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Comment by relics443 | Hacker News Reader

My wife and I are about to close on a starter home in the NYC area. We put down 20%. We're in our mid 20s.

We have a circle of friends all about the same age as us, all coming from the same SES origin as us (low-to-mid middle class), who complain non-stop about how they can't afford a house in our neighborhood.

My wife and I both started college at 18, and graduated in 2-3 years (CS for me, BSN for her). We worked the whole time we were in college, and ever since graduating. She's currently getting her NP, and I'm still paying off loans from graduate school.

Of our friends, only one has a professional job (RN). Only one other graduated college (financial analysis), but chooses to work as a nanny a few hours a day so that she can have time to herself. The rest are employed in low level jobs, and have no college degree (no intention to get one, or still trying to "figure out what degree they want").

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a humblebrag or an example of survivorship bias, or both, but thank you for sharing the experience with us.

It was my nice way of saying that in my experience millenials tend to make it difficult for themselves to succeed financially, and then question why they don't have more money.

I tried gently broaching the topic with my friends once. One friend who is a low level customer service rep that never attended college responded "I have a job, you have a job. We work the same amount [we don't]. Why are you able to afford to buy a house, and I can't?"

This is one of those areas I think both sides have a point. In many areas housing is incredibly and unsustainably expensive and that has to change. On the other hand you're right that many in our generation have absolutely no concept of saving, many of those wouldn't have been able to buy a house in any era and many didn't. And it does seem to be people with iPhones that fall into this category, it's rarely just the iPhone, it's the type of person that will buy premium brands for everything.

There's also a third branch, many that need a reality check on their expectations. They need to get used to living in a small apartment because they should never expect to be able to afford a large house close to a major city.

I work with customer service reps on a daily basis. Their work ethic is vastly different depending on the person.

Some customer service reps should be able to afford a house, while others probably shouldn't.

> I tried gently broaching the topic with my friends once. One friend who is a low level customer service rep that never attended college responded "I have a job, you have a job. We work the same amount [we don't]. Why are you able to afford to buy a house, and I can't?"

And what insights did you garner from that interaction aside from your thinly veiled sense of superiority?

You can be the best customer service rep in the world. It's not gonna make you enough to buy a house in my neighborhood no matter how much you wish for equality (unless you adopt a rather extreme saving lifestyle, which my friend has not).

It's facts, not superiority.

He works 8 hours a day and sometimes complains that a customer cursed at him.

I work 12 hour days (and I'm on call the other 12 when I'm not sleeping) 6 days a week. I go to sleep and wake up thinking about my work. Am I a workaholic? Yes. Do I love my job? Yes.

My takeaway was that most people don't realize that a typical 9-5 low level job is no longer gonna cut it if you want to live a certain lifestyle.

I don't consider myself superior to my friends; I just made better choices than them.

The customer service rep, for example, had every opportunity to go to college. His reasoning for not going was (and I quote), "I don't need to go to college to learn some nerdy shiz. Let's talk in 10 years when I'm managing a customer service floor, and you're talking geek to a computer."

We're closing in on 10 years now. I'm not gonna remind him.

> My takeaway was that most people don't realize that a typical 9-5 low level job is no longer gonna cut it if you want to live a certain lifestyle.

Being able to afford housing with a 9-5 job is a luxury now?

> I work 12 hour days (and I'm on call the other 12 when I'm not sleeping) 6 days a week. I go to sleep and wake up thinking about my work. Am I a workaholic? Yes. Do I love my job? Yes.

What's the point of writing that on the internet? Do you believe policy should be structured around people like you? Do you believe people who don't work 12 hours shouldn't be able to afford to buy a house?

> I don't consider myself superior to my friends; I just made better choices than them.

Yes, you do. It's in everything you write. You were able to make better choices because your circumstances allowed it. If you were their actual friend you'd probably have half a clue why they didn't make the exact choices you did.

> We're closing in on 10 years now. I'm not gonna remind him.

You're just being an asshole on the internet now. Everyone needs an outlet, I guess.

What you seem to be missing in every single response you've given is that I'm referring to buying a house in the NYC area.

As the article says, they can move to where a house costs $120,000. But they insist on wanting to live in NYC.

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