To be confused by other people's finances...

[Haudyerwheesht]

I know it's none of my business obviously but still....I want to know!

For example how does my neighbour who only has one adult working in an averagely paid job afford to go to Florida and do Disney / universal etc twice in 6 months?

How does another person I know live in an enormous house and wear designer clothes and have lovely holidays etc when they're 24, with 3 kids and don't work (husband does). I kind of know the answer to this as they're both from wealthy families....but I want to know the ins and outs because I'm nosy!

Why does my friend rent for 1.2k a month and fritter money away when they could ft a mortgage much cheaper if they had a deposit?

How can my sister moan about money when she has no mortgage or housing costs, no council tax and her and her husband both work full time??

Obviously aibu to be so nosey but I'm not the only one am I?

A lot of people get help from parents.
I know a couple who are both full time professionals and her parents pay for all the dcs activities. They also find foreign holidays and I'm assuming the couple will inherit quite a lot when the parents die.

Unicorn and Jessikita you, amongst a couple of other posters, are my heros. It's refreshing to read about people who have saved towards goals that everyone else is complaining about. You've proved these goals be achieved with commitment.
When I read about the way people spend money and on what I despair for future generations with the entitlement gene. Just when did it become acceptable to spend such ludicrous sums of money on weddings, multiple stag and hen does abroad, honeymoons, new furniture, new kitchens, carpets, eating out, foreign holidays, new cars, iPhones, multiple TVs with attached technology, on and on goes the list, when that couple have nowhere to live? And why is the property they seem to think they're entitled to often new in the best areas? Why isn't it a doer upper in a poorer area? My apologies to all who aren't following this practice but the youngsters of today can be as entitled to this label as the one they've unfairly applied to me and my generation. 100 years ago the majority of the general public rented, mainly just rooms. It was only the wealthy who owned properties, even those in well paid occupations rented, quite often in multiple family houses. Owning your own home was still fairly new amongst the general public right up until the 1950's when ownership started to increase at a faster rate. It was only in the 70's, less than one generation later, that ownership equalled rental. So being able to buy your own home is something that should be treated as special and as worth working towards as it was then. We, that'll be us vilified 'baby boomers', treated it as a privilege to be able to buy a house and we worked damn hard to save towards that goal. We bought properties in need of work and went without other things. We lived on beans on toast and without furniture. It's no surprise that orange boxes were so popular then.

Less than 45 years later we seem to have bred a generation of spoilt youngsters who want and expect the best of everything. Maybe it is our fault, but not because we bought when we did but because we raised our kids to think they could have just what they wanted handed to them on a plate without any effort on their part.
They were brought up post war, post rationing, post austerity, post slums. We applied the 'it won't happen to my kids' mindset and we spoilt them.

Teddy you still don't get it.

Now even with saving hard, going without, a doer upper is beyond the reach of many regardless of how hard they work.

Precisely, Birds. That 'entitlement' line is fucking awful and people peddling it ought to be ashamed.

Our doer-upper in a gentrifying but not-posh part of London cost us £1.2m two years ago. It's a very normal 3 bed terrace with a small garden - a pretty standard family home. We still haven't done it up, as we are saving. We haven't been on holiday for 2 years. We don't have a car. I buy most of my clothes on Ebay. We probably spend too much on convenience food - but then we are both working 14 hour days and at least one day every weekend.

The person we bought the doer-upper from was a key worker who was able to buy it on one key worker salary in the 80s - no doubt she worked very hard to do that. But no police officer / teacher / nurse would have had a hope in hell of buying a 3 bed terrace like this. It takes two big earners these days.

We bought our first flat 10 years ago when we were in our mid 20s, having done the so called "baby-boomer scrimping and saving" for 4 years. We rented a flat so cold we had to have sleeping bags on the bed. We ate out about twice a year. We both love films, but hardly ever went to the cinema. We made our own lunches or bought Sainsbury's 99p egg sandwiches. We went on one holiday - to glamorous Hastings! And doing all of that we were just about able to scrape together the deposit. We bought a flat. It doubled in value. We sold it and bought a house.

