To think most people my age (32) are making huge financial mistakes?

This is the pattern for all the 30 ish yr olds my DD knows. Absolutely no hope of putting a deposit on anywhere without serious family help, usually an inheritance. For a wide variety of reasons, some have moved back with parents (relationship break-up, lease on rental ending, saving for deposit).
A mortgage on something very small would be 6 x most of their earnings. Might as well eat the avocado.

@Badbadbunny
@IpsyUpsyDaisyDoos
So were you living at home before you got onto a partnership? That's luck, not good management. That allows savings and car ownership. Having family that can pass on used furniture etc is luck. Not everyone is capable of earning enough to get a deposit and afford the house prices in their area. Finding a partner, that you can set up home with, is partly luck.
It's a bit messed up that we are starting to rely on people who live in dire circumstances,to repopulate our society and look at British people, who just aren't ticking x-y-z boxes, especially those who don't stand a chance of ticking those boxes, as failing.

(As an older person) Fight back. Educate yourselves. Don't play the games they want you to play. Learn how to exploit the systems. Vote to change the systems. Don't feel powerless.

Why don't you think you'll see the pension you've paid into?

DS (28) just bought a house on his own. He's not on a big salary but was lucky enough to save the deposit by living back at home after Uni. He's furnished it all from charity shops. He's still had holidays abroad whilst saving. I've no doubt it'll be tough for him financially paying all the bills on his own even though he's budgeted.
Niece in early 30s has bought a flat on her own. Nephew knew he wouldn't be able to afford anything in London so bought a BTL in his home town to get on the property ladder. Both seem to have regular holidays abroad and seem to be careful with money.
So I don't agree that all people of that age have the attitude that they might as well live for the now and spend spend spend.

Yup, people blame individuals, but successive governments have adopted the “buy now pay later” by overspending and, yes, the shit is now hitting the fan. I seem to recall seeing that in the last 50 years the country has only been in surplus for a handful of years, the rest of the time, we as a country have lived beyond our means. Good for those who lived through it and benefitted from it, but crap for the younger people who’ll have to pay for it and not reap the rewards themselves. Definitely drawbridge but the older generation in general won’t accept it.

It's the wrong way to think about it as "luck", I agree. Financially, it's "lucky" because not everyone will inherit money after their parents die.

I know there's (probably) enough coming that I'll be able to pay off the rest of my mortgage (obviously barring the need for huge amounts of care), which will make me financially luckier than my friend who's parents have nothing. But I'm not planning for it.

And when my parents mention it, I tell them to spend it, to enjoy themselves and that I'd rather have them for another 30/40 years than their money. Because I would.

But it's still luckier than people who lose their parents and get left nothing. Those people would also rather have their parents.

People of every generation have acted like that and sone people seem totally hardwired to do so

the differences I see today are that perhaps more young people are acting that way as a mixture or lack of hope for the future and the desire to keep up with social media lifestyles

and yes one avacado won’t buy a house but if you want to save 50k in 10 years ( once you reach 30) to get a home when you get married ( wanting to buy on your own is a new concept ) ( ie if wasn’t a common expectation ) up that’s 5k a year or less than 100 a week- lose the expensive food shop, lunch with coffee out every day , no fancy nails and a simple dry cut at the hairdressers once every 2 months , and drop the short flights for weekend breaks - all things previous generations didn’t do - and you have probably saved nearer 100k

and yes I know that many don’t live like that especially once you have small kids with no family support but I think this is another problem of social media normalising attitudes- like “no one can save “ and “everyone deserves a treat” and “ avacados don’t matter”

but I think that’s probably pushing people in every generation towards poor financial choices not just the young

** Don't forget MIRAS too.

Looking back, we clearly had artificial and unsustainable growth in the 90s and 00s but today's workers are paying for it, and some!

And this is why we are fucked. They kicked the can down the road after the 08 crash & we now have run out of road.

Inheritance is not 'lucky'. I'd rather have my Dad back.

This makes no sense. You are aware plenty lose a parent but do not receive an inheritance?

My friends mostly fall into that age group and definitely aren't doing all of those things. Guess it depends on who you know.

I was never able to buy. I didn't realize this until my mid thirties, when I actually looked into it. I had always been renting as it suited my lifestyle, but I figured I could always use buying as a plan B, without knowing that simply was never an option for me.

If look back at how I ended up in the situation, it makes total sense. In my early to mid twenties I was still reeling for the sheer chaos that was my teens. I had no idea what to do with my life and I just blundered about trying this and that. I eventually developed some focus in my late twenties and went back to school. This was a big financial hit and I spend a good chunk of my late twenties and early thirties being broke, not building up much savings and using all the savings I did have on my education and living costs.

