SO, according to my boomer mum, sending a child through uni these days is the same as it was in the 90s

[PotteringAboutIn]

Because apparently they didn't have the wages back then

Ffs
Drives me nuts

What when uni was free, accommodation wasn't anywhere near as expensive and you even got a grant

The person was saying there was no grant. You seemed to be saying things only changed in 1998 which isn't correct. They changed in 1990.

We lived in a house 3x the size of mine, and travelled abroad, had two cars etc.

My parents lifestyle on one professional wage 40 years ago was really very good. We couldn’t afford their house on two professional wages today.

I went to uni in the 90s and my parents weren't high income people and although I didn't pay tuition fees and got a small grant, it was still an expense for them to pay for my rent (which was London, plus a year abroad) so their contribution was significant. Not a patch on what my kids will cost me, but my financial situation is utterly different to what theirs was.

I know it's easy to dismiss your mum and her 'boomer' ramblings, but in her own way she does have a point. Maybe she's looking for a word of thanks from you?

There were nurseries and childminders.

She wasn’t spending £4k a month on childcare, no. They could afford a similar lifestyle to mine now on one wage - whereas we need two.

I mean this proves the cognitive dissonance really, most people don’t even take home anywhere near £4k a month and yet still you think it isn’t such a big deal for us to be having to pay it.

I go to work to pay my bills, feed my family and put a roof over their heads - same as most people.

It’s not a competition as to who had it hardest, it’s the ignoring the very real issues of today - which is exactly what you are doing to. ‘Oh well I think I had it harder so your issue isn’t relevant’ - could you afford to spend £4k a month on childcare? Thats the local nursery.

It’s rather a different ball game today with the size of the fees and the interest rates - surely you can recognise that today’s students have a worse deal in terms of fees and overall cost…?

There was still the issue that if your parents earned too much for a maintenance grant they were supposed to give you money, some didn’t though so those students had the worst of all worlds. Children of single parents (usually mums) were ironically the better off when I went. Full maintenance grant and then the odd bit of extra cash direct from parents. My mum was a teacher and my dad had a poorly paid clerical job (earned less than my mum). I didn’t qualify for the maintenance grant and they made it up to exactly that level. But there was not one penny extra. I was allowed to take a bit of food from home on my rare visits.

I'm 77 very few of us went to uni back then, it was considered to be realm of the brilliant and /or rather posh. Grammar school,working class girl,I left after 'O' levels. Later did an 'A' level at evening class and subsequently OU degree.
Work was patchy when the children were young due to lack of childcare and uncooperative husband.Widowed quite young, got whatever work I could around school hours. I'm still working as one adult child with complex mental health problems seems to have permanently returned.
Not complaining, but not all boomers have a smug easy life as some seem to suggest!

My dsis is 12 years older than me but still a "boomer". When she wanted her first mortgage, she had to get a man to act as a guarantor, and my f refused.
I'm also a boomer but got the first mortgage I applied for, needing only 6 months employment.

Thr boomer years go from war time rationing to the swinging sixties and the sexual revolution. It's such a daft term. Experiences and opportunities varied wildly.

Really? Certainly back in the 60s/70s, much accommodation was squalid and crowded in really old buildings, damp patches covered by hastily pinned up Indian bedspreads or psychedelic posters. Nobody knew how to cook, or had any money, so lived off big pots of lentils like in The Young Ones. University Rag days had huge decorated floats going through town while students raised money for charity by flogging magazines full of jokes that would have made a Northern club comedian blench. Despite feminism and the pill, unis and lecturers were often rampantly misogynistic. Trying to get through Uni with disabilities was bloody hard. Compared to that, purpose-built accommodation, lots of help for ND and differently-abled students.......I'm not saying either is easier or harder, just very very different.

Early 90s there were grants

Low, 'top up' sudent loans ran alongside grants for a few years

Means tested tuition fees were introduced in 1998 and only rose to their current rates in the 2020s

So yes. The early 90s are part of the 'good old days' and it all started going to shit around 94/95

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zb8wg2p

And grants weren't abolished until 1998. I don't know anyone who had a loan in the early 90s.

you’ve misunderstood my point. The OP said that the behaviour and attitudes of the boomer generation are to blame for the way the term is used as an insult thus blaming the victim for the prejudice against them. I was hoping she’d understand her prejudice if I pointed out an example that she might feel more sensitive about.

My 3 cousins all got full grants - despite their (mainly) absent father earning substantially more than my parents.

That’s interesting, what did your dad do for a living?

I don't know how you got housing benefit and signed on; Housing Benefit was stopped from Sept 1990 and signing on went at the same time, if not before. I went in 1990 and neither were available.

I got housing benefit, but only because I had a child.

My mum is not a boomer and doesn't have these views, hence needing to pinpoint the generational demographic she's discussing

midnight patrol conflating issues 1000 per annum up front in the 1990s was not easy to pay. The current system interest rates are ridiculous I completely agree. However look at salaries then and now, mortgage rates were an average of 9% - many much higher.
To just look at the number and not accept that salaries have gone up is wrong.

My time at university straddled times when you could get Income support in the summer, and when you couldn't. I missed the housing benefit era though. I got a small grant and the rest had to come from my parents. They were very supportive of university despite not going themselves, if your parents chose not to contribute you were sunk. I was happy with my room in halls but there were no en suites. Once you lived out of halls it was in beds that had mattresses that wouldn't have done well under a UV light - because no Ikea, everything was old!

inflation was 27% in 1975 so wages hadn't kept up in nursing and people were struggling

I graduated in 1994 and only finished paying my student loan off in 2007 (with a bit of help from DFIL).
It wasn't free.

Being a student is hard what ever generation- for the first time in your life, you being to realise what living costs - electricity, heating, light, food, transport etc
you want what you grew up with but suddenly realise it costs and costs mean work and making monies! Holidays are a luxury not a right - my dear niece!

What i think we can all agree on is the current student interest rates are ridiculous and that needs reforming.
Oh and to those of you who say no one ever paid fees prior to 1998 - utter utter bollocks, it was less common but plenty of families ahd to cough up fees - military families, last posting overseas before your child came to uni - put you in the overseas category - 10k per annum in the 1990s was a lot of monies.

It's a completely ridiculous term and more often than not use as a term if abuse. My dad is a baby boomer (born 1945), but so is a good friend of mine (born 1964).

The similarities between their upbringing and life experience/outlook, not surprisingly are non existent. My friend is still working and has children at university, my dad's in his 80s and been retired for years.

The only thing I can remember they do have in common is they both voted for Corbyn for reasons best known to them.

We've paid £180+ pw for halls this year. When you factor in bills and a 12 month contract next year, they are both around £7k.

When you say look at salaries then and now….

… are you considering inflation at all. Wage growth in the UK has been appalling over the last twenty years.

Ditto on house prices…? Houses are a lot more expensive now, and people have to borrow a larger sum - usually on two full time incomes.

Most people I know are living in far more modest housing than their parents at the same age.

In any case - it’s not a competition. Every generation has its trials.