I (20M) just got my future torn apart in front of me.
Grandma went to the hospital 3 years ago feeling slightly sick. It was stomach cancer, stage 4. She was gone in less than 2 months. Dad's house was in her name but she didn't write a complicated will, so my Uncle and her estate took 2/3rds ownership of the house my Dad lived in. Was an old 1 story rancher he bought for 50k, paid off, and lived in for 20 years.
Uncle didn't budge. For context, this is literal chump change to him. He lives in a nicer neighborhood in a house about 3 times bigger and lives on a fat pension. Uncle and Dad were far from estranged. Uncle sold off his portion and rugpulled my father who didn't have the money or will to buy out 600k (the property's modern day value) due to the fact he wanted to do an RV lifestyle anyways after retiring.
I was mostly raised and taken care of by my mother but was wihh my dad on weekends. We were poor, barely made it through the 2008 financial crash, but I was young and didn't notice at the time. Would've been pretty much entirely low income if it wasn't for my Dad, but there was friction there too since he made some of his child support conditional (complicated but there's a certain loophole he exploited).
So, right now, my mother has no family as well as no retirement and I still live with her. Currently burning through my legal settlement which I barely got half of due to fees and taxes (from a car shattering my femur by hitting me when I was 9), both my cousins are older and have their own houses and extremely fruitful careers, and my Dad is off living his RV life.
I have next to no money, am forced into college classes due to an affordable rental housing agreement, am responsible for taking care of my (now disabled by COPD) mother who was fired from a job she had for 10 years over it, and I had to quit my factory job (which was still 30 hours a week minimum wage) due to my forced full time college classes.
Basically my only hope of ever owning a home or even being lower middle class was pretty much dashed in front of my eyes. Both my mother and my father seperately are telling me they have no idea what I'm supposed to do with my life with Dad telling me I might never have a house. I'm pretty much paralyzed as to what I should do because trades aren't even guaranteed, my friend went to a fairly prestigious trades school and is now stuck with a useless Automotive Repairman certificate because literally no one wants to teach newbies.
I really try to stay positive, and usually I am, but even then it's just me completely ignoring the impending problems. I've learned to be a fairly resilient person throughout my short lifetime, but I don't really see the point. I have never felt so utterly justified in feeling completely hopeless.
It just feels like I've been put in an unwinnable situation. I've been through the employment grind, even had a great workplace, but even then it took me 7 months as a fully abled male with over 100 hours volunteering experience to get a minimum wage job. I applied to over 200 positions, handed out 40 resumes in person, and it took me unbelievably long just to get somebody to give me just a CHANCE for an interview. It was literally just me scrolling on Indeed and applying to a job by chance. That's literally it. After all that hard work and effort, it came down to lottery rather than any genuine resilience or work or experience.
It's not a matter of opportunity, or smarts, or experience, or working hard. I'm literally gambling to see if I get completely screwed over by whatever field or industry I go into. Literally had to go to the government to help my friend get paid for his first job ever (with the training shift being 11 hours on short notice 4pm to 3am.) because his manager gave him only 3 shifts in a month before ghosting him and quiet firing him.
This isn't a call for a movement, or action, or really anything. I just know what's to come and it isn't going to get better. Everything that I was taught about integrity and the way the world works and how to have a successful career was wrong and now my parents can only stare at me and tell me they don't know what I should do.