But I REPEAT: If we were just 10 years younger, trying to do that saving now, it just would not be possible. We would need so much more for a deposit and house prices have run away compared to wage inflation. I saw that crummy, freezing flat on RightMove a while ago, and the rent is much higher. We were lucky to be at the tail end of the generation that could earn and save and buy (although we were already at the point where you needed high-paying jobs to be doing this in most parts of London). Rather than being smug that we ate baked beans and saved, I feel incredibly privileged that we had that option - and deeply concerned for the people coming up behind us.

It's not the case these days that the cost of an iPad plus a foreign holiday plus going on your mate's hen weekend would somehow add up to a deposit - we are talking about money that is way beyond the reach of most people. Of course, if you blow £30k on a wedding in Portofino, that's your lookout - but it's too easy to write off people in their 20s and 30s as entitled. Much more difficult, perhaps, to take some responsibility and ask how the financial load (the pension bill, the NHS etc) can be spread more fairly between the generations.

I say this as older millennial and I do own my home.

But I'm very lucky - I also live in the north and live in a poorer area. I also inherited a small amount when a relative died. Had I not I probably still would have bought but it would have taken another couple of years.

If I lived in the south of England and/or was a younger millennial I've no idea what I would have done.

@Birdsbeesandtrees - I am just a millennial and I agree. I think we are in a unique position - able to have bought (if we were lucky), but also close enough to the current crisis to be able to see it for what it really is.

I agree. Elle

When my parents bought the house they live in now it was affordable for two people on an average but decent salary. It's now worth nearly 10x what they paid for it.

Now you'd have to be bringing home ...roughly 100k a year jointly for a mortgage on it.

Plus they didn't have to go to uni to get the jobs they had so started working younger without student debt.

Now the jobs they were in it would be unheard of for someone not to have a degree.

I only really compare with people like me - same background, education etc. Some people do get an awful lot of parental help: childcare, dogcare(!) , holidays, cars for dcs, university maintenance... it goes on. Dh and I only have our earnings so we have to fork out for everything.

Dh and I have spent some time wondering about bil and sil, however. They went suddenly from a 2-bed bungalow to a 5-bed house, and from a second-hand Polo to a Range Rover. No change of jobs, no inheritances. They so won the Lottery!

I'm afraid I do wonder about 1 family that were declared bankrupt 7 to 8 years ago now. They lost their house and 'posh' cars.
2 years ago they managed to buy a house again using the governments help to buy as they were classified as first time buyers. But then it all started... upgraded the golf and now both drive top end 4 x 4's, 4 exotic holidays in the last 2 years. Brand new furniture for every room in the house and top end electronics for all. The icing on the cake is putting on the market their 2 year old house (value half a mill) as they're moving up the ladder!
I really hope after what they've been through previously they are being sensible but don't understand how they can afford their lifestyle on one income
And 3 sets of private school fees on top!

Just been to find my flak jacket and crash helmet.
There is no time limit to saving. One thing is certain spending money frivoulsly is not the answer if you want a house, neither is doing nothing. Times change and you have to find solutions if you want to buy a house. My Ds found a house in a poorer area that needed doing up, he found some lodgers and a mortgage. They moved in together with their rents and his subsequent mortgage cheaper than the market rates. Neighbours did something similar, 2 couples paid a deposit between them and lived together for 6 years paying half mortgage each couple and therefore able to save some money as well. They then split the value with one staying in the house and the other moving into another property.
You are right, when I bought my house the uk was in a stable economy, this was just after we joined the eec. There was then a shut down of British industry in the following years, I didn't sell British steel, nor did I allow cadburys and it's like to sell out and move to Poland. And as my pension age keeps moving taking with it any entitlement to age related benefits and is now set at over 67, 6 years away, an age I'm not predicted to reach, I haven't had any of this Pension I've allegedly stolen from future generations yet.
And it's just as well my house earned an equity because it will be funding my care, a huge saving on the social fund. Incidentally this is a move I agree with, but it's not something that renters will have to worry about, they'll get it for free, although it will probably come from the inheritance tax on what's left of my equity and that of my oh so fortunate and privileged baby boomer generation. So when you talk about funding my pension it doesn't look like anyone other than me and my DH will be doing that does it! And this is not meant as a bitter question, just a fact of life that I'm prepared to tackle head on.
And if I can't use the term entitled to describe some members of the younger generation who display the wrong characteristics then the term baby boomer and it's label of blame for all that is wrong with the world is equally objectionable.

