I realize, daily, that I’ve very much lucked my way into my station in life. Two kids, a 4bed/1.5 bath house in the suburbs. Decent steady job. 200k household gross income.
My house is “worth” a half a million dollars. At least. But so is any other house that is maybe a sidestep. There is no moving to another town…we can’t manage to accumulate any significant savings before something happens to take it all away. Even if we could swing the cash necessary to start buying a house, we were able to refi during the pandemic…so moving to a similar-priced house now will mean a significantly higher mortgage due to the higher interest.
I’m on the other end of the spectrum for the most part. I was born into a huge family and actually started my adult life 3k in the hole (on top of those student loans) because I let my parents use a credit card in my name which they didn’t pay back, but yeah, I’ve been lucky in a big way these last several years.
I have everything I need and some of what I want, and in today’s America, that’s as close as you get to the American dream if you’re not born wealthy in the first place.
Seriously.
I realize, daily, that I’ve very much lucked my way into my station in life. Two kids, a 4bed/1.5 bath house in the suburbs. Decent steady job. 200k household gross income.
My house is “worth” a half a million dollars. At least. But so is any other house that is maybe a sidestep. There is no moving to another town…we can’t manage to accumulate any significant savings before something happens to take it all away. Even if we could swing the cash necessary to start buying a house, we were able to refi during the pandemic…so moving to a similar-priced house now will mean a significantly higher mortgage due to the higher interest.
I’m on the other end of the spectrum for the most part. I was born into a huge family and actually started my adult life 3k in the hole (on top of those student loans) because I let my parents use a credit card in my name which they didn’t pay back, but yeah, I’ve been lucky in a big way these last several years.
I have everything I need and some of what I want, and in today’s America, that’s as close as you get to the American dream if you’re not born wealthy in the first place.