to feel shit about renting at 30?

[ScaredBUTstrong]

Been renting since I was 18, no way of ever saving for a deposit and all money was going in rent.
Husband similar position, I left my career after having our child and got £15000 redundancy however used it to keep me at home for the last few years and have now gone back to work as he starts school this year but we will never be able to save for a mortgage.
Rents are £1000 for a 2 bed here ( Horsham West Sussex ) and they are bloody hard to get, everyone's going after the same houses you get rejected for bad credit which I'm paying off lots of landlords don't want kids etc.
feels like my sons childhood has and will be spent with a whole load of uncertainty and worry.
Feeling like I've let him down.

And... You could still look in to shared ownership.
I've asked you a few times now op. Is that something you could consider?
Gradually increase your shares?

Of course Muff is right that 13% on a £60k place (£7800 interest) v say 2% on a £200k place now , even allowing for the fact it would be then and now usually a repayment mortgage over 25 years so a good bit of the monthly payments capital repayments.

I think the point we older ones make is just that it was not dead easy before in any sense and some of us went through virtual hell to get to where we now are 20 or 30 years on! That there was masses of early sacrifice, no maternity leaves really, full time work, no tax credits or help with childcare costs and in those days much lower wages.

So for those wanting to buy now I continue to say buy before you have a baby (I bought my first place when I was 8 months pregnant aged 22, but always worked full time and just had a few weeks off ) Other people my stage often did not have children for another 30 years and had gap years and messed around and didn't pursue a career whole heartedly, went to parties, went dancing etc. i didn't do that which was fine as I didn't want to and put my all into buying/career.

Anyway it's not easy but my suggestions above are worth considering - the sofa surfing, the living with parents which many young people tolerate whilst saying a mortgage which yes can still just be 5% of the property value, the living in areas you hate, the slumming it in virtual slums because that's the only place you can afford, the deferment of a nice life now to have a nicer life later - what I summarise as jam tomorrow. However we do a huge disfavour to people if we suggest now or ever in the past everyone will have been well off enough to buy a home. In most of English history many people's wages have never been high enough to buy.

I don't think anyone's suggesting it was ever easy. Just that anyone who suggests it was ever thus is wrong. And really, dancing through the centuries in order to try and normalise the present situation simply won't do. The appropriate comparisons are with the past couple of decades, not the fourteenth century. I think it's fair to say OP could've made choices that would enable her to be in a better position to purchase now, and hasn't, and it's fair enough that she did that. However, it wasn't her choice to be a young adult at a time when house prices bear less resemblance to average incomes than they have in decades.

OP could you move away from London altogether and your DP get a new job in the new location?

40k isnt enough to live the life you want in London, but 30k+ further north could be, as houses there are less.

Also, as a general rule, if you're going to be a SAHM then you need to be able to finance it on the salary you have coming in each month, otherwise you can't afford it.

What I find puzzling is all the posts from people who have voluntarily given up work but find it unfair that this has consequences on their purchasing power and income.

OP from the sound of it has spent 5 years out of work, by choice. Or on extended maternity leave, whatever you prefer to call it. Presumably she has enjoyed that time, benefitted from it, and that's what she gets in compensation for the loss of income. She doesn't get both - there isn't some magical fairy that provides an extra income for SAHPs.

I agree with buying as early as possible, if you can at all. I don't think expecting a family home in your preferred area as your ftb is realistic.

Well yes Elke. I was back at work full time when the first baby was 2 weeks old and no that is not easy, hiding in the toilets expressing breastmilk, trying to leave a meeting dead on 6 to get hom to feed, up every 2 hours all night to feed. Not easy but if you want your jam tomorrow (a house) then you do it. If you want to rent you don't.

One of the bigger differences in London now although recent changes make it better has been huge stamp duties which mean moving every 2 or 3 years is not so sensible as it was as your pay rises if you were wise enough to pick careers where pay rises. We had a small terraced house, then a semi by the time baby 3 came along, then a small detached, then two buy to lets we sold at a massive loss in the 1990s but having put every last penny into paying off the loans on them with our chidlren in second hand clothes, no meals out etc; and then bought this big house which I hope to die in in about 45 years' time. Today stamp duty probably means it's best not to make quite so many moves. My daughter was given £10k by her father for her first place (tiny 1 bed in London) and 100% of that generous gift went to the Government to pay for pointless foreign wars and foreign aid, a massive state and idle benefits claimants. That £10k could instead have kept her mortgage down by another £10k.

The thing I've found (and not suggesting anyone here has expressed it) is the thinly veiled jealousy towards owners. We own two properties, one that we rent out. Two mortgages, one of them BTL. Next to no profit on the BTL, it evens out and ticks over with rent v repairs etc.

And there are folk we know who will trot out along the lines of "ah but it's ok for you, you've got TWO houses These are folk who've had the same opportunities as us, made different choices, are now seemingly stuck renting. It's as if they've forgotten we slept on the floor of MIL's 1bed flat in London to scrimp and save, hardly went out for three years and still had to borrow to afford the deposit. Oh no, two houses just fell from the sky, straight into our lap

reddaisy taxes (including stamp duty) pays for things that we all need and use, not just war and benefit claimants. I'm not even sure how a discussion about the costs of war and benefits fits into this thread but I'm assuming you and your daughter have used the NHS or state education and other universal services at some point? If you have then those are all things that we fund through various taxes. I have paid stamp duty more than nice and although difficult to find the money I didn't begrudge paying it as I saw if as a cost of moving in the same light as estate agent fees, sinking fund contributions, solicitors fees, mortgage arrangement fees, surveys....

