, with or without student loans. They need to look closely at other alternatives.
Older people have always had more money than younger folks. Nothing new there. The older people have already worked and saved for a lifetime while the younger ones are just starting out and doing expensive things like having kids. They have not put in the time. Seniors earned what they have.
Most seniors are not hanging out on private yachts like the picture suggests. I wish! All the people I know lead ordinary lives and hope they have saved enough to live till they die! And I mean ordinary. Average housing, used cars, and coupon cutting.
Sure there are exceptions. There are rich seniors with yachts and wealthy millennials popping open $500 bottles of champagne in 'the club'. But that's not average for either group.
I think the anger is misplaced. All the oldsters did was was work and save all their lives. That has exactly nothing to do with the fact there are few jobs out there that will allow you to do the same thing. Things changed. Technology made most of us redundant and the jobs available to the masses no longer pay enough to make a living. You are angry because you listened to your parents and went in debt to get an education that no longer guarantees you a decent job. If I was one of you I would be angry too. Seniors didn't do this to you. And the advice you parents gave you about the value of an education was the best available at the time.
If you need an enemy, it's corporate America. Those people who offshored all those decent jobs. And then moved their corporate HQ to BFE to avoid paying taxes here. Those same folks who now offer you part time work with no benefits, for minimum wage. And you can be angry with the government that facilitated this mess, bought and paid for by these same corporations. It probably started with Reagan and his trickle down economics and has been embraced by all the administrations after him. Democratic and Republican. There are few left in the government who give a damn about the people. There's no money in it.
I don't know if you can change things but the answer has to be political activism. Just make sure you are angry with the right people! The people need to win for once. All of them.
I already posted the study from the US Census Bureau so I won't look it up and post it again, but according to the US Census Bureau, the AVERAGE cost for one year of college tuition, room and board is about $15,000.
Of course colleges vary widely when it comes to costs, just as different regions of the US vary widely when it comes to cost of living.
People should pursue a college education at an institution they can afford. They need to look at their return on their investment BEFORE they make the investment and see if that degree from that particular school is going to probably pay off for them, with or without student loans. They need to look closely at other alternatives.
Welcome to adulthood!
The majority of alternatives are frowned upon. If trades aren't frowned upon by high schools and parents, they would be a viable option. Community colleges weren't due to somewhat true negative stereotypes of "mouthbreather students" and you don't get the university experience. Perhaps the Obama plan once enacted can change that as a cheaper option. You often hear about scholarahips which go to extraordinary students and if not, the just under extraordinary students and often white males are overlooked.
Better spend thousands driving everywhere.
It's not the iPhones or Xboxes.
Go back about 25 pages on this thread and there's a video where Elizabeth Warren explains in great detail where the money is being spent today compared to 1970. The big ones are the second auto (necessary for the double-income couple), childcare (necessary for the double-income couple) and housing.
Meanwhile, pay for male workers has absolutely flatlined since 1970. The gains in family income are only because of working women. With that comes the associated second car and childcare expenses.
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Originally Posted by im_a_lawyer
So just keep adding more roommates to deal with never ending housing bubbles? Why not just take this all the way and have everyone live with their parents until they're 35? Why not grandparents too? Because that's the end game here.
My point was that high housing and transportation costs are the reason why young people of this generation are so poor. Stop blaming phones and video games they're peanuts.
If we looked at the real reasons why each successive generation starts with more and more difficult hurdles, it would force us to come to what Al Gore would call "inconvenient truths." Basically, the selfish ones have gray hair -- they literally mortgaged the future of their children and grandchildren and expect them to pick up the check for the benefits they received but refuse to pay for.
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
I know several people forced into early retirement who aren't doing well. They expected to have 10 more years to prepare for retirement and found themselves out of a job. I'm a little worried myself. I'm 55 and have less than $400K in my IRA. I have 12 years to figure this out and it took me almost 20 years to save the first $250K on an engineers salary.
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Originally Posted by KathrynAragon
I know what you mean, believe me. My husband said the other day, "My gosh, I'm going to be working till I'm 75 years old."
Retirement is going to hit Gen X hard. And it's going to be progressively worse for Gen Y (and eventually Z, assuming we keep punting our problems). From the looks of things, there isn't going to be a whole lot of empathy for the people who simply cannot work for whatever reason life throws at them. "Maybe you should have planned better. Maybe you shouldn't be so lazy. Put on the big boy/girl pants and figure something out."
Why shouldn't they? A single person making $50k/year and spending $7500/year on a car is not unreasonable. They do not need to buy an apartment, so how is that relevant?
Your question is indicative of the lack of reasoning ability coming out of our educational system. Nobody spends 10x their annual income on an apartment. The minimum income for that sort of purchase would be around $170k/year, and they would be spending 25k a year on a car. At that rate, you could spend $125 a day on cab fare and come out even.
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I know several people forced into early retirement who aren't doing well. They expected to have 10 more years to prepare for retirement and found themselves out of a job. I'm a little worried myself. I'm 55 and have less than $400K in my IRA. I have 12 years to figure this out and it took me almost 20 years to save the first $250K on an engineers salary.