To think the babyboomers have had it a lot easier than the next generation?

[DarlingDuck]

In terms of house prices, uni fees, pensions and retirement.

I'm 30 and don't know any people my age who own their own homes unless they were substantially subsidised by their parents. All my friends have uni fees to pay off and a lot of them struggled/are struggling to find work even with a degree.

Am a bit jealous of my parents generation... Had a major pang when I heard the over 65's own 85% of the UK's property, AIBU?

"YANBU my parents bought a house in 1972 for £8000"

In 1972, £16/week was not an unusual wage for an unskilled worker. A London bus driver earned £30/week. You could have a mortgage of two and a half times the husband's salary, and one times the wife's except that if she was thought likely to have babies and stop work, her earnings would be disallowed.

You think it was easy to buy a house then? I bet your parents didn't have a colour telly, carpets throughout, central heating, maybe not even a washing machine or a freezer. Standards have risen today for most of us.

How does house prices/current earnings stack up with today?

Okay I thought parents who became so in the 60's were baby boomers.

If you mean people born in the 60's well I am part of that generation. I think we have had lots of advantages - free uni, full grants - although even when I went they were cutting the benefits available to students - it was in the 80's when I was a student that they cut entitlement to benefits during holidays for students for example.

But the 80's when I became an adult, were a real mixture. Some people in the City for example, experienced a real boom. Others, such as me in a Northern City experienced a biting recession.

In the 80's there were still big manufacturing companies who when they closed down laid off thousands of people. House repossessions were very high and I personally found myself in negative equity.

I sold the first house I bought for less than I had paid for it 7 years before. And unemployment was very high. Watch the Full Monty or Brassed Off to get an idea of what the 80's meant to a lot of people.

I also lived in London for a few years to get better work prospects. I ended up moving out as I couldn't afford to rent a house or 1 bedroomed flat, never mind buy one. All I was doing was living in rooms in shared houses - along with the teachers and other professionals who I shared with. Trying to find a rented room in a house that wasn't a dive was very very difficult.

We bought our current house 11 years ago and is this house which has increased greatly in value.

"In terms of house prices, uni fees, pensions and retirement."

House prices : definitely, it was possible to find a house that cost no more that 2½ times annual salary (My flat was £22k on a salary of £12k). BUT, it was harder to get a mortgage and the wife's salary was often discounted since you were expected to breed immediately or at the very least resign and get your pinny on becaome a full-time home-maker. About 80% of my home-town lived in council housing, owning a property was pretty much the preserve of doctors, head-teachers.

Uni fees : only 5% of school-leavers went to uni, which made it feasible to be funded centrally. So although costs were nonexistent lower, so were the sights of most pupils. Mostly you were expected to get a job at the earliest opportunity and contribute to the household. Many would have been subtly discouraged throughout childhood from even dreaming about higher education.

Retirement : given that a lot of working-class men died within 5 years of getting their pension, not really. And the women had little pension accrued, having paid the 'little stamp'; so poverty in retirement was really the norm.

You are notoriously well-paid Xenia , and everybody knows people on an average salary were once able to buy and now cannot. You and your daughter are not 'the norm'.
I forgot to give my credentials as a 'Generation Xer' married to a 'late babyboomer' and say that I feel lucky every day to have been able to buy when we did. The bachelor flat my dh bought in zone 2 1983 (by coincidence) was £29000 and is now £250,000. Unfortunately has not increased by the same multiplier!

Sorry that was meant to say 'his salary has not increased by the same multiplier'.

So are we saying salaries in what I do are the anomaly that they have kept up with house prices in zone 5 then but if it weren't for the wise career choice someone in the 80s buying would have found it much easier? I doubt it. As we see above very very few were going to univesrity then so salaries like my children's father as a teacher earned then were rare because most people didn't have the qualifications of teachers.

Let's take the teacher salary then as the indicator. he was earnintg £7500. the house cost £40k. Today the house costs £250k. 3 x joint salary of about the price of that house. Today two teachers on £30k (he was head of dept would that be more than £30k today) £60k x 3 £180k not that far short of the £250k price and also nowadays you can borrow more and interest rates are less than half. In those days you needed years of saving at the same lender and pretty much as it is going now.

I just don'g agree that in zone 5 for this type of house things are worse. This is 3 bed www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-34365383.html

Also people expectations are higher now. They dont' expect to get their furniture handed down from family members which is almost falling apart.

I'm not saying it's ever been easy for most people and it never will be but over time standards of living have risen.

how can you say that £180k is not that far short of £250K there is a difference of 70K that's a pretty big difference, not sure a building society would accept that,

customer: well yes it is 70k over budget but relatively speaking its not that far short of our income

bank manager: its still 70K over your afforability! no mortgage!

Agree re: higher expectations, hand-me-down furniture and second-hand baby stuff. Yes I did all that, still have a good percentage of the hand-me-down furniture, but it was quality and you could say that was another benefit of being born when we were! (i.e. there was both the tradition and the acceptance of handing down stuff, and it was good enough quality to pass on)

However I just think you are kidding yourself with these house price examples. It is common knowledge that people cannot buy like we could in the 80s. Read the OP 'I'm 30 and don't know any people my age who own their own homes unless they were substantially subsidised by their parents.'

