80% of Millennials Say They Want To Buy a Home -- But Most Have Less Than $1,000 (cnbc.com) 594
An anonymous reader writes: Millennials aren't buying homes in the same numbers as previous and older generations, but it's not because they don't want to. The vast majority of millennials do indeed aim to buy someday, or would even like to now if they could. Unfortunately, the numbers don't look good. New data from Apartment List shows that, although 80 percent of millennials would like to purchase real estate, very few are in a good position to buy, largely because they have nothing saved. According to the report, '68 percent of millennials said they have saved less than $1,000 for a down payment. Almost half, or 44 percent, of millennials said they have not saved anything for a down payment.'
What a coincidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a coincidence (Score:5, Informative)
What this article also missed is that nearly 60% of all Americans don't have enough savings to cover a $500 - $1000 unplanned expense [cnn.com]. This article is trying to make this a Millennial problem, but in truth it is just a reality of the majority of all US households.
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That's just it. 80% of millennials have less than $1000 "FOR A HOME DEPOSIT". I'm sure they can tell me all about it when I meet them on their yearly international holiday on the beach sipping margaritas, or when they invite me to their expensive inner city rental for a nice fresh pressed juice from their $400 juicer.
Yes the specifics of the examples are facetious. The value however is not. There's about as many articles discussing the millennial trait of living for the now as there are articles talking abo
Re:What a coincidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, as a Millennial, I prefer to have a couple months salary of savings, for obvious reasons. I have a budgeted amount that goes to savings every month, and I get quite agitated if for some reason I have to use it for something else. But that usually stops me from drawing it from savings, so it's a wash really.
And what's that about parents? Oh yeah, I pay their cell phone bill and have paid for other things that come up because they blew every cent they had.
My criteria for "affording" something is "can I do that AND still put away my monthly savings". If the answer is yes, then I don't feel bad about doing it. I've denied myself plenty of things because the answer to the question was no, but that's the price I pay for financial security.
Aside from that, I'm not so naive as to think everyone has it as easy as me. However, I know from experience that if my earnings were reduced, I would scale the savings also and my criteria would stay unchanged.
Re:What a coincidence (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, as a Millennial, I prefer ...
I say this as a late gen Xer, that what, as a millenial, you are missing is the appeal of good, old-fashioned ageism. There seems to be nothing more fun for some people to basically aggregate every thing they dislike that they've ever seen or heard of a young person doing, assuming that all young people do all of them, blaming you therefore for doing them and then getting to feel entirely superior to you because they are too smart to do all of those things.
It's very appealing because you don't have to be more clever, richer, more virtuous, more experienced, skilled or really anything to feel superior to whole swathes of the population. You simply have to be older, which is free and easy.
Re:What a coincidence (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess the last couple of generations for some reason, weren't taught to budget, and save most of your money....that luxury items like the latest phone or $$ Nike's or whatever were meant to be saved for only after you save everything else for a rainy day or things that matter.
And...if you don't make enough money after living and saving as you need to, then you DON'T get those luxury items, you are not entitled to them, hence the term "luxury".
Re:What a coincidence (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's not like saving money means you have to give up everything. I buy beans in bulk and make me own coffee every morning, buy games or movies when they go on sale and have a co-worker who just borrow movies from the library since they stock more than books now.
Re:What a coincidence (Score:5, Insightful)
If you piss away $100/month, you're pissing away $1200/year. That's not the kind of money that allows you to buy real estate.
Luxuries are a lot cheaper than they were, and things like houses and college educations are much more expensive. Hence, people spend money on different things than when I was a kid.
Re:What a coincidence (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. I got my first job in the 1970s. I clearly remember many of my co-workers constantly complaining about being broke. Financial incompetence is nothing new and I have seen no evidence that it is worse with millennials.
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I wonder how much this has to do with bank saving accounts and money market funds paying interest below the inflation rate. In this environment, the rational choice is to put your money elsewhere, like stocks and bonds, to avoid losing purchasing power. When surveyed, people rightly consider these investments, not savings.
In which case they are not being as irresponsible as is being reported, but rather making the rational, smart choice. Even buying stuff to stockpile now is better than leaving your money i
Re:or h-1bs (Score:5, Insightful)
It's arguable that immigration always leads to wage depression because it increases supply.
