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How Do They Do It? What Am I Doing Wrong?

I just don't get it,  it seems that on shows like House Hunters , Property Virgins , And My First Place seem to be populated by so many people my age, and they have budgets that I could only dream of!  I don't get what I am doing wrong I scrimp and save, I stuff the vast majority of my paycheck away into savings each week with automatic transfer! I live less then extravagantly I'm about the most frugal person that I know, and have absolutely no debt.

Yet I am still at a loss for how all these people I see on these shows not only have higher budgets then I do but seem to have so much saved up, I have been saving most every penny I could scrape together since I was young and with the goal of buying a house since I was in in my early teens in high school.  I have been seriously shoving money aside and living well bellow my means since I got my first job after graduating HS in 06.  Yet even a modest condo in the area I live in is still so far out of reach.  And its not like the pay and benefits of my job are bad ether.  I currently make $12.90 an hour (and work 40 hour weeks, with my pay increase to over $13 a year by the end of the current 3 year contract) I have Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance threw work, a great plan for a very low monthly deductible from my pay check, I have a 401(K) and Union pension.  Matter of fact I have better benefits then my brother, and only make a little less then he dose and he is a certified welder!  My income is not off of what the average income for the area is, matter of fact I make as a single person about half of what the average income of a family and about 2/3 of the average household income, so my pay is not out of line.

How ever if you use conventional ways of figuring out how much house one can afford I can't even afford a studio condo! but along the same lines if you use the same figures based on average and median incomes even for families in the area a family making the median income can't even afford the median priced house, heck they would be hard pressed to afford lots of the condos here ether!  I just wish I know what the secret of those on the shows was as most of them seem to be so much further ahead and also living less frugally then I am!  It just feels kinda hopeless at times, like my dream of a little place of my own (like a 1 bed condo) are just not realistic.


I guess the only think I can do is keep saving, I mean luckely my parents are in no hurry to get me out of the house which helps with the saving but at the same time why is it that so many of the people on those shows at 24-26 can seem to aford to buy a first place of their own yet for me it looks like I will be lucky to manage that even at 30?  I just makes me feel like my dreams are pointless, like some how I am asking for to much.

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