Home prices are through the roof in some major cities. Part of the jump in rents may be because owners did not raise rents for 2 Covid years so as not to force out known people for unknown people who might have been less careful about health issues. I know I spent years of eating hotdogs and chicken, buying clothes at thrift and church stores, and rarely spending money on anything but healthy food, and staying healthy. Was able to save the 20% downpayment. Subsequently gave my 2 sons $10,000 each around 2001 using my equity line of credit on the house, so they could get out of their 1 bedroom apartments, and buy 3 bedroom fixer uppers and provide me with 4 grandchildren.
The vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how easy it is to save money. Lets just take one thing like the bad habit of smoking for instance.
Take a working class guy just getting by, but who has a smoking habit:
He smokes 1 pack a day.
The average cost of a pack right now nationwide is about $7.
That doesn’t seem like much does it?
But that’s $2,555 a year.
If instead of smoking a pack a day, he put that money into a relatively safe investment. Say.. a fund that tracks the S&P for instance. And he were to get even a modest 8% return on average over his working life 20-65. He would have about a million saved for retirement.
And that’s if the price of cigs never goes up!
And that’s just ONE seemingly tiny thing. And could just as easily be a 6 pack of beer, or eating out one meal a day.