Jaynee Beach,

Thanks for reading and responding. Really. I'm not here to pick a fight. What I do find charming is that now a millennial and a boomer have told me how wrong I am, and that's okay, but it's also really kind of the point of the article. The generations kinda need to imagine themselves into others' places better than we are all currently doing if we want a shot at understanding the bigger picture.

I know what you are saying, to an extent. I am able to pay my mortgage partially because we, like you, don't spend. We are still using a non-flat screen TV (I'm pretty sure ours is the last set in America), we don't travel, we don't subscribe to streaming services. All of that helps our bottom line.

But please, PLEASE understand what younger generations are up against, if not in housing costs, then in health care. Let me do the math. In the mid-60s my parents literally paid something like $400 cash when they had my sister. If I had not been insured when I had my son, fifty years later, I would have paid 50,000. Do the math ([new price-old price]/old price, then times 100) and that is a 12,400% increase. Holy shit. Has your salary gone up twelve THOUSAND percent over your lifetime? Mine has not.

Even with health insurance, most people are now paying out many thousands per year in premiums, deductibles, and other non-covered expenses.

So don't tell me going without a few coffees is going to make a big difference. I guess if I was a much younger person looking at this system I'd be tempted to get some tattoos and coffees to distract myself from this ridiculous inequality-driven, billionaires-extracting-money-from-all-of-us joke we call an economy.

I see younger people getting ahead too. A friend of mine with a young family has a spouse who works multiple jobs and they both work hard to keep their family going. They're thankful they can afford their rent, and maybe someday they could save up for a small house. But it is hard and getting harder.