Any other millennials fancy a moan?

[MoscowMules]

I know everyone says, the generation before you had it harder, all the way back to the Crimean War probably.

But

Is anyone else who is a millennial just a bit fed up? Fancy a pity party?

I reflected this evening on things that have happened.

I was born in the very early 90's, so am pretty much smack bang in the middle of the millennials.

We've lived under pretty much unstable governments in adulthood. Mainly conservative.

We've had 2 global recessions

An illegal War

Brexit

A global pandemic

Housing Crisis

Cost of living crisis

Possible collapse of the NHS or if not collapse it continues to limp on with poor care

Russia invade Ukraine and global tension.

To mention but a few calamities, and now here we are, trying to raise Alpha Generation typically, in the midst of all this.

I just feel a bit like "wtf" how much more can we take?

Yes there were good things on a social level, we were the first to learn and grow from the internet and become digital. LGB rights moved forward with same sex marriage, education improved especially with the removal of Section 28 from the education act towards the end of some of our schooling.

But my god! What a generation to belong to and try and navigate in.

I totally accept if I'm having a pity party for one here tonight though 🤣

@WhyCantPeopleBeNice My dream is a three bed semi but I can't afford that 😂🤷🏻‍♀️ In my area they start at around £500k (and those are the ones that are dilapidated). Combined, my husband and I are on £70k. £450k is our max budget if we manage to sell the shoebox newbuild two bed my dad (very generously) bought for us.

I know I'm lucky to actually own something but I feel sad that my (rather boring) dream house will likely never be within my grasp.

Also "as an "xer", who tf are you to tell anyone to go away?! No, "they" did not get the raw end of the deal, whatever the fuck that means.

How I loathe these nasty little posts designed to do nothing other than shut down different viewpoints. I suppose it's part of this same inability to perceive nuance that leads to this odd desire to sort human beings into neat categories.

Everyone struggles. We're all dealt a hand of cards at birth - sex, race, family wealth, health, personality, country, how good your parents are. Many, many people older than you will have had harder lives due to these factors. I have sympathy for anyone with genuine disadvantages, but not for the poster upthread whose SIX-FIGURE salary isn't allowing her to buy the house she feels entitled to because she "did everything right" and her sibling has one. 🙄

I actually think that part of the problem is that a generation has been told that university is the only way to be successful and you can't be successful without going. University was never meant to be for everyone, and it was certainly never meant to be a 'safe space' that shielded you from the real world and ideas and opinions that you don't like!

It's devalued Higher Education, what good is a degree if everyone has got one, and everyone now has tonnes of student debt.

I think it's successive I'm all right jack voters and politicians that are the problem, and we need to resist the temptation to fight against each other rather than uniting to make things better. I'm one of the oldest generation x and it was no better for us, although some of the pressures were different. Worked hard, good uni etc etc but I can't afford a 4 bed house either. Oh and at the risk of derailing the thread I think it's unfair to blame the civil service. Civil servants are there to implement the policies of the elected politicians not to implement their own plans. The press like to focus on the very few very senior civil servants and their salary/pensions which are rather different from most. Latest figures I can find are from 2016 when the average pension for male civil servants was £11047 pa and the average female pension was £5875.

Also enjoying this thread. It's quite validating seeing it written down.

DH and I are 34 and 30. We have done OK, we bought our first house for 210k in 2015 aged 26 and 23 with a 10% deposit and no help from parents, but I think that is quite unusual. We lived in a hotspot and sold up after 18 months and moved a bit further north (we are talking an hour by car) to get more bang for our buck. We gambled and stretched ourselves but it did work out. I still consider us very lucky. We earn well ie. Both above average, but are likely to stop at one child. Infertility mainly, but life does also feel a lot safer financially with just one.

I don't have much else to add on here but it's a good read and I'm posting mainly so I can look it up later and have another read.

You left out "total climate collapse"

I was interested to read this thread to try and get a better understanding of how the millennial generation feel and their perspective as I am a generation Xer myself.

But once you all start talking about waiting for the "Boomers" to die, and how you are the most hard done by you rapidly lose any sympathy. I am not disputing the hardships faced in terms of housing or cost of living but you are swallowing the media rhetoric if you truly believe that you are alone in having faced hardships and poorer quality of life than many previous generations.

PS nobody gets to choose when, where they are born or the set of circumstances that they are born into. Most of us try to make the best of what we are given if we are lucky.

I appreciate that you want to have a rant, and I think you are fully entitled to, but please don't blame previous generations for everything you are struggling with today. Many of them have never voted in the way you might assume and are not responsible for the challenges your generation are facing. Also maybe don't wish for all the "Boomers" to die. My DH has given 40 years to the NHS and is practically holding his department together at the moment (witnessed by me and DC barely seeing him for the last month) as so many millenials have jumped ship for better paid and less stressful jobs (for which I don't blame them at all). And no the pensions aren't what they were in case you're wondering.