The H1B program should be reserved for the cream of the crop; for jobs where not only is there little supply of workers immediately available but where there are very poor prospects of training enough people to do the job.
We have plenty of shortages in the medical field, and it takes a lot of skill and effort to become a doctor. It does not take as much skill or effort to become an IT services worker, even one specialized in certain specific fields. I've seen eighteen year olds recruited fresh out of highschool pick it up and I've seen older workers that transfered within the non-IT-focused company to the IT department manage to do it. We don't need to import workers for IT, and I expect a lot of CIS and CSE jobs likewise could be done with existing population.
Save the H1B for the specialists where we really do need their help.
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I mean, they were raised with everyone getting a trophy just for showing up...maybe they thought mommy and daddy (or the mommy state) would give them a house too...?
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I wonder how much wage depression is the result of h-1bs?
Hmmm. Yeah. I also wonder how much termite farts contribute to global warming. Let's list some other things we wonder about in our spare time.
Back on track to the actual story though, I doubt this has much to do with wages, I bet there are a lot of people that could be paid $80,000 per year who would find a way to spend all of it. The article points out that around 40% of people 18-24, and only slightly less (38%?) of people 25-34 are saving exactly $0 each month for a down payment. I doubt this is sol
Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
"68% of millennials have saved less than $1000 towards a down payment on buying a house."
But probably 100% of them have spent twice that much for a smart phone and data plan within the last year.
Not to mention games.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
"68% of millennials have saved less than $1000 towards a down payment on buying a house."
But probably 100% of them have spent twice that much for a smart phone and data plan within the last year.
This sounds a lot like that statement from whoever-it-was about paying for healthcare by giving up phones. How many times do I need to not-buy-a-phone before I have enough for a down payment on a house? Besides that, who budgets $2k/yr for a data plan?
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If the downpayment is $10k, you need to not buy a new unlocked high-end smartphone approximately 20 times. If you otherwise would've bought one every year, you'll be able to buy a house by the time you're middle-aged, and then maybe the year after that, you can own a smartphone!
I've never kept a phone for less than 5 years so far, so it'll take me longer.
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Ahh ok (Score:2)
So surely you don't have a smartphone then, since they are such a waste?
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I mean, 68% of millennials are under the age of 30, right?
And 44% are under the age of 25?
I mean, assuming the range of 1981-2000.
These numbers don't seem terrible unless you're a boomer who could get a good paying factory job out of high school or something.
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Maths are hard (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, $500/yr sounds like a lot if you can't do math. Lets say our Hypothetical Millennial buys a $100 phone and replaces it every 2 years ( I own cheap phones, they start getting crashy and failing in about 2 years). They're saving $450/year now. They need $40k for a down payment on a 'starter' home in a city with a job market (it's not good living in a place where I can buy a house for $40k if I can't get a job to pay for it). 40,000/$450 = 88 years.
Nows the part where you point out their coffee is $5 bucks a day or about $1800/yr. With our savings from our cell phone that's just 17 years to get our starter home. Of course, there's this little thing called inflation and this other little thing called Wage Stagnation. So in 17 years our plucky Millennial's savings are worth about 3/4 what they were (I'm being _very_ charitable here with my math).
The working class isn't being lazy or loose with money. Anyone who tells you that is either a rich man that wants to pay low wages and no taxes or one of their lackeys. Spend a few minutes, do the math, and you'll see that. But that would mean confronting some really, really unpleasant realities. It would also mean you don't get to look down on Millennials anymore...
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
This idea seems very common - if only Millennials would stop spending so much, and start saving up like their parents' generation, they would be able to afford a house.
Where I live, the house price to income ratio is double what it was in 1985. This means that young people need double the income that their parents had, to buy the same home.
In this case, it isn't that they're spending too much - it's that houses are too expensive relative to the jobs that are available.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Funny)
I agree, having to use a year old cellphone, that's the end of the world!
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A smartphone is now pretty close to being essential. An expensive one is not. My phone is now over 3 years old (and cost about £100 then) and still does everything I need it to. I'm on a pre-pay contract and typically spend about £1/month on it. I'll probably replace it soon, because it hasn't had security updates for a little while (I don't trust it with any important data, passwords, and so on, but people are increasingly using SMS for two-factor auth so that's starting to be an issue).
