Aibu to think that "suspended adulthood" is going to lead to large problems?

[BlancheBlue]

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/22/young-people-living-in-a-suspended-adulthood-finds-research

Just this really. There was a telling comment about this article with the ever increasing age profile of parents the chance of children knowing grandparents is going to be remote.

I think lots of the boomer generation really fail to understand this. Whenever it is said it is tough for young people que loads of "well I worked my arse off and owned a house by the time I was 21" type comments.

WankingMonkey you think that's bad? (My grandad says the same btw)
My own parents (early-mid 50's) seem to be incapable of understand what its like now. My cousin (age 28) is in the process of buying a flat in north london, it's £435,000, with shared ownership of 30%. They were going on the other day about how much he was going to have to pay, not only mortgage but also rent and then other bills. There's no way he could do it without shared ownership (baring the deaths of 2-4 of our family members ). My mum's convinced that if he just spent less he could buy the traditional way.

Using myself as an example:
At my current rate of saving, £500 per month, and a partner,who I don't have, saving equally it will take 8 years (I'd be my cousins age by then) to save the 20% deposit (which is the % they did, I think). In that 8 years house prices will have gone up hugely, if the current situation is anything to go by.

But they bought a 3 bedroom mid terrace, with parking and a garden, in london in their late 20's, on mediocre (at best) jobs. So surely everyone can still do this... .

Not so much house related but my parentd are the same as that on the job front. As when they were by brothers age it was easy to walk into a job from school with no qualifications besides (O-levels) GCSEs. Even without exam results you could do waitressing and such so everyone could get a job if they 'really wanted one'

I have been involved in many arguments between my brother who is trying his hardest to get ANY job (that is not just commission based) and my paretns who reckon he is happy not having one. They still think there are shitloads of jobs available for everyone as thats what it was like for them. My dad often says he got into his job (high level IT) right out of school, no a levels or anything so why does my brother not do that. It does not seem to maker sense to him that someone breaking into his position these days would likely have to have degrees, not even 'just' a levels. As such, its further proof that my brother is not trying hard enough, nor being ambitious enough. As anyone can do anything they put their minds to...including magicking jobs from thin air to waltz into

presumably rents and house prices in central stockholm would rocket, as they have done in london, and then housing would be allocated to the richest? Or the swedish equivalent of housing benefit would also have to increase massively to enable lower income people to continue to live there.

House prices in central Stockholm (and central Gothenburg/Uppsala) are already sky high - Stockholm prices are barmy and even where I live we sold our tiny flat for about 280K. A family sized house where I am will cost you 400-700 grand (uk pounds equivalent.)
Because the rents are so scare, second hand contracts are rife and expensive- uk SE prices. And so, so scarce - it's really hard to rent anywhere here.
I'm not sure how benefits work here - there's certainly less out and out poverty than the uk. It's an expensive country to live in though - things cost 3-10x the uk prices.

My grandfather used to ask me (at 18) when I was going to buy my first house as he bought his at 20 and paid outright for it with money he saved from his wage for a year

Are you 10? Wankingmonkey.

I'm mid sixties and my parents didn't own a house and I didn't expect to own one.
Where did DGF live that this was the case?
My DB was first in family to buy a house, that was 1981. He would have been 37.

... and DB had a large mortgage.

I'm mid sixties and my parents didn't own a house and I didn't expect to own one.
Where did DGF live that this was the case?
My DB was first in family to buy a house, that was 1981. He would have been 37.

My grandfather, were he still alive would be 106 right now.

Also he lived in the north east. Stanley to be more precise. House prices even today are miles lower than everywhere else. Can buy a 3 bed for 80-100k in many places here.

I am obviously not 10 I am nearly 30 (sadly)

The majority of young people are struggling to buy a house because supply is low, because prices have lost all sense of proportion to wages and because they have no way to raise the deposit. No denying that.

However a lot of young people (and in my personal experience, very well paid young people) are still renting because they won't shift their expectations of what they think their first home should be.

I earn just under 6 figures. Incidentally so do most of my friends, because i moved to the UK to pursue a particular career path and made friends with people training on the same graduate scheme).