I’m early 50’s and remember feeling exactly like this in my late twenties and early 30’s. I remember feeling really stitched up when I looked at older couples with their big cars on their big drives outside their big houses.
The mega interest rates and negative equity wasn’t much fun either.

Pensioner bashing again @Cuppasoupmonster. You just can’t help yourself, can you?

My FIL worked down the pit with his Dad and mates, loved it and earned over 50k/year even back then. Bought their big 4 bed detached house for 39k.
Now has a hefty pit pension.

Things have changed.

Naaah

Millennials seem to be hogging the limelight these days as they indulge in their internecine warfare with their grandparents, but this place also needs a space for the quiet generation in between: the cool generation. The Poland of generations, sandwiched between two awful larger rivals.

We gave the world Radiohead, stuffed crust pizza, world wide web Nokia 1011, Baywatch and Twin Peaks, so most of you should be grateful.

I'm grateful for being born in '89 as I do believe we were the last generation able to play outside unsupervised for prolonged periods of time - I used to go to my best friend's house and play out back in her garden (which had an epic rhododendron bush we called "the den") for hours and hours, only running in for a glass of squash every so often. I don't remember adults being around much at all - I'm sure they were keeping an eye out but I don't remember them interfering. Plus we benefitted from tech and it's grown with us so we're tech savvy without it having had a particularly negative influence on our childhoods (although I do remember being sent dick pics on Yahoo messenger by a random man when I was 12 - I thought it was funny at the time - as an adult it's massively disturbing!!!).

Our TV's screen was smaller than the laptop screen I'm working on and we only had 5 channels (in fact 4 when I was really young, I remember the guy coming around to tune in channel 5 which was always fuzzy haha).

My parents prospered until they divorced in 1993, neither of them had qualifications but ended up with good jobs at BT, then bought a semi-detached house and a brand new car before I was born! I live on a boat and can only dream of having a brand new car - we only buy bangers 😂

Downsides (from the perspective of a mum of a 15 month old) include the parenting style - I would say I had good parents but I don't think the knowledge was there - I was in my own room from the day I was brought home so my parents didn't get woken up by me, my mum said she doesn't remember having to feed me every two hours like I did with my DD (who I co-sleep with!). I was on only pureed food for months so I ended up a really fussy eater (I presume that's why, my daughter isn't fussy, yet, at all and we've done baby led weaning). My dad smacked me across the legs if I was acting up (yet now he's an old vegetarian hippie who wouldn't say boo to a goose). I do look back on my childhood pretty fondly though, honest😅

I don't think any generation has it plain sailing though, there are perks and downsides to every period in time. I hope that my parenting style will teach my daughter resilience and that she's always got a secure base to come back to if the shit hits the fan when she's older; something I've never really felt I had thanks to parents that hit the roof if I ever disclosed anything to them that was out of the ordinary. But I do think my daughter has some very difficult challenges ahead of her, not least seeing ever more devastating effects from climate change (but hopefully seeing some positive changes in that area too?!).

I'm an elder millennial and think there were loads of good things - the late 90s/ early 00s felt hopeful, girl power, great music scene, free contraception etc, opportunities to get on the property ladder.
I'm glad I didn't grow up on social media.

My dad was born in 1916,his oldest brother was wounded at the battle of the Somme, he was clever but had to leave school at 14 because his parents just couldn't afford to send him to grammar school. Did some fairly boring, unskilled work. Joined the army the day war was declared in 1939. Served in North Africa, the Middle East and Italy. Came back with TB to find his dad had died just after VE day. Had some ill health for the whole of his life never owned a property, left me nothing when he died as he had next to nothing. I was the first in my family to get to university. My mum died when I was 11 which really added to our poverty. My DH and I managed to buy a basic 2 bed house. We lived through the Cold War, the fear of being bombed by the USSR, the property crash of the 1990s and the fallout from that. We lived through depressions, which to my mind are cyclical, the appalling Margaret Thatcher years, the selling of the nationalized industries (which I think was a ridiculous idea), and god knows what else.
Every generation has it's challenges, when you look back you might think that life was rosy for previous generations but there was so much that was unavailable. I can remember my mother sobbing because my dad was in hospital very ill and there was hardly any food in the house and she had no money, the rent was due and the social security of the time just didn't pay enough for her to pay for everything. In the end she begged the Salvation Army for help and they paid 2 weeks rent for us so that she could have a breathing space. Without that I think I would have gone into care. I could say more but I will leave it at that.
Is your life hard? Maybe, but do you have that grinding poverty that I was brought up in? No. Are we heading back there? I hope not.

