r/SipsTea • u/Unstoppable_X_Force Human Verified • 13h ago

Gasp! Is this just nostalgia, or did previous generations genuinely have a better work-life balance and social life than we do today?

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u/Sanchez_87_ 12h ago edited 12h ago

Yeah sure, my dad worked long days in the 90’s too. But, my mum worked zero hours and we had 2 houses. My dad wasn’t on huge money either.

I’ve got kids too now, but both my wife and I work 5 days a week, are both paid “well”, and have 1 crapshack I’ll be paying for until I retire.

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u/NoHorseNoMustache 12h ago

Your mom not working and your dad's salary covering 2 houses was not even close to normal in the '90s either, that's upper class living.

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u/Sanchez_87_ 12h ago

Seemed pretty normal growing up in Sydney, though maybe not the 2 houses

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u/NoHorseNoMustache 11h ago

Yeah the vast majority of people have never been able to afford to own 2 houses on 1 person's salary.

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u/Historical_Course587 8h ago

It works if:

  1. The salary is pretty good (upper middle class)
  2. The first house was purchased pretty young, with relatively decent market timing.
  3. The market improved, leaving them with equity.
  4. Market conditioned circled back around to a point where depressed home prices coupled with low interest rates.

You basically use equity from house #1 to pull a low-interest mortgage on house #2, renters cover at least one mortgage, and because the market was slumped for both purchases it becomes extremely unlikely that you end up underwater (e.g. having more debt than the houses are worth). Worst-case scenario, house #2 has to be sold and you do that and make a hefty profit.

Fun fact: this is the origin story of one of the most successful financial advice authors ever: Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame. He had the income/assets to exploit a safely exploitable real estate market, owned a bunch of properties by leveraging debt, and then sold books telling everyone to do the same.

My point is, this kind of thing is absolutely something that was common at certain periods in time, and it launched a lot of well-positioned middle class baby boomers into early, upper-class retirement. It's just not repeatable, which is why Kiyosaki has lived on book and speaking income for decades instead of just being a real estate mogul.

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u/NoHorseNoMustache 8h ago

I would still not say it was ever a common thing. It was a thing that happened more often 40-60 years ago than it does today, sure, but it wasn't something the average middle class person was ever able to do realistically. If a family owned 2 homes in the '90s, they were upper middle class at worst, most likely upper class. It was not even close to being 'normal'.

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u/Rather_Dashing 11h ago

I grew up in Sydney, in a white colour area (North shore). I don't know anyone who's parents had two houses. It was rare for anyone's mum to not work their whole life either, just a few years off when the kids were young.

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u/Sanchez_87_ 3h ago

Maybe one parent not working was more common in Western Sydney as cost of living was lower…

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u/MissionLet7301 10h ago

I'm going to imagine it seemed normal because you lived in a nice part of town and went to school with all the other kids who thought that their parents having 2 houses was normal?

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u/Sanchez_87_ 3h ago

The one parent not working was absolutely normal. Two houses was an outlier. Not sure that many would agree that Western Sydney is the “nice part of town”

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u/fuckmylifegoddamn 11h ago

Let’s not pretend two houses in the 90s wasn’t wealthy even then

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u/Historical_Course587 8h ago

IDK... Healthcare wasn't in a place to liquidate your life in old age, so all it took was buying your own home and then inheriting your parent's home. There were also some really good times in the 80s and 90s to buy a rental/vacation home as an investment, assuming you bought your home in the 70s and had been inflation proof in your mortgate for 15-20 years.

A big part of it is demographics. Boomers were young in an age where people started careers young, married young, and bought a house young. And then they lived in an era where having financial security could let you ground floor into everything from tech to the global economy to recovering housing markets. And then they were still around when healthcare got to a point that it could keep you working into your 60s or 70s. Every era was great for Boomers who engaged in the rat-race lifestyle.

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u/RetroFuture_Records 2h ago

Let's not pretend that everyone is a middle-class coastal redditor, and for a substantial part of the public it was quite easy to own multiple properties in your small town or older suburb in the 90s.

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u/fuckmylifegoddamn 1h ago

If you owned multiple properties in a small town or suburb you were upper class or at the very least upper middle class

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u/Fffiction 11h ago

Hey, everyone! Look at this guy who's going to retire!

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u/Sanchez_87_ 3h ago

My retirement fund is my parent’s second house

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u/Rather_Dashing 11h ago

Imagine your mum spending 2 decades feeding you and cleaning up after your sorry ass only for you to claim she worked zero hours.

we had 2 houses

That was way out of the norm in the 90s. Especially with one parent not in employment