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?

Gosh, I'm a baby boomer! just.

It depends on circumstances, at the age of 22, I had a mortgage with DH on a small semi. Was in a local goverment job, DH runs his own business, built from nothing. We have worked hard for all we have now, nothing handed to us at all. We paid for own wedding, every penny. bought old cars, no holidays,did house up ourselves. etc.

We have no parents.

We intend to see our kids set up for life, but that is our choice.

Property prices for first-time buyers have been exorbitant for the last ten years, not just now when real income has fallen.

Property used to be a good bet over a 40 year period, we are talking double in 2 or 3 years at times over the last decade. Where have you been Xenia?
As for going back to full time work with a two week old baby that was your choice - the choice you are always saying ALL other mothers should make because staying at home is SO stupid! That was the sacrifice you chose to make to own the house you did - the point is that now, most people still couldn't get the house even if you did work from two weeks after giving birth!
If you bought a house in 1983 you were barely affected by the high interest rates in the 90s. Our mortgage went as high as about, ooh, £200 a month!

It's interesting that they say generation x extends to 1982. In this country at least I'd say it finishes a few years earlier than that. I was born in 1980, a few years earlier I would have escaped tuition fees and perhaps been in a position to buy a house circa 2000. These two things alone would mean I would be in a much more fortunate position than I am now.

I have friends who bought a new build semi for 30k in 1999. They sold 6 years later for 90k. Despite following very similar paths career wise, my sister and I live quite different lifestyles just by virtue of her being 3 years older.

Sorry you are wrong anyone who bought a house in the mid 1980's would have been affected by high interest rates.. We bought in1979 (25 year mortgage) and we very nearly lost everything because of no salary increases for years and high interest rates and inflation.

OK nagy I accept that's true if you had a big mortgage. DH only had to borrow £15000 to buy his £29000 flat!
We bought a 3 bed semi in outer London in 1994 which had gone to 6x its value by 2005.

You are the same age as my eldest tyler80! He like you was unlucky to be one of the first to pay tution fees. He did qualify for a small grant in his first year of university (£800 I think).

But he in turn has had it easier than his younger brothers. He had no problems getting a job on graduation. Managed to save for a deposit and should be mortgage free by 35/36 (by the time his 1st DC starts school). He prefers to own a more modest house than to struggle with a massive mortgage. His 17 year old BD has decided not to go to university because of the debt.

BD......I mean his brother.

LieIns....50% deposit at anytime means you have a bloody good start! And London and SE isn't like the rest of the UK.

Yes, that's what I mean, he was a babyboomer and he had a bloody good start! He was a trainee at the BBC, 22 years old and had some savings and a few grand from his mum, a widowed retired teacher who had had no mortgage herself for about 30 years.
That sort of situation is so much rarer now.

The salary for an equivalent job now (if you could find one) would be about £22,000. Where would his 50% deposit come from now?

I suppose even now if parents come up with a few grand it is possible to get on the ladder. Although 50% deposit would still be out of the question for most. I understand BBC are moving ooop north. Lots of cheaper houses there!

Yes, but this was in London and xenia was talking about London too...
If a 22 year old was on £22,000 now and their parents were able to generously stump up say £20,000, it would still get them nowhere. Even with a couple earning that much each (fairly unlikely at 22), each with a donation from parents, They'd have £40,000 plus realistically be able to borrow about £100,000.

Liein - Mothers went back to work after 2 weeks off to have a baby, because their choice was either to do this or have no job. Until the late 70's there was no such thing as maternity leave - it just didn't exist. You could normally book 2 or 3 weeks off of annual leave - remember people normally got only 2 or 3 weeks annual leave a year.

After you had used your annual leave though you had no choice but to go back to work or give up your job. That is one of the reasons why there were relatively few mothers with young babies or toddlers working.

House prices have soared in the last 11 years. But people forget the really hard times many people suffered during the 80's. A small proportion of the poipulation did very well during the 80's - particularly in the South of England. But in many places unemployment was very high, repossessions and bankruptcies were very high - much higher than at present, and there was lots of people in negative equity.

