I love history. It provides a window into a world that’s different from the one we currently live in but is the same in many ways. Regardless of how far back you go in history, money or some form of bartering existed for you to obtain the goods or services you either needed or wanted. It serves as an example of what has been and what could be in the future.
Personally, I use it to keep me grounded. I only need to look at how far we’ve come as a society during my lifetime to understand how lucky we all are to be living in the time that we do. Politically we may be all over the map, but that doesn’t discount the fact that we have more now than we’ve ever had in our history.
To be sure, certain goods and services are getting very expensive and perhaps out of reach for many of us. Housing comes to mind as a good example. .
For context, I’ll be 49 next week. Born in 1975, America’s household income at the time of my birth was a little over $13k per year. This equates to around $80K per year today. According to SmartAsset, the median household income is a little over $77K today. This varies widely depending on where you look, but we’ll use this for reference.
The average home price in 1975 was $39K, which is a bit over $222K today. The average home price in 2024 is well over $400K, a significant jump when compared to pre-Covid prices. What are we to do?
Simply put, we evolve.
You can already see society starting to adapt and evolve. There are countless articles and video posts of people who have decided to travel the country living out of a customized van or bought some land and placed a tiny house on it.
The idea of a house is being stretched as well. Cargo containers, pre-built houses for purchase on Amazon and 3D printers are being creatively used to provide not only shelter, but unique and dynamic ways for everyday living. The advent of AI will only add to the options available in the years to come.
In the more traditional sense, I’ve seen an uptick in townhomes (re-branded as carriage homes) that are being built around where I live. They provide efficiencies for homebuilders as they’re able to build more units on less land while passing on some of these savings to the homebuyer.
The point is, throughout history, we as humans have a way of being very resilient when we have to be. Think about families that had to live through the Great Depression. Waking up each day and realizing you may not get anything to eat is a level of depravity most of us in America have never experienced.
This isn’t to say that housing isn’t an issue. Along with the prices of many other things in the country at the moment, it’s definitely a real problem. Yet, as we’ve seen for centuries, it’s a problem with potential solutions that we may not even realize yet.
No matter where we end up twenty years from now, sacrificing now to own what you want later has proven to stand the test of time. I can assure you, owning a tiny house and living in it for a few years in order to make a profit is better than renting a larger house and gaining nothing. You’ll sacrifice space but you’ll own whatever it is you’re living in.
This provides you with something no amount of money can buy.
Freedom.
