To think that actually 30 isnt the new 20?

[JenPoll01]

Conversation with group of mates this evening at friends' house...

"30 is the new 20, we dont need to worry yet."

We (group of about 10 of us) live in London. Husband and i got married 6 months ago and will shortly move to Bucks where we are buying our first house and will have first baby hopefully soon after. I am 28 and we are all aged between 28-34. We are the only ones to have ever saved. Despite the lowest salary of the group being £45k (we have never previously talked about £ but convo became rather in depth after i said that i was very surprised that noone had any savings whatsoever) and highest being £70k a year.

Apparently we are in the minority? Surely not? They all spend every penny they have on goong out, lavish hols and clothes and have hige credit card debts. We of course go out with them but not to everything (they all go out at least twice mid week too). We love them dearly but i have come away tonight wondering if i am alone in thinking they will regret this complacency eventually?!

"Bucks"

Wait...so can I have a unicorn.

Oh no crap! I'm 28 so that would make me 18 right? I'm confused.

Op: you are not smug at all.
I know a 35 year old who earns £200k plus and yet has no savings.

My circle of friends seems to be split - half just starting on the property ladder and half not.

I'm 30 and I have noticed that this split has created a difficult divide as, as OP said my homeowner friends have an evening in or go to a cheap pub for a meal and have done for years to afford the deposits for houses. Whereas the renters all have massive credit card debt, broke at the end of the month, designer clothing, clubbing everynight etc. because they are "still young".

It's just personal peeference and at least if I do want a wild night I know who to see!

It's all relative though. When I was looking to buy my first house nearly 25 years ago, (£53,000 in Home Counties, with a £5000 deposit) it seemed utterly impossible on the wages at the time. I only managed it due to my parents lending me the deposit (which I paid back monthly on top of the mortgage). Not sure if IKEA even existed in those days (possibly one branch at Brent Cross), but I scraped together furniture from antique fairs and flea markets for peanuts.
Is it so very different nowadays? House prices have ballooned, yes, but wages have risen also. But possibly our expectations have risen also, so for many/some, second-hand furniture and low-key holidays are not acceptable.
I've had (young) people tell me we're lucky to be nearly mortgage-free now, but it's not a fair comparison. Compare in 25 years' time, if you must.

What I don't know about today's 20 year olds is how they get onto the career ladder at all, let alone property ladder. If doing a gap year/backpacking after uni/doing internships is now pretty standard, you may still be studying at 22, like my youngest cousin is.

I was in my first job at 22, so were most of my friends, and most had bought their first flats by their mid-20s. I hadn't only because I had a crap boyfriend who refused to settle down, I was fortunate enough to be able to afford to buy on my own when I was single again aged 30, but that did mean I had to stay in a job I hated to be able to afford to buy on my own. I'd been wanting to change career path but I couldn't do that AND buy property.

The only friends of mine who didn't manage to buy anywhere by now (we're all late 30s) is one who still lives with their parents (that's a whole other kettle of fish) and one who has changed career about 3 times since I've know her, so that took all her savings.

That's what I worry about for today's 20 somethings - can they afford to screw up their degree or career or do a mid-20s career change? Will they all give up on gap years and back packing? I never got to backpack myself or do inter railing, and I think it's sad if other young people miss out on that because they feel they have to go straight into jobs, but I did catch up on a lot of the travelling I missed out on in my early 30s instead, when I was single and solvent.

I feel like I am one of the lucky ones - I 'wasted' my 20s in a dead end relationship but in my 30s managed to get on the property ladder, have some awesome holidays, meet DH and have children. I never take it for granted! But the thing I didn't sort out was was my career and I'm now unsure I'll ever be able to have the career I dreamed of, or at least be able to earn money doing what I love. There'll always be one piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit, it seems.

I dont really understand the 'settled' thing. I am 30, married, 3 children, had a mortgage for 11 years but still am out all time, go on holidays/nights away with my friends every 6 weeks, go clubbing etc. I dont think I will ever 'settle down'

I love being 30.

I am finally comfortable in my skin.

I also don't give a fuckety fuck about the life choices of other people.

Life is not a competition, OP.

I also dont think it will matter so much now property isnt going up so much. I put 6k down on my first place when I was 18/19 but the same place today you would need 25k+. There are a lot of people who are my age that waited who are struggling to buy now, but that was just because I had suspicions properties where going to rise at 18 (sadcase).

I wouldnt want to live in Bucks though as I had to live there at 18 with work and it was bloody boring! Only good thing is being relatively close to London.

Abso-flipping-lutely Summerbreezer! Bang on the nose.

Turning 30 made me braver to say "this is what I want and that's my business" but also to not hold myself against other people and their standards.

I am happy, I love my life and I am blessed.

My position is that i will be paying the same towards a mortgage as i am towards rent currently. I'll have more spare cash as i won't be saving quite so hard, so i am hoping to start having a holiday here and there.

I do want some of the nice things in life and some exciting experiences as other posters have said. I suppose i'm fortunate that where i live means that i don't have to borrow the absolute maximum i can afford for a mortgage. I can't image trying to buy something in the south east, it must be really tough.

Loved being 30. At the time it was the early 90s and all if my circle of friends had kids and mortgages.

