How this middle-class millennial managed to buy a house

Most of my generation can't afford to buy a house. This is a fact and a meme, and some days I actually feel guilt for being an outlier. The least I can do is push back against the persistent, mostly older-generation-based idea that we're lazy and irresponsible or whatever.

Tl;dr: it was only possible because of a streak of good luck.

A large part of that luck was simply being on the older side of my cohort. I and my husband were born in 1984, so we managed to get ahead of a lot of the worst of the recession by a couple years, and then take advantage of low interest rates at just the right time.

But my luck goes much deeper than that. It's generationally built, and to have an understanding of how I came to own a house before I turned thirty, you have to go back at least a century.

I'm white, and my family has a history of being homeowners, both factors that statistically make my home ownership more likely. My working-class family immigrated here in the early 1900's, moved to the west coast (dad's side to the city, mom's side to the country) and immediately bought their own houses. They then, despite being working or middle class, had some extra wealth to help their children do things like also buy their own houses and go to college. 

My parents were solidly middle class. They both worked full time to afford the small suburban house they purchased in the mid 70's, but even then, they needed some help from family members for the down payment. Which they got! Because we had a little bit of generational wealth to share around.

Having stable housing, plus raises they both got from their jobs--helped by the post-high school education their generational wealth helped them obtain-- plus finding a very affordable daycare provider --something that's rare and precious, and had retired when I was a teen, the first of many windows I slipped through before they closed-- meant they could afford to upgrade a few years later to a small rural property, which they live in to this day.

My husband's family was not quite as a privileged, but they are also white also had a history of generational property ownership.

Another big piece of luck was the unique college scholarship I received -- Being able to afford that rural property meant that I went to a specific small high school that paid many of its graduates a full-tuition scholarship to the local state university. It's worth noting that this small town had a very limited rental housing situation--meaning if someone had to move, they would likely have to move out of district--so that most of the kids who qualified for this scholarship came from home-owning families (it required a student to be in the district for, IIRC, 8 years at the time).

I once again came along at just the last possible second to really take advantage of it; After my year, the scholarship requirements became much more restrictive and limited. Had I been just a few years younger, I would not have qualified, and I'd probably still be in student debt to this day. 

My extended family (using that generational wealth again) had been sending checks and bonds to us kids since we were small, so I had a small but significant savings account to dip into by the time I was eighteen, and my parents both had enough wealth to help with college expenses that weren't covered by the scholarship. Between that and my summer job, I graduated four-year university with that magical, nearly unattainable number of ZERO. Zero money in my bank account, but also zero debt. Nearly unheard of for my cohort.

Even my housing situation was lucky and set me up for success later: having stable housing my entire childhood meant I had grown up as part of a community -- I have friends and contacts all over the local area. I ended up becoming roommates with a couple of people I'd known since elementary school. Trusted and reliable roommates are worth their weight in gold, and what's more their family contacts let  rent a house together for very cheap, which meant I could earn enough with my summer job to pay for rent the rest of the year, and therefore focus on study instead of working as well.  Just a few years after we moved out, the landlord decided not to rent it anymore, and all over that university town, rents have skyrocketed in the last decade. 

When people say that eviction is traumatic, this is part of what that means. Community members help each other in ways that are numerous, and difficult to quantify. Eviction and unstable housing destroys communities. 

Anyway, back to me: I got a job with salary* and benefits right after graduation. Barely. I applied to about a dozen places, and it was the only one that called me for an interview. Most wanted the now-normal "experience in the field" or a master's or were seasonal-only and unstable. I almost passed by the booth at the job fair, assuming I wasn't qualified, but luckily, the woman who was working the booth that day was the extremely nice manager at the time. She actively encouraged me to apply. If she hadn't gone out of her way, I wouldn't have. Less than two years later, that organization changed its policies; no longer allowing not-yet-graduated to apply, and actively discouraging those with "only" a bachelors. I squeaked through yet another window that closed behind me.

Me having a salary with benefits meant that my boyfriend (and soon to be husband) could quit his dead-end job and start going to school full time, which meant after a while he could get a particular (paid!?) internship, which lead to a new job, a few years later that paid so well we moved across the state to take advantage of it.

With the help from his family for part of a down payment, and the fact that the rural area we moved to had some of the lowest land prices in the state, we bought our first house for $110k. A few years later, we would sell it for much more. Yet again, we made it just in time; We could not have afforded our house had we arrived a few years later.

