I'm 30 years old; I'm part of the young generation. Not to generalize but looking around I can say that the majority of my peers make good money (better than me) but don't know how to save, it's blatant. You make great money; financial constraints that might limit someone who makes mininum wage do not exactly apply to you.
I'm banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how you can't save or get ahead making $100k a year. What kind of car/truck do you drive? Do you have an $8k carbon fiber wonder bike in the garage or are you riding something a couple years old? Do you have an expensive coke habit that's gobbling away all your spare money?!?
re: becoming burnt out and missing out on enjoyment outside of work, yeah that's a reality. Working hard and being burnt-the-fuck out for a few years is totally ok and will not kill you. This is going to be more blunt than intended but, what's your priority in life? Do you want to:
a) enjoy life but never have a chance of owning a house and always say "I could bust my ass, be burnt out for a couple of years, but nahhhh…I'm just going to give a dodgy landlord a huge amount of rent every month for the rest of my life because I don't want to sacrifice my lifestyle for a (relatively) short amount of time in the grand scheme of things to set myself up in the future, maybe someone else will do it for me.
or
b) make buying your own house a priority and make the needed sacrifices to your lifestyle for a (relatively) short amount of time to make that a reality. Maybe for a couple years you won't get to ride your bike very much, you'll be brown-bagging a lunch every day, maybe you're going to be burnt-the-fuck out but whatever, when you're old and sitting on the porch of the house you own (not the one you're paying rent on), you'll probably look back and say "yup, that was worth it".
You're right and I do not think I am in a bad position relative to peers my age. I do try and enjoy my life but I also typically work 40-50 hrs a week, closer to 40 recently as there isn't as much work lately. I drive a 2005 truck. I commute to work every day on my bike, unless I am getting paid mileage to use my truck. Outside of skiing, hockey and biking, I do not spend much money. I concede those three sports are not cheap but I am willing to allocate some money to them each year. I have nice bikes but by no means do they stand out, particularly in these woods where everyone is on [HTML_REMOVED]6k enduro rigs.
I eat at home and cook myself. I always make extras so I don't have to buy lunches. I put away about 30% of my pre-tax income. So yes, I am saving, I am frugal with spending.
However, relative to previous generations, our generation has to work more hours for similar pay. Pay is generally not that high in the lower mainland for younger people, the location our discussion is about. For sure, when oil is back people can go make tons of money for the sacrifice of a few years, but again, not everyone can or will.
As I said previously, at times I wish I had training in a trade so that I could be more valued in smaller towns but for my education and training, work is in the city,
Regarding the example about how you save an extra $30k and the place goes up in price $100k in the meantime - the point isn't that you have to save another $5k for the minimum down payment. The point is that there is no sense in trying to save extra money to make a bigger down payment on a place (ie. something a conservative responsible home buyer would do in a normal housing market) because by the time you've saved the extra money the house has already gone up in price at a much higher rate than you are saving so you are now worse off overall by $70k (which is the extra mortgage you are taking out vs. if you just purchased right away). And this is a big reason why people are panicking and trying to buy a place ASAP, which just fuels the fire overall.
This. I have saved up a decent down payment and I continue to save. It is just the past few years where real estate has increased so dramatically that it seems like I am trying to find the end of the rainbow. Even with saving each year for a down payment, the total mortgage would increase because housing prices have grown so much. For a dramatic example, say I saved 400k for a down payment on a 4 million dollar home. That is 10% but the mortgage is now more than I could realistically earn in my lifetime. Before anyone rags on me, no I am not looking or considering a house like that. My only dream if I live in Vancouver is to now own a townhouse. Detached houses are a dead dream.