I am now middle aged and have been trying to fix my financial situation, but it takes time. I should be better in about 5 to 10 years. But in my opinion, the OP has no appreciation of what a mess parents can make of their own and their children's lives and how far those children are behind trying to fix it once they are adults. None of us choose this. Financial literacy was barely taught in school when I was little and my parents only knew what they had learned themselves, which wasn't much. So it's a lot of trial and error and if you have a late start in life due to traumatic circumstances added on top of that, you'll end up paying for it for a long time.

Yes, I do blame some of it on my parents, even though they also never received the knowledge they needed to make their lives work. Some of the chaos in our homes could have been prevented. My parents were always quite dramatic and were very good at making a bad situation worse.

My SIL did a 30k wedding and made a profit lol.

We bought a flat in London before planning a wedding for 48 relatives and 2 friends at a 5 star hotel in my home country (cost around £6k including flights for my MIL and SIL). I made a profit as all my relatives gave cash gifts. I shouldn't have worried lol.. but to be fair, it is probably better to be safe than sorry.

Inheritance is not 'lucky'. I'd rather have my Dad back.

I agree. Lots took a risk on an endowment mortgage and were handsomely rewarded with a huge payout. Lots benefitted from speculating on privatisations and demutualisation. Most benefitted by pay rises over inflation. None of that is available anymore. Looking back, we clearly had artificial and unsustainable growth in the 90s and 00s but todays workers are paying for it, and some!

I also said luck or should I say privilege, as in having support from parents/family who can/want to assist you financially and want to help with grandchildren compared to parents who aren’t able or don’t want to help.

100%. Add to that hen and stag dos on top.

A coffee or avacado won't stop you buying a house but a £30k wedding will!

We are Londoners and only bought with help (cash gift and living at home to save).

As you say, choices!

No it really hasn’t. Housing costs have never been so high in proportion to wages. Cars don’t last as long because they’re harder to repair and electronics are expensive to replace when something goes wrong. Prices of most things are far higher in proportion to wages. Taxes have increased. Wages have never stagnated for so long before.

Yes, there have always been people who’ve made poor decisions re money, but it’s now harder to get out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into. A few decades ago you could tighten your belt and wait out a few pay rises to catch up. Most people can’t do that now as costs are rising faster than wages so you end up deeper.

I think it’s just down to luck and choices, I don’t know many people who own their own home but the ones that do were either able to live with parents and save up, or were given a lump sum from their parents and none of them had children before buying a home, now that they do they all seem to have solid childcare from family members so they can continue working without worrying about another financial burden.

Where as myself and my DH had children young (in college) so neither of us were in a good job yet (DH was a cleaner and I was in retail).
Parents made it clear we were to move out so had to find rented accommodation.
I never completed university due to falling pregnant and within 6 months I was pregnant with my 2nd despite using contraceptives! So it was cheaper for me to be a SAHM. Youngest is disabled so I ended up being a SAHM for 10 years instead of waiting until they reached school age as I was constantly having to collect my child from school and have them at home. DH has slowly made his way up where he works but is still only earning 30k. I am in a low paid job working term time hours so I can still support our youngest.

We are still stuck in rented accommodation, unable to save much due to the amount of rent we have to pay. We never go on holiday, we had a registry wedding that cost £150, we don’t own the latest phones and our card are cheap runarounds that we’ve had for years. We’ve never spent more than we could afford but still aren’t getting anywhere fast as we don’t earn enough and bills eat it all up.

We can’t afford a mortgage for a 3 bed house on our current wages either and neither of us will be getting an inheritance so doubt we will ever own a property of our own.

I'm not sure where to start. Some young people are fully financially literate. Others have been woefully let down. You can see a good mixture just on this thread.

But I feel that they are being hamstrung right from the start. Take the NEST pension scheme with its lovely ethical investment options - no tobacco, no oil, no defence companies, etc. Which companies have outperformed continuously?

Don't take my word for it. Look at their performance figures below. Guess which fund is not hamstrung and how well it has done versus the others?

https://www.nestpensions.org.uk/schemeweb/nest/investing-your-pension/fund-choices/compare-fund-performance.html

On the SUV front, there's a lot more being built these days than there used to be. That's a change in availability as well as the "fashion".

When I passed my test, SUV wise there was the range rover and a few slightly "nicer" off roaders and mostly they weren't practical for day to day use in towns and cities.

In the past though some risks paid off. Many people took out 95% interest only mortgages for multiples of their salary pre 08 and it paid off big time for some.