Anyone other Gen-Zers on here sick of daily life

[lorrisandthesnowman]

Just that really. Endless bills, no hope ever of getting on the property ladder as the mummy and daddy bank wasnt an option, paycheck to paycheck living. The fruitless thought cycle of if we should have children/can we/ what would that future even look like.

Or is it just me and im in a bit of a negative slump

@SquirrelGGwhat like my parents, aunts & uncles, in-laws?

A really important point

@Satisfiedwithanapple you don’t need to say anything to make my ego happy? You are the one getting upset!

Plenty of people who bought in the 80s have done very well in the housing market..

I agree it's harder for you. I'm in my sixties. When I was in my 20s it was easy to get on the housing ladder with two entry level incomes

Parents, aunts & uncles, in-laws don't trump ACTUAL experiences. Also, as a boomer I will be renting for the rest of my life now, even though I did own property a long time ago. Do I come on here saying how hard my life is, whinge, whinge, whinge, someone else has it better than me etc. etc. No I don't, I'm perfectly content with my lot. Would I like to be able to buy a house - yes, but it's not going to happen. That's life.

The changes are real

Interestingly for me anyway was the recent analysis that suggested young people today face similar challenges and difficulties to that faced by my generation ( housing is more expensive but things like food are cheaper , likelyhoos of getting a basic job is similar) those born in the 80s and 90s had things better it seems.

before then paypacket to paypacket living was the norm. The property ladder didn’t exist for the working and lower middle classes ( ie the vast majority )

yet it’s those from the 50s to 70s that people today are often envious of

which makes me think - don’t give up hope just yet.

do try to build a supportive social community so that if you need a couple of potatoes or an emergency childminder someone in the street will help you out. That to me is where the real negative changes have occurred- that we have moved to online communities which are much narrower and less supportive in general than the real life street communities of my youth

If you’re lucky! Lots of YP in their mid twenties, and especially those recently graduated with degrees (and debt), struggle to earn that.

@SquirrelGGso what are you arguing? Your lived experience trumps my families experience because you are the posting? Ok. But again it was easier for the boomer generation to secure a mortgage, this does not mean every boomer has a house or is rich.

Hi OP- Millennial here - we bought our first house at the age of 35 with government assistance. We both worked full time, had exceptional credit and went on holiday, every other year, with a budget of no more than £600/week for three people (food, board all included in this budget). It was hard. We saved for years. We'd been together since we were 21.

A lot of people we knew, who were our age, benefitted from 100% mortgages which we missed out on and then the deposits were increased to 20%, income thresholds increased way beyond our capabilities etc.

All of that to say, you're not alone. It shouldn't be this hard but it is. UK wages are stagnant and everything is going up. But, it's been this way for a long time. We were told it was hard because of 2008/9 market crash. Every generation is given an excuse for why they have to struggle.

I don't know if this is what you're looking for or that helps. Wish things were better but hope they're not horrible for you, either.

Were people so obsessed with generational labels in the past? It feels like something that has really grown in the last decade or so (social media?) people making their generation their whole personality. I came of age in the credit crunch so do remember newspaper articles about millennials and avocado on toast, but it seems so much more prevalent now, across the generations. No one was even talking about Gen X a few years ago lol.

The housing landscape has changed massively but why is buying in the 70s the comparison? That was 50 years ago.

For most families of millennial or Gen X generations (and probably the majority in older generations as well) we’ve had to spend a significant amount of time getting ourselves established and having no money in our 20s and 30s. That’s just normal and should be expected. I just don’t think you can say you have no chance of ever getting on the housing ladder because you don’t earn enough in your 20s.

Wage stagnation doesn’t get talked about enough

Who the hell pissed in your soup good lord.

Thank you to everyone else, been some good pointers on here to think about

If you don't know where the money is going, you need a budget.

Presume you've been in work since 21/22 if you went to uni. That's 6-7 years you've been in work. You've saved on average 13.10-15.20 a month to get to £1100. Have you set up a standing order to put, say, £50-100 straight into your savings on payday? Is it in a LISA/ISA?

Your financial situation will get better IF you get a better grip on it.

I was going to say the same as @Kaltenzahn, late 20s can be a tough time and people are prone to analysing what their peers are doing and trying to make a life plan when it seems almost impossible. I think for women who want kids our biological clock is an issue and we are trying to fit it all in a timeline.

No words of wisdom but I think there is a lot of generalisation of different generations. Most young people struggle financially, there was a very brief time where some lucky people made a lot of money in their 20s but that was never the norm and some young people now seem to be obsessed with this.

Im late 40s now and bought at 27 but this was unusual. My BF and I saved for a few years, we made a decision to do this. We were the outliers in our friendship group and chose a more frugal life. For years and years I wondered if we did the right thing. We rented separately in house shares, 4 to a shower for me. We eventually moved together into a cheap and not very nice flat, I accept this is less possible now. We moved to a different city that was a bit cheaper. We cooked and made home made lunches, we spent very little, we didn't go to a friends destination wedding, this I regretted. I remember being at another wedding and realising that all our friends were staying at the venue but we had a cheap b&b a few miles away, I felt like a mug that night for the sake of the small saving. Almost all my friends took a gap year and went travelling and I slogged in a soul destroying job. Dh got a promotion and decided to put all his extra pay into savings, we didn't spend a penny more. It took a few years of this to save enough for a mortgage, and I wondered many times why i had chosen such a difficult path. My friends were out enjoying themselves. 3 or 4 years later they were all moaning about how lucky we were and how hard it was for them, quickly forgetting that we had made different choices. I know this may not seem relevant OP but don't get caught up in feeling like your generation was a victim. People my age made sacrifices too, as did every generation before. Life was never easy except for the lucky few.

