To say that things are tough for many adults these days is putting it mildly. The economy in many parts of the West seems to be in a weird spot, and some young professionals are finding it incredibly difficult to make ends meet… and don’t even get us started about how difficult it is to save up for private property.
Digital creator and Alabama mom Jessica McCabe, @That1crazy72, recently made a massive splash on TikTok with an open and honest video. In the 3-minute-long clip, she vented about how tough her adult kids have it despite being very hard-working individuals. A lot of the woman’s ideas were relatable, and the video got over 11.6 million views and counting. Scroll down for the full story. Bored Panda has reached out to Jessica via email, and we’ll update the article as soon as we hear back from her.
Many young adults are finding it hard to make ends meet and save up for a home. Working hard sometimes isn't enough
Image credits: Debby Hudson (Not the actual photo)
One mom recently went viral on TikTok after sharing that she feels 'helpless' as a parent
Image credits: that1crazy72
I am so tired of feeling helpless as a parent. Yes, my kids are grown adults. My oldest is 28. My youngest is 25. And I thought by teaching them what I learned, which is you work hard, you get a good job, you're gonna get the things in life that you need. Worked for me, why wouldn't it work for them? 'Cause it doesn't, because the world is changed. And now I feel like I see them struggling. And before my generation comes at me, yes, I understand struggling is a part of life. We all struggled. But there's a difference between struggling and drowning. We struggled, and it was tough. But you know what, we made it. We knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel with our struggle. It seems like kids today, no matter how much they struggle, they just get further and further down the water into the drowning point.
Image credits: that1crazy72
When I was their age, I was making less than $10 an hour, and I could afford to live on my own. Now you have to be making six-figure salary to get a decent, tiny little place to live. So what the [hell] is going on? And how do we help them as parents? I told my son, "all you have to do is work hard, go to college, join the military", like I did. He went to college, got his degree, got a full-time job. He moved back in with me right when he graduated from college because he said, "Hey, Mom, as soon as I get a job," which was within two weeks of him getting out of college, "maybe it'll take me two months, and I'll save up enough money for me to move out." Okay, cool. It's been 10 months. He has saved almost every dime and still can't afford to live.
Image credits: that1crazy72
Why are one-bedroom studio apartments almost $2,000 a month? Why? I just don't get it. I don't think that there's even classes anymore. There used to be upper class, middle class, lower class. It's literally turning into the ultra-wealthy and then everybody else is just poor. Like, that's what's happening.
Image credits: that1crazy72
And then I told him, "Hey, when you turn 25, at least your car insurance will go down." Hell no, he turned 25 and his car insurance went up $150. I tell him, "You know, if you need health insurance, get a good job." He did. Has health insurance. He has had a medical emergency this week. Had to go to the emergency room twice. He had to go to the emergency room because he couldn't get anybody to see him with the health insurance that he had. Right. So he had to go to an emergency room. Now he's out of money for that too. It seems like you can never get ahead.
Image credits: that1crazy72
And then my daughter wanted to buy her own house. My daughter worked six days a week, 12 hours a day to save up enough for this down payment [and] finally got this house. She's paying double what I'm paying for my mortgage, but her loan was the same amount. And then her mortgage company, after she's already moved in, said, "Oh by the way, we forgot to tell you that you need this type of coverage which we forgot in the beginning. That's an extra $200 you'd be paying a month."
Image credits: that1crazy72
And all they see when they come home is they watch social media kids their age on lavish vacations, all this money and nothing to do, all these social media influencers, because we value those types of things over hard workers. We will pay them $10,000, but you work 40 hours a week, you can't afford it.
Image credits: that1crazy72
Image credits: Anna Shvets (Not the actual photo)
The 51-year-old is retired from the US Air Force and now focuses on sharing her thoughts and insights on social media, including on TikTok where she has a huge following. A whopping 766.5k TikTokers follow Gen X Jess’s account for her freshest clips.
Another 146k people follow the creator’s Instagram page. So you’d better believe that what she has to say resonates with a lot of folks in the US and abroad.
McCabe has two adult children. Her son is 25 and her daughter is 28. Despite the two of them following their mom’s advice about working hard and getting a good job, they seem to be struggling quite a lot.
What worked for Generation X might not work for Millennials and Generation Z. And a lot of young people feel frustrated that working a steady job can’t afford them the same lifestyle that their parents and grandparents had. For some, owning their own house and having children are pipe dreams because of financial concerns.
“Both my kids work really hard and are two loving and giving individuals that help with family and others. I understand inflation, but usually, the wages go up when the price of everything else does, and it’s just not keeping up,” McCabe told BuzzFeed.
Image credits: Ian MacDonald (Not the actual photo)
“Times are just not the same! It’s not 1988 anymore. What worked for us does not work for our kids. Today it’s time we brought the family unit back again and focused on generational living to increase generational wealth.”
According to the mom, what can really help young people thrive is having people in office who represent working-class Americans. “Most of the people making laws for our youth haven’t been in the real world for decades. When is the last time someone that 'represents' us worried if they were going to be able to put food on the table or get evicted because they could no longer afford to live?” she said.
The digital creator added that it’s important to set term and age limits for politicians, as well as to prevent corporations from buying up housing inventory. In her opinion, this is more akin to monopoly than capitalism.
You can watch Jessica's viral video, which got over 11.6 million views, right over here
As CNN points out, even though home prices fell in June in the US, the median price is still the second highest since 1999. A recent report conducted by the National Association of Realtors found that the median home price was $410,000 in June 2023. That’s 0.9% less than the all-time high of $413,800 a year ago.
Meanwhile, the inventory of homes in the US is very low. Homeowners are choosing to stick with their low mortgage rates and are refusing to sell. After all, why sell your home when you’d have to pay a far bigger mortgage on your new property?
The chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, Lawrence Yun, said that “there are simply not enough homes for sale,” and that the market could easily “absorb a doubling of inventory.”
There’s a lot of tension between members of different generations. Older generations tend to think that young people don’t work as hard as they used to. Meanwhile, younger generations believe that older Americans may be slightly out of touch with reality. However, these inter-generational conflicts are nothing new. They’re a fact of life.
Image credits: Keagan Henman (Not the actual photo)
"There are various reasons that members of each new generation seem to think they see things more clearly relative to members of previous generations. Partly, this fact results from people surrounding themselves with like-minded others. If all of my friends and I tend to see the prior generation as having ridiculously outdated views, then our attitudes are bolstered and feel like a sort of reality," Glenn Geher, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at New Paltz, recently explained to Bored Panda during an interview.
"Further, in a time marked by rapid technological and cultural advancement, members of each new generation often do, in many ways, have a genuinely advanced understanding of the world relative to prior generations," he said.
"We Generation Xers saw—and largely created—profound technological advances in our lifetimes. We saw the realization of the full human genome, the shift from paper mail to email, and shared global issues such as climate change. Our world is truly and permanently changed relative to the world of prior generations," Geher told us.
Image credits: Zachary Keimig (Not the actual photo)
Parents and other internet users felt like they were in a similar boat
