Interesting how they don’t mention housing costs.
Housing costs in some parts of the country are absorbing bigger and bigger percentages of income.
Housing is the biggest single expense most of us have, yet, it’s not mentioned in this article about the middle class financial squeeze. Interesting omission.
Where I live in IL, if you buy a house with conventional financing today, the tax portion of your monthly payment will be larger that the mortgage portion... and the tax is going up next year.
The "middle class" is now an ATM for the gov't.
Housing costs are outrageous.
My WATER bill here in MA is bigger than all of my other utility bills excluding my crazy comcast bill.
I’d cut the cord but others here would have no clue what to do with themselves.
Housing costs are mentioned in the lead up. They talk about how much money is left after taking care of necessities like housing, utilities and food. As housing costs go up the discretionary money is what gets squeezed.
That said when I lived in the SF Bay Area I had what would be considered by most standards a very good income and thought about buying a house. I gave up that idea when I realized there wouldn’t be enough of my paycheck left over to afford enough gas to drive to work and back after I paid just the interest, taxes and insurance on a decent house. I rented a house at less than a third of the monthly cost for an interest only mortgage payment would have been for the same house. This was back before the 2008/2009 crash and I understand it is even worse out there now. Housing prices have doubled from 2009 to now. Almost makes me wish I had bought during the crash and held instead of moving to the heartland.