Right?! I see my sister doing it solo without help from the dad what so ever and damn I donāt see how she does it. Works full time with OT daily takes them to school helps them with homework cooks dinner all the time every day.
This is me. Every few years my kid's dad sobers up long enough to tap out a rage text about what a piece of shit I am for not letting him be a father (literally never did anything to stop him, told him to file for custody and let a judge decide if he's fit to care for a child). Like bro, I'm too tired for this. I'm the one who is supposed to be mad. You have no responsibilities, pay no child support and there are zero expectations on you. Why are you even this mad at 11am on a Tuesday?
It's not a particular time, it's just when the shame built up so much it had to burst out, but he doesn't have the emotional skills or honesty to let it be shame. So it came out in the form most natural to him.
Im not a single mom or a mom, just a dad. But i was raised by a single mom and well..... they do it with love and magic i guess. As a 40 year old father of a 7 year old with a spouse, i have a deep appreciation for single moms that do it.
My mom was a single mom. We rented until the 3 of us kids were adults. Only then were we able to buy a house together. The first time my older brothers bought it together with her. They sold it after a decade and each had enough for a down payment for their next house by themselves. I teamed up with my mom the second time, she had been gig working and even with her down payment secured no one would approve her by herself. And we're now in amazing shape comparatively to others around us.Ā
There's a lot of stigma around generational housing in North America but its put her in the position to be able to retire even with her meager savings. And it's put me, someone who spent almost 10 years working retail at Walmart, into the position of home ownership and retirement savings. Though I was really fortunate to have made that decision in 2017 before prices doubled. My current mortgage at around 5% interest rates is only $1000/mo.
I only make $60k gross right now, and while I do live a pretty frugal basic life apart from prime rib steaks every weekend in the summer, ounce of weed a month, and the dog. I don't live paycheck to paycheck anymore. I was even able to save $15k this last year.
Now I come into threads like this and I feel like an alien.Ā
Our parents exploited a more abundant world. Now weāre fighting for the scraps while boomers buy up all the affordable housing for overpriced rentals and vacation homes
It's not even boomers, it's corporate rent-till-you-die as a business model. Probably boomers are in charge of those companies, but there's also a big proportion of boomers with nothing but social security as an income. This is not just generational its a system for funneling wealth to the wealthy. People of all ages are doing bad.
Yup, a lot of times inflation is just for the purpose of draining the public of any advancements being made in profit. Think about it, you keep doing such a great job that you get raises, then prices jump up overnight and take any gain you made through advancing yourself away from you.
Yes, but it does come from both sides. I worked in retail and then retail pharmacy management for about 20 years. The writing on the wall was just expanding and expanding so I left after almost hitting 100k. Now I work in the trades making cabinetry for commercial and residential. And the business I work for is about six months from bankruptcy. So you can either work for an incredibly profitable fortune 5 company or for a 90 year old prestigious small company and still be underpaid and in constant threat of doom. Inflation is just the symptom of greed or tyranny
I'm honestly always surprised that more blame isn't placed on the Gen Xers that would have been (and still are) running these rent-til-you-die companies
They were funded by boomers' investment and retirement funds, since boomers have largely switched to bonds I suspect there's been a slowdown in REITs buying up homes to flip as rental properties.
I think there will just be more shell companies going forward as they have an almost infinite source of cash and there is work to limit the amount of properties each company can own (grandfathering in the companies that already own thousands of single family homes, of course). And yes, they were funded through some retirement funds, I'm sure. But now there is enough capital I would think to fund reinvestment in perpetuity. These schemes started after 2009 so they've had almost 20 years to prove the roi
The next hope would be for boomers to die off and disperse their wealth to their kids via inheritance, but unfortunately it seems the boomers are spending everything they have on lavish retirements, retirement homes, and end-of-life care. The real winners are the owners of elderly care facilities.
It doesnāt need to be a contest for who has it harder, and they werenāt saying it was the same. It reads like they also have creatures that depend on them and they have to keep going too, as hard as it is sometimes.
I've needed to work crazy hours in bad weather to keep truck drivers from losing money, and the truck drivers and and I don't even like each other for the most part.
creatures that depend on them and they have to keep going too, as hard as it is sometimes.
