Your Parents' $100K House Now Costs $800K—And They Don't Get It

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Every generation thinks they have it harder, but somebody is wrong.

[00:00:04]>> You know what just kills me about the boomer generation? My clients that are the older boomers, they will complain bitterly about how none of the younger generation wants to work.

[00:00:14]>> They're calling Gen X the unemployables.

[00:00:16]Now, the funny thing is, by all accounts, we never should have been employable from the beginning.

[00:00:21]>> I think millennials are going to have a hard time becoming homeowners >> at this point. I seriously think Gen Z is just screwed. In 2026, Gen Z simply earns way less than it actually costs to survive. What's up? You got KO'ed. It's ish here. Every generation thinks they have it harder. The boomers, they say young people are soft. Millennials always complain we got financially destroyed. Gen Z, they say that their future is completely hopeless. Oh, and let's not forget Gen X. Half the internet forgets that they even exist.

[00:00:52]Now, in truth, every generation got hit up differently. And this entire conversation is about to get really ugly real quick. Let's go.

[00:00:59]>> Today's housing market is being shaped by older, more experienced buyers than ever before. Nearly 49%, almost half of the buyers in 2025 were over 60 years old.

[00:01:14]>> Boomers are easy target online. They have it easier because they bought homes cheaper and now homes are super expensive.

[00:01:20]>> How much were homes in 1990? I'm glad you asked. Here's your median home price in 1990. By 2026, median home prices grew to 418,000.

[00:01:32]Median household income in 1990 was around 31,000. Today, median household income is closer to 85,000, meaning 50% of households make more and 50% of households make less.

[00:01:43]>> It's a pretty simple number there. Home prices were 4 1/2 times cheaper when the boomers bought them in the '9s and the income was only about a third of what a house cost. Now income is only about a fifth or less. So yeah, homes were cheaper. College was cheaper. There was a stronger economy. The boomers might have had it easier. Before we continue in the video and the whole story, this is a long one. We're going to go deep.

[00:02:04]We're going to have a lot of fun here.

[00:02:06]Before we do that, go ahead and click subscribe. That way you don't have to worry about it later. You can pay attention to the whole story. Let's keep it going. trying to explain to my boomer relatives that working a retail job is not the same as what it was in the 1980s and 90s. So, for context, my aunt used to be a manager at J C Penney for years and years and years for like uh between the 80s and the '9s. And she was like, "Well, it can't be any like different from what it is now." I'm like, "Oh, well now they can when you [clears throat] say part-time, they can work you 38 hours 50 and say you're working part-time, so they don't have to give you full hours."

[00:02:49]Um, but when you tell them like, "Oh, like no, like I have other obligations like school," they go, "Well, then we can't hire you. Unless you're giving your body and soul to this company, we can't hire you." This is why younger people get so furious hearing the words from the boomers, you're lazy and you just need to work harder. But the boomers on the other end have their own worries. Retirement. Retirement keeps getting pushed further and further back and it might even get pushed back to like the age of 72 where you're not even going to live enough on average to even see that money.

[00:03:18]>> We go to people like my kids in their 20s when they're coming into the system and we say the rules have changed. We change retirement age to reflect life expectancy.

[00:03:27]>> And what would that be? You've already raised retirement once since I've been alive and I'm 57 years old.

[00:03:34]>> Well, I think we have to do the numbers.

[00:03:35]We've got to figure out what it is. But what we do know is 65 is way too low and we need to increase that.

[00:03:41]>> 65 is way too low for retirement according to the government. That's pretty insane. So honestly, if you're a boomer and you're 60, 70, 80 years old and you still have to work, sadly that's not uncommon. And the boomers do have it hard because of that. The senior citizens that you see working, Walmart, Target, Kohl's, do you think they're working because they have to or because they want to? I'm asking this question because I see them all the time and I know firsthand that some of them are working because they have to.

[00:04:15]>> So, younger people when they look at boomers, they see a whole lot of privilege and good time that they never got to experience. older people feel completely abandoned and like their future too is not going to be possible in the way that they thought.

[00:04:28]Ultimately, both sides completely resent each other. And then there's Gen X.

[00:04:34]>> So, for a while now, Gen X has been called the forgotten generation. And uh it's it's funny to me that it still seems to be proven all the time. My mom came for a visit not too long ago and I was telling her about this news program that was talking about the different generations and they completely skipped Gen X. They went boomers, millennials, Z and the this new generation, the alpha generation, which by the way is a very disturbing uh label, especially if you have read Huxley's Brave New World. So, I don't know who's picking these names, but they got to stop.

[00:05:14]>> Gen X might be the weirdest generation because for some reason they're never remembered or talked about, and nobody seems to care about them.

