If you have at least $1,000 in savings, you have saved more than two-thirds of millennials. Young adults have a money problem – namely, our #squadgoals don’t line up with our personal finances.
See, we want to own our own homes someday sooner rather than later. CNBC found, “Eighty percent of millennials report that they would like to buy a home, and a majority even say that it’s part of their five-year plan.”
Our generation’s money mantra has been “access, not ownership.” We want rides without owning cars (Uber) and movies without buying them (Netflix). We even borrow our formalwear (Rent the Runway) and tunes (Spotify). When it comes to houses, though, we’re bucking the trend… or at least trying.
Let’s say you’re saving as much as the average millennial. It might take much longer than five years to get you into a home, according to Apartment List. You’ll have that down payment saved up in 11.6 years if you live in Washington, D.C. If you’re shipping up to Boston, expect to save up for 15.2 years. The outlook is bleakest for millennials in California. They’ll have to save up for 23.9 years for a place in San Jose, and 20.7 years for a home in Los Angeles.
Other major cities have more affordable options – though none that will take less than five years to earn. Miami millennials will need to save up for 6.3 years. New York City is one of the more affordable places, too (I swear Trump opened up some rift in the force by touching The Orb) – anyhow, an average young adult saver will need to stash their cash for 8.3 years for a place in the city. If you’re in Dallas or Houston, you’ll need to save up for about a decade.
This doesn’t stop us from dreaming. Instead, millennials flock to television shows that romanticize shopping those homes and decking them out with excessive amounts of shiplap. HGTV boasts a rapidly-growing millennial audience. We can’t get enough of do-it-yourself projects (even if we can’t afford to actually do them ourselves).
Since we’ll be waiting awhile before we can buy houses, we’re spending time and money on other things that make a rental feel like home. 75 percent of thirty-something Americans have dogs, and 51 percent have cats, according to the Washington Post. That’s a higher rate of pet ownership than our parents and grandparents. We love our fur-children so much (and they are replacements for children, according to this psychology professor) that the pet industry is now three times the size it was in 1996.
As much as I love pets, and I really do – please, tweet me pictures of your pets – they, unfortunately, won’t help you out in a way that a home really could. Finance author and self-made millionaire David Bach says, “If millennials don’t buy a home, their chances of actually having any wealth in this country are little to none. The average homeowner to this day is 38 times wealthier than a renter.” In short, we don’t have enough money to make more money.
Bach calls this a mistake, but it’s a mistake that we literally cannot afford not to make.
