Fermsy

Boomers bought houses when they were affordable, watched property values explode, then spent decades treating housing like an investment instead of a place to live.
Now some of them oppose new construction, fight against denser housing, and complain that younger generations don’t work hard enough to afford a home.
Their house went from $180k to $750k without them doing anything extraordinary.
Meanwhile, younger people need two incomes, a massive down payment, and a 30-year mortgage just to get a shot at the same dream.
Then they ask why nobody wants kids anymore.
You can’t inflate the cost of

CALLER: I'm 18. First year of college. Already projected to graduate with $100-120k in student loans.
DAVE RAMSEY: Okay. What else is going on?
CALLER: I bought a car for $30k. I now owe $41k on it. It's in my mom's name because my parents split and her credit took the hit — I'm paying her 12% interest rate without realizing it.
DAVE RAMSEY: What's it worth?
CALLER: Trade-in offered me $28,700. Private sale, maybe $30,500.
DAVE RAMSEY: So you're $12,300 underwater on a car, as a freshman.
CALLER: My income is $1,000-2,000 a month from retail.
DAVE RAMSEY: And the car payment alone is close to

My home insurance went from $1,200 in 2019 to $4,800 in 2025.
Same house. Same roof. Same zero claims ever filed.
$4,800 a year just to legally hold a mortgage on something I'm still paying taxes on every single year.
So let me get this straight.
I paid transfer taxes when I bought it.
I pay property taxes every year to keep it.
I pay insurance every month in case something happens to it.
I pay for every repair myself, insurance or not, because the deductible is higher than most of the damage.
One house. Four separate costs stacked on top of the mortgage.
And if a storm actually hits, the insu

A woman at my gym pulls into valet parking in a Bentley, works out for an hour, then has someone else detail her car while she's in there.
Meanwhile I'm doing mental math on whether the $15 day pass is worth it this week or if I should just run outside for free.
I keep seeing people posting from their third vacation home, dropping $800 on a dinner like it's a snack, putting their kids in $45K-a-year schools without blinking.
And I'm here deciding between the name brand or generic peanut butter based on a 40-cent difference.
Genuinely, what do these people DO? Because either everyone forgot to

Something about the American housing market doesn’t make sense anymore.
A family earning $50k a year struggles to afford a modest house.
Meanwhile, a $700k home in a town where most people earn less than $60k sells before construction is even finished.
Who is the market being built for?
Not the teachers.
Not the nurses.
Not the people running the local stores.
The people who keep these towns functioning can barely afford to live in them.
At some point, we have to ask:
If the people who work in a town can’t afford to live there, who exactly is the housing market serving?

My uncle gets $2,700 a month from his pension. For life. Guaranteed, no matter what the market does.
If he wanted to buy that same guaranteed income for life today, as a private annuity, it would cost him roughly $500,000 in a lump sum, upfront, in cash.
He didn't save $500,000. He worked 32 years at a union job that doesn't exist in that form anymore.
Nobody under 45 is getting that deal. We get a 401k match, if we're lucky, and the job of building our own $500,000 from scratch, on our own, with none of the guarantee.
Same "worked hard, retired comfortable" story.
Completely different price t

My neighbor's trash pickup used to cost $22 a month through the city. This year it jumped to $68.
He called to ask if something changed with his service. Same bins. Same weekly pickup. Same route.
The rep explained the city sold the waste collection contract to a private hauling company two years ago to help close a budget gap.
New owner added a "fuel surcharge," a "fleet maintenance fee," and something called a "regulatory compliance adjustment" all stacked onto the base rate, none of them explained further when he asked.
The trucks are the same trucks. The guys are the same guys. The trash s

Why did no one tell me medical debt doesn't automatically transfer to your spouse?
My aunt passed away in 2024 with $41,000 in unpaid hospital bills.
My uncle spent months convinced it was now his responsibility. Stopped eating out. Picked up weekend shifts. Nearly drained their joint savings paying it down.
A friend finally told him to check his state's laws. Turns out most medical debt dies with the estate, not the spouse, unless you co-signed or live in a community property state.
He'd been grieving her AND bankrupting himself over a debt he never actually owed.
The scariest part isn't the

A guy pulls up to my kid's school in a $140K Range Rover, drops off his kid, and drives off like it's a Honda Civic.
Meanwhile I'm checking my bank app in the carpool line hoping the gas light doesn't come on before Friday.
I keep seeing people with multiple properties, a boat, private school tuition for three kids, and a new car every two years.
And I'm sitting here doing the math on whether $40 covers groceries for the week.
Genuinely, what job pays for ALL of that? Because either I picked the wrong career at 22, or somebody out there is explaining "generational wealth" a little too casually

Mom had a business worth $2.3M.
She sold it.
She put $2.3M into a diversified portfolio averaging 8% a year.
$184K a year, more than the business ever paid her after expenses and headaches.
$2.3M is still there, growing, with none of the payroll, none of the 2am calls, none of the risk.
Owning the business wasn't the dream.
Owning the exit was.