I
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So to save enough for a downpayment for a house you need to live without a decent phone for, oh, about 150 years.
But yeah, let's make it more cruel and allow phones only for me-first generation of baby-boomers.
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There's simply no way an average millennial can save $50k in 5 years. The median salary for them is
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So make those loan payments on time. That increases credit score making house buying easier.
I can, but just missed the last bubble (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd prefer to wait till this new bubble pops. Millennials being this poor is a bad omen for the future economy, and prices will fall accordingly.
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Re:I can, but just missed the last bubble (Score:4, Interesting)
Once the boomers start to die off en masse there will be a lot of homes available. Look for housing prices to fall.
The average life expectancy in the US is 78.94 lets call it 80 as it is a nice round number. the baby boom started in 1946 ending in 1964 so average boomer was born in 1955. the the should start dying in numbers around 2035. So the menials (1980-1995) wont be able to buy their homes until they are in their mid 40s to 50s.
I wish I could point and call them irresponsible, (Score:5, Insightful)
but I look at the turnover rate at companies these days and I realize stable employment is nearing a thing of the past, especially for younger people starting out. I don't care if they want stable employment, they're probably not going to get it. I look at what percentage of my own income rent is, then my health insurance which is nearly as high as that. Even without any revolving entertainment bills like over-priced cable there's not a huge amount left if you're regularly employed, and if you're someone who has to constantly search for the next gig and have to be prepared for a dry spell there's even less.
We need to get a little government out of employment, the rates companies have to pay big brother (which includes healthcare and other mandatory funds) to actually employ people makes it difficult to keep someone around when you don't have a specific pressing need.
Re:I wish I could point and call them irresponsibl (Score:5, Interesting)
I would mod you up for being reasonable and intelligent...
Though I disagree a little bit. There are places you can hide and stay stable for long periods of time. Try doing IT for a stable manufacturer. They are out there. That's what I did.
After spending time in the "big league IT world" in, or associated,with silicon valley, I decided my last job before retirement would be at a successful commodity manufacturer. It worked. There are people here who have worked for 40 years in this company.
Though I did a lot of research of the local companies before trying for a position. And when I got the position it was as a tech rather than my usual executive/IT Director type gig. It's a big pay cut. I have good benefits. And drive 12 minutes to work with no traffic in a small town setting.
Successful manufacturers are hurting for IT people.. especially outside of major cities. They regularly promote from within, pay a lot less, and exist in rural or semi-rural areas.
Seems to me my lifestyle is about the same as it was in San Jose or Cupertino. A movie, popcorn, and a drink is less than $10.00 at the first run theater.
But the fun part? If you've held some decent positions and come out to the country with a fat resume.... suddenly you are a very big fish in a small pond. It's nice. And if you are struggling in a major metro area.... the undiscovered hinterland is bleeding for talent.
Keep an open mind... It's out there...
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I would like to go to a more rural place. Even with a pay cut I could do better than if I continued to live in a metropolis. I seriously considered some "stationed" out of the country rotate in and out work, but with a toddler I can't, and with a child from a previous marriage I'm pretty much held hostage in the city I'm in. I've given some serious thought to finding a place in flyover country, some old has-been town that happens to be on some fiber backbone and setting up my own data centric business wh
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Employment is rarely stable, even in past generations.
But you're making another mistake - without the government doing anything, most larger companies are paying the health care costs anyway. If you're trying to be competitive when hiring employees, the very first perk you're going to have to show is a medical plan. Without the plan the only employees you're going to get are those who couldn't get a job elsewhere.
First Time Buyers (Score:3)
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My wife & I used the USDA loan program a couple years ago, and bought our first place with 3% down & the seller paying closing costs.
Would we have liked to have 20%? Do we understand why that would be better financially than what we did?
Yes on both counts. But, to us the trade-off was worth escaping the hideously high DC metro area living costs...and things worked out to where the mortgage is literally the same as the rent payment we had paid for 4 years after moving here - and thanks to the low dow
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The problem is that in many places the interest you will pay on a mortgage for the cheapest available home with only 3% down is higher than the cheapest available rental alternative. You can't buy small enough homes. People are living out of bedrooms in other people's houses and struggling to make rent even there. You can't buy one of those. I'm living in a tiny mobile home that I own outright... on rented land, a tiny parcel of rented land the like of which you can't buy anywhere. The mere interest on a mo
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I had to have 10% down I think for my condo, and only that low because of a good credit score. Paying less down means you end up paying lots more points which is more expensive in the long run.
