EFFIE BATEMAN | Lifestyle | Contact
A Betoota Heights woman has finally cracked the code to finally getting her parents to understand the housing crisis, after copping criticism and snide comments about lazy millennials for years.
Angela Haddock, 32, tells The Advocate that the solution was rather simple, and that she’d wished she’d thought of it a lot sooner.
“In their heads, younger people just don’t own homes because we don’t know how to sacrifice, and just want to spend money on going out and travelling.”
“I’ve tried to explain that we go out and travel BECAUSE we can’t afford homes, so we prefer to spend our money on experiences.”
“My dad’s a plasterer, and he thoroughly believes he achieved everything he has through hard work.”
“And he did work hard, but that work doesn’t have the same amount of buying power that it does now. My parents raised two kids on a single income of $45,000, and they managed to build a three bedroom house on a 950 sqm block of land for $200,000.”
Angela says she had her final straw when she visited her parents for dinner last night, and they made another snarky comment about ‘entitled young people.’
“I got the shits, so I showed them the house appraisal for our childhood home, which is now evaluated at $979,000.”
“They couldn’t believe how much it costs now, which goes to show that they echoing whatever garbage they’re reading online instead of doing their own research.”
“I make twice as much as my dad did when he bought that house and there’s no way I could fucking afford that. Even with a partner.”
“And then imagine throwing two kids into the mix!”
Letting out a sad sigh, Angela says aspirational middle class living just doesn’t exist anymore.
“In my parent’s generation, the majority of their peers owned a house, so wealth was measured by how big their house was and how many investment properties they owned.”
“In our generation, wealth is measured by who can afford a house at all.”
More to come.
