Reply #46: When we bought our first house it cost $39,900

[SoCalDem]

and our realtor told us that the "rule of thumb" was twice your annual income was "average" for a "starter house". At the time we earned 24K, so we were sitting pretty with a house payment of $325 PITI..

Starter houses in our town are a bit cheaper than most in Southern California, but they START at $200K for really crappy ones and go UP UP and AWAY..

We are still in the house we bought in 1982, (for 81K)and if we sold it tomorrow we could make a bundle, but where would we move?? We could not afford to "buy" our own crappy house :(

Unless you are a "professional" or belong to a good union, a $15hr job is pretty good, so how on earth can people buy their fisrt house anymore?? Apartments are renting for $1,000 a month for a basic no-frills 2 BR...IF you can even find one..

and then there's gasoline.. In preparing our taxes, we discovered that just for work expenses, we spent almost $3K on gasoline for my husband's truck...

It just plain sucks to ALWAYS be behind the 9-ball:(