The Millennials Are Alright (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow, this post is everything wrong in the world (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of demanding better conditions for yourself you want the Millennials to suffer?
I think you've missed the fact that Generation-X is stereotypically cynical, and the poster was just expressing that cynicism. He doesn't want Millennials to suffer. Instead, he's complaining that nobody cared when Generation-X had the same problem.
The two generations have different ways of complaining. Millennials complain by with very public (and often emotional) outbursts. Generation-X complains by making wry, cynical statements. The difference probably has it origins in their relationships with their parents. The Millennials have a lot of support from their parents and other adults in the community. So, they can expect that the adults will correct a problem if they are made aware of it. In contrast, Generation-X had very little support from their parents and other adults. In fact, Gen-Xers usually felt that the adults were idiots. (For example, the character of Marty McFly in Back To The Future was a typical Generation-X teenager.) A Generation-X teenager couldn't complain publicly without be scolded by the adults. So, the whole generation resorted to cynicism as a way of expressing their complaints to each other, while avoiding the wrath of the adults.
I'm sure this is due to all the avocado toast. (Score:4, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I'm one of these terrible, no-good, lazy, overspending millennials. I have actually a pretty good job situation, but that doesn't mean I'm going to lie to myself that somehow I've done better because I'm somehow a better person. I've been very lucky, and a lot of millennials are being screwed over through no fault of their own at all.
I also think we need to stop using millenial (Score:4, Insightful)
Or at least get a concrete definition, because it seems to just mean "those damn kids" at this point. The year range is extremely hazy, and ever expanding from what I've seen. Originally what I saw was people born from 1982-1995, 82 because that's the first year that would be the graduating class of 2000 and hence the name. However as of late I've seen it defined as broadly as 1980 up until now.
Ok well first off it seems rather silly to include almost a 40 year period as a "generation" since there would be many children literally in the same "generation" as their parents which makes no sense (a family generation is offspring). Makes the term pretty meaningless.
That aside if you are going to define it so broadly, then you can't make any generalizations about said group since they are very different people and faced very different problems. I'd be a "millennial" by that definition, but I'm 37. I've been working professionally for over 15 years, when I got in to the workforce, the big depression hadn't happened, when I went to university costs hadn't gone nuts, I've owned a home for a decade, etc.
So the experiences I've had have little in common with our students who are 18-22 and will be entering the workforce soon. They get called "millennials" too which would maybe be accurate for the tail end of the initial definition. What they are going to deal with going in to the workforce is very different then what I had to, and their school has been WAY more expensive because the state has been cutting tax money to public schools for over a decade.
So I think the media bitching about millennials needs to stop at the very least until they can work out a concrete definition of a "millennial". Stop acting like everyone under 40 is some kind of homogeneous group, it is absurd on the face of it.
How much are they making? (Score:2)
I'm 33, and just bought my first house a couple months ago. I had $140k saved up for the down payment/closing costs. I saved that money while having a salary that slowly grew over 11 years from $48k to $75k. If you live frugally and make half-decent money, it's easy to save. Some people need a crash course on budgeting and self-control.
Re:How much are they making? (Score:4, Interesting)
You're making about twice as much as the average millennial. [smartasset.com] However, you didn't mention how much student debt you were carrying, which is a major factor.
Any other questions?
Most politicans say they want affordable housing (Score:5, Insightful)
Most politicians say they want affordable housing, but when we started to get it during the so-called "crisis" of 2008, all everybody did was bitch.
The housing collapse was the very definition of housing becoming affordable--prices dropped dramatically.
The cognitive dissonance on this issue never ceases to amaze me. You can blame the banks, and they bear some of the blame but not all of it. You can blame the NIMBY phenomenon, but that's not the whole picture either. IMHO, the core of the issue is that housing is a leveraged "investment", and that creates structural issues that encourage it to be expensive.
If a significant percentage of your net worth is in your house, you are strongly incentivized to do everything you can to make housing expensive in your area.
The banks are encouraged to make housing expensive, because cash purchases are for the wealthy only, and the rest of us pay interest.
Local governments are incentivized to make housing expensive because property taxes are based on assessed value.
