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Comment by Justsignedup | Hacker News Reader

The way it works.

You buy a house. It grows in value. You then use that value as a down payment on a bigger better house that you now pay as much as rent for monthly. And you multiplied your wealth and have a wonderful place to live.

When you retire you sell that house, buy your kids a down payment, and yourself a place in a low cost of living area. And now you enjoy the fruits of your life's labor till you die.

But this all relies on population growth and a lack of better housing options. A. K. A. House prices generally always go up.

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The way it used to work.

Now, you just about manage to buy a tiny starter home in your late 30s or 40s. You just about pay it off by the time you retire if you're lucky. You could never afford to get a bigger house.

Or you're in a shared ownership scheme because you could never buy the whole small flat you "purchased"...

this is true. Being 39 I realized I still can't pay down that down payment because I don't have a vast amount of money I was able to save up, being in a HCOL area, and even if I do get a loan, I won't be able to pay it off before I retire (If I live long enough). And every time I save another chunk, the cost goes up so much more that the chunk I saved may as well have been zero, so I need to use that money to live by this point. Not to mention that mortgage gets more and more unaffordable.

It is a horrible spiral, and I have no idea what I can do about it, other than get richer parents.

The solution I found was to move to a lower cost of living area. I also changed to contracting which paid more. The combination let me buy a very small house. I couldn't afford it now though, I'd have to move even further away...

if i lived alone, sure, but moving away from my family, away from my friends, away from my partner's friends, away from my child's friends, basically starting a completely new life... it isn't something we'd be looking for. All while facing the fact that many parts of the country (USA) isn't very friendly for women, or for non-white people, and having to be in a position where I can still find good work.

"Just move" has been a very challenging outlook for me to combat :(

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