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Comment by flakeoil | Hacker News Reader

In fact, now, thanks to the higher interest rates there is a great possibility to save and earn interest (and compound interest) to buy a house. In addition, thanks to the higher interest rates, it will be harder for everybody to borrow to buy a house so the house prices will not increase as much or even decrease in price. This makes it easier for savers to buy a house.

If the central banks can keep from going down to near zero interest rates of course.

And I agree with you that younger generations, probably at large due to social media, are not patient enough to get rich by saving.

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> And I agree with you that younger generations, probably at large due to social media, are not patient enough to get rich by saving.

Speaking as someone in a younger generation, there's a sense that with the climate sword of Damocles dangling overhead and countless people stressing the already fraying hair, perhaps we may not have sufficient time to accumulate any sort of wealth by saving. Perhaps this is just a lack of patience in our generation, but I think it's quite possible there are bigger factors at play.

If climate change is cataclysmic, no amount of savings/wealth will help you (outside of Elon/Zuck type wealth). If it's merely disruptive, then it's just another factor to consider in your investments.

Think of it like nuclear weapons. You can't really plan for nuclear war, but you can still take nuclear capability into account when making financial decisions (e.g. China is unlikely to annex Taiwan because of US nukes so investing in TSMC is not a terrible move).

> If climate change is cataclysmic, no amount of savings/wealth will help you

Which is why people are choosing not to bother saving, of course

Because they're constantly being told that it is in fact cataclysmic and there's no stopping it

Even though I consider myself a flaming liberal, this is the one "conservative boomer" belief I allow myself to have: Telling an entire generation that 'they have no future because of something they cannot control' has been huge a society-wide mistake, turning so many people into doomers or reckless gamblers, incapable of planning for their future. I think we are starting to finally bear the fruit of telling our children's generation over and over that there is no future and no hope.

It's been more than one generation at this point, and it gets louder with each one

People forget that the "climate cataclysm" doomsaying started decades ago. There are articles about "we will be under water/burning alive/etc in only a few years!!" As far back as the 70s. Maybe before!

So it's been a huge mistake in two ways, because it's led to two types of outcomes:

The first is like you said, the younger generations have basically given up. High rates of depression, anxiety, and just general "checked out of society"

The second is the older generations that have high rates of "They've been saying the world will end in five years for the past fifty years, so clearly this climate stuff isn't a problem at all" and they are behaving accordingly, as though it weren't a problem at all

That's why I compared it to nuclear weapons. There's little point in making decisions based on possible cataclysmic events you can't predict or control. I think it's wise to plan based on a more optimistic reading of the future instead even if you think the cataclysm is inevitable.

It's also notable that the "Boomers" managed to do this with the spectre of nuclear war hanging over them and this threat never actually went away. The younger generation just chooses to ignore possible nuclear war cataclysms in favor of possible climate cataclysms.

Edit: Just consider how "real" the threat of nuclear war must have been to someone who had regular "duck and cover" drills in school. There's nothing comparable for climate change (yet).

The difference is that the nuclear war "might happen but everyone is doing our best to make sure it doesn't"

while the climate crisis "is happening already and it's too late to stop"

People genuinely believe we will not have a habitable planet in a couple of decades no matter what we do now.

That seems a lot different than "maybe some people decide to fire nukes but probably not"

If you haven't heard of it yet, I have been enjoying a recently released book about this: "Not the End of the World" by Hannah Ritchie: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hannah-ritchie/not-...

You're exaggerating. No science says that society is going to collapse because of climate change in your lifetime. Maybe in your grandkids' or their grandkids' but not yours. Get real. Read a book.

> In fact, now, thanks to the higher interest rates there is a great possibility to save and earn interest (and compound interest) to buy a house.

That sounds like you've got some extra money laying around that should belong to your landlord...

Unfortunately because of the too low for too long interest rates the landlords building cost them too much which is why their rent is too high.

In any case, there is no reason people cannot put some money aside each month and earn some interest every year. And on top of that the house prices will not increase, at least not insanely as in the past, so you have a chance to catch up if increasing your salary and savings for a few years.

If tenants had enough surplus income to put into any meaningful savings, then landlords would increase rents accordingly to scoop up that money. Their entire business is to maximise the amount of rent extracted from the tenants.

It's unrealistic that renters could save themselves out of the hole they are in. Their efforts are much better spent making drastic career changes, high risk investments, or even extreme measures such as drug dealing or moving to another country, than thinking they can beat a game that is completely rigged against them.

> In fact, now, thanks to the higher interest rates there is a great possibility to save and earn interest

A lot of people live paycheck to paycheck, especially younger people. How are they supposed to take advantage of this, exactly?

Find a mix of job and COL that allow you to save a little bit. This isn't rocket surgery here, friend. If your current rent eats all your income, move to a cheaper place and/or find a better job.

I was born in abject poverty. I went to public school and state colleges. I made money in TN, GA, AL, and TX before settling in northern CA. This area is my dream location and it took nearly 2 decades of planning and effort out of college to prepare to buy and settle here in a financially stable way.

San Fransisco isn't the only city available to US citizens. If you can't save in a high COL location, move to a lower COL location so you can save. Then, when you've saved enough, move back to a higher COL area.

This idea that you're stuck in some expensive geography and can't do anything about it is plain silly. I made most of my moves with less than $1,000 in the bank and plenty of credit card debt. After moving a dozen times across nearly half a dozen states, today I own a home in the Bay Area outright, have zero debt, and do what I like with my time and I'm not yet 50.

If I would have left college for the Bay Area immediately, none of that could have happened. It took planning and stages and moving all around the country (and living in the cheap South) but it was doable and is doable now for anyone that wants to make the effort. Yeah, boomers had it a lot easier, but so what. That's history. That was what they got for living in a high tax high investment era and we get what 20 years of Reagan and Clinton gave us, trickle down, so we deal with it.

"I want to live in SF or NYC out of college and own a home because boomers could do that" is bullshit. There's a substantial generation between you and boomers, my generation, X, that saw we weren't gonna have it as easy as the boomers and we didn't complain, we changed tactics and adapted to the environment. We figured out by going to state schools, busting our humps at a half a dozen different jobs including ones with serious physical labor that might even cost you a finger, being illing to live in less than ideal places for years or even decades, could let us settle into something better in middle age.

California costs about 2.5 months more salary to live in than the national average and about 4 months of salary more than truly affordable states. If you can increase your savings by 2.5-4 months of take home all for the price of a bus ticket and a few days of hotel stay to find a place to rent in a more appropriate COL location, you can save for a house, even a house in a high COL location, no problem. You probably cannot save for a high COL location house living in a top 3 COL state while trying to do so.

> move to a cheaper place and/or find a better job.

Moving costs thousands. Finding a better job is good advice but often requires investment in yourself (education costs money).

How could anyone move to a lower COL area for less than $1000? A security deposit and first month's rent will be more than that almost anywhere you can "find a better job". And that's ignoring the cost to move your things. (But maybe you didn't have any things or expect someone to sell/start over?)

It's clear your intentions here are good but you're giving poor advice. You're out of touch.

At the end of the day, though, you have to do something to change the situation, and just accepting the status quo means you'll just be stuck there forever. Their advice might be harsh, but it's not poor, it's very even keeled.

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