There is, IMHO, no *technical* barrier to supplying a house for less than $100k almost everywhere in the USA. In a few special places you can argue that flooding the market with a supply of cheap housing is not possible due to resource constraints; but that's not true in most parts of the USA.
Every once in a while, somebody does actually supply cheap housing. It's like an elm sprout in the forest. As soon as it springs up, the structural fungus of our NIMBY, Leverage, debt-financed, assessed value taxed housing system attacks it and it dies.
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This. Whatever happened to buying a home and then living in it until you die? I understand that you may have to relocate to find work, but that's different than just buying a house that you're treating as a financial instrument instead of a place to sleep.
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Houses ARE cheap to build and ARE cheap.
What is so expensive is THE LAND. Especially in metro areas in any of the big cities.
I live downtown SF. A million dollars only gets you a tiny studio here, because the demand to live here is so incredibly high and land is limited.
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I wish I could upmod you but I've already posted upthread. This is the most insightful post in this thread.
Gen-X Homeowner here... Ownership is Overrated (Score:5, Insightful)
The amount of maintenance, both scheduled and unscheduled, that a home requires has proven to be a lot more than I expected or budgeted for. I'm a pretty handy DIYer, and even at that I get overwhelmed sometimes with deferred tasks. It eats your time if you DIY, or your money if you hire it out. I'm quite certain that I am not financially ahead, compared to if I had been renting, and I'd certainly have a LOT more free time.
You loose a lot of flexibility by owning a home. The transactional costs of buying and selling mean that it is difficult to justify moving to a new job in a different area, or even to relocate to a more convenient location in the same metro area, unless you know for sure it will be at least a 5 year gig. I have turned down interesting job opportunities for this reason. At the time I bought my home, I was a 10 minute bike ride from work. Then my division of the company "temporarily" relocated (We were told 2 years, then 3, which turned into 5) my department to the other side of our metro area (25 miles), and I had a 1 - 1.5 hour car commute. If I were a renter, it would have made sense to lease in the "temporary" location for a while.
Finally, as a homeowner you are more exposed to swings of the market. I got lucky when the bubble popped, as I had bought in a good bit before it, and had no need to sell at the low point.... but I had friends who lost their jobs, and had to relocate across the country, and HAD to sell when the market was depressed. Some lost over a hundred thou on that deal.
House? What about retirement? (Score:2)
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I have a nasty feeling that by the time I retire, with inflation, $1 million won't buy quite as much as $1 million will buy today.
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I do get the point. People waste money. But really they don't. For instance my cell phone bill isn't much more than a land line cost me 30 years ago. In 1970 I can see people paying a buck for a cup of coffee, which is what is costs now inflation adjusted at Starbucks.
On the other hand, people regularly bought houses for $25,000 in 1970. Today such a house should cost no more than 150,000. For such a house you need to scrounge up $10,000 and maybe $700 a month. B
Oh, sure, blame millennials (Score:3, Insightful)
Part of the problem is that the housing market is out of whack.
Using data for 1972, when you compare median household income and median house price, the house price is ~325% of the income.
Using data for 2015, when you compare median household income and median house price, the house price is ~525% of the income.
Just a bit of difference there. Now, part of that is different (more exacting) house construction standards, increased costs of construction materials, and so on, but that much of a difference?
Yes, some millennials have poor spending habits and poor savings habits. But the increased cost of houses also plays a part. Not to mention student debt. (And DeVos seems to give not a single fuck about that.)
Just stop drinking Starbucks (Score:2)
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering the reason home prices are sky rocketing is cuts in government infrastructure spending. The government was putting up the money to do the expensive stuff to get the land ready for home building so that
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$125/mo starbucks (~$5/day)
$50/month cable (or hulu+netflix+etc)
$15/month MMO (or $45 if you are an addict and paying for 3 MMO accounts)
$220/month car insurance (full coverage for a 20 year old is about $2600/year)
$400/month car payments (because you wanted a brand new car and got screwed on the interest rate for the loan)
$200/month on take-out (a big underestimate, at one time I was spending $700/mo on eating out and take-out for 2 people)
That's $1010/month that can probably be reduced or eliminated, that
And they still have options, too .... (Score:3)
With no money down, it's still possible to get a USDA loan for a home. The "catch" is, you're going to have to select a home that's in one of the designated "rural" parts of America (as well as meeting some other criteria like having a reasonable debt to income ratio).
