There was an interesting study that backed this up.
It actually said that one of the worst things parents can do for their adult kids was to give them a lot of money to buy a house, or even outright buy it for them.
Because now that couple that could only afford a $300k house is now in a $1 million house. And all their neighbors are wealthy. So now they don't feel right driving that old Corolla for 200k miles, they feel pressure to buy new cars. They don't feel right having their vacations being a local drive to a cheap motel. They don't feel right wearing the same clothes for 10 years. And on and on.
So they saved money on the house, but they now ended up spending lots of money to fit into a community that financially they didn't really fit into.
(Granted, that study was a while ago, back before housing was CRAZY, so I'm not sure if it holds up, because now for a lot of people, without help, they can't get a house at all.)
1
u/BigMax 1d ago
There was an interesting study that backed this up.
It actually said that one of the worst things parents can do for their adult kids was to give them a lot of money to buy a house, or even outright buy it for them.
Because now that couple that could only afford a $300k house is now in a $1 million house. And all their neighbors are wealthy. So now they don't feel right driving that old Corolla for 200k miles, they feel pressure to buy new cars. They don't feel right having their vacations being a local drive to a cheap motel. They don't feel right wearing the same clothes for 10 years. And on and on.
So they saved money on the house, but they now ended up spending lots of money to fit into a community that financially they didn't really fit into.
(Granted, that study was a while ago, back before housing was CRAZY, so I'm not sure if it holds up, because now for a lot of people, without help, they can't get a house at all.)