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this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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Me and my fiancee both work full time to just barely survive each month with no savings because the CoL is so fucking high it's unmaintainable. And if you reply with "just move", first: I'm in the midwest, it's not AS bad out here, and second: Moving is a privilege, it's expensive, time consuming, and often times you end up in a worse spot than you were before
Don’t worry. All that work you’re doing will pay off… your landlord’s fifth mortgage.
In my case I'm subleasing so I'm paying off my Landlords' Landlord's fifth mortgage
Landlords all the way down.
Landlords are parasites.
You just need to put in some extra effort or get a side hustle like we did. /S elder millennial.
::strangles the shit out of them with their own bootstraps::
I can install some pull handles on your bootstraps for a small monthly subscription fee. No, you won’t own them.
Exactly! Same boat, I am too poor to move! Due to missed payments on mortgage, credit cards, and medical bills, our credit score is abysmal. There is no way we can get a new mortgage or pass credit checks for an apartment. On top of that I don't have the time or money to invest into the house so there are many things that need to be fixed, some of these absolutely need to before selling it so I also can't just sell either. 3rd, you're right. Wherever I do end up moving (if somehow we did get approved), it's probably going to cost more due to higher interest rates, and it will most likely cost more. We are praying to make it a few more years until stupid daycare is done so we can finally make ends meet a little...
I never thought I would be in this bad of a situation in my life, but here I am and I just want to survive each day. Thinking about money every day for years now is tiring and stressful. They have a name for it, its called poverty brain.
The US requiring credit cards is part of the problem why people have money troubles. It’s a lot less transparent than just using bankcards (or cash). The whole credit system mostly benefits older people and richer people than starters. It should be that if you don’t have debt your need to pay monthly on you should be able to take a mortgage for the max amount. In the end if I can spend 1000$ a month for a mortgage and I have zero other monthly loan payments I should be able to get a loan which requires a payment of 1000$.
Edit: budgeting using a free tool like Actual Budget can help you give some more headspace
I had a basic but nice first house, but I sold it to move for a new job. I even was lucky enough to still make a bit of a profit. But not enough, and now I'm stuck back with renting again, can't really afford to buy a new house with interest rates, prices, inflation eroding my income in other areas, and poor availability. I think back to my parents buying their first house and how nice it was by comparison, for a fraction of the price even adjusted for inflation and it gives me a really unfortunate sense of perspective, much less hearing stories like yours or from friends I know who are in a bad situations. I'm not struggling, but prospects for improving things aren't great either, and that seems to be the case for everyone I know.
I'd love to know your version of "just barely" is you have two adults working full time in a 2 person household.
Maybe your mortgage is far higher then I'm imagining.
I live in an apartment, but it's overpriced, and it's just me. This world is designed to be a 2 person household.
So I have to imagine you're living beyond your means. I'm living beyond my means too, but I also don't have a decent wage either. So living at all is living beyond my means.
You should add up your whole house income, divide that number by 4, and THAT number should be what your mortgage shouldn't be higher than.
I suspect your mortgage is probably much higher than that number.
Either that or we have different definitions of "just getting by".
That formula hasn't been valid for like, 20 years?
Yeah that inital response gave me the impression that they live in a completely different situation than what I, and most of the people I know IRL are experiencing. Typical rent prices out here are 120% the sum of 2 weeks of minimum wage pay, not including utilities
Lets use WA as an example. Average house costs 588k interest rate is about 7% now. So you'll be paying $4300 per month. So man that's rough but surely there are some cheaper that average units out there! If you want to be anywhere near where the majority of the jobs are even a lot drive away you are going to have a hard time getting below 450k or 3300 per month.
Well maybe you can rent cheaper right? 2BR 1.5 bath where again most of the jobs are can easily run you $2000-2500 which seems like a very nice savings however whereas your fixed rate mortgage is you know fixed your rent will probably exceed the payment on your mortgage within 10-12 years and since you have no equity you have no cushion to fall back on if you ever experience a downturn you could find yourself a bum on the street. Hell if you aren't able to save anything you will definitely be heading for bum status when you get old enough that you can't work. Holding on to being able to own something is an investment in not descending into desperate poverty later.
I think its weird how people don't believe people can actually be struggling in America without also somehow being the source of their own problems. It's like people like you have broken brains.