[00:05:21]>> I've done some horrible things for money, like get up early every day and go to work.

[00:05:28]>> They grew up independent, skeptical, kind of emotionally detached, but they still showed up every day and are still having an immensely difficult time. And Gen X sees what's happening to the boomers and they're expecting it to be worse for them.

[00:05:40]>> I know the world can feel a little heavy right now and in some cases very heavy.

[00:05:45]I see a lot of my friends struggling just to make it through the day. We all can feel the shift that's happened. I just want you to know you're not going through this alone. I've been battling a lot of stuff myself for the last year and a half and let me tell you, my anxiety is through the roof.

[00:06:02]>> By seeing their boomer parents doing relatively well as a whole, Gen X expected the same thing. But now they're getting quietly crushed.

[00:06:10]>> You know, when they talk about how hard it is to be in the sandwich generation, they're not kidding.

[00:06:16]I am a Gen X. I'm the very first year of Gen X. Um, I'm a late mom. So, I have a 18 and a 19year-old.

[00:06:28]And in the past month, I have taken my one of my kids to the hospital and um he's been in the hospital and I've taken my mom for surgery. Um, we've had a dog in the hospital.

[00:06:44][clears throat] So, both generations on either side of me, uh, and the four-leggeds, it's up to me. It's up to It's up to our sandwich generation. It's not easy. Gen X is stuck in a rock in a hard place because they have to support the parents, support their kids, support their pets, work non-stop, no future of retirement in sight. All the while, society is ignoring them completely. Gen X probably feels like this. Nobody helped us. Nobody cares about us. We're on our own and we just are in survival mode. Then we get to millennials. This is where the anger might really start.

[00:07:25]>> Millennials are still a major force in the housing market, but the way they buy has changed. Younger millennials are still entering as first-time buyers. On the flip side, older millennials are becoming repeat buyers, but across the board, many are dealing with more pressure than previous generations did.

[00:07:40]They're trying to save for a down payment while still paying rent, managing student loans, dealing with inflation and competing against buyers who may have more equity or cash. What's the solution?

[00:07:52]>> Millennials got hit hard financially.

[00:07:54]Repeat crisis after repeat once-in-a-lifetime crisis. And on top of that, their average home buying price nationwide in the past 10 years has gone from an average age of 30 to 38. That shows you that it's harder to buy a home. It's harder to afford it. It's not that millennials don't want a house. is that they simply can't afford it.

[00:08:11]>> We are literally as a generation if we don't figure out why everyone is so comfortable having so much debt. And I believe it's because the system has led us to believe that it is something perfectly fine to have. You can have student debt, you can have car loan debt, you can have a mortgage, which is debt, whether you want to realize that or not, and everything else in between.

[00:08:34]um we have normalized debt being a good thing or a positive thing when it's absolutely not.

[00:08:42]>> Millennials are at an inflection point because we have a very high level of debt. I'm a millennial. On average, millennials have a very high level of debt, but income is not keeping up and everything is continually getting more expensive. So, it's a cycle of debt, more debt, repeat more debt.

[00:09:00]>> I made 107 last year. I'm honestly probably going to make more this year.

[00:09:05]And I'm still living paycheck to paycheck. I'm still in a ton of debt. My bank account still goes into the negative sometimes.

[00:09:12]And people in the comments were just flabbergasted. They could not fathom the fact that I have an income like that and still live the way I do. Granted, we do live in Massachusetts. Cost of living is very high. But someone else commented saying that everybody in my comments were in the poverty mindset. And honestly, I do agree with that. Like I see the people at my work, the CNAs and stuff working doubles constantly because that's in their mind that's really their only option is just to like continue to answer to the man.

[00:09:42]>> And that's really everyone's option these days. But millennials grew up at a time where if you made a h 100,000 a year, you were going to be rich. You were going to be really well off. But then all of the things that happened since, you know, 2015 to 2026 caused 100k to be uh not even middle class.

[00:09:58]Honestly, I did a poll on the channel and middle class, everyone voted pretty much the majority. 200K is now the floor. Every generation right now is competing against each other. Instead of asking the question, why does everybody as a whole feel squeezed? And here go the statistics. This is the poll I put up on my channel. Most people see that Gen Z has it the hardest, but you just saw a whole lot of comparisons about boomers, Gen X, millennials. Based on everything you saw, which generation do you actually feel that has it the hardest? And did this video change your opinion in any way? Put that in the comments. Maybe this is the biggest takeaway, though. Every generation has been hit with something different.

[00:10:37]Something important was taken from them, and nobody is getting what they expect, and it seems like everyone is seeing that they have a dark future ahead of them. Guys, if you want to support the channel, the best way is to look up here. If you look up here, that's the next video. So, if you like this video, click the next video. Click the next video.