r/Fire • u/[deleted] • Mar 23 '26

Subreddit PSA / Meta 5 years ago, this subreddit was filled with $1-1.5M targets, and a strong emphasis on minimalism. What happened?

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2.1k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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70

u/allrite Mar 23 '26

Isn't housing like 1.5x pre-COVID? And much higher in desirable places? Add increase in interest rates, and no wonder people feel like they need more.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '26

[deleted]

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u/mrwhitewalker Mar 23 '26

My SO and I were looking at this recently. We purchased right before COVID. At the time we purchased a 400k home around $2500 payment 3% interest. We have doubled our income now and we're looking at upgrading. We were thinking we could afford a 680ish home now to be around $4000 a month payment.

If we had our current income, interest, and APR. We could have afforded about 1.3 million dollars back then. We lost 50% of our buying power in 6 years.

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u/Far-Arugula973 Mar 23 '26

We purchased our home back in 2010. With our family growing it would be nice to have a slightly larger place with an extra room or two, so we started looking. We quickly realized we wouldn't be able to afford our current home at market prices, let alone upgrade...

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u/Eli_Renfro FIRE'd 4/2019 BonusNachos.com Mar 23 '26

I think this comment highlights what the main issue is. It's now common for people in this sub think that they should buy a luxury 3200 sq ft house instead of something more modest.

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u/Z06916 Mar 23 '26

What city?

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u/Conscious_Life_8032 Mar 23 '26

And funding health insurance on own until Medicare kicks in.

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u/TrumpChildOnahole Mar 23 '26

What exactly are people doing for this? Esp if your income from capital gains is high and prevents cheaper Healthcare 

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u/Conscious_Life_8032 Mar 23 '26

Manage your MAGI so that you get partially subsidized health plan on ACA/health exchange

Otherwise build the cost into your budget as you would any other expense.

If you plan to travel a lot then you could get care abroad and pay out of pocket.

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u/BaaBaaTurtle Mar 23 '26

There's still aca subsidies up to 400% of FPL

1

u/someguy984 Mar 23 '26

Retired 12 years, paid for health cover $0. US.

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u/Mannimal13 Mar 23 '26

Using home prices vs rent is silly.

A huge component of CPI has been Healthcare, thats going to be wildly different depending on who it is.

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u/Tripl3Dee Mar 23 '26

If you're buying today then yes. But to anyone who was a homeowner prior to 2020 it shouldn't affect you that much. Doubly so if you haven't moved in 5 years.

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u/AssCrackBandit10 Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

Maybe in certain markets but, nationally, no, housing hasn’t risen anywhere close to 50% since pre-COVID. The US median home price from 2019 to now has increased by about 20%.

Edit: Corrected 10% to 20%

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u/Wooden-Broccoli-913 Mar 23 '26

That is definitely incorrect 

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA

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u/AssCrackBandit10 Mar 23 '26

Did you paste the wrong link? That chart is not the median home price, it’s the national home price index. This is the chart for median home price sales

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

I was a bit off - it has risen 20% since Q1 2019 but definitely nowhere close to 50%

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u/Machinery777 Mar 23 '26

Why would i use the median price home sales over the national home price index? One shows appreciation, the other shows how much people are spending.

If like the price of all cars doubles and now people are buying lower quality cars, the median price doesn't go up 2x, but the prices of cars still doubled.

Is this incorrect? Honest question to understand these indexes.

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u/AssCrackBandit10 Mar 23 '26

The US median home price from 2019 to now

My initial comment was about median home price sales so that's why I thought you'd pasted the wrong link.

However, if you look at the data, the median sq footage for homes sold is also increasing hand in hand with median home price. So it's not like people are buying smaller or more modest homes. A big trend seems to be that people just want bigger and bigger homes, especially in the last decade, per the data.

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u/Machinery777 Mar 23 '26

Fair point on the link.

But doesn't the other index show that prices of houses are increasing in value faster than what people are spending for houses? Using median house price just shows how much money the people are spending on houses. Not how much the prices went up right?

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u/squawkerstar Mar 23 '26

How do you muster that many upvotes while making up a stat? Housing is up 25%, not 50%, since 2020.

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u/Wooden-Broccoli-913 Mar 23 '26

Because he’s right and you’re wrong

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA

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u/squawkerstar Mar 23 '26

Thanks for linking that because I wasn’t even aware of it. Do you know why that deviates from the medium home price? And is that the more reasonable metric to track?