Comment by raw_anon_1111
5 days ago
Funny enough, I moved from metro Atlanta to where I lived from the time I graduated from college in 1996 until 2022.
I happen to have an old paystub in an email folder I sent to a real estate agent back then actually mid 2011. I was only bringing home around $5K a month back then and spending every penny of it just surviving.
While I told my step sons from the day I was serious about my now wife (they were 9 and 14) and treating them as my kids that I would pay for college - they both decided not to go. I feel no obligation to help them pay for their first home. My parents didn’t help me get my first one when I was 28.
On the other hand, I don’t believe you should buy a home too early because it limits mobility. If you can’t afford your home without help, you probably shouldn’t buy one and you don’t have the financial stability needed for it.
Even if you do want to stay in your child raising home (my parents still live in the house they had built in 1978 and added in to it in 2004), it should be paid off or such a low expense by the time you retire it shouldn’t factor in.
I’ve heard that in Wisconsin, it’s common for retirees to sell the family home and buy a cabin on a lake. The dad spends his remaining years fishing and enjoying the quiet.
But downsizing to a lower-cost, rural area often means less access to healthcare. Eventually, Dad passes away, and the widow is left snowed in each winter: unable to afford moving back, now that home prices and interest rates have climbed far beyond what they sold for.
> If you can’t afford your home without help, you probably shouldn’t buy one and you don’t have the financial stability needed for it.
My prediction is more and more families will provide down payment support. $2m homes are affordable if you put 100% down and just need to worry about taxes, repairs, and insurance.
Assuming everything else even (career/income, etc), the person with the family assistance will get to own the home pushing the goal post further away from the people that don't have family assistance.
Looking at statistics of how much most people have in income in retirement and how much most depend on social security, people aren’t retiring rich.
While I understand helping your kids to “launch”, letting them move back in for a couple of years after they graduate, subsidizing some of their expenses because they aren’t making enough to live where the opportunities are early on, etc, I never understood why parents pressure themselves helping grown kids buy houses, pay for expensive weddings etc.
I told my parents plenty of times they should “die dead broke” - in other words spend their last dollar on their last breath and not worry about leaving me anything (only child).
I can’t explain the parents pressuring themselves.
if you look at any tier one city’s job centers unless you have a great career, living in a comfortable home near your house just isn’t affordable on a regular person salary.
Which means your kids spend more time in their car and less time parenting their kids.
Many families, especially ones that were careful with their spending, will choose to support their kids and enable them to live in neighborhoods. They couldn’t normally afford on their lower income.
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