"Boomers destroyed the economy for us"
Random 26 year old:
•Switched jobs twice in 3 years, negotiated a combined $31k raise doing it
•Learned to code on free YouTube tutorials, now freelances $2k/month on the side
•Opened a Roth IRA at 22, has $14k in it from $200/month
•Negotiated remote work, saves $400/month never commuting
•Still complains the system is rigged while doing none of what his grandfather had to

My uncle's assisted living facility got bought out by a PE firm last year.
Monthly rate went from $3,800 to $6,200. Staff-to-resident ratio got cut almost in half, the same employees, just covering twice the rooms.
When his daughter asked about the jump, she got a letter about "enhanced care infrastructure investments." The dining hall still serves the same food. The hallways still haven't been repainted since 2019.
What actually happened: the new owners loaded the facility with debt to finance the purchase itself, then raised rates to service that debt — a move called a leveraged buyout, and

QUESTION: when did urgent care stop being "urgent" and start being a cash grab?
My mom's urgent care clinic — the one she's gone to for a decade and was bought by a PE-backed network two years ago.
Same doctors at first. Same building.
Then the changes started:
Visit fee went from $120 to $275, "facility fee" added separately from the doctor's fee.
Wait times tripled, because they cut the on-site staff and centralized scheduling through a call center.
Routine bloodwork that used to run in-house now gets sent to a lab the PE firm also owns, billed separately.
Nothing about the actual medicine c

We were taught that success means:
Buy your own house.
Get your own mortgage.
Pay your own bills.
Raise your own kids.
Retire on your own.
Meanwhile, multiple people in the same family can be paying thousands every month for separate roofs, separate utilities and separate everything.
What if the next generation stopped thinking:
“What’s mine?”
And started asking:
“What could we build together?”
Not every family can live together.
But the idea of pooling resources isn’t crazy.
Especially when housing is one of the biggest expenses most families will ever face.

Just got my homeowners insurance renewal.
$8,400 for the year.
The house is paid off. No mortgage lender requiring it. I'm paying this entirely out of pocket, every single year, just to keep the option of rebuilding if something happens.
I get that insurance has to cover real risk. But watching $700 a month leave my account for a policy I've never once used, on a house I already own outright, feels less like protection and more like rent I can never stop paying.
Seniors on fixed incomes shouldn't have to choose between coverage and groceries just to keep the home they spent a lifetime paying o

CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHY MY "LOCKED-IN" HEALTH PLAN KEEPS COSTING MORE?
Enrolled in the plan two years ago.
Same employer. Same tier. Same network.
Year 1 premium: $280/month.
Did everything right — stayed in-network, got my annual checkup, no claims beyond routine care.
Year 2 renewal: premium jumps to $365/month. "Rising cost of care."
Year 3 renewal, this week: $460/month. Same reason, different number.
Same plan.
Same coverage.
Same me, barely using it.
Except now it costs $2,160 more a year just to stay insured, for a plan that hasn't changed a single benefit.

My cousin bought her condo in 2020 for $240,000.
Her mortgage: $1,010/month at 3.1%.
The identical unit two floors up just sold for $385,000.
The buyer's payment: $2,650/month at 6.9%.
Same building. Same layout. Same HOA.
One person is $1,640 a month ahead before either of them spends a dollar on groceries.
That gap isn't going away. It's why her neighbors aren't listing, and why the new buyer will be feeling this decision for the next 30 years.

Called a plumber for what I thought was a simple clog. He walks in, looks at it for two minutes, clears it, and hands me a bill for $385.
I asked why a two-minute fix costs that much.
"Truck's a rolling toolbox $60,000 to stock it right. Liability insurance runs me $2,200 a month because one bad flood claim can bankrupt a solo operator. Licensing, continuing ed hours every year, and gas just to get here."
Then he added: "You're not paying for the two minutes. You're paying for the fifteen years it took to know which two minutes to spend."
Never thought about it that way. The invoice isn't the

THIS IS QUIETLY INSANE AND NOBODY'S TALKING ABOUT IT…
Average new car loan rate right now: 9.8%, per Edmunds.
On a $41,000 loan, that's a payment of roughly $857/month over 72 months.
At the 2021 average of 4.1%, the same loan would run about $650/month.
That's $2,484 EXTRA every year, for a car that's worth less than what you owe on it the moment you drive off the lot.
Nobody budgeted for financing costing more than the depreciation.

i used to think contractors were charging crazy prices.
then i actually started looking at what it costs to run a contracting business.
the truck isn’t free.
the tools aren’t free.
insurance isn’t free.
fuel isn’t free.
licenses aren’t free.
employees aren’t free.
and neither are the hours spent giving estimates, driving between jobs, buying materials, answering calls and dealing with mistakes.
so when someone charges $800 for a job that takes 3 hours, that doesn’t mean they’re making $267 an hour.
that $800 has to keep an entire business alive.
we’re so used to seeing the final price that we