But because we could, we could buy another house... barely. My husband's next job was in Portland, and housing prices were very high. It took nine months of searching to find one that fit our needs and was within a reasonable commute (two hours is reasonable, right?). And that only worked because we were able to tap into our family and friend network once again, me, my kid and dog living with my parents, while my husband lived with his friend in Portland during the week, rent -free Without that help, if we'd had to rent during that time, we would have burned through savings instead of being able to save for a down payment. We had a small child at the time, and I couldn't work because, again, affordable daycare is hard to find, and my wage wouldn't have been able to cover it or justify it. We'd be renting to this day.

The impact of childcare on society cannot be overstated. When we lived in a more rural part of the state, home ownership was more common for younger and blue collar people - part of this can be attributed to lower cost of land, but another thing I noticed is that people from there tend to stay there, near family, and therefore have free daycare. The boost this gives to people literally makes the difference between home ownership and renting. 

But we finally found a house and bought it. The one we live in now. It's in a nice neighborhood with friendly neighbors, decent schools and walkable to some businesses. It's three bedroom, 1.5 bath, and has a backyard for my garden and the dog. It's not extravagant, and it's old and needs a lot of work, but we did it. We're livin' the American dream. Barely; Just one year after purchase, our house had increased in value so much we never could have afforded it had we tried to move later than we did. Yet another window closed behind us.

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*Funny story, just a couple months ago I was reminiscing with my husband about my first "grown up job", and how it had "paid so well", and I was like, "I don't remember exactly, what was my salary back then, like $50k? (a number that had been rattling around in my head because it's roughly the median income of the county I now live in)" He laughed, and was like, "um, it was barely $28k. It just felt like a lot because of how poor we were."

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Some sources:

The Great Recession, education, race, and home ownership

Pew Research: How young adulthood today compares with prior generations

The Childcare Crisis

My wine jug terrarium after 5 1/2 years

On September 24 2013, I tossed a pothos cutting and a chunk of lichen into a wine jug with some dirt:

February 7th, 2019:

It went through a rough period in 2014, when my toddler knocked it over and pushed a ball point pen in there (which remains to this day), but it persevered.

Me at Parties

Slice of Life

Here is my current average weekday schedule:

7:30am - 10:30am: work, "nanny duties", i.e. feeding, cleaning, entertaining a 7-month-old baby. If she's feeling accomadating and can entertain herself for awhile, then I can also do some household chores, most also involving cleaning up after her.

10:30am - 12:30pm: she naps, I have time to work on other things. This is my chance to shower usually, and to take the dogs out back to exercise. Sometimes chores, sometimes writing, sometimes animal rescue business (making phone calls, updating website/facebook, networking, doing follow up, etc etc). If I'm being good about time management then I'll remember to eat my own lunch before she wakes up.

12:30pm - 3:00pm: work, more "nanny duties"

3:00pm - 4:00pm: she naps, I do other work. Sometimes I nap!

4:00pm - 6:00pm: work, nanny duties until Tom gets home.

6:00pm - 7:30pm: 1/2 nanny duties, 1/2 other stuff. Tom and I switch baby duty back and forth depending on who's making dinner (usually him)

7:30pm - 10:00pm: relax, have some TV time, though usually I also get phone calls about animal rescue stuff during this time.

By my calculations, if you don't count naps*, it's a 38 hours of work in a 5 day week, plus weekends, which in an ideal situation (where Tom cares for her exactly half the time), would add another 7-8 hours. So, I work a minimum of a 45 hour work week, before even counting whatever I do as director of a non-profit.

If you were a nanny or child care provider, you would count naps as work time, in which case I'd say I have like a 70 hour workweek.

I guess this is why I feel busy. And yet relatives and friends (even those who should know better) still ask what I do with my time, now that I "stay home all day".

I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. I'm happy; life is busy, full, and rewarding. But damn. This is why nannys are so expensive. It's a career.





*my child is a better-than-average napper, too.

Because he's kinda cute

Today is our wedding anniversary. Together nine years, married for six. I think I'll keep him.






Can you believe he'd never owned a dog before he met me?

Pregnancy Calender: Week 23-27

Week 23
How big is your baby?
About 1 1/2 lbs and over a foot long from head to foot. So, like, a newborn Labrador puppy.
Babies can survive outside the womb at this point (barely, and only if you live in a first-world country and have access to good health care and are close to a hospital with a neonatal intensive care unit. Even then, survival rates are about 50%). Personally, I'm a 3 hour drive from the nearest NICU.

This is a pretty recent development; NICU's didn't really exist until the 1960's.

