<\/p>\n
My parents came over for dinner on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It was supposed to be a normal evening.<\/p>\n
Mom brought her homemade pie. Dad complained about the traffic. We ate, laughed, and talked about everything from the weather to my cousin’s upcoming wedding.<\/p>\n
Then, somehow, the conversation turned to my housing situation.<\/p>\n
Dad asked, “So… any progress on buying a place?”<\/p>\n
I hesitated.<\/p>\n
“I got approved for a mortgage.”<\/p>\n
Dad smiled immediately.<\/p>\n
“That’s great! So you’re finally buying?”<\/p>\n
“Technically,” I said.<\/p>\n
He looked confused.<\/p>\n
“What does technically mean?”<\/p>\n
I pulled out my phone and showed him the house I’d been looking at.<\/p>\n
Three bedrooms.<\/p>\n
One bathroom.<\/p>\n
A small backyard.<\/p>\n
The basement wasn’t finished.<\/p>\n
The roof needed replacing.<\/p>\n
And it was listed for $465,000.<\/p>\n
Dad stared at the screen.<\/p>\n
“That’s almost half a million dollars.”<\/p>\n
“I know.”<\/p>\n
“For that?”<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
Then he asked the question that changed the entire conversation.<\/p>\n
“How much would your payment be?”<\/p>\n
“About $3,400 a month.”<\/p>\n
Dad leaned back in his chair.<\/p>\n
For a few seconds, nobody said anything.<\/p>\n
Then he laughed\u2014not because it was funny, but because he genuinely didn’t know what else to say.<\/p>\n
“At 29,” he said, “your mom and I bought our first house for $128,000.”<\/p>\n
“I know.”<\/p>\n
“I was making $41,000 a year.”<\/p>\n
“I know, Dad.”<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
“You make more than that.”<\/p>\n
“Much more.”<\/p>\n
“So what’s the problem?”<\/p>\n
I took a breath.<\/p>\n
“The house costs more.”<\/p>\n
Dad looked back at the phone.<\/p>\n
Then at Mom.<\/p>\n
Then back at me.<\/p>\n
He slowly shook his head.<\/p>\n
“When your mother and I bought our house, we thought the mortgage was expensive.”<\/p>\n
Mom smiled.<\/p>\n
“We complained about it for years.”<\/p>\n
Dad laughed.<\/p>\n
“Yeah. We thought we’d made a terrible financial decision.”<\/p>\n
I smiled.<\/p>\n
“How much was the payment?”<\/p>\n
Dad thought for a moment.<\/p>\n
“About $700.”<\/p>\n
The smile disappeared from my face.<\/p>\n
“Seven hundred?”<\/p>\n
“Something like that.”<\/p>\n
I looked down at the listing again.<\/p>\n
$3,400.<\/p>\n
A house that needed a roof.<\/p>\n
A basement that wasn’t even finished.<\/p>\n
And I was supposed to feel lucky because the bank had approved me.<\/p>\n
Dad suddenly asked,<\/p>\n
“So what are young people supposed to do?”<\/p>\n
I shrugged.<\/p>\n
“I honestly don’t know.”<\/p>\n
That answer seemed to bother him.<\/p>\n
Not because he was angry with me.<\/p>\n
Because for the first time, he realized I wasn’t refusing to buy a house.<\/p>\n
I simply couldn’t make the numbers work.<\/p>\n
He asked how much I had saved.<\/p>\n
I told him.<\/p>\n
He asked how much my rent was.<\/p>\n
I told him.<\/p>\n
He asked about property taxes, insurance, repairs, closing costs and everything else.<\/p>\n
We sat at the dining table for nearly an hour.<\/p>\n
Dad pulled out a calculator.<\/p>\n
For the first time, he wasn’t giving me advice.<\/p>\n
He was doing the math.<\/p>\n
And the more he calculated, the quieter he became.<\/p>\n
Finally, he put the calculator down.<\/p>\n
“You’d have almost nothing left every month.”<\/p>\n
“Exactly.”<\/p>\n
“What if the roof goes?”<\/p>\n
“I’d have to put it on a credit card.”<\/p>\n
“What if your car breaks?”<\/p>\n
“I’d deal with it.”<\/p>\n
“What if you lose your job?”<\/p>\n
“I’d be in trouble.”<\/p>\n
Dad stared at the table.<\/p>\n
Mom reached across and touched his hand.<\/p>\n
He didn’t say anything for a long time.<\/p>\n
Then he whispered,<\/p>\n
“That’s not what buying a home is supposed to feel like.”<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
“What do you mean?”<\/p>\n
“When we bought our house, we were scared.”<\/p>\n
He smiled faintly.<\/p>\n
“But we were scared because we had just become homeowners.”<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
“You’d be scared because you could lose everything.”<\/p>\n
Nobody spoke.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later, Dad asked me to show him the listing again.<\/p>\n
I handed him my phone.<\/p>\n
He studied the pictures.<\/p>\n