People of working age are of course funding pensions. Funding public sector pensions is an enormous burden for younger generations paying tax, who will not retire at the same age, or on the same terms.

University grants, affordable housing, a functioning NHS, privatisation payouts, triple-lock protected pensions. These are all huge privileges enjoyed by one generation and denied to the next. But because of huge voter turnout in the older age groups, politicians are frightened to redress the balance.

This has opened my eyes. I thought our mortgage at £700pm was a cheap one since we live in a cheap area but guess we bought too late. Blimey.....

@theclick google it. Links from 2016 are out of date on the bbc. Guardian. Red top rags etc, as they say c.13k. The radio the other day said 14k.

Elle
Just a couple of questions before I disappear.
Why do you think that you are being subjected to more tax than we were. When I first started work I was paying 35%-40%tax. This went on for over 16 years at this rate and put an enormous burden on the younger generation of the time. I was made the same sort of promises you say are being made to you now but when these promises were broken we waspis didn't have time to make any alterations to our futures. The personal allowances didn't proportionally match what they are now either. The middle rate was 55%-60% and the upper rate reached 83%! Is it any wonder the rich left the uk taking their wealth with them. It'll happen again if taxes rise too high, and the uk will die. A rise of a couple of pence would be acceptable though and is needed to pay for the services we need.
What makes you think you are being denied a functioning NHS service when it was a huge privilege enjoyed by another. Your generation has already enjoyed this through one of the busiest periods of your life's and with the massive advances in medicine over the years it is ours who has missed out on these advances. There are many reasons the NHS needs tackling one of which is to make people from abroad who have had no monetary input pay for the services they use but that's a whole new ball game.
Oh and we didn't get free or subsidised childcare then.

A lot of the time it's down to sizeable credit card debts.

An ex business colleague of DH's finally threw in the towel, owing more than £60K on various CCs. If you initially have a good credit rating, and are in a 'good' job it was far too easy to be advanced £££££££s in credit.

I truly believe that a certain type of person watches all these glam TV shows, and reads all these glam magazines and deludes themselves into thinking they also deserve that lifestyle. I really think it a form of mental illness/delusion?

@Teddyinglasses

Why do you think that you are being subjected to more tax than we were. When I first started work I was paying 35%-40%tax. This went on for over 16 years at this rate and put an enormous burden on the younger generation of the time.

I didn’t say that working people are subjected to more tax than in previous generations - I said that funding public sector pensions is an enormous burden for the younger generations who are paying that tax. Ie. It is a huge whack of money that needs to come out of the limited tax pot - contributing massively to the cuts faced by our schools, hospitals, police force, social services etc.

Having said that, the taxation system does work in the favour of older people, because earned income is heavily taxed, whereas assets / wealth are generally untaxed (and it’s baby boomers who hold most of those assets - one estimate a few years ago put it at half -

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/7085489/Baby-boomers-own-half-of-Britains-wealth.html)

There is a funding crisis in this country - for many reasons - and we ALL need to bear the burden of that. At the moment, pensions are triple-locked and sacrosanct, while further education grants, school budgets etc have all been up for grabs and significant student debt has become the norm. We all have a problem but the younger generation is disproportionately affected.

This article explains things very well, and I think it puts forward some good solutions re- separate tax bands for pensioners.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/13/rich-pensioners-tax

What makes you think you are being denied a functioning NHS service when it was a huge privilege enjoyed by another. Your generation has already enjoyed this through one of the busiest periods of your life

It is widely recognised that the NHS is in a worse state now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. I don’t think there’s a single political party arguing otherwise? Here are the facts from Full Fact - which is an excellent, impartial fact-checking site:

fullfact.org/health/is-nhs-in-crisis/

with the massive advances in medicine over the years it is ours who has missed out on these advances.

