How did people leave home at 15…

I went to look at a "flat" in Shoreditch back in the 1980's which was a single large room which was the living room and bedroom and then a door through to the kitchen and bathroom.
The kitchen and bathroom were a single room, tiled floor to ceiling with a fridge in one corner, a cooker in the opposite corner a shower and sink in the other corner and a toilet in the other corner. You could literally put dinner on then have a poo whilst you watched it...

I also think if you move out and pay rent today it's very hard to also save thousands upon thousands of pounds required to buy somewhere.

If the option is staying at home longer and then buying house OR renting forever, I'll happily let my daughter stay at home longer.

I was chucked out at 15 or more accurately, didn't get on with my Dad so left.
Sofa surfed and then my Mum who was quite high up in a house builder's business, let me live in one of the empty houses that wasn't a show home.
At 15 I did odd jobs and then at 16 worked in restaurants and bars etc but didn't need much £.

I rented between 2002 and 2015, so not a million years ago, though I guess longer ago than it seems to me!

People need to do what they need to do, but I just think there is a massive non-monetary cost to living at home into your 30s that people don't factor in. We all only get one go-around on this planet...

I have a summer birthday, so could have legally left school at 15.

30 years later (early 00s) you could still leave at 15. In fact I think this was the case until compulsory 16-18 education.

Technically you were 16 by the end of the school year. But once your exams were done in May/June you'd be working at 15 if your birthday was after that.

Yes. If you were a summer birthday like me, you left school at 15 and started work.

She was in Ireland where it was 15

So she went Norway to Ireland to England? Oh well that makes more sense Think Irish leaving age was 15 in the 70s

The school leaving age was raised to 16 in 1972 in the UK. So MF would have had to have been 16, unless she wasn't at school in the UK.

A bit of both. It was definitely much easier to work and become independent then, as multiple posters have pointed out: pre housing boom so rent was far cheaper, jobs were more plentiful and lots of people left school at 16. You could live and work in very transient circumstances and earn enough to just about support yourself, which supported young people in finding their way.

But I think we sometimes gloss over the downsides as well. I lived in a lot of incredibly shabby flat shares in the mid to late 1990s with a lot of transient and sometimes fairly dubious people. I never squatted but I knew a lot of people who did. Looking back I'm surprised I didn't get into any dangerous situations. I survived, but honestly I wouldn't be thrilled if my DD was living in situations like this.

@treeowl agree and also got paid in cash, so you didn't need a bank account or to prove your identity, age etc. You just turned up and got paid at the end of the week, in an envelope. Equally, you paid rent as cash too. It was easier to game the system if you needed to and pretend to be 16 when you were actually 15!

She grew up in Ireland where school leaving age was 15 in the 80s.

It was easy to get a job in the music industry in the 80s. I wrote to a few record companies as a project for a gcse I was doing and got offered a job at Virgin records. I didn't take it up as the thought of moving 240 miles at 16 was daunting but I guess lots of people did it.

There wasn't the same ID requirements back then. If you could pay you way and looked decent you'd be given a chance.

The biggest difference then was the abundance of jobs & how you didn’t actually need qualifications or experience.

Yes a couple of lovely Victorian guesthouses where I used to live, one is now an HMO, the other has been divided up into the most compact of flats, glorified studios really just with a partition to call them 1-bed. Rental only (none for sale). I guess the guesthouses just couldn't compete with Airb'n'b and Premier Inn. This is in addition to three-bed houses being turned into 6/7-bed HMOs.

I do find that quite a sad attitude: I don't think the money I spent on rent rather than living with my parents in my 20s was 'wasted' because it was so integral to my life experience

Same but my rent was much cheaper vs today.

It's just soooo much more expensive to rent these days as rentals are disappearing. That's another reason kids are staying at home until they can afford to buy. Mine probably will as I'm easy commuting distance to London and I'd prefer they saved for a deposit than spent an absolute fortune on renting.

Married couples would also live with parents in my mum’s generation until they got enough together to set up home.
Certain jobs would come with accommodation eg nurses homes.

I agree with this. My childhood was also tough, despite being very middle-class - I was kicked out of home at 18 to fend for myself. I lived in the most squalid houseshares for years. One, which cost £25 a week, had really bad black mould and I became asthmatic. I did manage - well, you have to - but it was really difficult until I got to about 30. I definitely didn't want that for my own children and so have given them the childhood I wished I had! I don't think they're spoilt or entitled though and I think they'll do just fine in life - it's not their fault or mine that everything is insanely expensive these days and well-paid jobs (or even just jobs!) are few and far between.

Ah, what I think is more common now is to think that renting is 'throwing money away', and so people living at home until they buy - and obviously it's very complicated and pretty inadvisable to buy as a group. Which is slightly different to young people only wanting to live in self-contained flats.

I do find that quite a sad attitude: I don't think the money I spent on rent rather than living with my parents in my 20s was 'wasted' because it was so integral to my life experience. But I think the attitude that it's irresponsible to rent is very much pushed onto young people from their parents, it doesn't come from the young people themselves in my experience.

The wikipedia I am looking at says that she lived in Ireland until she was 15! In an interview in the Belfast Times she herself says she came to England on her own aged 16 - so who knows!!!!!

DH left school at 15, went in the army until 17, then lived in lodgings until he married his first wife, then private rental, for peppercorn rent. The house was owned by someone who inherited it and wanted to rent it out to keep it lived in until their child turned 18. Rent was half council rent! They then got a council house. He was shocked at how expensive council housing was!
My best male friend left school at 17( summer after A levels, summer born baby) and went to London, into digs while working for a government department. Quite a few of our contemporaries had full time jobs at 15/16 and were living more adult lives.
I on the other hand was very sheltered, I left home at 19.

15 was school leaving age for a lot of youngsters and unlike now, some( not all) were far more mature than todays infantilised young adults.

Two people in my team at work have worked here ft since they were YTS at 16. We were telling yr 10 work experience and her mind was blown that they had been working ft from just a little older than her.
I left school early 90s and my daughter is incredulous how few went on to college or uni. Some went to YTS schemes, some factory work.

I left home over 20 years ago (aged 18) and throughout that whole time have either lived in or been aware people are living in HMOs. In the more expensive areas it's absolutely the norm until people are coupled up in their 30s. (And there's plenty of them in less expensive areas too!)

I never understand people who think this is a new (or returning) thing, or who go on about young people living in their own flats. Young people have been sharing houses for all these years! In fact it seems to be the older generations who got their own places at a younger age!

Re. The OP - the big difference is work availability. You can still rent a room or something if you know where to look, even if it's not quite the same as before. But the lack of work opportunities is vastly different. You can't just pick up work anymore, let alone something you can work your way up in (even when I left home in 00s this was easier than now). This, I think, is the main thing older generations don't realise. They think young people are lazy, but can't comprehend there just aren't the jobs.

Not on here. Apparently they all living with mummy for free or a pittabce until they've saved a deposit to buy their own house