internet/cable: $50-100/mo, call it roughly $1k/year too
gaming: $250 xbox 360 or ps3 every 4ish years, plus maybe a $60 game every 3 months, call it $300/year
entertainment: 10 DVDs a year at $15 each, a movie in the theater every month at $10 a pop, call it $300/year
eating out: $20 including tax and tip every week, call it $1k/year
car payment: a cheap car, only $150/mo, call it $1800/year.
These are just SWAGs, but they are relatively conservative SWAGs compared to the way most 20-somethings live today. Nevertheless, add it all up and you get $4-5k of money spent a year on relative luxuries. Save that up and in 4 years you have a down payment. Then roll it in with what you'd be paying for rent and you have a mortgage payment. Keep your credit clean and you can start paying on a 200k condo even in a big city in no time. Once you build up equity and once your career has advanced and you're making more income you can trade up to an even more expensive house.
This isn't rocket science, but it does take discipline and sacrifice.
More generally, this whole conversation has become one of minutia.
The fact is that moving ahead financially has become more difficult. Impossible, of course not -- but the sacrifice, shrewdness, and plain dumb luck required continue to grow.
You will have a hard time convincing me, or anyone else paying attention, that this trend is due to some sort of society-wide age-related motivational shortcoming, which seems to be your argument.
Getting ahead is often minutia.
> First, you're rather fudging the conclusion that cutting expenses to the bone has bought you a house
Actually, he didn't cut anyway near "the bone". Write down everything that you spend money on for a month. (Yes, including vending machines.) You'll be amazed, and you'll save a lot of money because you'll find that the benefit of many purchases is less than the cost of writing them down.
> You will have a hard time convincing me, or anyone else paying attention, that this trend is due to some sort of society-wide age-related motivational shortcoming, which seems to be your argument.
We're not claiming that you're lacking motivation. We're claiming that you're spending lots of money that you could spend on something else.
If you're anywhere near "hacker news typical", you're spending 2-3x as some of your neighbors.
