[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.

[gdix]

And they say millenials are entitled...

> We are living in the richest and most technologically advanced civilization ever to have existed.

That's always true at any given moment in time. 100 years ago, someone was living in the most technologically advanced civilization but they still had to budget. We're not in star trek the next generation yet.

[TheCoelacanth]

We managed to have affordable housing 50 years ago with vastly less wealth and vastly inferior technology. We should be able to manage it now. The fact that we don't is purely due to the utter failure of our politicians to manage housing policy in a way that benefits the average citizen.

And given that this is a democracy, yes, we are entitled to have a government that operates for our benefit. That is not too much to ask.