Don't worry, super, Red - Xenia - (insert namechange) is a one trick pony: EVERYTHING is about how hard-working a taxpayer she is v. the rest of the world (bar immigrants, 99% of us are lazy scroungers to whom she is superior), every penny of her taxes is transferred via online debit to millions of feckless wasters (none is spent on infrastructure), and how women should be and do exactly as she does or they are also lazy, scrounging, feckless prostitutes who deserve the worst.

In her eyes, poor people are always poor due entirely to their own fecklessness and stupidity, why can't they all be like immigrants who work for less than min. wage and sleep in slums run by rogues (expecting things like min. wage, secure renting, non-slum conditions (never mind that slum living causes disease among other ills, which cost society money) is just 'featherbedding the poor'), they just need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, shut up, doff caps to da' master and serve him.

That explains it then expat. I must admit I was totally baffled by reds random idle benefit claimant comment but your post has explained it perfectly

I was just supporting Elke's point. Many people in the UK think tax is too high (and no I have not used state education for my children - I am nice like that because I consider the less fortunate and do not hog state school places that others might need).

And here we go again! Taxes are too high due to benefits claimants. Any thread about money becomes about how the welfare state is the cause of all ill in British society. It's just a broken record, Super, with some.

Many people in the UK think tax is too high (and no I have not used state education for my children - I am nice like that because I consider the less fortunate and do not hog state school places that others might need).

And many think it's very low compared to many other countries. The equivalent of stamp duty is 5-10% in much of Europe, for example, and somebody who earns 50k would probably pay half of that in direct taxation.

Elkes point was nothing like yours red and this thread was not about taxation and use of taxes. Elke was talking about choices and not being able to have it all which is very different from your attempt at derailing the thread by talking about 'idle benefit claimants'.
Have you used the NHS? Will you be wanting a state pension? Any need for the police in the past, present or future? Other state funded services?
I returned to work when my child was only 5 months old because I realised that I couldn't have it all and I had a mortgage to pay, my child also attends a private school (but I don't expect a halo for not using up a state school place) and I still don't begrudge paying taxes including stamp duty.

Don't - there is going to a massive property crash in the next couple of years. Just make sure you have some savings.

And much of the country has not been enjoying the big property price increases of London.
(I would like the state to be about half the size it is but yes I agree that is a topic for another thread).

Exactly reddaisy.

I have no worries about a property crash, I have bought a bargain of a house in scotland a few minutes walk from a newly built railway station on the longest new domestic railway to be constructed in Britain for over 100 years - opening next month.

A large state is a driver of social stability. If the state is a major employer then too many people have a stake in the status quo to start revolutions. But yes, for another thread!

I do think that people who are comfortable in the housing sense are usually there just as much by luck as by good judgement. The fluctuations in the housing market, changes in the economy in general and how that coincides with personal circumstances are usually out of individual control. And they massively influence housing "success". Not to mention where you were born and the average house cost:income ratio for that place.

When there is a thread about housing people always mention Germany but there was an article in Guardian few weeks ago saying that there is huge housing problem too.
As for other countries, some pp mentioned Spain and Turkey saying that people there dont care about ownership thats no true. They do and they were building houses like mad until the crisis. Everywhere in the world people desire to have a permanent secure house when they have children. It is not a nasty British desease.
In Britain renting is horrible and renting in London is very expensive, it keeps going up so YANBU OP.

The house my mother grew up in costs about £55k today in the NE of England.

Ah whether things are luck, judgment or hard work is never very easy to work out. Am I lucky that I've worked for 30 years full time and lucky I moved hundreds of miles away from all family support to find work or was that judgment? I suspect more judgment than luck.

Well I moved over 10,000 miles away from all of my family support to follow the job market for my profession and it still took me until I was in my late 30s to buy a house and that with family help and with savings and being careful with money and not having children until my late 30s and blah blah blah. So yes, I do think it's as much luck as it is judgement.

SweetAndFullOfGrace I agree.

I didn't plan on my husband developing cancer, treatment affecting his mood and mental state so much that he got us both into financial difficulties, before inconveniently dying.

I wouldn't have planned that.

Nor would I have ( as her only relative) becoming a carer for my disabled mother meaning that some great job opportunities were not open to us ( a 5 year contract in Dubai for instance).

Sometimes life throws a curved ball, and no amount of planning can compensate for that.

Yes it can be tought. I did have £2m life insurance though when the children were young so you can protect against death financially and many people do. You can also write it into trust with a simple form from the insurance company so that when you die the state does not take 40% of it in inheritance tax. In other words even with issues like detah planning and making sure you have a will - I had my first one produced when I was 18 - is a good idea.

two things:

• renting is the norm in a lot of other European countries, even for those who could afford to buy, there is no shame attached AT ALL.
• look into shared ownership.

Good luck OP!

Ive just had a load of pudding and whilst licking the empty packet I thought:

'I've eaten all the tiramisu, it's not fair that their isn't anymore left.'

Then I remembered this thread.