My mom was all sad that they were selling the house and it was going to someone random and not one of the kids. Even though when I offered to buy it from them they scoffed at me and said I didn't have any money
My dad won't even let me build a mini bunkie house in his backyard because it would be inconvenient for his dog, but then expects me to come stay with him every few months when he has his various surgeries and needs a caretaker. My mom literally put some kind of stipulation in her will that none of the children can buy out the others and keep her house because "none of you would keep up the maintenance to our standards"
Caring more about the house over the kids is fucking insane. Have they always been like this? Iāve noticed the older ppl get the ruder and colder towards ppl they get.
Yes. My whole life. They are both narcissists who got into the housing game by pure luck. My mom through her third marriage and my dad through some kind of thing back in the 90s where he could use his Navy pension as a down payment. Neither ever saved, both smoked a pack a day, made terrible relationship decisions and drank a drive-thru coffee daily. But they preach as if they are serious financial gurus.
My dad is literally letting his house rot to the ground. I make enough to buy the house for a discount, have offered to renovate the basement for him and let him live with me for free for the rest of his life and he refuses because "I had to work hard to buy a house, I'm not buying one for you too"
Which literally makes no sense. I'm asking to buy it.
So the house in a beautiful neighborhood with a huge, spacious yard with a greenbelt in the back is just sitting there turning into a shack that the neighbors consider an eyesore.
My parents (from whom I am estranged) let their primary home fall into literal ruin (no roof, visible on Google Maps, must have been using buckets to catch rain while living there) and it was condemned and demolished to the ground by the city. The fought it in court for YEARS apparently, while it crumbled around them, and eventually lost due to neighborhood and city/township outcry.
Now they have a lien on the vacant parcel of about 3x its value, for the legal fees and demo. Sibling and I only found out about all this snooping onlineāgoogling township meeting minutes and aerial photos. Absolutely stunning waste.
Presumably parents are now living at their second home, and on the way to trashing that one!
And get a loan to buy one on what? I couldn't even get a loan for a fucking car. My dad had to take loan for it and I was paying him back. How will I get a 30 year loan for a fucking house?
Bro, I donāt even know how people are getting into tens of thousands of credit card debt. My score isnāt the greatest (680) and I either get denied or approved for $1200 with 3000APR
Because there is a non-zero amount of people who still score 40-50k/yr jobs and then have absolutely no self control for the hedonism treadmill and start clarna'ing everything under the sun, add more credit cards
Take the "I want it, so I'll do it" mentality to trips through and to different countries. Taking out whole ass personal loans to go on a 10 day vacation in Italy and blow 20k with nothing to show for it.
Doomspending is out of control. If you can manage a 700+ score and manage the bills you can quickly rack up cards with decent limits. I could double or triple my current debt ceiling if I wanted.
My score is over 800 and they wouldnāt approve an increase in my credit limit earlier this year from $6,000 because I pay it off too quickly and they didnāt earn any money off my account lol. I just wanted more in case one big travel expense came up. So I also donāt get it lol.
My score was around a 680 before I got a card. Got up to about a 730 and then they approved me from $500 to $5,500 within a year. Now i'm at a 798 and I wonder if I should "let them make money off of me" to get a bigger limit or if I should just keep paying it off right away like you have been doing and then apply for a higher limit card once i reach an 800.
Yeah to be clear Iāve never applied for a second credit card, but Iāve had this one for just about a decade. My income is over 40x the limit but that didnāt matter fwiw.
Our move up to the Midwest came with a lot of trials and tribulations and I had to use my credit card to survive. It's really fucked me lately and unfortunately I can't really pay the monthly amount
literally my boomer parents even floated the idea of buying a condo for my partner and I and we just "pay them rent" aka the mortgage, since they have actual money. It's the downpayment, the insane competition with cash offers and insane upgrades we'd need to do with most houses in our price range. We can't afford shit anywhere anymore, but our landlord charges us 750 a month, so we're just continuing to save as best we can. Interest rates just went up AGAIN, and they're even worse than before with how much houses cost.
13, friends dad had a restaurant. I had to save to buy a car.. I just took at 15k loan out to pay off my credit cardsā¦ wish it could have been for a 5 year old car :/
the worst is people treating you like YOU'RE the problem. fuck those people! I've been sick 18 years now and i'm beyond exhausted. i spend 100% of my energy on work and I still can barely afford rent. I hope one day I will actually be able to LIVE a life.
My parents got land from my grandmother and found a trailer house that we( me and my two younger sister) built around. They still give me grif for owning a town home instead of a stand alone.
