Americans who locked in a job, a home, and stocks are thriving. Everyone else missed out on their ticket to wealth.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

Some Americans who secured jobs, homes, and stocks a few years ago are thriving financially.
The job market has tightened, home prices have surged, and stock prices have risen.
But some Americans are struggling to find jobs and afford homes — and not everyone invests in stocks.
Think back on your life two to three years ago. Did you have a job, own a home, and have significant investments in the stock market?

If the answer was yes to all three, then there's a decent chance you're feeling OK about the state of your finances. But if you didn't check all three boxes, you might be among the Americans who remain frustrated by the economy.

If you had a job a few years ago and haven't quit, there's a good chance you're still employed — layoffs have been low relative to historical levels. There's also a good chance you've benefited from wage growth, which has exceeded inflation over the past year. But if you didn't have a job and are searching for one now — including recent college graduates — you're facing a considerably tougher labor market.

If you bought a home before 2021, there's a good chance the value of your home has risen considerably in recent years. It's also likely that you locked in a low mortgage rate. But if you're trying to buy a home today, you're facing a housing market that's much less affordable than it was a few years ago.

-----------

A consistent paycheck, homeownership, and stock holdings are perhaps the holy trinity of wealth creation for many Americans, but not everyone is well positioned to benefit from all three in the years ahead. It's among the reasons, despite falling inflation, many Americans aren't happy with the economy. The longer some people are boxed out of these paths to wealth creation, the more difficult it could be for them to pay the bills, become financially secure, and retire as early as they desire.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ar-AA1oElS6

[Deuxcents]

1. Home ownership is great but I'm getting squeezed with insurance and other things these days.

Health, home, car insurance is becoming increasingly expensive n being retired, myself n my friends are always checking for better rates. Not to mention upkeep, upgrades on that home.

[ColinC]

3. Landlord fees for me

[Deuxcents]

4. That's probably because they're getting hit with big insurance costs, too. What I'm reading is

Insurance n property taxes are driving people from their once secure homes and it’s not just here in Florida.

[getagrip_already]

2. Most start with nothing, or very little....

When i first started looking at houses, interest rates were 17%. There was a recession in parts of the country and people in some fields couldnt find work.

There have been countless cycles of good and bad economies in my life.

But still, people worked hard and managed to save, invest, and find homes.

Are some hurting? Sure. I get that. But it isnt hopeless, and this administration is not to blame.

Want to make the future a better place? Work for it, not against it, and stop complaining about what others arent doing for you.

[Keepthesoulalive]

5. Wow

Perhaps you went to a state college that had reasonable tuition, maybe someone in your family had a friend who helped you get your first job. If you are poor and or a minority enrolled in schools that are nothing more than warehouses trying to keep the lid on with students who have problems because of poverty and limited horizons. On the other hand you have people who should be in an institution but because of daddy’s money , lax immigration laws for rich white folk and government subsidies making them rich, they haven’t worked hard they just gamed the system. People who serve your fast food, take care of your children, pick up your garbage and bust their butts on minimum wage jobs also deserve a hand.

[valleyrogue]

9. Almost always requires two incomes to do it.

You aren't living in reality. For women, this almost always means we have to marry a man to be able to "buy" a house. Not a fair trade.

I can just about bet you have a spouse, and that enabled you to do it.

[getagrip_already]

16. I do have a spouse, that helps, but my daughter doesnt...

She is 28. Has an art degree, but doesnt work in a field that uses it. She is single, with 2 cats.

She owns a house and is scraping by. Single cat lady.

I have a son also. Hes 32, has 2 degrees he also doesnt use. He works managing a car rental agency. He is single atm, has a dog, and owns a house.

My other son doesnt own a house, but is single, never went to college, is an electrician apprentice, works 50 hours a week, and has enough in the bank to easily afford a nice house. He just doesnt have the time.

So yeah, im biased. If you set a goal, work towards it financially when you can (i get its easier at 50k than 15k), prioritize, and hustle - you may get there with luck and planning.

Govt help wont hurt, like student loan forgiveness, jobs programs, tax incentives, opportunity grants, vocational programs, etc. Those are needed, but you wont get those under trump.

[progressoid]

11. Work for it? Yeah, in today's economy ya gotta work a lot more for it.

In the 1980s, it took about 3.5 years' worth of household income to purchase the typical home. Today, it takes 6.3 years' worth of household income. If home prices had merely kept pace with inflation, the median home would cost only $177,500 today — compared to the $431,000 it actually costs.

For homes to be as affordable today as they were in 1985, the median household would need to earn $134,000 per year — nearly double the actual median of $74,580.

etc. etc. etc. https://listwithclever.com/research/housing-inflation-2024/#historic

[getagrip_already]

17. Interesting...

Be careful of average costs. With all the higher end homes on the market, the averages are skewed.

There are still lower cost homes. 2 of my kids bough homes in the $300k range in central mass in the past couple of years. And we are a high end market. Nothing is cheap here.

[kcr]

13. You are so unbelievably out of touch n/t

[NameAlreadyTaken]

6. I want everyone to have the same opportunities

I do qualify by those criteria on a small scale. I bought my first house when I was 55. Got married for the first time at age 59, and in fact the first same-sex marriage ever recorded in our county. Small business owner. Own a small amount of mutual funds. Have an ACA health insurance plan. Eligible to collect SS but haven't started. Eligible for Medicare next year. All of this happened within the last 10 years. So I'm sitting pretty good. And yet, I will vote for the Democrats who work towards making the same opportunities available to all Americans, for example Medicare for All.