Decades of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" Republican propaganda will do that. So many Americans have been convinced that if you aren't wealthy, you only have yourself to blame. And if you're poor, you are inherently flawed as a human.
I picked this out because it illustrates how utterly fucked up our system is, because we need housing to be:
Expensive, because it's the default retirement investment vehicle for the working classes.
Cheap, so that young people just starting out can buy it.
See a problem?
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/19/bank-of-america-nearly-half-of-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html
You are lucky. Do not assume everyone else is as lucky as you.
≥ Mortgage You lost me there, renting is much more expensive than paying a mortgage off
My rent is around 1800 euro, if I’d buy this apartment, my mortgage would be around 3000. That’s for more than half a mil. After 30 years I’d have paid off more than a mil.
The company I rent from just got their financing much earlier, and in very big quantities. (Eg it has 100s to 1000s apartments and houses.)
Every year I make more money, every year the place I live is more difficult to buy.
If you lived in America your rent would be 3000 and your mortgage 3000. 10 years from now you would be paying 4000 whilst they continue to pay 3000 or 2000 even if they bought during any of the 4 crashes we have had in the last 20 years.
True, mortgage does not increase over time. As long as I stay put it is somewhat limited but over enough time that will be a significant factor.
One key difference between renting and buying is that you can then sell the apartment or house. You can't claw back rent after being a good tenant for 30 years.
True true, I try to invest most of the difference, hopefully that will be worth something too when I need it.
Yep if you rent for 60 years you'll have nothing and spend more by far than the cost of the mortgage.
Depends where and how you live. My rent is $800 a month, but some mortgages are thousands of dollars.
Where the fuck do you live with $800 rent? Middle of Montana? Dead center of Death Valley? Gtfo.
800 if split 5 ways probably
Ikr, just saw an ad for a nearby apartment wanting 1,200$ a month for a studio apartment... in Nebraska
Lakewood, a suburb of Cleveland. It's overpriced as hell.
You pay $500 less than the average American for rent. I think you may be lacking the perspective necessary to engage productively with this topic.
My rent is $500 less than whatever metric you're using, but our local ecconomy is also lowers than yours.
Average wage here is 10/hr for a factory job. I've heard some places like Seattle make $20/hr just working at starbucks.
And keep in mind my rent is basically 1 room.
The problem with lying about things on the internet is that people can check.
https://www.talent.com/salary?job=&location=lakewood%2C+oh
https://www.apartments.com/rent-market-trends/lakewood-oh/
To sum up: You are paying less than the average rent in a city where the average rent is lower than 40% of the rest of the country and lying about the average wage in order to make it look like this is normal.
It took a very small amount of my time to look this up.
Be better.
So, I happen to have friends that live in Lakewood, and from the sound of it, you just might live in a different Lakewood than them. Lakewood is economically similar to the majority of other suburbs of the major Ohio cities, and seeing as I also live in one of those suburbs, I can assure you that you're lucky to be paying what you're paying in rent, even for a studio apartment.
$800 Rent is cheap in this economy
Yeah, but I'm not in your economy. Average wage around here is lkke $10/hr.
Again, the "how you live" thing again, in your opinion, what is the "correct" way to live?
😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
Poor people move all the time. It's a fucking wild take to call moving a privilege. Though I do agree with the last bit about sometimes (or maybe even often) being in a worse position than before
Look at this guy he knows all the poor people.
Yes, that's why all the inner city projects are devoid of people. They've all moved somewhere else because it's so easy for them.
I read something in The Atlantic about how people used to move about every three years and that sounds insane to me.
And also, the phrase “I just read something thing in The Atlantic” makes me feel even older than my gout and shingles.
You're going to have to rename yourself to Boomer Humor Doomergod. (Sorry about the gout and shingles.)
As soon as I’m on my Good Screen ^tm^ I’ll do it
Edit: Done
When I was young we averaged moving every 4.5 years, but for reasons, I got very accustomed to changing environments every year or so, and as an adult I’ve struggled to stay in one place for the clean start it offers, but moving is so expensive now, and I don’t like driving anywhere near enough to be a nomad van dweller type.
I can maybe do it one more time in the near future, assuming money and housing values don’t tank first, but that’s probably it for the rest of my days. I hope it really scratches the anxious itch for change, cuz if not..
I have a feeling the poors don't move to different cities/states that often.