Mine were at school.

We brought our first house in 1988 for £34,000. 3 bed detached nice area with a deposit of £400. Buying a house was easy. You couid borrow up to 3 and a half times your income and very littie questions asked.

Everyone I knew had a house/mortgage in their 20s unless they didn't want to.

How times have changed. Agree op that things are getting later now first house, child etc.

Quite normal now to hear couples having their first child at 40. Back in the day that was fairly uncommon.

To be honest OP your life sounds pretty dull to me (I'm 30 and have a DD!). They might say they're jealous and want to settle down etc but actually they're probably more than happy having expensive holidays and meals out. If they weren't they'd do something about it. It's not really any of your business anyway, just smile and nod when they moan and get on with what you want to do.

I'm 27, had DD at 23, bought my own place at 24. I still have weekends away with friends, nights out with DP, the occasional midweek dinner. It's about choices, I've no doubt that many in my situation would use that money for new kitchen, flooring, decorating, savings, pensions etc but I choose not to right now and I really love my life, I feel I have the perfect balance.

You seem strangely defensive about your own choices though.

OP, given that you earn less than your friends and have managed to save for a mortgage in 7 years (I'm presuming that you saved from age 21-28) what on earth makes you think that your friends won't be able to do the same when they decide it's what they want? (And when they're in stable relationships and, as others have mentioned, saving for a mortgage becomes a hell of a lot easier.)

I was down to the dregs of my bank account at the end of every month of my 20s. Funnily enough, now I'm in my late 30s and mortgaged up I don't look back and curse my financially unwise decisions to travel round Europe and South America on a shoestring, catch a good chunk of London's theatre and opera over the course of a decade and generally eat drink and make merry, all on a pittance of a PhD stipend until I was 26. I don't think many people have gone to their graves saying "if only I entered middle management earlier!"

And with regard to their moaning about house prices, the fact is that London's house prices are massively inflated at the moment, in case you haven't noticed. It's definitely moan-worthy, and is not a problem that is caused by 28 year olds dining out! As for their saying you're lucky - I'd imagine that they have picked up on the fact that you are feeling both proud and insecure about your decision to sacrifice a lot to save for this house, and are just being kind to try to validate your choice.

I'm 35 and only just thinking about doing the whole house and kids thing. I had a few smug 20 something friends laughing at our lack of house and kids too, and tutting at our multiple holidays a year. They haven't realised that we will have a £1m home paid off by 40, enough money in the bank to put several kids through private school already and plenty for more holidays, not counting any inheritance we will get.

They didn't notice we've been quietly building high paying careers, investing etc, they just saw the lack of house, car, kids, trappings of a middle class existence and thought we'd been very silly indeed. I've called plenty of friends "lucky" for having two kids and a suburban semi, just to make them feel good about their lives. Things aren't always what they seem OP, life is not a race!

Wow Apatite you sound a lot more smug than the op does.

In fact condescending would hit the mark more. You actually tell people lucky them to make them feel good about their lives?

I agree with Meg Jay that 30 is not the new 20 for many reasons, but none of her points are the ones that seem to be bugging you.

Financials can come on their own timeline and people's idea of how they want to use them are different. My DP and I have been married for almost 12 years and only really got to a place where we can really save each month last year (we're just entering our 30s ourselves) - and yes, we wasted money on meals and day trips but they seemed small joys to grab compared to waiting for surgery or results or looking at how much it would take for us to live in our dream area on our salaries or facing leaving a job for medical reasons. We chose to marry and have kids far earlier than our friends because it was our priority - and I was facing a strong family history of early menopause that I didn't tell most of the people in our lives who questioned our choices until it was clear I was going into menopause when I was 28. There are so many strands that you can't know - and there are just different priorities. In one of the most expensive cities in the world, those holidays and meals are hardly a drop and neither are those salaries.

They might regret it and/or they may enjoy and treasure those memories for the rest of their lives. Many things are a mix of feelings. Studies show many people say they regret not travelling in their youth while I find travelling so draining (and very awkward with my disabilities) that it is not something I get. Same studies show many people regret not saving earlier for their own house/pension and many people now worry that it won't happen at all with housing prices as they now are and so are making the best of what they can.

TL;DR: It's a lot more complicated than "complacency". People and circumstances are just more complicated.

Massive generalisations. OP you do sound "I am so much better than yow".

They haven't realised that we will have a £1m home paid off by 40, enough money in the bank to put several kids through private school already and plenty for more holidays, not counting any inheritance we will get.

Maybe they have realised, Apatite, but don't care?

However you play the game of life, it has a nasty habit of throwing curve balls at all of us. We never know when the rug will be pulled from under our feet.

As the wonderful John Finnemore says, there are only two rules to life:

Be kind.
Have fun.

these people are one redundancy or illness away from the food bank. Just as well they aren't planning kids.

I'd leave them to it and get on with your own life.

You might regret being so sensible. I think I might have done.

Anyway, they're earning enough that should they need to they can buckle down and get some serious saving done in a fairly short period by being frugal (relatively that is) for a year.

Different circumstances, but we bought a house in the suburbs about 7 years ago. I hate it.

Get over it Jennifer.