[tskrainar]

If "fruit on toast" is a "frivolous luxury", then I can't think of a better example of how unimaginable wealth inequality in this country has become.

Even at $8, that's on par with a pint of beer at a bar in SF.

What a life of frivolous luxury.

[gdix]

What are you talking about? Spending $8 on a beer is a luxury. If you spend an extra $6 on a drink to have a man pour it for you, you can't complain about being poor. I'm sorry.

https://www.thecut.com/2014/06/biggest-food-clich-on-instagr...

One of the tweets linked here is this https://twitter.com/nickconfessore/status/864192842817839104

He's making it seem like saving $50 a week to end up with $33K is some kind of impractical absurdity. $33K is a long way towards a down payment on a house in most of the country. AND THAT'S JUST HIS AVOCADO TOAST BUDGET! Cut out the $8 beers and $4 lattes from Starbucks, get married and combine your wealth with your new wife and guess what, you can afford a house. In the SF Bay Area? No, probably not. But believe it or not, there is a world outside the 64 square miles of SF.

[deepnotderp]

First of all, 5% interest rate is amazing, please tell people to stop investing in index funds and invest in the Magic Avocado Fund (tm) instead! ;)

On a serious note, if you're talking about houses, then house prices should increase as well in that time, assuming inflationary forces keep up.

[gdix]

Let me google that for you: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/where-does-7-come-from-when-i...

4-6% inflation adjusted return is not unreasonable or amazing.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-historical-return-of-real-...

"So far this decade, the U.S. stock market is ahead once again. And for the past 40 years, it would have earned you almost 4 times as much as U.S. residential real estate."

[TheCoelacanth]

People for whom $33k is a long way towards a down payment are not spending $8 on a beer and people who spend $8 on a beer do not live somewhere that $33k is a long way towards a down payment.

[gdix]

Huh? If you want to buy a million dollar condo in SF when you hit 30, the down payment would be 200K. If you and your your spouse save an extra $50 a week then you'll have $66K. That's one-third of the down payment you need using the numbers from the tweet which only represent avocado toast expenditures. Save another $50/wk by not going to bars (1 person can easily spend $50 on alcohol in a night out). Save another $50/wk by not going to starbucks. Save another $50/wk by not going into extreme student loan debt which is totally avoidable. Save another $50/wk by not leasing an Audi A4 because it's always been your dream car therefore you should have one when you're 22. Save another...

The point is, you can save a lot of money by making smart choices instead of blaming baby boomers.

[TheCoelacanth]

Great, so all you need is a high-earning job starting at 20, that you got without going into student loan debt ($50/week is the payment on like $15,000 of student loans which is practically nothing, so you are essentially suggesting not going to college or getting your parents to pay for most of it or being extremely brilliant and managing to get some really great scholarships or getting into one of the few extremely exclusive schools that cover most of the cost for people from families of modest means) and a spouse that also managed to accomplish all of that who you managed to meet and form a relationship with without doing any of the most common social activities that people do to enable them to meet people and form relationships. And then either choose to not have children or have an income high enough to cover both your outrageous SF daycare costs and your $800k mortgage at the same time. And of course, hope that the condo is still only $1 million ten years from now. All of that sounds eminently achievable for a typical person and like a sustainable to run a society /s.

I'm not complaining out of personal bitterness. I live somewhere somewhat less expensive than SF and have been relatively lucky on most of those points and have lived frugally and so am fairly well on track to be able to buy something by my early thirties. However, this is not a sustainable way to run a society. When even people who are among the luckiest and most privileged 20% of people have to scrimp and save to get something basic like a 1000 sq ft condo and the other 80% has no hope at all of ever getting that, something is seriously wrong.

[gdix]

Well I meant e.g. "only have 30K of student loan debt instead of $45K". And yeah all that stuff is possible. It's called life and it's not supposed to be easy. Sorry.

And yeah if you can't earn enough then you should move. It's not a big deal. Sorry that money is a thing and that real estate has varying prices in different geographics areas causing you to have to make this decision. So sorry.

[TheCoelacanth]

We are living in the richest and most technologically advanced civilization ever to have existed. Life is supposed to be easy.

The failure to ensure that basic needs like housing are available at prices that are affordable to average people is a clear and unforgivable failure by policy makers.