Should I be inspired by 20-somethings who buy their first home?

• The average house price in New Zealand on the 1st of January 2024 was $925,461.
• The average graduate salary in New Zealand as of 2022 was $50,000-$70,000.

Those statistics sound very frightening to me, a 17-year-old student one week into my bachelor's degree. 

Growing up in a post-GFC world, living through a global pandemic during high school, a cost-of-living crisis, and hearing Millennials forever complaining through social media about the difficulties of making money, my future seems bleak.

I’m not sure I’ll ever buy a home.

I don’t mean to say it’s not doable; however, news headlines, social media, friends and family, and even school don’t shy away from sharing the realities and difficulties of this modern cost-of-living, housing crisis mashup.

Yet I would love to own my own house one day and pay it off. As I know this will give me the option of being able to comfortably retire one day. 

Sometimes though, after a particularly difficult day for the economy, listening to some dreadful statistics, it can feel like buying a house has to be your dream in life rather than something anyone can achieve with an average salary.

With the stories out there of 20-somethings buying their first home, this should be inspiring. But the fact that it even makes a story is discouraging to me. It only shows further just how foreign this concept of buying a house has become. 

Should I blame myself or the world?

Are we just lazy? Or is it truly more difficult? It seems to be the generational argument; boomers all managed to buy houses, so obviously, it can’t be that difficult, right?

The help.

Recently, I have noticed a very considerable increase in financial literacy self-help books, Instagram pages, podcasts, magazines, etc. I truly am thankful for this; however, it concerns me two-fold.

First, the fact that this increase of financial advice exists is a worrying prospect; these bright and intelligent people are noticing an actual issue.

And second, as I alluded to before, if I want to be able to purchase a home one day, I will have to put a great deal of effort into becoming incredibly financially literate in order to find the seemingly necessary creative ways to home ownership.

So, we are forced to decide whether to save and upskill or just give up on the idea of owning our own home. Maybe it is more difficult these days?

Fortunately for me, I’ve grown up playing HACKT!CS, so I’ve definitely got a head start.