I think parenting and teaching style changed massively from Gen X to Millennial whilst a lot of it was good, it created a sense of entitlement that people now in their 30’s and 40’s are realising is a facade and I do have sympathy as it must be incredibly hard.

I was born in ‘76, so came of age in the 90’s. and I noticed soon after I left primary school that the infants started to do team sports days and participation prizes for it, and I think that was the start of ‘oh I deserve a prize’ ‘we’re all special’. Which continued throughout life. Another example is when I did my English lit A level we had to learn the text, but a few years later, they could take the text in. Small stuff but it all added to the sense of deservingness synonymous with millennials today.

On the few occasions I tried to say ‘I’ve worked hard, I deserve a break’ even now, my mum (and all my friends mum’s) simply say ‘why? What makes you so special?’ And that’s that! Sounds harsh and it’s not in alignment with all the self care stuff of today, but I do think it made for more realistic attitudes about what life can give.

I disagree. Perhaps it depends on where you live but me and DH are 32, born in 1990. Bought our first home at 22, as did many of our friends. We all bought ex council houses; big houses for cheaper than newer, smaller ones. Most of our are now on our second “forever home” a couple are on their 3rd. We’ve all got children, have holidays, nice homes. I don’t feel hard to done or that our adulthood has been spent in misery. We’ve all actually done really well. All the men in the couples have a trade and all earn very well, wages have increased year on year. The worst off couple of our group are the only 2 who both went to uni. Only bought first home last year, earn the least of the couples and haven’t started a family yet.
I’m currently pregnant with number 4. Only one couple in our group, not including the childfree couple, has 1 child and she’s currently pregnant with the second.

Omg yes! Ahahahahah

@Blossomtoes Practically one post away from advocating euthanasia the other day.

We do have it bad at the moment I was born in 1981 so maybe just an elderly millennial.
I was thinking of my grandmother who was born in 1912. She lived in Folkstone as a child and remembered waving off the soldiers going to France for WW1. Then after WW1 they had the Flu Pandemic, General Strike, Great Depression and then WW2.
After WW2 high inflation, no jobs, rationing till 1952.
Not untill her mid forties did things finally settle down and get better.
Not trying to say now we have it some much easier, just previously generations have had some tough times before and pulled through.

Add to that the constant threat of IRA bombings, which could happen anywhere any time. I remember whenever I’d go to my local large shopping centre, in the back of my mind would always be a niggling worry it could be a target. Also nuclear war was a real threat people wrote songs about it. You only have to listen to music from the late 70s and the 80s to know there was a lot of political angst and contempt for the UK/world.

I couldn’t afford to buy property in the late 80s without the help of my parents giving me the deposit and I couldn’t afford to rent unless I did a flat share with strangers. House prices are crazy now though, far higher against average salaries than back then. I wouldn’t go back to the 70s if you paid me but I am glad we didn’t have social media, it’s a breeding ground for self obsession and narcissism at a level that just didn’t exist back then.

I do feel for the younger generations (I have kids) as getting jobs are all on the internet, even casual jobs require a CV and interview whereas back in 80s you could walk in to a cafe or cinema or pub and ask if they needed staff and you’d be accepted on the spot, no CV required. I had loads of casual evening jobs on top of my main job as they were there for the taking.

I’m guessing you aren’t living in the south east? It’s totally unimaginable in the town I grew up in to buy a house at 22 without huge parental contributions even on a good graduate salary. Not a single one of my 20 friends from school that I still see regularly are living in my home town 15 years later despite are parents still living there. We are all graduates with good jobs. It’s just waaaay too expensive. This of course has a knock on effect as you’re then far from family, so no grandparent help, far from long standing friends so no one to ask for help in an emergency.

^our not are

Where have you got generations behind us being larger from? It's the opposite, generally the birth rate has been steadily declining.

There are approximately 200,000 more 33 year olds than 18 year olds, for example www.statista.com/statistics/281174/uk-population-by-age/.

Plus larger generations behind us would actually be a good thing as it would mean working age people to pay our pensions for us rather than us paying for the much larger generations above and not getting the same back!

BTW, after leaving university I had to move away from the family home because there were, quite frankly, no jobs at all. This was 1977. I have never managed to move back there. I missed my family like mad. I had no help when I needed it, but I just got on with it.

Whinge away! You have good reason to. Get politically active if you aren’t already. Pressure your MP, understand the issues, maybe consider joining a political party if that’s your thing.

I think personally that a lot of the social issues are solvable. It’s more a question of what kind of society do we want to live in? Climate change is really the big issue that dwarfs everything.