41, started work at 14, 4 kids, no chance of getting on the housing ladder, rent is more than I was costed for a mortgage about 3 years ago but I did not meet their affordability criteria. Clearly could afford it, I been paying more in rent for 10+ years
No offense, but your parents are oblivious boomers who don't want to acknowledge that the costs of living have gone up significantly, but that wages/salaries have not kept pace.
Started at 12. Was scammed by my first company and they never really paid me. Thank god they went out of business. Ended up going back to school after saving up 50k because I couldn't get approved for a mortgage for a house because of some bullshit.
Hey, You're a trooper. Fuck the judgement. You live your own life. When dead, you won't be able to take you're bought home with you anyway. And it's not the key to a happy life per se. Do the things you want to do, buy the things you CAN afford. Be proud of how much work you did. You did more than most people. It's not like our parent's generation has all the wisdom to happiness, as much as they like to think they do. And surviving being a single mom alone is a whole nother level of awesomeness most people will never understand. Fuck em
Struggle is real. I'm (43m), worked full time since 16, was very late (37) diagnosed ADHD, and been single basically my whole life, so I've had no help and had to rely on myself for everything.
My parents paid $37k for their house, and paid it off early while raising kids on only 1 full-time income, and it's now valued around $1.2m. We had a 3 week holiday every year, take-out or restaurant once a week, and never went without anything. Yet somehow their generation "had it tougher", and they just worked harder, saved harder, and budgeted harder.
I moved overseas and started over somewhere where rent is at least affordable (25% of my income).
I feel this. I was a single mom with 2 kids close in age. I lived far away from my family, and the paternal family (including the father) were zero help. I had no support, and everyone watched me drown. Now I'm 43 and they can't understand why I don't own a home etc. It's frustrating.
Ditto on everything, but I'm turning 40 in December.
Every time I talk to my Mom on the phone, all she does is brag about how well off everyone else in my family is and great vacations they're taking, and then doesn't care about the fact I'm struggling so bad financially and working a job I hate, and switches the conversation back to either how fabulous my cousins are doing, or to how bad she's struggling on a "fixed income" (retired ~9 years), but owns her house, has zero debts apart from her mortgage, eats well, and can afford to buy my kid and me useless crap we never ask for or need.
Like, Mom, I love you dearly, but could you instead send the money you blew on the same friggin' set of pot holders you randomly sent last year? That $20 could've covered enough gas for me to get to and from work a couple days before payday š
When we were in college my friends thought of me as the lazy one, because im a bit of a slacker study wise (im the type that gets good grades with low effort). But i was the only one that had ever had a parttime job. That always possed me off.
Also been working since 15. I was a gift wrapper at Dillard. Did it on Christmas break too.
My mom also thinks Iām a piece of shit because of where I donāt stack up. Iāve worked 2 jobs plenty of times only to get cancer and have it wipe out every bit of savings and then some.
Iām 39 crawling my way back. She remarried a really rich dood and is constantly traveling and the other day she said to me condescendingly āgotta pay your duesā šš¼āāļøš
I also started out as Christmas staff in a department store. We were called "fluffers" (š¬š¬) because we went around making sure all the stock on display was folded properly.
My mom also married rich and constantly uses the "gotta pay your dues" as if she didn't have a bankruptcy by my age and as if she didn't blow a ton of money she didn't have on the bf before this husband, a former drug addict with a mullet who talked her into funding his custody battle and her used furniture business that he chainsmoked in all day with the illegal Russian immigrants he would hire
Omg itās enough to make your insides just absolutely shatter isnāt it. The madness.
Yeah my mom didnāt work growing up and divorced my dad and then convinced him to give her our inheritance if he died. He missed her so he did. She did it in secret and then asked me to get on his credit card statement to make sure he wasnāt overspending. He told me about it and said he regretted it and I said āyou need to do what you want to do but just get it doneā. he died 2 months later and didnāt do it. She was mad at funeral we asked her to pay for casket. Said she would have to put off getting her kitchen cabinets redone. Later, she had a boyfriend that got scammed and they both lost a bunch of money. The stories I could tell. I feel like Iām in a fucked up sitcom.
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u/sipstea84 8h ago
Since I was 15.
Yet my parents think I'm a lazy piece of shit because I don't own a house as a 40 year old single mom. The "starter" homes in my area are like 500k.
I'm honestly exhausted.