Yes - that’s the nature of advancement in medical science! Each generation will be able to take advantage of deeper understanding and better treatments. (Although we have just walked away from the EU, which gave us £1bn per year for research and enabled us to attract the best scientific minds to this country… But that’s another thread entirely!)

There are many reasons the NHS needs tackling one of which is to make people from abroad who have had no monetary input pay for the services they use but that's a whole new ball game.

There are currently around 55,000 EU nationals working in the NHS in England. One in ten of the UK's registered doctors is an EU national. Thank God for them - the NHS would be in even greater trouble without them. Thanks also for the many many tax-paying immigrants who help to keep keep this country going.

Some excellent posts on this thread, ElleMcElle.

Elle - you really have got it in for older people havent you.

You say It’s the baby boomer generation who have enjoyed artificially low interest rates. Are you for real? Do you know how high mortgage rates used to be? I bet you have never paid mortgage interest at 16+% on your £1.2mill house, because I have, as have many people of my age (early 50s - not actually a baby boomer).

As for your comment about me handing over a whacking great portion of my wealth for redistribution. Why shouldn't my kids enjoy the money I earn, I don't work for fun, neither does my DH, we both do long hours and commutes. I dont live for work, I could have easily packed work in and lived off benefits like my brother has all his life, but I havent, I have worked hard to become and stay self-sufficient. I dont see why my own flesh and blood shouldn't have that money. What is the incentive to work, if we then have to give a whacking great portion of our earnings away? I wonder how many people here would work if they had to then redistribute the majority of their wealth to people other than their family?

Maybe if you feel so strongly, you should practice what you preach. Why not sell your £1.2mill house (owning a house of that value is way out of our reach, so you are already wealthier than us) and give away a whacking great portion of it. No, you dont fancy that? You didn't have to buy that house with the money made on your flat, you could have given it all away.

But it doesn't happen. It's not a case of not caring, but until it becomes the norm for wealth to be redistributed, and everyone to do it, including you, then I will save mine for my kids and grandkids.

Well, can we come back again to the bitcoin and crypto currencies chat? Or did someone actually start a specific thread after all?
Don't mind me. But the thread has gone a bit dull, girls! Lighten up.
(running back behind the wall before I'm a pile of irresponsible cinders)

The state pension is unfunded and paid by current tax payers.

The increases, the best they have ever been... is paid for by current tax payers.

Current tax payers, for the first time ever, have an automatic enrolment into a pension to which they have to contribute. Opting out will put them at odds with intended changes to pension saving and would be extremely risky.

Current tax payers are therefore paying for their parents pensions, along with their own.

As for the taxation system does work in the favour of older people, because earned income is heavily taxed, whereas assets / wealth are generally untaxed. Do you think wealth grows on trees?

Because my wealth didn't, it has all come from earnings, so has already been taxed once.

Are you saying my savings should be taxed again, so double taxation? If so, why? Why should people with savings have to contribute two lots of tax to the coffers?

I genuinely dont understand why people who have been careful with money and saved, are being lambasted on here, and told to re-distribute our wealth? We are still in the modest house we bought on marrying 20 yrs ago. Most friends have upsized, we could have done too.

We decided to stay and extend, as we preferred the security of building up savings and money we could pass onto our DC, to a much bigger house. Our choice, why should we have to redistribute those savings? Friends with bigger houses dont downsize to redistribute to the general public, or does it only apply to those with savings, not those with money in houses?

Lots of money is double taxed, in fact most spending has an element of double, if not triple taxation.

I am in my mid 50s. There were no proper controls over private pensions in the past. If firms went bust, you often lost your workplace pension. I paid into a pension since I was 21, I would have been better putting the money under the bed. And now I am too old to save enough so will rely on the state pension. We are not all feckless wasters you know.