On Housing

[Stephen3141]

Middle-class buyers are increasingly springing for homes they can barely afford

One in 4 middle-income new homeowners — twice as many as a decade before — are buying into cost-burdened situations.

www.nbcnews.com

The article asserts...

It is not wise to spend more than 30% of your monthly income, to pay
for a mortgage (or rent). Paying more than this, results in an inability to
spend any money to improve your situation in life.

Median income in America has gone UP 50%, in the last 11 years.
(This is pretty amazing.)
But, the cost of buying a house, has gone up even more.
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Note that the federal government does not control private home
construction companies. And, it is more profitable for private home construction
companies to build LARGE and EXPENSIVE homes, rather than a lot of cheaper
and more affordable homes. If you want free enterprise, this is what you are
going to get -- construction companies building as many expensive homes as
they can sell, and very few people building affordable family homes.

The affordable housing shortage is NOT NEW. It has been developping for
(probably) over a decade.

The tendency of the younger American generations, to EXPECT to be able to
work an unskilled job, and earn enough for comfortable living, AND save for
buying a house, is an incredibly naive and ignorant expectation.

With the millenials, the trend of being a "slacker" and living with your parents,
although you were an adult, became a normal style of living in America.
Now, the electronic screen generations tend to think that being a slacker, and
living comfortably, and having enough money to raise a family AND enjoy
expensive hobbies, is somehow guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution (I am
speaking a caricature, and generalization).

I speak bluntly about these expectations, because it is politically incorrect
to speak about these topics, BUT they affect the finances of the younger
American generations.

American Christians need to enter into the financial discipline of getting as
much technical education as possible, working technically challenging jobs
(even if they are not fulfilling), living simply, and buying small one-family
houses, instead of the walled neighborhood large homes that realtors want
to sell them. Or the big, jacked up pickup trucks that all Texans want to drive.

Ironically, it is new immigrants to America, who are willing to go through this sacrifice.
But increasingly, it is Americans whose families have been in this country for multiple
generations, who are NOT willing to live sacrificially.

Although wages have gone up to match the rate of inflation, since the Pandemic,
younger Americans are not showing the discipline to work for the future, and
live frugally. More and more younger Americans are signing into mortgages
that they cannot afford, and then finding out that they cannot afford basic
groceries and utilities, for the big house mortgage.

Younger generations who do not live sacrificially, will not improve their
financial future, and are terrifically susceptible to Donald Trump's conspiracy
theories about new and criminal migrant groups, who are stealing their jobs,
and their futures.

Christian congregations ought to be teaching church members about
basic finances.