All those of you talking about how expensive interest rates were in the 1980s relative to now might like to refer to this Guardian article from a few days ago, pointing out that

"Mortgage rates have fallen to their lowest level in 23 years, it was claimed this week. Financial data provider Moneyfacts says new fixed-rate and tracker deals are the cheapest they have been since it started to record rates in 1988."

www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jul/01/mortgage-lenders-cheapest-deals-large-deposit

ie rates in the 1980's were actually much cheaper than now. Yes, we know they rose shortly after, but only for a couple of years - and rising wage inflation helped to offset that (as it did in the 70s of course). Now, most people are experiencing wage deflation in real terms - put your hand up if you took home a 5% + wage increase last year. Thought not.

Don't forget headlines like this either:

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ianmcowie/100010716/parents-hit-hardest-by-high-marginal-tax-rates-and-rising-childcare-costs/

"Families with children need to earn 20pc more than they did a year ago to maintain a ?minimum acceptable standard of living? according to analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation."

:(

Yes Lesley, the late 70's, (1975 to be precise) so benefitted most babyboomers born from the mid-50s onwards. For all but teen parents born in the 60s then maternity leave did exist, anyway there was often scope to take unpaid leave on negotiation with employers.

Though I do agree that in non-financial terms, lesley, you are 100% right - as a woman, and a member of an ethnic minority, I am aware that so many things I take for granted I would not have enjoyed pre-1980's.

Valerie Grove in The Times, July 15th 2008: 'I was one of the first grateful beneficiaries (of the new maternity leave legislation). There were very few women in the office and those who had babies tended to leave anyway, from choice. Families could still get by on one income then. It was undoubtedly a benefit for me: between 1976 and 1983 I took four maternity leaves - each 16 weeks long, and a man deputised for me during the last three.'
So in that respect babyboomers are better off than the generation before them, and it has also been easier to go up the property ladder.

I have a DC who is on a very good salary paying £1000 pm rent in London. If she came back to the east mids she could easily buy a house. But of course she wouldn't earn as much here and she loves living where she does.

I think that this time those in the SE are suffering more. The rest of us are used to it........1400 skilled workers gone from train makers in Derby.

Why does everyone keep saying it is impossible to buy a house in the southeast? I live in the southeast, it is possible to buy a 3 bedroom house [ex local authority] for £130,000 . Plenty of people commute into London from this area.

"Financial data provider Moneyfacts says new fixed-rate and tracker deals are the cheapest they have been since it started to record rates in 1988 ... ie rates in the 1980's were actually much cheaper than now."

Utter rot. Do you know nothing of statistics? You can 'prove' anything if you choose data from the right timeframe to justify your theory.
Try looking at this and tell me that interest rates in the 80s were low.

Apols for any mistakes: preview isn't working for me

Dang. It didn't work

Agreed some things are better now, less sex/race discrimination is a good example. All sorts of other things are worse, too, e.g. some might say the pressure and working hours, partly brought about for financial reasons but also the fast pace of modern life with all the technology etc. not letting people have down time.
But the OP was mainly about house prices, pensions and retirement.

Try this historical data instead.
Comparing house prices to wages is a bit of a red herring because the price of houses is dependent on interest rates. We should really be comparing the ratio of mortgage repayments to net wages - anyone got any data?
The same repayment will buy so much more ATM because interest is so much lower. And if there is more cheap credit washing around then house prices will go up to accommodate it.

still no preview.

It's not just about interest rate. Inflation is on the way up. In 1975 inflation peaked at 24.2%. It stayed high and peaked again in 1980 at 18%. Those years were no fun to live through. It hasn't all been fun for the baby boomers.

I found looking at that list of interest rates a bit chilling really.

I remember dreading getting the increase notifications through the post. They would arrive almost monthly telling us our repayments were going up.
DH had his salary frozen for 5 years but he was lucky many lost their jobs.
We struggled to keep our old banger of a car going to get DH to work, had no holidays, and mums swapped DC clothes and baby stuff or bought it from jumble sales. Mine had new shoes because my parents helped out. They also paid for food at times. One thing I do remember was the rates(council tax) went up every year almost in line with inflation which only added to the misery.