to ask if you're pissed off with the Baby Boomers?

[DamFineBeaver]

Because people who are currently young-ish adults (MN's main demographic?), and younger, will be paying for the lavish lifestyle they've enjoyed?
The money borrowed for their nice big pensions will be paid back by us and our children.

Does this mean they shouldn't spend so much time in Tenerife?

bloomingmargaret lucky you to have a garden to grow veg in! All the families I know, (with parents in decent jobs) still just live in flats.

Gardens are only for the wealthy.

i think there is a lot of regional variation in house price affordability. take where we live in the south - yes house prices have got much less affordable. In others, for example south wales, they aren't that different compared to salaries. Miniumum wages have improved the salaries to make the mutliples pretty similar to what they were years ago. unless we concrete over the south, this isn't going to get any better though, is it? just stoppiing bus passes is going to make zilth difference

BloomingMargaret, exactly my point! The thing is all the above do not make the difference between being able to buy a house or not. What you have sited is a drop in the ocean. I also grow my own vegetables and bake my own bread. Yes, it does save pennies, but we are not talking pennies here, we are talking tens of thousands of pounds younger people are worse off... compared to the older generation at a similar point in their lives.

Sorry to bleat about carpet sweepers and washing machines! I don't for one moment imagine that buying household appliances or takeaways would make the difference in buyng or not buying a house.

The point I was trying to make was that being a sahm forty years ago was undoubtedly more labour intensive than it is these days. I don't know for sure as I wasn't one but I remember bits of drudgery from childhood.

I think it is truly worrying to see just how divisive this whole issue is.

summerworld
BBs bleating on about...
As soon as you use words like 'bleating' you expose your prejudices and thereby undermine your entire argument.

I don't know, the words summerworld uses indicate just how deep feelings run.

Jackieharris yes to bbers not understanding the insecurity of work now.

I think you will find that those BBers, like myself, who are still in the workplace understand it all too well.

Lazy simplistic thinking again.

I certainly agree with that! DH is on a fixed term contract.

to not understanding the insecurity of work. I've had more redundancy notices and 'at risk' letters than you can shake a stick at. Ridiculous thing to say.

you do know the BB generation can be as young as 50? I'm unemployed right now... this is just becoming laughable.

I think I might make a list of comedy sayings from this thread. The one about boomers conspiring to raise their own pension ages is still my favourite, although pensioners clogging up the garden centres is close behind.

The myth that people used to have jobs for live if they were born in the 1950s! First women in work were shunted back to the house when men got back from WWII. Then we had that awful 1970s period with 3 day weeks, strikes, sackings and the like. Then we had all those redundancies and mine closures. I could go on. The idea people were in high paid work for life with high pensions is not true for many. You did not even get the right to maternity pay even the 6 weeks at 90% pay until you'd been employed by an employer for 2 years which is why I did not qualify even for that for the first three babies.

I recall talking to a 65 yo babyboomer who shared he was spoilt for choice wrt employment after school (remember, with no qualifications at that point). He narrowed it down to three apprentiships eventually, all with big national companies. Needless to say, at the end of the 2-year apprentiship he WILL have had a permanent job for as along as he wanted it. As it happened, that was most of his working life. This baby boomer was born into very modest circumstances, but ended up residing in a posh village next to a pop-star. Yes, through careful planning and hard work.

Fast forward 40 years. My DH just completed his training in the same trade (so had all the necessary qualifications, to the highest level, in fact). No employer would touch him until he had 5 years experience. So he struggled as a self-employed tradesman building his business from scratch. Seven years later, he can get by on his self-employed earnings and companies do now invite him for interviews and offer contracts. But this is still very unpredictable.

Take me in an office job. I now do what would be at least 3 people's jobs in my parents' day. Yet I am only being paid for one, there is unbelievable pressure and deadlines, you are expected to answer your e-mails in the evening, weekends and while on holiday. Are you being paid extra for this overtime? Oh, yes, of course you are (NOT).

It is a different world. And it does get younger people's back up when BB make comments about working "as hard as them".

DH's job was never secure once Mrs T got elected. It wasn't just the miners and steel workers who lost their jobs. Entire industries went under all across the country. Engineering, boot and shoe, textiles very little remains. To top it all they sold all the utilities and council houses. That's the main reason there are no homes for families and only lower paid service/retail jobs.

Blame those who made the decisions not the poor sods who suffered the most, ie those who lost jobs/homes/businesses. Many of them were the BB you all love to hate.

And no BB didn't all vote tory.

Nobody is denying it is all true, JillyR. However, the majority of families could manage on just the husband's wage back then.

Why why do people think BB have had it easy? It makes me so mad! I'm apparently a BB, but a very very late one (1963).

Unemployment was sky high when I left university. I couldn't find a job for love nor money despite applying for over 100 jobs. I had no job security at all, all through the late 80s when I was first working. You could be sacked at the drop of a hat.

I had ds at 30, there were no tax credits or help with childcare, nothing at all. When I became a single parent, I had to pay for ds's childcare with no tact credits or support. I would have qualified for it now though, on the amounts I was earning then. House prices were really high relative to salaries when I was buying in the mid 90's.

I will have to work until I'm 67, and am still paying a big mortgage. The thing is, every generation thinks they are the first to do something. But as one of these so called Baby Boomers, I've had it tough, and not that much different from today.

nagynolonger ...and once they'd sold off the utilities companies they outsourced a lot of their employees' jobs to other countries. However, I thought that was more to do with corporate greed and globalisation, rather than the machinations of those pesky babyboomers.

Er Summerworld a lot of us still working! Did you miss all those posts? We have emails and ridiculous deadlines just like you plus we have children who are struggling to get a toehold in the world.
There is really no need for anyone to lecture, we know how hard it is now; people are simply trying to explain that - for a lot of us at least - there never was a golden age.

Nobody is denying it is all true, JillyR. However, the majority of families could manage on just the husband's wage back then.

When exactly was 'then', Summerworld?

I was a child in the sixties. My mother always worked.

I think summerworld is basing her 'facts' on this 65 year old bloke she once met who was 'spoilt for choice'. And people like margaret further up the thread...

I'm a BB.
I'm still working in the same "answering your emails at all hours" world as described above.
I've been made redundant and worked on short term contracts
I don't have a final salary pension.
I didn't vote Tory - I lived in a pit village in South Yorks in the 80's at the time of the miners' strike.
Both my DDs have permanent jobs, better pensions than I do and their own houses (both larger than mine!)

I am not sure I live in the same world as many of the posters on this thread!
But I hate the assumptions.

Maybe she met him at a garden centre, Gideon

IMO younger generation do not "hate" older folks, they resent the attitude and the comments and total lack of understanding. The world has changed, and not for the better. Permanent jobs are getting extinct, housing is getting out-of-reach and costs of living are climbing higher and higher.

And yes, younger people do work very hard, harder than their parents ever did in their jobs. But younger people are not seeing the benefits of their hard work. It all seeps through their fingers to pay the extortionate rent and other bills. If they have got £20 left over for an iPhone instalment, well, does that make up for the things that matter and which they are never likely to get like a good house in a decent area?

I' m sure corporate greed had/has a hell of a lot to do with it.

Also surprised by a BB doing a two year apprenticeship. My father, and later my brother and cousins all took 3-5 years to do theirs.

Summerworld I will hold my up hands over house prices. My house has already made more money than I ever will. It's absurd. What do we do about it though? Because anyone on this thread who is hoping to inherit from their boomer parents is part of the problem.