Also you are as always, very rude to SAHMS and still under the illusion that everybody could just make a 'sensible career choice' and be able to afford the house of their choice.

And £180k not that far short of the £250k price ?

i also think peoples expectations have changed since the rise of places like Ikea, furniture no longer has the longevity or the price tag that it used to.

it is much cheaper now to buy furniture than it used to be.

but yes i have looked to buy furniture etc second hand when i've been skint, as have many others as i have also sold on furniture quite easily through gumtree etc.

LieInsAreRarerThanTigers i love your name

If the babyboomers are so well off, maybe they give their kids a leg up with a deposit on a home for them?

mmmmm I'd love to give the kids a leg up - but.... the government have taken away our tax credits and will be taking away our Child Benefit - we are on the lowest bracket for both of those to happen - so not poor but not "rich" either....

We also have the joy of 2 sets of parents alive but unwell - living with all those things that used to bump off the oldies back in the day (said with fond affection as that is what ours call themselves) - emphysema, chronic heart failure, inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis and Alzheimers - between running them to their hospital appointments and the kids to their stuff - and paying for both sides, we are feeling a bit squeezed.... then when the oldies get too much to handle and need full time care, we either soak it up, one of us quits work to do it, or they go into full time care and their house is sold to pay for it, and if they "live long and prosper" in one of these places, we then end up topping up the fees when their money is gone.....

I do not for one moment begrudge this, but feel that folks bleating on that my generation have it sooooooooooo good need to wake up and smell the coffee!

Bit I am of your generation ByTheWay.

I don't think it's all black and white and people have pointed out lots of advantages of being young now. However, I think they will still be left with the same issues re: the 'oldies' (us!) in 20-40 years time.

Mortgages were rationed in the 1970s and as others have said the womems income was not always counted because it was assumed she would give up work. Building society managers had real power. You had to have saved with them and have a reasonable deposit. You couldn't just walk in off the street and ask for one. Banks didn't do mortgages.

nagy we have to remember the 'babyboomer' period (1946 - 1965?) is two decades, so quite a few social /financial changes went on in that time.

Late babyboomers were starting careers and buying property in the 80s, before the recession hit. Hence dh could buy his 2-bed flat at 22. Generation Xer me - I came out of college in 1989 to mass unemployment and moved back in with my parents for 5 years!

Oh yeah 180k is like 250k. Its nearly 5 years wages for my husband!

I had my first DC in 1980......The 80's = high inflation(maybe not as high as 70s but still high), high interest rates ( ours hit 15.75%), and high unemployment.

The babyboomers do spread over two generations really. I think the older grammar school boomers did better than the later comp pupils!

I have 3 DC age 25 to 31 and 3 Teenagers still at school.

The eldest 3 have done very well in education, jobs, buying homes etc. The younger 3 will struggle more because of tuition fees etc. I do hope they are not of the older 3. DH have done our best for all of them.

I don't agree. In those days you were lucky to borrow 2.5x income. These days you can borrow more. I have been very surprised recently. I thought we were back to very tough times on lending. Also the head of Dept teacher salary I suggested was £30k in London might in fact be more - teachers on here can let us know and the house for sale could be negotiated down - that was an advertised price.

Previously mnost people couldn't in a blue moon own a house, only professionals like my parents and my husband and I could. Nowadays may be it is hard again too but house prices are not huge everywhere. teh house my mother moved to in 1939 in that street they are currently for sale at £50k in 2011 in the NE.

It would help this discussion if people understood what period the baby boomers covered. Wikipedia gives the dates of those born from 1946 to 1964.

Generation X is defined as those born from 1965 to 1982.

krystianah your comment "I believe the personal allowance is something like £9,900 if you are 65+? Not bad on top of a state pension I suggest." shows you don't understand how pensions are taxed. The state pension is taxable. If you also have a company pension and/or a job that £9900 is first reduced by the amount of your state pension. It isn't state pension plus another £9900 tax-free.

I'm not sure it was just professionals that could buy their own homes Xenia.
My grandparents both owned their own modest homes before they died. They did rent as newly weds post WW1 but they did manage to save a few hundred and bought for cash during the 1930's. My own parents lived with their parents until they got a new council house (1958or9) but they had saved a deposit and got a mortgage by the mid 1960's. Some chose to remain in their council homes but the majority of my school friends parents bought.....very ordinary factory workers who all left school at 14 or 15 with no qualifications. They were not babyboomers they all pre war babies.

What about the 'Loads -a-Money' generation. The young adults of the thatcher years. They must have done OK.

Oh I missed that! Are they Generation X?

On that definition then I was a baby boomer (just) - which bit was easy for me - the no maternity rights back at work full time with a baby of 2 weeks, all baby stuff second hand etc etc. yes if you own a house over a 40 year period you will probably find you make some money on it in any 40 year period but we had a period when property prices in the 90s were right right down, loans were higher for people than the house value, interest rates went up to 12%. It was not at all easy for many.

We are certainly in a recession now and it is the first time in I think 34 years when real incomes are falling although inflation is nothing like people suffered in the 70s -0 we had something like a 60% rise in prices in 3 years. People's life savings were worth so little. it was a really really hard time. People just forget.