But USDA loans aren't just for buying farm-houses .... You might be surprised how many places qualify for one. You just have to consider a home that's outside a major city to have a shot at it.
You can't really avoid "closing costs" because the parties doing all the paperwork and making the sale happen want their cut. But this is negotiable too. Many times, a motivated seller of a pre-owned house will agree to pay all closing costs as part of the deal.
Welp (Score:3)
I guess you're renting.
FHA loan will let you do a 3.5% down payment if you have decent credit. Still, 3.5% on a $300K house is over $10K. It will take a couple years of steady job and scrimping and saving, but it's a feasible goal for many people. Things get more complicated if you absolutely must have a house in an expensive location, getting mortgages for $700K+ homes with very little down is unlikely unless you have a huge income. (dual income would help, I guess find a spouse that makes as much or more than you)
I didn't really have any money saved up when I was in my 20's either, but I have a house now (in Silicon Valley). I got into a groove in my late-20's/early-30's and was able to keep credit cards under control, paid off the car and kept it for several years (no car payments), car insurance got a lot cheaper, job paid more with more experience under my belt, and lots of other factors contributed.
Re:Thank your parrents (Score:5, Funny)
Don't they just need to wait for their parents to die?
Re:Thank your parrents (Score:5, Funny)
and then move upstairs?
Re:Thank your parrents (Score:5, Insightful)
My parents helped me with my first down payment. I will be helping my kids.
This is how people you fight poverty. Maintain the family unit, help your children to become more successful than yourself.
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Same. This also (partially) explains why many black populations in the US are so screwed over today. They weren't able to get mortgages in the 50s and 60s, so they never were able to start accruing wealth to pass onto the next generation.
Re:Thank your parrents (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, but for that to self-perpetuate the following generation needs to not be entirely aware that their parents got their back. They have to hunger a little, they have to have a need to put forth the effort to live independently so they learn how to be financially responsible.
My parents had my back and I didn't realize it. As a consequence I only had a couple of relatively minor scrapes where I benefitted from help; probably could have made it work without their help but it was definitely easier with it.
T
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II heard it described as "rags to rags in three generations". Somebody from modest origins starts a business, they make their kids work and study hard and when they grow up they either expand that business or go into good professions. The third generation are spoiled and feckless. When the money runs out they're incapable of supporting themselves.
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This is how people you fight poverty. Maintain the family unit, help your children to become more successful than yourself.
I'd argue exactly the opposite. Parents are now one of the biggest mortgage lenders in the UK and this has increased wealth inequality: your parents' wealth is now a bigger indicator of whether you'll be able to afford a house than your personal income. If this continues, you'll see a greater divide between those born to well-off parents and those who weren't.
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And the college fund may be the most useful thing you could give (give a man a fish....). My folks didn't 'bequeath' me anything (except having to deal with the paperwork of being dead - that is a trial in and of itself). They did pay for a substantial amount of money for my BA degree. That allowed me to get a stipend as a grad student. Twice. And then I was able to bootstrap that into making enough to more or less afford medical school.
But had I been saddled with $100K of student loans as an undergrad
Re: Thank your parrents (Score:2)
Millennial here, parents didn't give me anything. Paid for my own college, and now I'm saving roughly $2000 per month towards a house, just waiting for the bubble to pop. I'm at about $63,000 saved right now.
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You assume our parents own homes too.
Re:Thank your parrents (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't they just need to wait for their parents to die?
The Baby Boomer parents are too busy spending their inheritance. All that they're going to get is a bill from Uncle Sam to pay for Social Security/Medicare and everything else.
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But I DESERVE that house! I did show up for the appointment to view it!
Re: Thank your parrents (Score:5, Funny)
You don't spend much time on Twitter, do you?
Re:All of the smug old losers... (Score:5, Insightful)
I got to where I was at without riding the benefits bandwagon, even though I certainly qualified for it. The need for government handouts is an illusion, and the student loan debt is so high BECAUSE those programs exist to ensure it. The last sentence is right, you just want the problem to be worse so it can be fixed....
Re:All of the smug old losers... (Score:4, Insightful)
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No it is the cause, along with universities hiring top dollar professors and excessive spending on non academic items like new venues and buildings.