Many scientists are of the opinion that this is the youngest we could possibly get a baby to survive on its own outside the womb. Any younger and the lungs (among other things) simply won't function.

Week 24
How big is my baby?
About the same as a week ago.
Your baby may be able to dream. This is the earliest age that rapid eye movements have been detected.

Week 26
Ditto.
You could start feeling Braxton Hicks contractions at any time. I've seen these described as your body "practicing" for labor. Yet, like the fact that the enzyme relaxin is release waaaay earlier than needed, and your breasts start producing colostrum waaaay earlier than needed (as in, a week after conception), this is probably just yet another stupid and useless side effect of hormones or something. Not all women even get any BHC's, and there's no evidence that there is any advantage during labor.

You could also start leaking colostrum at any point. Being a mammal is FUN!

Week 27 (end of second trimester)
Ho hum, more of the same.
Preterm survivability at this point is greatly increased (and abnormalities greatly decreased).

If you're like me, you can still go whole hours at a time where you forget you're pregnant. But those times are getting shorter and further between.

Pregnancy Calender: Week 14-22

Week 14-16
How big is your baby?
About the size of a newborn Daschund.

The fetus now looks like a baby. It hiccups. It swallows. It pees. It has eyelids to cover its alien eyeballs.

Week 17-19
How big is your baby?
About the size of a newborn Boston Terrier.

The hiccups continue, and this is about the time the woman could start to feel movements. THE QUICKENING HAS BEGUN.

Week 20-22
How big is your baby?
About the size of a newborn border collie.

This is the age you can get an ultrasound to determine the gender of your baby with pretty good accuracy. This common (but not actually routine) procedure is, of course, one of the most recognized parts of pregnancy because its so often featured on TV/movies.

Alas, week 22 is when your fetus finally looses its tail. (Well, for most babies that is).

I'm pregnant! Lets celebrate with some snark

For those who don't know, there is this popular thing where parents-to-be track pregnancy progress with a "week by week" calendar. There are like a million versions of them, but they all have a lot in common: they're all tailored to mid-to-upper-class women in heterosexual relationships who are having a planned pregnancy with a wanted, healthy fetus in a first world country and either stay at home or have jobs that don't require extreme/repetitive physical labor that they can afford to quit early if need be.

These "calendars" are often scientifically inaccurate to one degree or another, and they are universally so full of sickly-sweet rainbows and fluffy bunnies that they made me gag even before I got morning sickness. And they always, ALWAYS, compare the "size of your baby" to a fruit or vegetable. Sometimes, the fruit choices are downright bizarre. How does knowing that my fetus is the size of a kumquat help me visualize it? No one reading these things knows what a kumquat is!

So, I decided to do my own version of a pregnancy calendar. This first part is week one through my current week. My plan is to continue to follow my own gestational progress, or until I get bored with it or actually give birth. Whichever comes first. (The guide I'll be using is the Mayo clinic's book on pregnancy, which is succinct, scientifically accurate, never compares babies to fruit, and is completely humorless).

Warning: sarcasm and dark humor ahead.
 
Oh, and by the way, I considered not writing about pregnancy/parenting at all, since it seems a bit outside the normal topics I write about here. But then I was all like, dude, this is my blog. I write what I'm thinking about, and holy shitballs am I thinking about this. A lot.

Week 1, Day 1

How big is your "baby"?
It doesn't exist yet, because today is actually the first day of your last menstrual cycle. Because OBGYNs want to make you do math, today is considered the first day of pregnancy... or gestation... sometimes. But... only once you DO become pregnant. So, this day only becomes important retroactively, two weeks in the future when fertilization happens.

This is an asinine practice; in all other mammals, we measure gestational period as starting with fertilization. So, if you want to compare humans with other mammals, subtract 14 days. Well, sometimes, because, to make it more confusing, sometimes doctors and scientists DO count only from fertilization (aka "conception" another word only used in humans). I'll be doing it this way, because the other way doesn't make sense.

Fun Fact: gestational period becomes more complicated to measure in some animals because "pregnancy" doesn't always immediately follow fertilization. In embryonic diapause, the zygote remains dormant until environmental conditions are more favorable, sometimes for months or years.

This alone is an interesting phenomenon, but not as interesting as the bizarre lab experiments it has inspired.

It sounds like a really handy trait to have (assuming you could control it somehow), and I'm surprised that the only sci-fi reference for it is Farscape (where it didn't work out very well).

