I am older than that (40 and my wife is 35) and while we have been independent professionals for a while, we now have a 1 year old so this summer for the first time in our lives we bought a house and a car.
It was definitely harder to find a house (mainly less availability driving competitive bidding) and it took a little longer to find a car and we ended up having to pay MSRP.
However the thing I can say is - the incremental cost/hassle of having to do these things during the pandemic supply crunch is almost irrelevant compared to having to do this stuff at all. We paid say 3% more for the car and ok maybe 10/20% for the house than we would have otherwise, obviously that's painful but if I was "just stepping into adulthood and financial responsibility" I'd look to avoid this stuff altogether.
EG: do you need to own a house? If you're a single person, "throwing away" money on a relatively inexpensive rental might be much wiser than "investing" in a house in a seller's market. Likewise, if you're young and single then you should relatively easily (depending on where you live of course) arrange your life to not need a car. It was very easy for us in NYC, of course may be different for you.
The point is that in my mind, "adulthood and financial responsibility" don't have to translate "got my own house and car" but simply "making wise financial decisions given my situation" so if there's room to be flexible, be flexible.
"Roofing Industry Faces Unprecedented Supply Disruption" (April 27, 2021)
https://www.roofingcontractor.com/articles/95590-roofing-ind...
As for housing, it's perfectly normal to rent for a while until you know you want to settle down in a location for an extended period of time.
The market is so screwed up that even a crash that halved the price would still be 4 times price back then.
Second, you may not be doing proper calculations. I would not have - before I bought a house. Do you count property taxes, upkeep, larger water and electricity bills, possibly longer commute times/needing a car, relative lack of mobility, air conditioner/heating/roofing/siding/repair, lawn maintenance, etc.
Yes sure, if I bought this house 10 years ago, it would have been great. But I wouldn't know 10 years ago that I'd want this house, and for example dealing with all the above shit as a single man would have been stupid. There were also points in my life where I was very open to relocation for the right job, something home ownership would have put friction on.
it's very common to think of only a pro or a con of a decision (if I bought earlier, it would have only cost X) but you're not factoring the risk that existed at the time, nor the commitment you're creating on yourself, not the carrying costs I described above.
May not be relevant to you but I feel fine about "losing out" on 20 years of house appreciation (if I bought at 20 not 40) because I avoided all that stuff for 20 years, too.
My parents bought a detatched home at 20 with minimum wage jobs. I bought a townhouse at 40 with a high paying career. My kid is going to be 60 by the time he can afford a home.
It's fucked. Buy now.
Ok you certainly should go for it, but I'll give you one analysis that I have. We bought in a NYC suburb (for a bunch of reasons) and here's what I think constitutes price risk for me.
At the end of the day, a house is worth what someone can and is willing to pay for it. Right now, there's reasons the demand is high for near-NYC housing because (a) people aren't sure they need to be near NYC long-run and don't want to risk it (b) it's an easiest move to make to leave the city and not go far (c) supply is low because with covid, fewer people are willing to have an open house (d) now everyone is in a rush to upsize so space is at a premium.
All of these are demand factors that can change. EG: (a) it may become clear in 1-2 years that permanent remote is an option for many people, relieving demand pressure on NYC and the area. (b) once people are comfortable with leaving the city they may be comfortable moving further afield. (c) the pent-up supply of folks who didn't sell in 2020/2021 may come to market, especially if a and b occur, causing people to want to sell before it's "too late" (d) everyone who needed up upsize may have done it, relieving that pressure.
Also, for New York state specifically, with the number of wealthy people leaving the states, it feels inevitable that state and property taxes will rise, making all of this even less attractive.
And finally, interest rates are ridiculously low right now, rising rates will be a damper on prices when that happens.
Obviously there plenty of reasons it could also go up, but if your model is so simple "it's fucked so it's always goes up" you may get fucked too.
Don't forget: Cities actually allowing housing stock to increase. Very unlikely but hopefully not impossible...
They're not making any more of them, and demand and prices only go up (until maybe one day they don't, I don't know).
You can say that about anything - limited run beanie babies, bitcoin, whatever. It's all true until it's not.
In the case of classic Porsches, next time you hear someone say that, ask them (a) what's gonna happen once boomers die out. Do genX/Z/millenials give a shit about a classic Porsche the way a boomer would? (b) what happens if/when we replace ICEs with electric and the gas station infrastructure goes away (not saying it will happen but it's one likely future path.) In the world where you can't get gasoline, is a classic car still valuable?
I don't know the answers to these questions but unless the person who is giving you advice has modeled this out, their advice is of no value.
It has lost value against lots of commodities and "real" goods.
The way house prices work, often, is more or less banks determining prices via mortgage eligibility. Banks agree that a house is worth X. They lend X. That becomes the price. Buyers tend to be available.
People are so quick to see that credit expansion fuels price inflation in other areas, even the economy at large, but somehow diminish or ignore this with housing.
Obviously, supply constraints avoidable or otherwise, affect supply. In any given year though, the supply of housing does not change a ton. Where they do, you don't tend to have wild inflation... though you do often see bigger houses.
It's impossible to decouple housing from monetary policy. Housing is one of the few ways that buying power gets from A to B, where B is not a financial institution or direct spending.
There is a significant voice that would like to price cars out of private ownership. Traffic, pollution, safety, urban sprawl ... pick your evil and someone wants to eliminate private cars for that reason.
I regularly read about how the next wave of cars will all be somehow "shared", that we will whistle and they will appear at our doorsteps ready to carry us off to our 9-to-5 jobs in shiny glass office towers. I just don't see that happening anytime soon. Total conversion to electric cars in 10 years, maybe. Conversion to total ride-sharing and/or mass transit, doubtful in 30.
