Older millennials, adults aged 35 to 44, had debt-to-disposable income ratios around 250 per cent in 2019, while Freestone noted that metric was roughly 150 per cent for the same age group in 1999.
Can confirm we’re sitting around 250% but this is after exercising significant restraint to not take on as much mortgage as the banks would have given us. Everyone I know who bought over the last couple of years went all out and I can’t imagine them being any lower than 300-350%.
Before cars, those who could not afford a horse and buggy, or the fare to ride the train, lived in compact, densely populated areas known as cities where they could rely on their own two feet to get around. That’s literally why cities were invented. I understand that more people live in cities now than ever before, no doubt to avoid the problem you speak of. If your rural homestead isn’t making ends meet because the cost of getting goods on and off the property is more than the value the property is creating in return, the solution is obvious. We figured that out tens of thousands of years ago.