baby boomers ..confused

[ZackyVengeance]

how can a baby born in the early sixties be one?
baby boomer
nouninformal
plural noun: baby boomers
a person born in the years following the Second World War, when there was a temporary marked increase in the birth rate.

this is a really interesting thread - hope it doesn't descend into 'boomer bashing'. That said, I'm Spring 1965 and I definitely am not a baby boomer although I have benefitted from house price increases as I bought a long time ago in London and have not moved since (but did remortgage a couple of times when I had to give up work to look after a disabled child). I am due to work until I'm 67 (whilst growing up assuming it would be 60 as it was for my parents). I work in a much more automated environment so will consider myself very luck if I am able to hold on to a job until I reach retirement age.
Many posters talk about free education but that was out of reach for a large number of people as university was for 'other' people - not my siblings and I or any of the other children on our council estate - there was no aspiration in our families to study further as admin/retail jobs and apprenticeships were more accessible.
I do believe though that my children have a far tougher time.

Werkz wow brilliant post. Thank you have never considered that angle before.

I think people from generations other than the Baby Boomer generation get a bit annoyed when they are constantly told things like 'if you didn't have your iphone maybe you could have a big house like mine' or 'if you didn't go on a foreign holiday once a year maybe you could have a big house like mine'. The truth is, that giving up a foreign holiday once a year - let's assume the holiday costs £1000 - is not going to make the slightest difference. It would take 50 years to save up a 25% depost for a £200k house. Sadly, there are no houses, let alone flats, for sale for £200k in many parts of Britain now. Not having fitted carpets, again, that's not going to make the slightest difference. None of it is, because the gap has just got too wide. If we could save in the ways suggested and the house of the Baby Boomers' adulthood was really within our reach, then believe me, I think people would. But it's just not possible.

Another thing that is often heard from Baby Boomers is 'no-one helped me buy a house, so why should I help my children'. I appreciate that the Baby Boomers' parents did not help them, because the Baby Boomers' parents did not need to help them. The Baby Boomers' parents got to watch their offspring flourish just as they had, and in some case, the offspring became materially wealthier than their parents. So I do understand that the Baby Boomers want what their parents had - which was a comfortable existence, and not to have to help their children financially.

Well, they can certainly have what their parents had, but with one notable omission - in many cases they won't be able to watch their children flourish as they did unless they are prepared to help a little - and I don't just mean financially - maybe with childcare (again, we often hear the refrain 'but I've done my time' from Baby Boomers who enjoyed being SAHPs back in the day while other generations no longer have that luxury).

senua calm down, I was just commenting on an interesting idea, not attacking you personally. Jeez.

Ha! you tell me to calm down but you were the one who wrote hyperbolically that "the terror fear has been a spectre over my adult life."
Most generations have had to face some external threat - terrorism, the IRA, the Cold War, the Blitz, mass epidemics, ...
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Many early baby boomers had it very tough. End of WWII, prefab housing, rationing. Very different from later baby boomers.

Someone above talking about millennials living in shiny halls of residence and nice house shares, i'll just remember that as I sit in my mouldy house with a front door that doesn't lock properly - don't be so judgemental and think that another generation has everything!
I know baby boomers were generally able to buy houses at a younger age but I also know they didn't have everything easy and they encountered different problems too.

I'm technically a boomer, but don't feel as though I've had many of the benefits normally associated. I will have to work until I'm 67 before I get a pension - as long as they don't move the goal posts again, that is!

Compared with my parents' wartime childhood, my childhood was secure and easy. We always had enough food (no rationing). I have also benefited from the National Health Service - both my parents remember a time before this.
It's easy to look at what other people have and be jealous of it, but in many ways it's swings and roundabouts. My parents had a very hard start to their lives, but have generous pensions to see them through their retirements.
I think my start was easier, but I'm unlikely to see the same kind of pension, and I will certainly have to work years longer for it than they did.

I do feel for my DCs, who already face massive job insecurity, huge student debt and it will be much harder for them to get on the property ladder, if they manage it at all.
Every generation faces its own problems, and I don't really think it's fair to compare one set of difficulties with another.

Piglet have you actually visited a prefab house? Many young families these days would be overjoyed with that kind of space - they're often bigger than the houses/flats families are currently living in, with no hope of being able to afford bigger.

Also, I'm sure you're aware that there is talk of having to start building them again (in a slightly newer incarnation, but prefab nonetheless).

Werk that is fascinating, thanks for your explanation.

Crikey, we only finished paying off lend lease about five years ago.