I agree with previous posters that a lot of people of my generation (i am 30) need to reign in their expectations.

We bought a 3 bed house in zone 5. It has an avocado suite and a formica kitchen but it's a nice house and it's structurally sound. We are learning to live with the floral carpet. Our new area is grubby. There are a lot of HMOs and no amenities beyond chicken shops and corner shops.

My friends (who all earn the same as me, give or take) scoff and tease, they just cannot accept that their first home should be anything other than a chic flat in a desirable area with nice bars and independent shops. I know a lot of young people who bemoan not being able to afford a house but what a pp said is true: the issue is that they cannot afford the house they want, where they want it.

MidnightDexy I think you bought my old (late) next door neighbours house...

I'm young, I don't like new houses, I'd much rather buy an antique house stuck in the 70's.
And this is going to be a bit... weird... but I don't think the naice-ness of the area matters that much. It changes, in the 19 years I lived in our old house it went from very owner occupied & family friendly, to not some where you'd want to raise a family because of the number of drug dealers and growers on your street and very high numbers of people renting and houses not being looked after. That's gentrification for you, eventually it'll get nice again at the poorer people are being pushed out to margate/ramsgate

Midnight You do realise a 100k salary puts you in the top 2.5% of all earners in the UK?

You talk about "our" house so I presume you have bought with a partner on similar salary? So saving for a deposit and getting the large mortgage needed to buy in London was okay.

Think how impossible buying is for single people or couples on 20-25k salaries - especially in London and the SE and despite some beliefs on this thread many, many people in London are on these sort of salaries.

Touche olderthanyouthink. We hope the area will change for the better but it might, it might not. To be honest it can't get worse.

There are young people on this thread who are looking at the realities of wages and house prices and working out how they are going to get themselves on the housing ladder. I didn't say it's as easy as using charity shops and Stork, sorry if that's how it came across.

No I get that Blanche but the same logic could be applied to a couple in Manchester earning half of what we earn as a couple.

And the same logic could be applied to a couple in wales earning a quarter of what we earn as a couple.

My basic point, although clumsily executed on my part - apologies - is that it is irrefutably true that a lot of people can afford to buy a first home but don't because they can't have what the flat/house that they want.

I did say in my post that the majority of young people are unable to buy a home. But it doesn't change the fact that a lot of young people are able to do so, but won't shift their expectations

p.s. husband earns good London salary but half of what I earn. You're right that it wasn't a problem to save the deposit in the sense that we are childless and had disposable income and saved solidly for 3 years and then borrowed a chunk from my parents, which I have almost finished paying back.

If it took us 3 years and a temporary boost from bank of Mum and Dad I just can't imagine how the majority of young people are meant to do it.

I agree when it is frustrating when some members of the older generation don't seem to "get" the impossibility of house prices right now. But surely you could sit down with them and an i-pad and get them on right move and just proove to them what property costs now? My mum is 85 and has no mortgage but even she can grasp this.

Please also remember that many members of the older generation (I count myself as one at 53, easily old enough to be a grandma) are also frustrated by ridiculous house prices.

Our household income has more than doubled since we bought our house, but we can't afford to upgrade from scruffy 3 bed, 1 bath to maybe 4 bed and 2 bath (or even just downstairs loo). I do honestly understand that's a first world problem but there are very few people who genuinely benefit from stupid housing prices. As in all things in 21st Century Britain, the stupendously rich are getting fat on what everyone else does not have. Sickening.

prove not proove! I'm not daft, honest.

" i.e. people who have experienced full employment (leave a job and easy to get another quickly)"

So OH's experience of being made redundant twice and scraping by on semi-employment for the last twenty years of his working life never happened, eh? My own unemployment post uni in the 80s ditto?

Millenials, I have news for you. You don't have a monopoly on tough conditions, and it isn't all boomers' fault. Many many of the poorest are pensioners, not all of whom are middle class and bought their homes. So stop talking about how appalling we all are without actually doing the research.

I'm similar age to you bibbity and agree with all you say. DH and I understand all too well what our DCs are facing housing-wise but find it frustrating that the government and media have succeeded in making so many of the younger generation think this our fault rather than theirs.