@lorrisandthesnowman as a couple do you really spend your salary each month and have nothing left to save? That surprises me and I’d be interested to see the figures.

What I would have done in this situation is move to somewhere I could afford to get on the prperty ladder- unless you work on the trading floor in the city or in a London theatre or something you can work practically anywhere.
I bought property in the 1980's and contrary to popular belief it was very difficult then too if you had no help from family, and were'nt a hedge fund manager- I reseached leaving London if I had to- tricky because I worked freelance for theatre, but I would have done it if I couldn't get on the property ladder.

To put some perspective on it, I am Gen X/Boomer cusp. Bought first flat (one bed in very run down rough area, over a shop) aged 29. Had first child at 39.

In my twenties, to get out of debt and into credit I spent a year working three jobs - one day job, one evening job, one weekend job. I barely saw friends, spent nothing on myself, but it was with a very strong intention, with a self-imposed deadline, and it worked. Short term discomfort in order to turn my life around. I felt like a superhero by the end of that year.

Could you cut back on everything, sell things you don't need, eat as cheaply as possible, take on extra work evenings and weekends, but see it all in a really positive light, as your deposit grows. Do it only for six months or a year, and keep a small amount - say £15 - for a little treat each week. I was told to do that and it really helped - just a pizza at a food market with a friend, or a swim or a bunch of flowers or bottle of wine.

Try not to think of your current situation as impossible, that your time is running out or that everyone before you had it so easy. That isn't the case and it doesn't help you feel motivated. Your eggs will be fine for a good 12-15 years.

My first owned home was in an unfashionable run down area that was close to nicer areas and was not actually dangerous. When I met DH he'd done similar. He had a flat on a main road in an area of London that was served only by rail not tube. That's how he afforded it. It was a starting point.

Agree - I think the focus is totally on property values and increased rents (which follow from the former obviously) when we should be looking at wages. If wages had increased proportionately (even if they had just doubled vis a vis the 6-8x increase in property prices), the government would be generating masses more in income tax and we’d all be better off. It’s where they need to be focusing - which means looking at business rates, corporation taxes for SMEs, start-up relief etc. Then saving deposits and buying homes would be more feasible for everyone under 35 (which in turn stimulates income from stamp duty, increased banking revenues, VAT on legal fees etc).

Not an economist, though, so am probably talking out of my arse. But then, that puts me on a par with most government ministers of the last 15 years, present crop included.

I put down £1000 on first house bought in 1988 for £19,500.
Could have got 100% mortgage but didn’t want to pay the £325 insurance cover in case we defaulted in first two years.
But - mortgage went up nearly every month for two years as interest rates went from 7.75% when we signed to 15.25% . Plus our rates of £42 per month turned into poll tax of £44 each. It wasn’t dead easy.
Bought next house in 1998 on my own.
£7,000 deposit, bought for £49,000 and l struggled. Couldn’t afford a car.

If your rent is £1000 and you both work full time even on min wage jobs you should be earning (gross) £2k each -I can’t understand how you haven’t got more saved.
Babies? Well DD 19 told me she can’t see herself having them as the country is crumbling, too many people. Three of my friends daughters in their 20s have said the same. Too scared to have kids in their own country. Awful.

It is just so hard for your generation.

I’m a younger Gen X and I admit that we were super lucky to be able to buy our first flat in 2003. I moved back home after uni and paid rent to my parents - they gave me that back to use as a deposit on a 95% mortgage. Without that we’d have struggled to save the £7K we needed… the crazy thing is that we were paying more in rent when I moved out of Mum and Dad’s than we then did in mortgage payments,

My kids are late teens and tbh I don’t know how we’d find the money to help them the way my parents helped us, it’s a whole different world now - the house market is so crazy and you need so much for a deposit. And wages absolutely haven’t increased enough to cover the costs of things, we probably earn double what we earned in 2003 but the amount you need for a deposit / mortgage payments is SO much more,

so yeah, you absolutely have my sympathy,

I was still renting a room in a shared house at your age. I think there is a bit of an expectation that you should have everything when you are quite young. It’s not a generation thing. It’s a being poor thing.

@AnonyMumAuDHDI don’t know how we sort the wage stagnation tbh, we never recovered growth wise from the 08 crash (super low interest rates masked a lot of that). I don’t know how we get more growth without a shit ton of investment when we have no money.

Did we? I must have missed that when I was scraping my 10% deposit together aged 29. Admittedly my 2-up, 2-down was not far north of £100k in 1999.

Most of Gen Z are exactly where you are, especially in the UK.
I am from Poland and things are very different here. We don't really have a culture of travelling the world and spending money on weekend trips to Spain or fast fashion or generally spending on trash or consumerism. We save money since we are 10 and by the time we are 25 many can afford a deposit. It is usually parents that buy a plot of land and it takes you ca. 2-3 years to build a house. You probably can afford a honeymoon in Turkey, and then maybe 1 holiday abroad every 5 years. But everyday life is good because we don't have the Instagram pressure (I think it's mostly the problem in Anglophone countries). People here are very family-oriented and we just find joy in weekend family BBQ parties. I realise this must feel very boring to you. But the picture in social media is largely fake anyway.