The US pretty much wrote off lend lease. The recent repayment concerned the post-war Anglo-American Loan, brokered by Keynes in July 1946.

tired I love that. "Yes grandad, if I gave up my iphone I would be able to by your 3 bed detached house in London but I don't fancy that"
(if i had to go a year with no phone to own a little flat where I live I so would)

they're often bigger than the houses/flats families are currently living in, with no hope of being able to afford bigger.

Not in this city they weren't.

I suppose that's part of the reason that people younger than the "boomer" generation put so much importance on having "stuff"; because they know they won't be able to afford a ludicrous deposit and mortgage.

Werkz fascinating post. You've opened my eyes.

Werkz that was so interesting! I've always wondered why my parents generation had so much more social mobility than any before or after. I've never heard an explanation which makes so much sense.

werkz that is a fascinating perspective.

My parents are baby boomers, I don't buy all the had it so easy line. In some ways yes, cheaper houses, grants for uni and good pensions, but most people didn't go to uni, my mum was given a choice of 'teacher, nurse or secretary' in her careers advice at school. The equal pay act didn't come in until 1976. Unmarried women were still forced into giving up babies for adoption and good childcare was hard to come by so having a SAHM was essential for most families. The women's movement in the 60s and 70s happened for very good reasons. Different era.

I am a baby boomer, I worked three jobs and saved for five years to get a deposit for my first home. Interest rates went up to 16%, interest rates now are rediculously low. We had no heating, no car, no furniture.

My mum is a baby boomer. She was a teacher. She worked two jobs when saving up for their first home - teacher in the week, nursery worker overnight at a 24hr nursery at the weekends.

Interestingly she says when she was young you could work two jobs as a teacher - yes she had some planning, and reports at the end of the year, but essentially you turned up at schools taught, went home. Evenings and weekends were yours. Not so now. She says not only are teachers still as poorly paid in comparison to other professional jobs as they were then, but also, that the hours demanded of them makes working another job impossible.

My dad says the same about the engineering field he's in - you turned up, did your shift, went home. Not so now, when unpaid overtime is expected. No one can take on shift work down the pub to save up for a mortgage - there just aren't the hours in the day.

I've always wondered why my parents generation had so much more social mobility than any before or after

Never heard of the Black Death which presaged the Peasants' Revolt and the end of serfdom?

Baby boomers did have it easier.
In my view at least.
My PIL and my Father,
Both owned a house for a lot less than I will ever see in my lifetime. PIL bought their house for 15K in "82. My father bought his house for 35K in 96....the money that my PILs spent on their mortgage per month is the same as what my car costs for finance each month.
If my dad paid a 10% deposit that would have been the equivalent of what a deposit would be in a rental property nowadays.

I love them all, but they had it easier.

I was discussing mortgage etc with my husband today. For us to save and be able to buy a 3 bedroom house we are going to need roughly 8 times what PIL bought their house and had a mortgage on for 20 years, as a deposit.

In them days I'm also fairly certain that if they gained a degree they had a good chance of working in the sector of their choice.

Doesn't seem there's too much to look forward to as a millennial.

I think myself and my peers are quite trapped between elderly parents needing care/expensive care homes and student offspring needing massive support into probably their thirties.

Yup. I'm at the tail-end of the baby-boomers. Went to a 60th birthday at the weekend, and that was the main topic of conversation! We've just congratulated DD (26) on getting her first 'proper' job after gaining 2 degrees (both relevant, one of them a Masters) and 2 years working at anything she could find: it's a 6 month, zero-hours contract, for which she needs both degrees, FFS.

Today she had to ask me to act as guarantor on a flat she'll be renting for 6 months (see zero-hours contract, above). At her age I was already married with a mortgage.

However, compared to my PIL, we had it hard ...

See posters are kind of proving my point by saying bbms had is easier.
Perhaps they did at one time, but i have some how become one.
I just cant see how me and my peers had it easy.
We were teens in the 70s
Worked for peanuts,
Lived through the IRA bombs, yep i grew up near an army town.
Then you get a mortgage, and the interest becomes so high, you are in negative equatiy.
As for good pensions, i wish.
My whole annoyance is the idea that someone born at the end of the 50s upto when ever is a baby boomer.
Even my parents had to work bloody hard for everything
Yhe only thing i will say back then is that getting a council house was easier.

On house prices yes it was cheaper. In the 80s you could buy a 2 bedroom flat in a good area in my city, for 17 grand
Now a studio flat is over 200 grand.
But you only win by that if you didnt buy a house and get hit by the interest rate.

The Baby Boomer term was extended into the 60s in the US. This is the description people read about and they assume the later-born were as fortunate in their timing as the actual BBs, 1945-54. Generation Jones, born mid-1950s-up to Gen X, have very little in common with BBs. Even our nickname didn't stick.