The "Good Old Days?" Well, not so much, really.

[MineralMan]

106. All of what you say is true, of course.

Housing costs are way out of whack, for sure, especially when you compare them to household earnings. One difference now, is that most households have two incomes, rather than just one. That has changed dramatically since my childhood days.

It also makes a difference where you are looking at home prices. I live in the Twin Cities metro area. While you can occasionally find a house for sale under $200K, you'll have to do some work on it. That's always been true, of course, for houses on the low end of the market. Sweat equity can be a good thing, but not everyone can do the work. However, if you draw a circle with a 50 mile radius, you can find places to buy around $150K. Depending on what the source of your income is, that can be an option. There are markets in the USA where even $100K can buy a house. Again, what you can earn in those markets has to be a consideration.

When I bought my first house in 1974, what I could pay was well below market price. It took me about three months to find a house I could buy, and it needed a huge amount of work. However, I had the skills to do almost all of that work. So, my new wife and I bought it, and I did that work. Some things I had to learn to do, but that's always possible. In the end, when I sold it, 30 years later, it was long paid for and the difference in home prices there and where I was moving were enough to let me buy the next house for cash, and to have a nest egg to stash away.

My advantage was that both my wife and I were freelancers, so we could live and work anywhere. So, we moved to a place where houses cost less. A choice. We had a choice. Now, living in Minnesota is not as nice as living in a coastal community in California, but we got a house and a nest egg. A trade-off. We traded climate for financial security.

Every person has a set of parameters that control what they can and cannot do. Often, those parameters cannot be changed easily, if at all. It's complicated. Life is complicated. Sometimes, you have to think creatively to find a path that will work.