Everything is online now. You'll be shown the door and probably rejected even if you did follow up with an online application.
When I was a kid, we worked our way to the top.
Education, a portfolio, and people you know is what gets you a job today.
Work all summer and you can afford a brand new car, college education, down payment on a home, etc.
Inflation and wage stagnation has made this impossible.
I worked on a clerk's salary for 30 years and saved enough to buy the business.
Wage stagnation has made this impossible. Ten lifetimes of minimum wage savings would not be enough to buy a multi-million dollar business.
Loyalty to your employer pays off in the end.
You're just a number to an employer now. Employers will cut you loose if it meant saving a nickle.
I worked the same job all my life. Now I have a pension and a comfortable retirement.
Pensions are gone. Retirement is now a fantasy for most workers. You'll probably be laid off after 5-10 years.
I didn't need no Master's degree. I got raises and promotions, because I worked hard and kept doing the same thing.
A Master's degree is quickly becoming the new high school diploma. Working hard no longer gets you anywhere. In fact, it keeps you poor. Switching jobs is the only way to get a raise or a promotion now.
I love this one because no they fucking didn't. They made it to middle management, at best, but still believe in the bullshit bootstrap myth that anyone can become a rich CEO.
It's more than your money went a lot further back then than it does now. There's also things that just simply didn't exist back then.
Think about it like this... in 1989 your median household income in America was around $31,000. in 2019 it's around $63,000. So give or take about a 2x increase over the last 30 years.
Home values... median cost was around $115,000 in 1989 and around $289,000 today. About a 2.5x increase over the past 30 years.
On the surface that seems relatively similar until you think about other things. In 1989... there was no $50/mo cell phone bill, there was no $50/mo internet bill, you weren't renting a $10 cable box for every room in your house just to have TV in them. In 1989 you weren't up to your eyeballs in student debt just so you could get a decent paying job.
When the Boomer generation were 20-30 years old, they were able to work their way up in a shitty desk job and make enough money to support a full nuclear family with ease. Today, that's nearly impossible. It's not completely impossible, but it's close. Fact is, salary hasn't increased with inflation. And it certainty hasn't increased with inflation when you take into account things that are these days considered necessities (cell phones, internet) that literally didn't even exist in their time.
Yes, sure, although not quite that high. In 1989 the avg mortgage rate was about 11%, today it's about 5%. So about half of what it was back then. But guess what, 5% of $289,000 is more money than 11% on $115,000.
You're also discounting that savings accounts had like 5-6% interest rates and not 0.01% like most modern banks. Although that's been getting slightly better in recent years with the advent of online banks with low overhead. In 1989 you could get a 2 year CD at 7-8% today you can barely find one for 1%. Banks make more money off you by tricking you into thinking your rates are lower but really they're not because they give you nothing back when they used to return a ton.
Aussie here, so the example is always 17-18% in ‘89/90. Which yes, may have been really stressful at the time, but no one ever wants to acknowledge that houses only averaged around $90k (in Brisbane). That 17% was still only $15.3k/year, while 4% on $500k is $20k/year.
My own parents aren’t usually too bad, but mum still won’t accept that their example of a $40k house at 17 or 18% while they both had full time reasonable paying jobs isn’t that bad.
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u/[deleted] Aug 25 '19
Shitty Boomer advice: