… to think that no one wants to speak up for the younger generation?

[SnowBells]

I don't know what it is. Maybe political correctness gone mad.

Pensioners who are already wealthy get winter fuel allowance, etc. Each time this kind of stuff gets mentioned on things like Question Time or something, people shout and whistle, showing complete disregard for the subject, and no real debate can happen.

I am not talking about the pensioners who aren't well off. But a huge proportion of pensioners did profit from the higher house prices - something not likely to happen for the younger generation.

Our kids have to pay to go to uni. My generation will retire much, much later. We also have to pay for inflated house prices.

And yet, there will be people who say 'but we've paid our taxes'. Well, we pay taxes and our kids will, too, but we are likely to get A LOT less back. I just feel there's a huge generational wealth divide. And I wonder why no one wants to discuss this properly? Why do people want to stop a debate before it has even had a chance to happen?

Everyone will die. Your legacy is the next generation. So why not speak up for what essentially will be your only legacy?

Actually, it is men of the younger generation who are worse off than their fathers. The lot of women, when you take into account equal pay, maternity rights, divorce settlements, attitudes to DV and sexual assault etc has become rather better than it was for their mothers.

The big exception is housing, which is supply and demand driven (increases in population have simply not been matched with house building). And pensions - but that largely applies only to men as historically women had lower wages and lower pensions, and part time workers had no pensions at all, and on divorce the man's pension did not used to be taken into account and divided so at least women now get treated fairly on pensions (even if pensions are generally lower for men than they used to be).

Yes, I suppose there is a major split between the generations on some issues.

Love my parents very much but get wound up that they cannot see how difficult it is now. They bought there house with right to buy and now own 2 properties, one of which they rent out. They have worked hard all their lives but nowhere near as hard as dh and I have and will have to work to have even a tiny portion of what they had.

I'm not bitter but I do worry about dcs future.

Profplum a lot of womens refuges can no longer offer places due to cutbacks. I saw some stats last year that said 4 out of 10 homeless women are homeless due to domestic abuse.

Let's face it, there is no future here for a lot of our children. The cost of living is out of control.

It is a sad state of affairs.

While we are finding it difficult (in our 30s), I think my DH's younger sibling will have it more so (early 20s). We are just on the cusp of being able to buy thanks to parental help. SiL will have that help, too - but she also will need a well-paid job that pays for it, and she hasn't had much luck.

DH and I are determined that our DC will get every single possible advantage we could possibly give them - paid for by us or through other things such as language skills (I speak several). It is just very unfortunate that it has to come to this. It is just sooooo competitive now, that at some point it will inevitably become just one big contest, where some will win, but the majority will lose.

The most generous societies are typically those where everyone has a decent standard of living. We are losing that aspect of life.

for much of my life I expected to retire at 60, and with a decent pension. Retirement age has increased and I am expected to fund the education of my child, and to help them onto the property ladder. I had no help from my family, didnt benefit from the sale of council houses and everything I have I worked for. Now I see a generation that aren't prepared to give up expensive coffees, that waste money left right and centre and drink themselves stupid. I have some sympathy for the problems, why I have been saying for years that pension age had to rise, but I'd have more if they were prepared to live as we did when saving for a deposit. I also dont spend my time whinging about how my expectations have changed but focus on what I can do about it. And I didnt vote for this - but it wasn't only pensioners who did, many younger people were stupid enough to do so. I dont doubt that many working age people will vote for it again at the next elections.

As for house ownership - historically working class families haven't owned property. We've had a couple of generations that are anomalies. It is a mixed blessings as houses need constant maintenance, you never live free of expenditure on property.

We no longer make items the rest of the world want to buy, we spend what money we have on toys from abroad and foreign holidays - money leaves the country all the time and the government make it worse by widening the differential between rich and poor.

If I was younger and couldn't find work here I'd be off abroad in search of a better standard of life. There are far more opportunities for young people now than when I was young and women could still be told at interview that employers didn't usually take women. But if I was starting out now I'd do at least as well as I have. I'd probably do better because access to the internet means I'd have had far better information about what I needed to do to succeed.

Anyone who expected to be economically inactive for 30-odd years as they were going to 'retire' at 60 is beyond deluded.

Those in their 60s a ow are in for a shock in the next 20 years when there is no money for them to swan around for free.

"a generation that aren't prepared to give up expensive coffees, that waste money left right and centre and drink themselves stupid"

Are you describing your child there alreadytaken?

One of my dc is very involved in LGTB
another in student union
I love them.
I love they will stick their heads above the parapet without the idea of bank of mum and dad

alreadytaken I was shocked when I visited my nephew at uni how much he tightened his belt to minimise debt from living expenses. A latte from the coffee shop was definitely a luxury.

Little bit of reality for you alreadytaken:

Say every working morning I (profligate 30-something working 60-70hrs/week and in need of some serious caffeine to prop my eyes open every morning), buy one "expensive coffee" costing £3 from Costa, Starbucks, Nero etc. That's five coffees per week, costing £15 per week in total. In a month (give or take whether it's 29-31 days), I spend, say, around 60-65 pounds on my daily coffee. Multiply it by twelve (glossing over holidays but that's OK, maybe occasionally I buy a coffee on Saturdays so it rounds out), and I could notch up about £750 pounds per year on coffee! (I personally don't, by the way, I make my own, but for the sake of argument etc....)

Well, that sounds a lot. But let's see what I could buy with it instead....

Where I live in the SE (not even London), to even buy a one- or two-bed flat on my (decent professional) salary I'd need a deposit of at least 60k (without even including stamp duty or fees...) If I saved the money I am theoretically spending on this shockingly expensive coffee it would take me EIGHTY years, yes EIGHTY, 80, EIGHT-ZERO years of no Costa cappucino even to save for my deposit (never mind the rest of the flat....)

If I drank five "expensive" coffees a day, that's the equivalent of sixteen years until my deposit. I'd need to be drinking more than fifteen shop-bought cappuccinos a day, spending twelve thousand pounds a year on coffees, before giving them up would mean I could save my deposit within five years. (You may extend the analogy ad infinitum as you wish....) Do you really think most young people are spending the equivalent of fifteen expensive coffees a day on unnecessary disposable fripperies?

Does this not prove to you yet that the problem is not spending money on coffee?

Have you understood yet why young people are so despondent?

alreadytaken In the early part of my career (in my 30s now, so have been working for well over a decade), Starbucks coffee was a luxury. In fact, I still don't drink it now. I haven't touched Starbucks for years.

I don't smoke. I am also almost teetotal. My GP was shocked to hear the amount of units I drink per annum can be counted using the fingers of only one hand. I think he was disappointed he could not repeat his speech on healthy living.

I do wish now I had bought a house (well, more likely a flat) earlier in life. I had chances, but there was always something inside me that wanted to wait until marriage, etc. before buying a house. Stupid, I know. Maybe because that's what is done where I come from - you rent until then.

Actually research has shown that young people at the moment are drinking significantly less than previous generations.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25652991

I think most of the current issue is down to house prices. I really do think we need rent control. A lot of new housing built in London are bought up by foreign investors, because it's so cheap and easy to make money on them. Also, their investments are then likely to be safer than in China, for example. I'm not actually making that up. Bloomberg reported that a while ago.

And means-testing needs to be introduced. That's only two things, and it would solve a large part of the problem. Yet, the government (nor Labour) will touch this...

Just want to add my tuppence here:

Dh and I are 40. Both teachers. Our house and lifestyle is half of my parents' in the 80s, despite the fact my DM was an administrator (lower paid than my job) and my DF had an equivalent professional job to a teacher. I remember thinking in my late teens when DH and I got together and had planned to be teachers that our lifestyle/house would be better than DM and DF. How wrong was I.

Hmm, well I do have some sympathy for Alreadytaken's expensive coffee scenario and traininthedistance has summed up the problem perfectly albeit, imo, ending up with the wrong conclusion. So, it is only 750, and that's a long way off a deposit. Well, yes, but it is still 750 towards it. Does nobody else think like that? I sat and did some online surveys this evening. It took me an hour and I earned 3.50. Now I guess many people will think I'm a mug for working away for what is a lot less than the minimum wage. I however, think of it as being another 3.50 closer to paying off my mortgage.

Sadly it's not just coffee but everything else. The lifestyles of younger people involves a lot more eating out, coffee, mobile phones, fashion, cars and tech. It all adds up to a baseline level of spending that I never had when I was young.

House prices are ridiculous but depends on how much you want something. Times are tough at the moment so young folks need to weigh up university, work, housing and lifestyle.

Bingo! Yep, they all have iPhones, takeaways and go out. When I was a yung 'un, we didn't have one. No shit, no one did!

Yep, yung uns nowadays, they just don't want it badly enough.

House!

