Dear Gen Z:
It took ten years -- TEN -- of scrimping, saving, sometimes working two jobs, taking some risks, and overcoming setbacks for my wife and me to save enough to buy a house -- a starter house, a gut job we gutted and remodeled ourselves over two years.
No inheritance from anyone.
No financial help from anyone.
No college degrees.
We paid for our own wedding and honeymoon.
When we first got together, it was in a crummy apartment in Milwaukee's ghetto with two used cars that quickly turned into one.
Yeah, we wanted a house NOW, and we wanted a NICE house, but we weren't babies. We thought in years and decades -- of retirement -- not month-to-month or day-to-day pleasures.
And guess what? Those ten years without restaurants and fancy vacations; those ten years of brown-bagging and driving to and from work together; those ten years of a payday pizza being a treat and grilling out and the dollar movie theater and the $4 bleacher seats and the $10 per carload drive-in...?
They were wonderful years. We were young, the world was young, we were on a quest, and it was just the two of us.
Stop your entitled whining.
Wipe your tears.
Put your head down.
Make it happen.
This is America.
XXOO,
Gen-X