Quote:
Originally Posted by rat156
Well, you think you had it tough (though you're probably not old enough to understand the reference either).
When I got married, we had just bought the house we still live in, we borrowed a modest $70k (total price was $75k) for a 12.5 sq house on a 972 sq m block in Werribee, which is 35 km from the city. At the time my wife worked in Highett, at least 100 km round trip, I worked in Parkville, about 70 km round trip. Interest rates were 18.5%, we had a 30 year loan, the repayments on which took about 80% of our combined income, the rest went on bills and food, which was almost exclusively home brand and the cheapest cuts of meat. At one stage our loan got put out to 35 years because the bank couldn't put the payments up as we wouldn't have been able to afford them. This is what happens to your economy in a recession, something the Government that is responsible for trying to implement the NBN (trying to remain partly on-topic) managed to pretty much avoid by spending on infrastructure and running the economy into deficit. Something the new Government will continue to do (Tony's own admission on Sunday), without the infrastructure spend (I couldn't find any big infrastructure spend in the LNP policy).
There really isn't a lot of difference between your situation and ours, except for one huge difference, the interest rate. Housing prices have been driven up as a consequence of the lower interest rate available for mortgages, but even at $300k vs $75k you are actually heaps better off (and you end up with a $300k investment). Oh, your house is almost certainly at least double the size, if not triple the size of ours.
So, although you don't have it easy by any stretch, it's still not as hard as it has been.
My mother-in-law will tell you about what happened in the Great Depression, they really had it tough.
Count your blessings.
Cheers
Stuart
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I will not turn this into a fight over who had it harder, but to say that you have a 75k investment vs a 300k investment is silly. Your house value now is the number we should be comparing, unless your saying that you bought a property for 75 grand and it has not appreciated in any way.
I am not arguing that we have it good, because we do. But participating in this community it seems like some older generations would rather just tell me how easy my lazy, freeloading generation have it to make themselves feel better.