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.

Yes, it was a very interesting (and depressing) article! Though I wasn't sure how the 80s generation compares with generations pre 1960s - on average it seems to be poorer (economically) than generations born in 1970s and 1960s, but I assume the comparison would be different for the 1950s and previously.

The article did make explicit that one advantage of owner occupation is that you are buying an asset and therefore in general you are richer than if you don't. All very well to say 'renting can be great with proper controls' and "'Germany" - but the fact is that if you rent you don't accumulate wealth as you do if you owner occupy.

I understand I may be in the minority here ... But I don't think it is availability that is the problem and more the massive sense of entitlement that seems to be around now. And the lack of information easily available and given to younger people about budgetting, career paths etc. It should be mandatory but instead you have to look for it.

I'm currently studying around work with Uni. I will be in £18k of debt at the end of my course and to be honest, my salary expectations will never be huge. I don't mind though, because the actual amount per month I will have to pay back is hardly going to break the bank.

Our household income total is £25,000 (just dropped from £30,000 as I have reduced hours) and we are 27 years old. Even despite low wage salaries we still managed to buy a house 3 years ago. Our house cost £75,000 ... It is a 2 bedroom terrace first home. We saved £13,000 for deposit and fees ... Still had and have £100 pcm mobile phone bills, still went for nights out, still go on holidays. Didn't live with parents and are not in debt. Our mortgage is only going to take 15 years as well as we are over paying.

It isn't that it cannot be done ... It is that people are no longer willing to do it. Everyone now thinks they are a special little snowflake that deserves this and deserves that. They want to start off with a range rover and a four bed with a pool so they never bother with starter homes and deposits and just continue in their parents homes, wasting money and being told that the world is against them.

InsertWittyPunHere, I am glad that you have managed to find your way through.

However, your personal anecdote does not refute the mass of data from the Institute of Fiscal studies.

Where do you live InsertWittyPun? I don't think you could buy a shed for 75,000 where I'm from. You'd be looking at 120,000 at the very least, more like 150,000.

Insert, I was going to make the same point as golden. I'm in London, and a feasible two bed flat (not house), far from the centre, needing work, would be £175,000 or more. People can and do commute in, but commuting isn't free or cheap either.

I'm glad you were able to find something. I did too, and I feel very lucky (in addition to having worked my tail off to afford it.)

I bet loads of young people living in London would kill to inhabit a 2 bed terrace! I just looked on Rightmove and the cheapest one listed on there that is not shared ownership is £250,000. But there are very, very few places where a house can be bought for as little as £75k these day - and certainly very few of those where there are abundant jobs.

What are Millennials in more expensive areas supposed to do - where a similar house would be £200k or upwards? They can't all move to areas with low housing cost - many have other responsibilities (like care) where they are, or may work in sectors where jobs are concentrated in a geographical area. Not all of them will be hot shot lawyers or graduates - and a city needs cleaners, postal delivery people, bin emptiers to function just as much as it needs civil servants, marketing account managers, and lawyers. These people have a right to the city, the same as everyone else - we need to stop thinking that it's a privilege for someone to live in the place they've always inhabited, and start seeing it as a human right. Not least because the city cannot function without a mix of people.

For the record, I am someone who lives in a different and cheaper part of the country from the place I grew up in for work/housing reasons. I know the sacrifice it entails, and I also don't think it's something people should have to do. I hate people who operate on a 'race to the bottom' principle ('Oh, I had to make a totally miserable sacrifice to live my life, so why doesn't everyone else have to?'). That is no way to make policy decisions.

Insert - but you must realise you live in a very cheap area and lucky to have work there

Here a parking space nearby sold for £220,000. Not a 2 bed house.

A two bed house is £350,000 minimum. That's for a hours commute and needing renovation. Commute from that area would be £120 a week each ( train and tube needed). So that's £240 per couple, £960 a month in commuting fees alone for two. Plus extra childcare needed to cover longer commutes. Hence its cheaper to stay inside city and pay rent and have little or no commute fees, little childcare etc

One bed flats in my area start at 300k and two beds 400k+

Garages go for 80k

I do think I'm lucky to live in a cheap place. But my point was more for the people saying there's no jobs in places where housing is affordable. There are jobs here if you are willing to do them. My DH does manual labour. I work in retail as an assistant supervisor. Not flashy jobs by any stretch but even basic low pay jobs like ours can put a house into the affordable bracket when you live somewhere cheap. And that was while we were renting BTW we didn't live at home to save for our deposit so it can definitely be done .... It just depends on what you think is important.

I purposely chose to study a subject that involves a lot of freelance and flexible possibilities so that I can get work here and not have to move somewhere like London because house ownership is important to me.

Again, things like this need to be more readily discussed with young students etc. So that they are more informed to make the choice on where to settle / what to study.

insert so many people try and make this argument about people in expensive areas for housing just to move and change jobs. As I have said many times in this thread should all retail workers, health care staff, bus drivers, care workers, bin men, emergency services have to leave the south east then? Good luck to the people with high slates who remain!

