“You can't be trusted to have debt. You don't have the behavior for it. You're not a credit card person,” Hammer told her after walking through her three maxed cards. His prescription was equally direct: “Close them. Take away the weapons that are harming you.”
Growing up, I remember watching my dad count out coins at the kitchen table every Sunday night. He'd separate them into little piles - rent, electricity, food - and there was never much left over. Years later, I still find myself doing the same thing with my bank balance, even though those days of stretching every pound are long behind me.
The housing market only continues to look more bleak for younger generations-and it shows. The average age for a first-time homebuyer recently jumped to 40, signaling the housing market is starved for affordability. And younger generations are so disappointed and frustrated by the state of the housing market they're spending more of their earnings than they're saving, working less, and making risky investments, according to a recently published paper by Northwestern University and University of Chicago researchers.