We did face challenges in buying our homes too, usually without help as our parents and grandparents did not have anything to help with and we are, in many cases, now using what we have to help younger members of the family as much as we can.

It is sad that a lot of people like us, who do understand the challenges, are still classed as baby-boomers and blamed for the greed of politicians and the mega-rich

This thread reminded me of a thread I was on last year, and I've just been to have a look at it. Yes, I remembered right - there was a poster on there, just her and her dh (no children) in their 20s earning £120,000 combined and paying rent and council tax of £1350 per month, complaining that she would never be able to save enough to put down a deposit on a 3 bed house in a nice area. I said perhaps she could save enough to put down a deposit on a 1 or 2 bed flat in a not so nice area and she was with me!

bibbity I think that most millennials are not expecting to buy a 3 bed house straight away, and are not blaming the older generation.

The same way that most of the older generation do recognise that the current situation is particularly difficult, and are not telling younger people just stop buying your £4 coffees and you'll be fine you feckless idiots

But we've seen examples of both of those on here.

And apparently Gen X don't exist... Not everyone in the world is a boomer or a millennial, there's a whole swathe of people in the middle.

Can't get past the idea of sub £10k anywhere being a 'healthy' deposit... we had a deposit of £19k 18 months ago and still were met with sharp intakes of breath when we wanted a mortgage for a £120k terrace in a dilapidated state in rural North West.

I'm always watching the housing and mortgage market as we would like to move.

We will be working well into our late 60s/70s because we had our children late (and also we like working and don't fancy the idea of retirement with little to do - and as self employed people with inadequate pensions we are motivated to do it).

As previous posters have pointed out, it is fine to retire if you are only going to live another 10 years. But what if you (general population) are expected to live another 20 or 30 years? We all have to get used to the idea of working longer if we are going to live longer, if the jobs are there, of course. The problems facing the younger generation do not exist in a bubble.

I see a lot of younger parents on Mumsnet complaining that their parents aren't available for childcare. It is often because those parents are working. So, imo, with VERY few exceptions, we are all in a difficult place.

I'm always reluctant to comment on threads such as this, with my username - I'd meant it to be self-mocking, with a nod to our musical tastes, but hadn't realised how many people detest us.

However... A lot of older people seem to not realise quite how much things have changed for the younger generation and put this down to lazyness and unwillingness to sacrifice things when its not always the case

While this seems to be the experience of many posters, I'm amazed that people my age (nearing 70) don't accept that things have changed. How can we avoid knowing how hard it is for young people? We have families, most of us; we watch the news, read the papers, use social media.

In my circle, most of us grandparents are providing child care for parents who have to work. Many of us provide financial help for further education, housing and so on. Do we grudge it? Of course not. We wish passionately that we didn't need to - not because we're selfish but because it breaks our hearts to see our children work long hours in jobs they dislike but daren't give up, to see them struggle with huge mortgages and the lack of time with their own dc, to be unable, in some cases, to get a permanent contract or a foot on the property ladder. We're well aware of how humiliating it must be to rely on one's parents for help when those parents are approaching old age themselves.

It's not "wealthy boomers" or "feckless young people" to blame for the mess we're in - and we shouldn't let the powers-that-be set us against each other. I have nothing but sympathy and compassion for the under-40s in our country at the moment - the high-earners are in the minority. Most graduates I know are in relatively poorly-paid jobs with little security and those without supportive families are in a miserable situation. It's shameful.

www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/mayor-launches-london-living-rent-for-new-homes
Mayor of London talking about rents, might be of interest to some people on this thread.

It's not "wealthy boomers" or "feckless young people" to blame for the mess we're in - and we shouldn't let the powers-that-be set us against each other.

Very well said. Someone seems to have a vested interest in setting us against each other to stop us from looking for the real cause. (probably politics...)

I don't detest older people, nor do I blame them for anything either. It has just been my experience that the odler (and I am talking like 80+ here) people I have spoken to have that attitude. I would never say all older people think this.

Also the media do slant a lot of things to make out that the younger generation ARE indeed just lazy and unwilling to work hard so I can understand how older people who get their info mainly from the mainstream media think this.

odler = older

And 80+ as in 80 years+ rather than 80 people