Many universities have endowments and their tuition have increased at the same rate. So public dollars doesn't explain it.
I paid $16 per credit hour 30 years ago plus some fees and books. Today it's over $500 at the public university I attended. An increase of over 3000%. 12% per year average increase. Tax dollar spending hasn't decreased in that state and e
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This is true locally. State funding for the University of MN peaked in the 70's.
Nope, sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Student loan debt is so high because the cot of university has skyrocketed. Go have a look at what a state school costs now as opposed to what it did when you went, and adjust for inflation.
The problem is all you "muh bootstraps" types (and by the way you benefited from plenty of things, even if you don't realize it) want to keep cutting spending and a popular area is assistance to public education. So the state aid to universities go down, but costs do not. Universities can't just "make cuts and do more with less" so they have to get more money at some point, and that is done by increasing tuition.
You can't shift costs from the government to the individual and then hate on the individual for having trouble bearing those costs.
You got the causation backwards (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You got the causation backwards (Score:4, Informative)
Nope, sorry. I know that is how people like to sell it, but that's not how it works. State universities have their tuition controlled by a board of regents and funding regulated by the state and those states have been cutting and cutting and cutting. If you are interested, go and get the numbers from any of them you wish. Being public, they have to have their books open. Also realize it isn't like they can charge a lot and pocket the money like a private business. Again, the books are open, you are welcome to go and see where the money goes.
I work at a state university so I've seen it happen. Year after year the state kept cutting the universities' allocation. I don't mean "cutting the rate of increase" or even "not increasing it" I mean outright saying "You have $500 million less from us than you did last year." The response from the universities has been to make cuts where they can, try to bring in more private research dollars, and to skyrocket tuition. It turns out that the facilities, computers, materials and people you need are not cheap, the dollars have to come from somewhere.
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Nope, sorry. I know that is how people like to sell it, but that's not how it works. State universities have their tuition controlled by a board of regents and funding regulated by the state and those states have been cutting and cutting and cutting. If you are interested, go and get the numbers from any of them you wish. Being public, they have to have their books open. Also realize it isn't like they can charge a lot and pocket the money like a private business. Again, the books are open, you are welcome to go and see where the money goes.
I work at a state university so I've seen it happen. Year after year the state kept cutting the universities' allocation. I don't mean "cutting the rate of increase" or even "not increasing it" I mean outright saying "You have $500 million less from us than you did last year." The response from the universities has been to make cuts where they can, try to bring in more private research dollars, and to skyrocket tuition. It turns out that the facilities, computers, materials and people you need are not cheap, the dollars have to come from somewhere.
Tuition has skyrocketed for *private* colleges too. Your argument doesn't hold any water.
Re:You got the causation backwards (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, I went and looked at the California State University system. 1999-2000 Allocation (Funding) $2.25 billion. 2016-2017 $3.4 billion, the highest it has ever been. It peaked near $3 billion around 2010, fell off for a few years and bounced way back. Maybe you should go work at a CSU? The real problem there is the same as many places, vastly more overpaid administrators, not enough spent on students and education.
Sources
http://www.calstate.edu/budget... [calstate.edu]
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2016... [ca.gov]
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It's a mixed bag.
For reasons probably too elaborate to get into here, more and more types of jobs cite having a college degree as a plus. More and more high schools push students toward college as the best path. Therefore more and more high school graduates seek college degrees. Colleges only have so many seats, so as demand for those seats goes up, colleges can charge more. As prices go up, coupled with the apparent need for college training, government offers loans to make college more affordable. Un
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Bullshit.
What we have is degrees that are worth something in the real world out there. If you complain about not getting hired and your degree is about something no sane person considers marketable, it ain't the market that's wrong.
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Except that sometimes it's not just the degree.
My first degree was in Mechanical Engineering. Couldn't get a job. Hell, I only got a few interviews, and most places that were advertising openings were barely responding to resume inquiries.
My second degree was in Computer Science. I got the timing of that down just as the Dot-com crash was in full swing. So, I had a second degree in the wrong field at the wrong time, as people weren't exactly hiring fresh graduates when they could hire someone with a half-do
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Part of the problem is that most U.S. universities do not give a solitary fuck what you major in, as long as you pay tuition. They couldn't care less that you can't find a job
Of course they don't care. It isn't their job to care. It's YOUR job to figure out what you want to study and make good choices.