“Three bedrooms?”<\/p>\n
“Yep.”<\/p>\n
“How old is it?”<\/p>\n
“Thirty-eight years.”<\/p>\n
“Roof?”<\/p>\n
“Needs replacing.”<\/p>\n
“Basement?”<\/p>\n
“Unfinished.”<\/p>\n
He nodded slowly.<\/p>\n
Then he said something I never expected.<\/p>\n
“Don’t buy it.”<\/p>\n
I laughed.<\/p>\n
“That’s your advice?”<\/p>\n
“Yes.”<\/p>\n
“But you were the one telling me I needed to stop renting.”<\/p>\n
“I was wrong.”<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
Dad continued.<\/p>\n
“I thought the world you entered as an adult was the same world I entered.”<\/p>\n
He looked embarrassed.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t realize how different it was.”<\/p>\n
Mom squeezed his hand.<\/p>\n
Dad looked at me.<\/p>\n
“When we were your age, one income could support a family and still leave enough to save.”<\/p>\n
He paused.<\/p>\n
“Today, two people can work full-time and still feel like they’re falling behind.”<\/p>\n
That sentence stayed with me.<\/p>\n
A few weeks later, Dad called me.<\/p>\n
“I found something.”<\/p>\n
He sent me a listing.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t a house.<\/p>\n
It was a small duplex.<\/p>\n
It cost less than the house I’d been considering.<\/p>\n
The upstairs unit needed some work, but the downstairs unit was already rented.<\/p>\n
Dad had done the math.<\/p>\n
“If you buy something like this,” he said, “the rental income could help cover part of the mortgage.”<\/p>\n
I smiled.<\/p>\n
“You’ve been researching real estate?”<\/p>\n
“Apparently I’m a young person now.”<\/p>\n
I laughed.<\/p>\n
But Dad wasn’t finished.<\/p>\n
“I also talked to your uncle.”<\/p>\n
“Why?”<\/p>\n
“He knows a contractor who can look at the roof.”<\/p>\n
I stared at my phone.<\/p>\n
“Dad…”<\/p>\n
“What?”<\/p>\n
“Thank you.”<\/p>\n
He paused.<\/p>\n
Then he said,<\/p>\n
“I should’ve asked what it was like for you before telling you what you should do.”<\/p>\n
That meant more to me than the money.<\/p>\n
Because sometimes the biggest gap between generations isn’t the money.<\/p>\n
It’s understanding.<\/p>\n
My parents weren’t lucky.<\/p>\n
They worked hard.<\/p>\n
They sacrificed.<\/p>\n
They saved.<\/p>\n
But they also entered adulthood in a housing market where ordinary working people could realistically buy ordinary homes.<\/p>\n
I was working hard too.<\/p>\n
I was saving too.<\/p>\n
I was doing everything I had been told to do.<\/p>\n
And somehow, the finish line kept moving.<\/p>\n
That night, Dad called again.<\/p>\n
“One more thing.”<\/p>\n
“What?”<\/p>\n
“If you can’t buy a house right now, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed.”<\/p>\n
I didn’t answer.<\/p>\n
He continued.<\/p>\n
“Don’t let a price tag convince you that you’re behind in life.”<\/p>\n
I felt my eyes sting.<\/p>\n
Then he said,<\/p>\n
“Your mother and I bought our first house at 29.”<\/p>\n
He laughed softly.<\/p>\n
“Maybe our mistake was thinking everyone after us would have the same chance.”<\/p>\n
I smiled.<\/p>\n
“And maybe our generation’s mistake is thinking we have to prove ourselves by buying a house.”<\/p>\n
Dad was quiet.<\/p>\n
Then he said,<\/p>\n
“Maybe you’re right.”<\/p>\n
We hung up.<\/p>\n
I looked at the $465,000 house again.<\/p>\n
For the first time, I didn’t feel ashamed that I couldn’t afford it.<\/p>\n
I felt angry that so many working people had been taught to blame themselves for a problem much bigger than any one person.<\/p>\n
Maybe homeownership shouldn’t be a trophy reserved for people who can stretch themselves to the breaking point.<\/p>\n
Maybe a person working full-time should be able to afford a safe, modest home without risking their entire financial future.<\/p>\n
And maybe the question my dad asked that night\u2014<\/p>\n
“So what are young people supposed to do?”<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014isn’t a question young people should have to answer alone.<\/p>\n It’s a question every generation should be asking together.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cSo What Are Young People Supposed to Do?\u201d….. My parents came over for dinner on Sunday. It was supposed to be a normal evening. Mom brought her homemade pie. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9178,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9176\/revisions\/9178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}