Well there was no conclusion, so I'm not sure how it can be wrong. I was simply showing that alreadytaken is just simply wrong if she thinks that coffee is the thing that is expensive for young people today. And plain silly if she thinks that some kind of platitude about drinking too much austerity martyrdom about frothy coffees makes any difference to actual financial reality. (But those who believe that it's all the fault of the young people why they can't manage to obtain houses at market values of ten times their salaries won't ever be convinced... )

FWIW I don't know a single person my age or younger who lives like that (or drinks five takeaway coffees a week): most of us spend what money we have on rent, energy, food, etc. - like you would expect if you had a good grasp on the cost of living and what most people are paid in this country.
(Whereas I do happen to know an awful lot of people 50-plus, in quite ordinary jobs and lives, who spend what are to me absolutely enormous amounts of money on cars, kitchens, home decoration, consumer durables, holidays, and properties (including "investment" properties). And plenty of coffees to boot....)

Hasn't anyone on the thread anything to say about how they think young people are going to pay enough taxes to pay out their pensions, as well as paying for their own pensions, paying back their university fees, and affording those oh-so-easy-to-save-for-if-you-cut-out-the-frivolous-coffees houses? Remember that boomers retiring at 65 now are expecting to live for a further 20-30 years at least. Their pensions will come directly out of today's young people's tax contributions.

There is a demographic bulge of boomers compared to current younger generations, so just to afford the pension entitlement, younger people are going to have to pay higher levels of tax. If you're expecting that to happen maybe you'd better stop complaining about how many coffees they buy, because you'll be banking on them being willing for their taxes to go up considerably in a decade or so's time, and the mood among many young people at the moment is not really conducive to forking out even more in tax for those who want to pocket huge unearned windfalls from house price inflation as well. I mean you'd normally be a little less gleeful about how hard a bunch of people are finding it who you'll be hoping will be paying for your pension and your healthcare later on, no?

Every generation has it's issues. Maybe the current has it worse than many before it but I left school during the recession of 1990 and had no work but poorly paid menial stuff at £1.50/hour. I studied, like many, in college with no prospect of work afterwards. If I could have got a mortgage then interest rates were 15%. I remember the average wage being about £12k and the average house about £65k so houses were still hard to come by, especially with sky high interest rates. There were no 100% mortgages either.

University grants were also being cut about that time so the same sort of complaints were rife and many parents couldn't help their kids out due to negative equity, which plagued many for at least a decade after.

I didn't buy my first house until I was 30 and feel that's quite late but maybe that's how the current generation will have to do things.

I work fucking hard in the private sector for an absolute pittance compared to what my clients pay....and im a single parent ...and yes it annoys me but bite the hand that feeds etc.

The lifestyles of younger people involves a lot more eating out, coffee, mobile phones, fashion, cars and tech. It all adds up to a baseline level of spending that I never had when I was young.

Technotropic

I'm not sure how old you are or what you did when you were young, but suppose you ware a secretary in 1978, and your boss told you you don't need a freakin' typewriter, because… well, in "his days", he just wrote by hand.

The problem is that "mobile phones and tech" are VERY important these days. My personal laptop allows me to work for my employer as and when needed. Last year, my employer also cancelled all Blackberries worldwide, because they think BBs no longer perform the function needed, and required EVERY employee to use their own personal smartphone until they find a solution (likely to be iPhone).

If you stop young people to engage with technology, you are likely going to be taking away the ONE THING that could make them competitive. Look around you. Which industries are there where "oldies" cannot compete with the youngsters? Tech. Google, Facebook… median working age is something in the 20s. And no, Google does not just do the search engine we all know about, but a lot of other things. It's actually transforming the world somewhat.

DH and I are in our 30s. We have VERY good jobs that pay really well compared to most people in the UK (combined income is higher than 95% of UK households apparently). Isn't it weird that our income is higher than 95% of the population, and yet, we can't afford to buy a house without parental help... yet baby boomers who had jobs that never paid as well could?

Re. cars - you are generalizing there once again. The most expensive car we ever bought was our current one for £2,250 second hand. It's a decent car, because it used to be a company car - so it was well kept and not much used. We hope in a few years, after buying a house, we can actually treat ourselves to a posher car, but it will still be second hand. We don't see the point of paying megabucks for a new car that will see its value deteriorate by half over four years or so.

Fashion - if I did not have nice clothes at work, no one would take me seriously. There is an unwritten understanding that if they pay you well, you need to also be very presentable, and this often comes at a price (polyester suits are very easy to identify). It's almost like the image of the firm rests on your shoulders or something. Again, this might be difficult to understand for those people who have not worked in the same environment, and it annoys me a lot when a lot of older women who had a job but not a career smirk when they don't get what I mean.

DH and I did once discuss the conundrum of seeing a lot of premium or new cars in not so nice neighborhoods. In a way, we came to the conclusion that if you really can't see the light at the end of a tunnel… if you can't see yourself ever moving from the area because you can't afford to… you may spend your money on a car instead. The nice new car is a reachable dream. For many, home ownership is not.