I'd prefer it if ICE cars were as expensive as possible in order for the planet not to burst into flames.
The wish to inflate housing prices causes NIMBY-ism!
I've tried to diversify to more international mutual funds, but they also tend to have higher fees.
I'm not sure they are really diversification though. The major US companies have a lot of international exposure already so you don't gain much diversification. And of course they don't really protect you from a collapse of the US government (odds are either they are hit as well, or you can't prove you own them anymore)
Which is exactly the point being made by the parent comment that you can't capitalize on the upside. You'd have to sell and step out for a while.
Today, they are worth x+y% of a new car.
If you trade up now, you will pay less for the new car than if you traded up two years ago.
Similar situation for houses. Even if we assume all houses have inflated by the same rate, you can still downsize and cash out. Your existing $600K house is inflated 25% and you can sell for $750k. You downsize to a $400k house which is inflated to $500k. You oversold for $150k, but only overpaid by $100k and you pocket the difference.
Sure, my purchase costs went up some, but no where close to the additional value I got over normal for my sale. Put it this way, I paid a few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand dollars more for the car than I would normally, but I sold my old car for thousands more than I normally would have been able too.
That's capitalizing on the upside for sure.
Heard of someone who sold while the real estate market here is superheated and plans to rent until it drops. Personally, I don't expect it to drop for a while yet (it hasn't really dropped for decades here).
On the other hand, if you're in politics, finance, or executive business management, it's been a really, really great last 40+ years.
The timing of my life events is one of the things I am most grateful of.
I graduated in 2014 and within a couple years I bought a house. Strong job market for an employee and low interest rate.
I know people that were getting PhDs, because they started undergrad in the aftermath of the housing bubble and couldn't find jobs when finished. I also know people that decided to buy a house before the bubble and are still stuck underwater, preventing them to pursue opportunities not in their area. I also know people that went into medicine as tuition became ridiculous and have no way of servicing their student loans.
I guess what I'm getting at is count your blessings. Others may not be as fortunate as you.
the worst part is our government is rewarding them for bad behavior, the article mentions the billion dollar chip subsidy program. So these companies made money outsourcing and will now make more by bringing it back. Instead they should put a massive tariff on any chip not made in the US. Companies that invested here would be rewarded for loyalty
Moreover the chips were never outsourced. Toyota never made its own chips, nor is it feasible to. You seem to have some sort of idealized view where a company internally manufactures everything it needs starting from raw materials. That’s not how it works, and that’s never how it worked.
Toyota is just a symptom, every other car manufacturer and other industries are facing shortages as well. The US economy is now strangled because our supply chain got outsourced for "efficiency" that didn't account for potential disruptions
Voters would have rewarded politicians who supported these tariffs by voting them out of office for making all their toys more expensive. Everyone likes cheaper stuff and more stuff in the short term.
- shareholders (more profit)
- consumers (lower prices)
Second, you could say shareholders == Wall Street, but you could just as well say that shareholders are pension holders, banks, insurances and small private investors. All of these simply want to have return on their investment that is as high as possible. If that's good or bad is an interesting question, but the bottom line is that very few people are without blame here.
plenty of people have been warning for decades how the reliance on manufacturing from other countries could have major consequences. The fact that a small island like Taiwan is probably the most important geo-political issue in the world could have been prevented with a little bit of long term planning
And that's to say nothing of the opportunistic catalytic converter thefts if you park your car on the street overnight.
With a bike you don't expect it to be there after locking it in the street for more than 15 minutes. I don't know anybody personally whose car was stolen.
Is there similar plans in the US or at least some states?
I use one of these: https://yubabikes.com/cargobikestore/electric-boda-boda/
A relative uses one of these in the Boston area, year round:
https://www.ternbicycles.com/us/bikes/472/gsd
A friend loves this for their family:
https://www.r-m.de/en-us/bikes/packster-70/
Not cheap, but an order of magnitude less than a car ($10k/year by AAA’s numbers) over the lifetime of the bike.
It wasn’t cheap initially ($7000 CAD), but the cost per km drops enormously every year while the bike still rides as well as ever. The kids have all loved it, too. My youngest is disappointed when we drive places - he wants to walk or ride all year.
We do have a temperate climate which helps. Our cold days in winter are typically around 5 degrees outside of cold snaps, but even then we rarely dip below 0.
It’s a major quality of life improvement for us. They’re amazing grocery getters, you don’t get all sweaty on them, kids tend to love it, and they’re quite a bit easier to buy, maintain, and park than a car.
We went with the spicy curry because of its insane cargo capacity (we’ve used it for its full capacity many times, especially while bike camping), but you can spend far less if you don’t need to carry that weight.
When you weigh the pros and cons though, the condo can be alright. It's not my ideal at all but the things like the yuba can make that lifestyle so much more livable. More time with the family, more time to get out of the home if we want to, quick grocery shops, less money on commuting, etc - I think it could be alright. We fortunately live in a small city where you're only an hour drive from nature, so I suppose we could turn that into our "yard".
The last thing I want is my kids sitting in a car for 30-60 minutes every morning on their way to school. Or on a public transit bus, transferring and rushing around so they can sit in school for 6 hours only to bus back the same way. I know plenty of kids do it and they're fine, it's all fine, but it's not what I want for them. I wouldn't want it for myself. There's something to be said about shedding ideals (especially with living situations) but letting my kids be kids is one I don't want to compromise on.
(Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Malmö)
Something else is the problem. Maybe infrastructure or terrain.
I don't know that I'd do it again. The number of avoided-death-by-split-second close calls that I racked up in about five years is just too high... Now that I'm a bit older and have children, seems irresponsible.
This is in a city with relatively developed bike infrastructure, including separated lanes in some places. (Some) drivers just don't give a damn, and while I wish it was different, I don't see it changing any time soon either.