[central scrutinizer]

7. Include good health as a fourth pillar

If someone in your immediate family has a serious illness or suffered a serious accident, medical care might swallow all your wealth.

[valleyrogue]

8. "Homeownership" is a joke. Most people don't "own" homes outright anyway.

Having a roof over your head should NEVER be seen as an investment but as a place to live. This is what has gotten us into this mess to begin with regarding housing. The greed by the real estate industry really took off in the mid-1970s, with the big influx of women into the labor force. The industry really got greedy and started dramatically raising housing costs, which of course, required even more women to get into the labor force while at the same time industries were cutting wages in male-dominated fields. I take a dim view of "homeownership." The problem with "homeownership" is that it is damned expensive to keep a house because of the constant maintenance you have to do on these money pits. It is also a major time suck for the upkeep.

Renters are the ones who need help, not people who can afford to purchase a plot of land or get a bank/mortgage to enable them to get a plot of land.

Furthermore, for the great majority of women, to "own" a house (at least initially) requires them to have to trade sex with a man to get it; i.e., typically through marriage. There is no getting around this fact that most women have to do this to be a "homeowner." And for the great majority of "single" women who are out there buying houses, they don't get it through their own initiative but through divorce settlements or inheritance (widows, inheritance from parents). The poorest sector of the elderly are never-married women.

I am tired of the mentality that is still rooted in the 1950s that you must be married in order to be happy and be a homeowner and has no bearing on how people are living now.

[Sympthsical]

18. There are days I wish I still rented. Then I see what's out there.

There was a moment in April when we had to float $2k to fix a garage door, $200 on a dryer situation, another $200 because the motherboard(?!) on the oven broke, and a HOI increase, where it was just like . . . "If we were renting, the landlord would be paying for all this."

Having a house is so much work and expense. We looked into getting our AC replaced, and that priced in at around $15k. No, shan't. That shit will run until it dies. One time, a picture window randomly cracked. That was $1500 out of the blue. Just on and on and on.

And, as you said, the upkeep. Every morning I come back from gym and immediately walk into the yard to pick up the billion apples and leaves that fell overnight. Mow lawn, wash floors, clean gutters, and on and on. There isn't a single day where something somewhere isn't being cleaned or managed in some way.

And there's only two of us here, lol. (with a revolving door of nieces, nephews, and friends).

It's fantastic for entertaining, but still. There are two of us. I float between maybe a third of the space we have at best.

Here's the flip side though. We just extracted a nephew from his apartment, where he was paying $3,200/month on a one bedroom with his gf. He's 23. She's a nurse, and they were barely managing it until it just became too much. So they're back with their respective parents now. $3200 is very close to my mortgage on a 3,400 sq ft home. That's how stupid California has gotten. And Covid worked gangbusters for us. We bought in an outer burb that was much cheaper than closer to the Bay, and our value shot up 40% in four years.

Great for us. Fantastic for us. But for people like my nephew, really fucking terrible. Rents are killing people, making it very difficult for young people to start out, and actively hamstringing people from saving enough to buy the crazily expensive homes. I know it's California, but the median wage doesn't pay enough to afford most of this.

[progree]

10. Average real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) hourly earnings are up over the past 2 years and are above the pre-pandemic level

# Real average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000032

# Real average hourly earnings of private sector workers: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000013

one can see the early pandemic jump in inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings due to last-hired first-fired policies disproportionately cutting lower-earners the most. Since the peak of that jump, there has been a steady erosion until mid-2022. Then it started climbing again, and it is considerably higher than any time pre-pandemic.

[lostnfound]

12. Unless you have people hanging on to you like a lifeboat, getting ripped off or having bad luck..

This year has sucked. My job is supposed to be adding to my retirement fund or at least preventing me from drawing down too much since i “retired” a bit too early
This year it’s been:
a need to replace a central AC for $8500
a “friend” who quit her job and “can’t” find another, for most of a year, who is at least supposed to be paying their own utilities if not rent (for the second home whose sale we are postponing in part to keep the friend off the street)
A $4500 emergency tree removal, massive, fell over from soft ground at roots and leaning inches over top of chimney
What is normally a basic medical procedure billed as “out of network”, $5,500 instead of $1,000
A tire hit the curb and Elon Musk’s company has taken a full month now says it will be $4,600.
A soffit/roof problem estimated at >$15,000 (my amazing partner professionally fixed it for ~$1200 including buying the scaffolding, we didn’t want him to have to do it because he is not 23 anymore and it is >20 feet up)
Water heater bit the dust, ~$2000, got a hybrid heat pump version to replace old gas unit, self-installed by genius partner
A move and career change to support, no fault of family member, well worth it…
but I’ll just stop there.

On hold:
dental implants
Me having time to go for a checkup

Theoretically I should be doing well but when everyone else is drowning, you do what you gotta do. I pay a lot of taxes but have a lot of unofficial dependents.

[Johnny2X2X]

14. So, same as it ever was.

What's the point of this article?

[moondust]

15. Neoliberalism/predatory capitalism

took off under TSCF. He's a predator himself with a history of not paying his employees or his bills. Predators everywhere know that he'll never do anything to seriously rein in their predation and thus he's their guy. I don't know how predatory Musk has been but that is likely the driving force behind his support for TSCF. It certainly isn't morals or ethics.

[Initech]

19. Part of the problem is that we don't regulate anything anymore.

Because the media, for over 40 years now, has been spreading the same lie from St. Ronnie Of Reagan that the government is the enemy. It's way past time to start righting that ship.

Once again, nearly all of our problems can be traced back to billionaires and hedge funds.