The national conversation about interest rates has felt constant since the Fed started raising them in 2022.

The rates were a little like Taylor Swift.

We all knew they were there, but suddenly they were everywhere you turned.

The consensus, unsurprisingly, is that they are too high.

I can scarcely remember another cultural moment during my lifetime when they were such a hot topic of conversation, but their financial tyranny is mostly driven by a singular implication. Most people care if the Fed moves a couple of

basis points in one direction or the other for one reason and one reason alone.

Housing. housing. Welcome back to the Money with Katie's Show, Rich Humans. I'm your host Katie Gaddy Tossin and I'm going to go out on a limb today to say,

no, I don't think a high interest rate is our problem. As you'll see, the high interest rate is actually a bit of a red herring.

It's not the core of our issue and the

solution to our current predicament of low housing affordability is not lower

interest rates. In fact that's kind of what got us into this mess. So if you're scrolling Zillow every night before bed and praying that J-Pow has a change of heart,

you might be paying attention to the wrong indicator.

Today we're going to do a few things.

Number one, we're going to talk about how our current situation stacks up to years past.

Then we are going to talk about the strange upsides of higher rates, and finally we're going to nail down the practical application of what it means for you, the roof over your head and the decision to rent or buy.

So let's start with how rates compare to the past,

because in order to know whether or not rates are high or not now,

we need a historical benchmark.

Let's review our interest rate eras by hopping in our little time machine

and boogieing back to the 1950s when people drove pink cars and went to diners for fun. So the 1950s and 1960s.

Painting with a broad brush, the 50s and 60s were mostly a time of economic expansion in the

aftermath of World War II. The Fed, aka the Federal Reserve, began to gently

...