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.

smallfox it is indeed a MN classic - and also ironic when no doubt wealthy business owners are saying it is oh so easy for everyone - I would love to have a chat to some of their employees

Yes, they are professional jobs, in the £25-50k bracket.

Where is the job SparrowHawk?

Someplace where a house can be bought for £100K?

Is there any chance for advancement or promotion? Many people stay in London for that reason. It is easier to "move up the ladder" when there are lots of jobs going. Also, it feels safer, because if you lose your job, you will have more chance of quickly finding another without having to uproot your family.

Exactly, BombadierFritz. People are living on the same street as me playing nearly as much again aren't doing it for fun.

Obviously, London isn't the only place well-educated professionals can live. But DHs profession does only exist in certain cities in the UK.

ellyMay

People stay in/go to London because the salaries are artificially inflated due to the cost of living and it makes them feel important.

You can do the same jobs elsewhere for lower salaries, lower cost of living and far better work lige balance

You can't be serious that you don't understand that the rent is still the same percentage of a person's income.

So you absolutely have to spend the same proportion of your wages on rent? Why?

I live in the South East, striking distance to the City, its bloody expensive to get onto the property ladder but doable. I have a friend aged under 30 bought a 3 bed property with her boyfriend this year, another 27 has bought her own apartment in the last year. One of them is a Nanny and another a PA.

I just looked on Rightmove, you can buy a 2 bedroom house in my home town for £80k! its a shit hole but there are jobs there.

There are plenty of decent professional jobs in Leeds and affordable housing. We have lots of major accountants and law firms.

My employer is crying out for graduate scientists and for full time permanent roles and offers just under £30k starting salary, which is very good and offers a good standard of living and could get a mortgage to buy a 2 bed flat or house in an average area.

We get very very few applicants and none that we actually want to employ. I don't understand the alure of London and I certainly don't understand why we continue to cram the majority of the jobs and opportunities there when the vast majority of people on even very high salaries can't afford to live there.

We need to sort out investment in transport etc up north and then rebalance things a bit

SOD LONDON IT IS NOT THE ENTIRE COUNTRY!

But by equal measure it is gasp part of the country, as is the south east, and rather a lot of people live there and work their and have their families and lives and support systems there.

Given a third of people in England live in that part of the world, it's not totally unreasonable to consider the issues that may affect them more than other parts of the country, just as it's more than reasonable to consider the issues that cause problems and hardship in other parts of the country.

t4 you are not at all grasping the point (that gwen) makes above - the rent is still the same percentage of the person's income

If you rented in Nottingham you could get a lovely 4 bed house for £1000 pcm. On a salary of £50k that would leave you with a ton of disposable income.

Why is that relevant -- unless you're also assuming people should move and downsize?

That becomes an entirely different discussion.

Nannies and PAs can be quite well paid furry. Many are on £30/40k+ especially the PAs.

Nannies may have done live in work in the past and being able to save a comparitively large deposit.

*Where is the job SparrowHawk?

Someplace where a house can be bought for £100K?

Is there any chance for advancement or promotion? Many people stay in London for that reason. It is easier to "move up the ladder" when there are lots of jobs going. Also, it feels safer, because if you lose your job, you will have more chance of quickly finding another without having to uproot your family.*

Yes the jobs are in a place where you can easily buy houses for 100k, plus there is plenty of possibility for advancement - I would expect the £50k person to be on £100k in about 6-7 years. If they lost their job there would be other companies lining up to grab them - I know that because we've had to poach people in the past.

Find me the 50k job in Nottingham....

and why does not owning a home until later in life equate to "suspended adulthood"

But Sparrowhawk, you aren't offering £50K, you are offering £25-30K.

*Why is that relevant -- unless you're also assuming people should move and downsize?

That becomes an entirely different discussion.*

I'm not saying you should move and downsize. £1000pcm in London wouldn't get you anywhere near a 4 bed house. So you'd actually be upscaling.

Hey SparrowHawk I'm currently looking for employment in Nottingham, hire me!

People stay in/go to London because the salaries are artificially inflated due to the cost of living and it makes them feel important.

Oh how sneery. And sadly uninformed - prejudices can have that effect.

Could it be that the work in London is more interesting, or has better prospects for progression, or has better employment mobility for moving between employers in the same field?

Or could it be that they have family and friends and/or support networks (vital as you have children and if you don't have your own family nearby) there?

Or simply that they love the place?

You can do the same jobs elsewhere for lower salaries, lower cost of living and far better work lige balance

Not in my field you can't, unless you either want to stay with one employer with no career progression for the rest of your life, or uproot your family and sell that affordable house and buy another somewhere totally different every few years.

But £1000 PCM on a smaller salary elsewhere becomes an even larger portion of the take-home pay -- so even less to be saved for a deposit.

If I spend 30% of my income on rent on £85k, I'm still going to be spending 30% of it on rent at £50k in a different part of the country. There is no corresponding drop in the ratio of rent to income.

I would expect the £50k person to be on £100k in about 6-7 years

That's a quick ladder! Specialised skills? Niche industry?

what are people from Nottingham called

The first person who owned my 4 bedroom house in 1960 was a geography teacher (so earning an equivalent salary of £40-45k in today's money) - his wife was a SAHM and they were able to bring up 2 children and live a comfortable if not luxurious life (I know his daughter). Someone on that income wouldn't be able to buy a studio flat around here now unless they had a huge deposit.

I thought the same, that we were a disenfranchised generation, until I looked at my family history. Mainly farmers pre 1950s. Mostly they married mid twenties and lived at home until they did so. The women married and moved to their husband's farm. If the man came from a family with more than one son then the eldest usually stayed at the family farm to work alongside dad, then took it over. The younger farmers became tenant farmers themselves. None of them ever owned their farmland - they were all tenants. I would say the vast majority of people were if they lived outside of a city.

Home ownership was a post second world war idea that came with rebuilding the state and socialism. giving families something to own themselves. But this wasn't really sustainable as the population grew. Also, I believe that succesive governments becoming less social and more about the individual have encouraged people to cash in on those assets like home ownership. So instead of a son taking over the family home, he was expected to move out young and get his own. Also, job opportunities and education meant more people going into higher ed. So they were not earning and couldn't buy their own home.

Now this generation are therefore suffering from the lack of affordable housing that the boomers are either still living in to use as capital for their old age care or have sold on to each other at increasing prices or have let out their homes.

So the home ownership was the unusual circumstance post war and now we are back to creating a society of tenants. The answer is to secure more tenants rights including longer leases.

I do think that encouraging more people to go to uni has been driven by financial greed of those who lend money to those who go. It began looking that way when I was a student - the banks offered all sorts of incentives to get you to bank with them and borrow money.

Sparrowhawk I would kill to be able to move away from london. the fact of the matter is the job I have spent the last 5 years doing and 2 years training for just isnt possible outside of London. god I wish it was! I have really looked. the fact is that london has a much greater variety of industries and corresponding jobs.

london is a global centre and the depth of the infrastructure that supports the city isnt matched elsewhere in the UK. I'd likely retrain if I could no longer commute.

Hmmm Nottinghammians?

Just checked with the room, we're happy with it.