High salaries ffs!

But do your family and community live lose by, insert? I can see how those decisions would make sense in that case. To ask young people to move half way across the country, away from their entire support network, and do jobs they don't necessarily want to do just to afford a house otherwise seems like a rather big ask.

People shouldn't have to choose between a career/family on the one hand and a house on the other. Not to mention the fact that, as social ecosystems, cities actually need people in relatively low paid jobs to function. London would fall apart in literally days if it weren't for a whole host of people cleaning it.

I don't think it's "entitled" to not want to quit a successful career you've spent years working towards to become a minimum wage shelf-stacker, just to have a chance of buying a home. That's without all the other elements like leaving your family (maybe elderly parents), making kids change schools, massive lifestyle change, etc.

And £13k is an enormous sum of money! You wouldn't save that by cutting out Starbucks.

My DC are 90s generation - just leaving uni and setting up

The ones who did masters degrees and took to it like a duck to water, and have got into big companies with career progression are ok. The others are doing part-time retail, or call centres (slightly higher hourly rate) whilst looking for something that is a career, and being overtaken by new graduates. Too many of them are under mental health .

When they earn enough to set up their own home, they will be paying off their £45grand+loans (earlier thanks to government reneging on increasing the start point in line with inflation) and will be supposed to contribute to pensions for their lower pension (no final salary).

I am very worried.

Yes, given the situation everyone has to readjust their expectations downwards.

Of course the problem is, as we all move down a step, the people at the bottom (the young, the poorly paid) fall off altogether. Instead of accepting a grinding down, perhaps we could all work together to the change the system?

I bet if all the priced out Londoner move to inserts town, her kids and the people not on the ladder would no longer be able to buy on min wage jobs.

I agree that all the 'just move' rhetoric is nonsense. There would be outrage if all the millions of people renting in the south east just upped and moved North or to Cornwall. Everybody would be complaining about all the incomers pushing up house prices and stealing their jobs. Also, who is going to do the jobs left vacant by this mass exodus?

"We saved £13,000 for deposit and fees"

Wow, that wouldn't get you the deposit on anything in the South East, sorry we can't all live where you do, and if we tried to the house prices would rocket, supply and demand.

"It isn't that it cannot be done ... It is that people are no longer willing to do it. Everyone now thinks they are a special little snowflake that deserves this and deserves that."

You seem to think you are some paragon of virtue, never mind anyone else being a snowflake. Your anecdote and opinion are a load of crap frankly.

Anecdote is not the plural of data.

I never think these threads do us all much good. People get upset that their hard work and huge sacrifices are not appreciated and others feel jealous of the situations of other people. All each generation can do is work with how things are whether that is going bare foot in 1930s depression, bombs falling down on you in the 1940s, rationing in the 50s, 1970s huge inflation and property crash, selling houses at big losses in the 1990s crash or unable to buy because of very few 95% mortgages. i haev a long commute and when we bought decades ago we could only afford to live out here. Many people then and now would not tolerate the awful journey but we had to. You cut your cloth.

Also areas vary over time. My ancestors have had to move hundreds of miles (as did I) for jobs and housing including moving countries. None of this is new. It is always so and it's always pretty rotten as it splits families and is difficult and stressful but it will always be so. The heavenly nirvana of easy to afford rents and properties to buy and high salaries has never really existed anywhere.

My son is buying for £330k at present. My daughters have paid a small fortune to buy flats in London. It is not easy now but nor was it easy when I first bought when hardly anyone went to university and most people could not buy in the places where there were good jobs.

I'm sorry, but those kinds of posts are exactly the problem me2017.

No-one on this thread is comparing life in 40s Britain (or even 50s Britain) with today. What people are saying is much more specific than that: that since the 1960s, things have got worse for young people, and that - on average - Millennials now have it considerably harder than those who came of age in the 60s, 70s, 80s or even 90s. Plenty of evidence has been produced on the thread to support that claim. You either need to produce counter-evidence to back up an argument that says that things are easier now, or accept the evidence that has been presented here. Or you will be simply accused of delusional denial of the historical facts.

There are always people who have it worse. There are refugees in this country who have been through the most terrible things - war crimes, torture, agonising grief. Does their experience mean that we should ignore all injustices that fall short of the terrible crimes of which they have been the victim? Of course not. While it's good to remember that people made incredible sacrifices for us all in the 1940s, that doesn't mean there is not a problem with housing in this country right now.

Oh, and for the record, I'm not a Millennial myself.

Why is it so hard for people to accept that historical change, and macroeconomic shifts, have an impact on people's life chances? I find this UTTERLY weird.

shove it's like people are just standing on the street (or in the garden of their house bought for a reasonable price now worth a fortune) fingers in ears singing "there is no issues for young people, I am the hardest worker ever la la". Pathetic isn't it.

mrsdevere indeed all the hand wringing about rural local people being prices out etc ( which is indeed an issue!). However, anyone in London or Surrey or similar in a situation like this is a lazy entitled fool who should move as you say. The way some people talk about london is that everyone there is a "city knob"