Anyway, if you're trying to conceive on purpose, this is a time when you've probably already started taking a daily pre-natal vitamin. The irony is, if you have access to pre-natal vitamins (and the education to know that they exist in the first place), you may not need them because you probably get all the nutrients you need from your rich and varied diet. But it's still a good idea. Especially when a lack of folic acid can lead to such horrendous (and preventable) birth defects like anecephaly and spina bifida. Go ahead and google those. I'll be here when you get back (and the nightmares have subsided).

Fun fact: they make pre-natal vitamins that taste like sour patch worms! (which is to say: Man I love living in the United States in the year 2012! I am not being sarcastic!)

Actual Week 1, Day 1 (aka Week 2, Day 7?)

This is the day you probably conceive, if you're the average woman.

This involves a man ejaculating, there's no getting around it. If you're fertilizing your egg the old fashioned way, approximately 280 million sperm are deposited into your vagina, but only a fraction of them make it to the egg which is hanging out waaaay up in the upper oviduct (a trip that takes between 5 minutes and an hour).

Fun Fact: Domestic bovines produce an average of 3 billion sperm per ejaculation and their travel time is only 2-3 minutes. This amazes me; the distance is further, the pathway more crowded, yet they gets there so much faster than in humans.


Extra-fun fact: I have personally, via anal electoprob, caused quite a few bull ejaculations in the last two years of employment at a mixed-practice veterinary clinic. I have lost count; more than a dozen, fewer than a hundred.

How big is your "baby"?
About the size of an amoeba. In the minutes after that one, special sperm wiggles through the egg's outer layer of cells, cell division starts and the separate haploid cells of egg + sperm combine to form a free-floating zygote (which includes the cells that will become the placenta).

Fun fact: if you were a domestic cat (or any other induced-ovulator), the act of copulation itself is what stimulates you to drop an egg or ten from your ovaries. Can you imagine how terrible it would be if humans were induced-ovulators? Every time you had intercourse: BAM! a follicle explodes an egg out into your tubes. Fun.

Still Week 1 (around Day 4)

How big is your zygote?
Still about the size of an amoeba. Today is the special day that the zygote finishes its journey through the fallopian tube and reaches the lining of the uterus. There, it's secretes  nasty destructive enzymes that eat through the lining of the uterus so the this little life-sucking creature can burrow deep into the wall of the uterus and attach itself to your lifeblood. Rarely, this process continues out of control and the woman can hemorrhage to death as the enzymes eat uncontrolled through large blood vessels.

Pregnancy is truly a wondrous thing.

Assuming the woman survives, the zyogote is now known as a blastocyst, and consists of about 100 cells.

This is also when the litttle bundle of joy starts secreting the hCG hormone (you know, this one), which causes most of the unpleasant side effects of pregnancy like nausea, vomiting, sore breasts, mood swings, and crying at Kay Jewelers commercials. Therefore, today is the day you could realize you're pregnant. It's also the first day that home pregnancy tests can be used accurately.

Week 2

No one ever talks about week two. Week one is exciting because conception happens. Week three is exciting because it's the start of organ development. Week two is kind of relegated to "more of week one stuff". IE: cell division happens. Boooorrring.

Week 3

How big is your embryo? About the size of an adult German cockroach. It's not much more than a worm-like tube lined with rudimentary mucus membranes and the beginnings of a circulatory system, however at this point we get to call it an embryo! It's the beginning of major organ formation, so now is an especially good time to avoid things like cocaine and high levels of radiation.

Week 4

How big is your embryo?
About the size and shape of a housefly maggot. Though the heart may have started beating, the body is not recognizable. There is a "head region" and a tail, and maybe an opening where the mouth will be. That's about it.

Week 5

How big is your embryo?
About 1/3 inch long. Now, in addition to a head region and a tail-ish lookin' thing, there's also stubby little limb-like projections.

Week 6 - 8

How big is your embryo?
About the size of a newborn kangaroo. This is the point, in my opinion, when your embryo looks the most like an alien from a B movie: it has four flipper-like limbs, a long tail, bulbous head, and unblinking eyes.

Week 9-11

This is the first week where you can start to relax a little bit (if you have a wanted pregnancy) and stop freaking out every time you get a gas cramp: the rate of miscarriage drops dramatically at this point, and greatest risk of environmentally-caused birth defects has passed. Most major organs are formed, and we can officially call this little bundle of joy a fetus.

The irony is, of course, that the riskiest time for birth defects happens during the period where many women don't even know they're pregnant yet, and may not know to be cautious about their lifestyle.

Then again, there are some women who don't realize they're pregnant until the day they give birth.

