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We have never lived in a meritocracy. That is just some bullshit billionaires will tell you while you work yourself into an early grave.

And here's some free life advice: If you can stand to be around your parents once you reach early adulthood, continue to live with them. Life is cheaper in groups. Pay some rent and your share, but you'll find it a lot easier to save money for your own place when some leech landlord isn't funnelling all your hard earned money off to their own retirement fund.

I bought my first home half with money I’d saved by working, and half with some money I inherited from my grandparents. I was also able to buy with only 10% down because it was 2005, leading up to the sub-prime mortgage scandal, and they were giving out mortgages very easily.

Fast forward some years.

I reluctantly rented my place out for a couple of years because I needed to move myself and the mortgage was underwater following the 2006 crash caused by all those sub prime mortgages. I rented to a nice couple and although I gave them a very attractive rent and treated them as well as possible, there was no question that their rent money got me through that housing crisis and eventually allowed me to sell at a significant profit instead of losing my ass.

When I sold, I offered my renters a deal to move out. They took it, and said that they were buying their own place as they had inherited a small amount recently.

For me this was a perfect example of how, just because my grandparents died a few years before theirs, I was their landlord and not the other way around. I got protection for my investment on their dollar. And once they too got the benefit of inheritance, they were able to graduate to the next level themselves.

Years later I’ve remained a homeowner and am sitting on multiple millions in equity from all the appreciation during that time. My remaining mortgage payments are about 1/3 of what it would cost to rent the same home. My wife’s younger siblings, by contrast, can’t even afford to buy under any circumstances because the market is so high. And of course lending standards are much more strict now.

For me this is a perfect example of generational advantage. Here I am sitting pretty just because I’m 10 years older than them, while they have to move out of state just to get a start.

Anyone who thinks this is a fair and equal opportunity economy is a damn fool. As long as you are competing against people who have advantages you don’t, it doesn’t matter whether your theoretical opportunities are equal. You’re going to lose and wind up in servitude of those who won.

I'm in this picture, and I do not like it. Well, okay, it's better than not being in this picture. When I die I'm going to give as much as possible to charity, for what it's worth.

This is the picture we know, but the Bank of Mum and Dad is not just a luxury confined to the 1% – it is also evident in families like mine. I grew up in a working-class household and was the first person in my family to get a degree, but it was the fact my parents had scrimped in the 1980s to purchase properties in London (and allowed me to crash in one throughout my 20s) that has arguably been the true source of opportunities in my life.

Hate to break it to the author, but that sounds like somebody who started in the (upper?) middle class, and now is in the 5% at least. That's properties plural, in London. C'mon, everyone with money points to someone they know that's the next digit up so they can be just average. I find that tacky.

Edit: Okay, I actually read the article. The author points that out themselves:

But is this really the true story? Or have I just fed you a “working-class done good” tale, because that’s how I attempt to justify my own exceedingly privileged position? One academic investigation into the Bank of Mum and Dad found that its beneficiaries tend to frame this considerable financial support not in terms of their own individual privilege, but as evidence of their parents’ hard work and upward mobility. Whereas once parents lived vicariously through their children’s successes, now it seems their kids live vicariously through their parents’ struggles. And there lies the problem.

I'd also like to draw attention to this bit, which really resonates:

Young people’s frustration is so pronounced these days because this reality runs contrary to what we were told growing up. Then the message was, work hard, get a degree and you will be rewarded.

I literally don't know of anyone this actually worked for, at least at the current stage of our lives. What were the teachers smoking?

Well, wages are shit and prices are unjustifiably high. So yeah, you fall to the safety net or the ground.

It’s those who stayed with their parents while they saved for a flat, or stuck it out in a profession they were passionate about even though the wages are chronically low.

This part in particular I find to be a strange thing to complain about... Like, some people have the option of living with their parents, so what..?

This fantasy that everyone moves out of their parents' house and becomes totally independent the day they turn 18 is just another bullshit American dream that has little basis in reality. If you happen to have the privilege of your empty childhood bedroom in your parents house, and you have a good enough relationship with your family to make it work while you follow a vocation or save up money for later, that's not something to be ashamed of--it's making the best of your circumstances and being smart with how you spend money.

Remember kids: there's no magical stat bonus for adult dignity in giving half of your monthly wages to some asshole landlord if you don't have to, so don't let people shame you out of living with family in a multi-generational household like so many people do relatively happily in countries all over the world.

Yes, it's true that not everyone has that privilege (a good relationship with their parents, an extra bedroom to sleep in, etc.), but as long as you're contributing (financially or otherwise) to the shared household in some way, there's no more shame in living with your parents than their is living with non-family roommates, a spouse, or whatever.

I think most people, whether they've experienced it or not, would agree that the privilege of living with your parents isn't exactly a luxury or an ideal way to live, but there really is no shame in it. If you're a good person who works hard and are only able to save up enough money to work towards your goals because you save money on rent by living with family, doing something like saving up for a house is still a big achievement and nobody should try to take that away from you.

Imagine being butthurt about people who live with their fucking parents and not laser-focused on the fact that a 0.1% of people have 99.9% of the money in society. It's fucking nuts.

Gonna be honest, income inequality is awful in America, but this post feels more like sour grapes.

Nice to finally see someone talk about this. Every time I see those popular posts on reddit litigating how good their boomer parents have it, all I can hear is cry-bragging about how wealthy they are.

you all might. my folks were never that well off. my mom had to work cashier jobs the first 5 years of me and my sis life and those jobs were chumpchange even then

The only friends I have, including myself, that own their home are those with dead parents.

My parents blew up any inheritance I would've ended up with due to bad decisions and shit luck.

Now my mom depends on me during her final years as we cruise the stars in a two-bedroom apartment.

A lot of my friends live together and share rent. Some with their parents, and a minority got hitched and live with a spouse. It seems like a lot of people depend on small family groups these days.

If you want to tackle this you have to take on inequality. Now we all know if corporates weren't allowed to pillage profits for themselves, and had a salary tied to their lowest employee, this would go a long way to improving inequality and that alone could offer a lot of people a lot of opportunities. But as long as you have a system where people have to collect arbitrary numbers to acquire necessities there is going to be inequality.

People should always have access to essentials, and I count an affordable reliable roof over their head as one of those things. But are we ever going to be able to change the fact that someone on the receiving end of three generations of doing moderately well in life is going to be massively more advantaged that someone whose parents were 4th and 5th in large poor families?

Someone's parents having even a modest home with a spare room in London puts them at a massive advantage over their peers who have to privately rent. But aside from ensuring the fundamentals are in place of affordable accessible homes, is there really any realistic way of nullifying that advantage and is it even right to do so?

"Abolish inheritance"

But what about my inheritance

*sigh*

I was able to migrate over to work and study because my family paid for the trip and even though the deal was that I were to work and be by myself I could always call to ask for emergency money. I did that twice, one for paying for my college inscription and other for rent. Without that I wouldn't had the comfortable life I have today.

I believe this is the main source of unfairness in my country. I have a good pay, but most of it goes for housing. So I live the same life as someone who works for a minimum wage if they inherited their home or can live with their parents.

Even though I had to work and invest way more to get to my salary.

But what is even worse is that in eyes of our government I am considered rich and I get no social benefits and I also pay way more taxes than those who are "poor".