Do you really think the Universities are supposed to hold your hand and guide you through life, and coerce you into studying something you don't want to so you'll be employable when you graduate?
unless they're one of those colleges that advertises what percent of their graduates are employed
Because those are TRADE SCHOOLS that exist to teach you a TRADE that will lead to employment, and how many grads get jobs is a selling point for them. They are not universities, or even r
Re:All of the smug old losers... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's sort of a holdover when one expected a broad based education for management style jobs. Getting that English degree was not always a dead end choice. For instance, getting into law school does not require having a marketable undergraduate degree. Part of the problem is that many job positions are much more picky than they used to be - they want to hire managers with MBAs despite it being pointless for so many management jobs for instance.
Even for technical jobs I feel strongly that a broader based education in that field is still much much better than a narrow focus in the long run. Never aim for the first entry level job to be your entire career. So someone who wants only to learn about web programing and ignore everything else is most likely going to be stuck at the bottom rung forever. This sort of feels like the current tendency in society to mock and downplay intellectural pursuits has permeated even engineering disciplines. "Be your best" is not fashionable for some reason.
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Re:All of the smug old losers... (Score:4, Insightful)
All the CS classes I use at work at one point or another, but I run across so many professional programmers that just don't seem to understand computer science, they're just coders. They sort of self-learn some advanced topics but it feels like they're just stumbling along the same steps someone already took instead of going further. People 20 to 30 years programming will complain that code reviews are worthless and why do they have to use "const". And so few people understand floating point that I'm baffled how they got this far. That's just the programming part, never mind not having any concept of algorithms or graph theory or other concepts that underly what they're doing.
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I used to think that a liberal education program was stupid for technical fields. I thought it was dumb that I had to take all of these core classes that weren't related to Comp-Sci.
Whenever I talk to kids who are just starting out at University, my single biggest piece of advice is always "Take at least a couple of classes that are completely useless for your degree, but interest you personally." It's the one chance in your life to learn something from someone who is usually going to be an expert in their field, and in the grand scheme of things, the cost isn't enormous. Plus, you never know who you might meet in those classes, and it's always good to have contacts and friends outside
Re: All of the smug old losers... (Score:2)
Just want to throw in there: someone was buying the participation trophies for those millennials. The older generation is partly to blame.
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Millennials are stuck with student loan debt because older people have fought to take funding away from higher education.
Millennials are stuck with student loan debt because they bought into the concept that a college education is a right and the student loan program was "free money" to get them something they deserved. They used that money to get degrees in things that would never pay a good wage because they felt entitled to a college degree and a living wage just for breathing. (UBI, $15 minimum wage, etc, anyone?)
Don't condemn the "older people" who don't want to pay for the useless educations of millennials any more th
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No, they are stuck with it because of guaranteed loans driving up tuition and because the rise of HR departments who expect shit shovelers to have a bachelors.
Re:All of the smug old losers... (Score:5, Insightful)
The CCC and WPA were pretty nice programs imho.
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But "soon will be" would not explain any problems that already exist, unless you're saying the effect is preceding the cause.
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80% of Millennials Say They Want To Buy a Home -- But Most Have Less Than $1,000
The correlates well with the statistic that 100% of Millennials are entitled whiners.
Peeps, this is what you get when you refuse to believe in all the things that got your parents and grandparents what they have.
Your post correlates perfectly with the statistics that people get more grumpy/needy/whiny with each passing year.
Now go give yourselves more tax-breaks and add trillions to the National Debt the "entitled whiners" will have to pay off
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Peeps, this is what you get when you refuse to believe in all the things that got your parents and grandparents what they have.
I'm GenX and even I know that believing their parents and especially their grandparents is absolutely useless for Millennials. The economy their grandparents participated in that got them all their nice things doesn't exist anymore. Nothing like it exists anymore.
Nobody drops out of high school and goes to work and builds a nice middle class lifestyle for themselves anymore. Nobody starts in the mailroom and becomes a company president anymore. Nobody holds one job their whole lives anymore. Shit, that
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How does "wanting something but not having the money for it" count as entitled whining?
If that's not the definition, then what is? What do you call it when kids want ice cream from the store, but parents won't buy it for them?