Week 12 (end of first trimester)

How big is your fetus?
The size of a deer mouse.
Those of us with a wanted pregnancy can relax a little more as miscarriage rates drop even further at this point.

Sadly, this is also the point where, if you play contact sports like rugby or roller derby, you want to stop the contact part. The fetus is no longer fully protected by your pelvic bones. Ironically, at the same time that you have to slow down your own workout routine, the fetus is just starting to pick one up as this is the time when nerves and muscles start to function.

Tune in next week! There may be hiccups!

Things acomplished this weekend

~ Worked a half-day on Saturday.

~ Took Zelda, Sammy, and the husband to the river. The dogs got exercise, Tom got some vitamin D (a known deficiency in computer nerds), I got some photos and collected interesting things;  a usable fishing lure, some sparkly black sand, and some agates.
~ Finished Game of Thrones season two. OK, so not really an accomplishment
~ Three loads of laundry
~ Updated some Petfinder profiles for rescue dogs.
~ Cleaned the bedroom/office
~ Loaded up a box of old clothes for Good Will
~ Cleaned the patio, watered the container garden, snacked on some fresh peas, weeded, ate three strawberries, picked two squashes
~ Vaccinated 8 kittens at two different locations and delivered kitten milk replacer
~ Harvested cilantro seeds from one of my patio containers

~ Trimmed toenails on Zelda, Sammy and both foster puppies. It was the pups' first nail trimming, so we took it slow; about five minutes per foot (treats were tiny bits of stale corn chips)
~ Brewed a quart of ice tea and drank half of it
~ Made a batch of guacamole and ATE IT ALL

Blog Meme Sunday

Sometimes I just feel like it.

Ten Things I've Done That You (probably) Haven't:

1) Went to Disneyland during the LA riots. The lines for rides were very short.

2) Held both of Linus Pauling's Nobel Prizes in my hands (solid gold is very heavy, btw).

3) Made authentic Scottish haggis from scratch, starting with a live sheep.

4) Shook hands with an 800-year-old mummy (at the suggestion of the crypt's curator).

5)Visited the same English castle 5 times in a 6 month period.

6) Lived in a university dorm originally built in the 1930's to house a mental hospital.

7) Discovered one of only a handful of known specimens of rare conk (while helping a botanist. search for a different rare species of conk in a remote wilderness).

8) Chopped off 18 inches of my hair in one sitting.

9) Drove through the middle of a forest fire to pick up a paratrooper firefighter and bring him to the Forest Service basecamp.

10) Flew over my university campus in a 1920's biplane.

The Thanksgiving post I never wrote

If you'd like to know why I disappeared for a week, I was in California visiting family. Lots and lots of family.

My sister writes about it all on her blog.

Things that make Suzanne sad

1) Somewhere in the move, I lost my Photoshop disk. I take photos in RAW format, so now I can't even LOOK at them until I find it. Since this blog is apparently mainly about pictures I take, this sorta puts a cramp in my style.

2) My new job makes me so tired and footsore in the evenings that I don't want to look for it. Also, I'm lazy. Also on weekends I just want to play Borderlands until my eyes drain out of my skull. Damn you, addicting computer games! (OK. Not always true, since last weekend we decided randomly to go to Seattle. I'd love to show you photos to prove I'm not a shut-in geek BUT THEY'RE IN RAW FORMAT GGRRAAGH!)

3) My first day on the job I was handed a dead dog in a bag and told to go put it in the dumpster. That same day also involved two emergency life-saving surgeries on other dogs, so it works out on balance. But. Still.

Sweet!

As of Monday, I will no longer be among the ranks of the unemployed.

Not that I've been without a job for that long, mind you. Not long enough to hear the wolf scratching at the door, but definitely long enough to get antsy.

Shit

We just went to the vet. Three rats went with us, two came back.

RIP Bluray

That's about all I got today.

Behold the carnage

Labor Day evening we had a little adventure. I'm only sharing about it now because our house is finally returning to normal. I've successfully made it to the "and now we can laugh about it" stage of this little journey.

Here's a tip, kids: don't try to multi-task while a quart of vegetable shortening is boiling on the stove. Fun fact: an electric stove does in fact put out enough heat to cause Crisco to spontaneously combust.










Another fun fact: when you use a dry chemical fire extinguisher in a room, it will get on EVERYTHING in that room. Including things inside cupboards and refrigerators.

RIP Mo

January 2006 - July 4th 2008

RIP Curly

January 2006 - May 15th 2008