That boomers should should avoid criticising younger people when..

[TeaCake5]

They are the "the worst users of drink and drugs"

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/23/wednesday-briefing-baby-boomers-worst-drinkers-and-drug-users

I guess they can afford to with housing not being a problem for them - people in their 20s and 30s have no spare money for drink and drugs!

cardibach Been there, had that discussion thanks, and he already has the starts of a substantial house deposit tucked away from an inheritance. I wouldn't touch the student loans with a bargepole as an adult; I don't trust whoever is in power not to change the terms and conditions, and we both had our fees paid (but dh did his return of service for his and then some), so we decided to pay his.

Paying for his uni education was the best thing for us and our financial circumstances, but thanks for your concern.

scary I'm sure you have thought it through - but I see too many people thinking of it as 'normal' debt to be avoided at all costs, including not going to university at all, and I think it's worth saying that it isn't like that. I agree that politicians are untrustworthy, but I can't see any way they can make much change to this deal without casuing problems which are too far reaching to risk.

cardi If the loans were the old mortgage style ones, then I wouldn't have an issue, but as an adult I wouldn't take a loan or a mortgage structured as the student loan is, so why would I want my 18 year old ds to do it? If we hadn't been in a position to pay this from income, then we would have extended the mortgage by a couple of years, as 2.25% is way cheaper than 6.5%!

mother We already do pay some fees, mine were waived for my PGCE; dh's degree was funded by the RN, and some still are today. There are ways of doing it, and if you want the fees paid, then perhaps a return of service isn't too onerous an ask?

I think it's partly just individual circumstances

Oh my fucking god how hard is it to understand that anecdotal evidence is a fallacy.

In general on average the current generation will have lower living standards than the previous generation.

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-36821582

What are people struggling to understand? Yes there are variations and some people always will have hard lives but the "welll we worked hard and everything we have is through our own making, and anyone younger just needs to stop spending money on iPhones and live in a house with no bathroom" is such total tosh.

I am in a very good economic position but that doesn't stop me being concerned for the wider society. Declining wages relative to cost of living living/house prices isn't going to create a harmonious country to live in.

Millenials should be really fucking worried. House prices at record levels of average salary multiples. Declining wages in real terms. Pension provision much poorer. Social care in crisis.

Not a pretty picture.

I don't actually believe youngsters have it so hard nowadays. I think they over spend, want everything new, the best and right now. They've just got their priorities all wrong. And I say that as 29 year old.

I feel it is wrong too. And, an offshoot of this, is that many universities are now offering courses where there is no hope of a job at the end.

E.G forensic psychology a hugely popular course. I think there are 27 courses on this. But on average there are about 500 crimes per year that need this knowledge. Yet there are all these courses.

Another one is law. So many places offering law. There are enough law graduates to fill all the lawyer type jobs for the next 20 years. But universities want the fees so they keep offering them.

When l did my degree 30 years ago, there were only so many courses like mine across the country. This was because they produced only enough graduates to fill the future vacancies. And they were capped at this. So there was no offering just a course with no hope of a job at the end. I think this is just so wrong today, when students are paying for their courses.

@Flyingflipflop Quite. And if they'd had to endure 1970s TV, they too would be hitting the booze and drugs.

My DCs are much better off than I was and went to uni which neither me nor there DF did. The opportunities to travel are better and their homes are nicer than mine at their age. Some younger people are doing fine.

I am in my mid 50s. Still working and will have to do so for many years yet.
For most people the standard of living has got higher. But the middle class is much smaller. I still struggle with the idea of lots of things as being essential, because I still see them as luxuries.

Whether as a baby boomer life was better for you, or better for young people now, depends very much on who you are. If you are white, able bodied and in the middle class, lots of things were better then. If you are poor, disabled, black, have mental health problems, are LGB, things are better now.

My DP and I suffered violence and abuse when young adults, that the police did not give a jot about. I would have swapped a police force and better society that cared about black people, LGB people, etc, than cheaper houses.

The truth though is that in every generation some things are worse, and some things are better.

Mother I disagree with Martin Lewis on this one, as do others if you go to the Higher Ed threads on it. Tranches of the loan book have been sold off to Erudio who chase people for payments, and if there weren't a profit in it, why would such companies buy?

If I take a loan, the Ts and Cs won't alter, and the interest is fixed, so I know what I have to repay. There is enough uncertainty around the loans for us to have decided that we would pay for ds. The other advantage is that the money isn't treated as a gift, and has no IHT implications either for ds or us, so win win.

Sorry for dissing Peebles - I just plucked the name from the air and didn't realise it was very nice. Let's have an example I know about, then. Gosport. You could be a nurse in Gosport and be able to afford a house. You could be a nurse in Beaconsfield and you wouldn't be able to afford a manhole. A nurse in Gosport could spurn a few lattes and iPhones and manage to buy a property in the end. In Beaconsfield you could give up eating for evermore and you wouldn't be able to afford jack shit. Even if you settled for High Wycombe you'd be latte-less till the end of your days in order to buy anywhere.

It's so silly when some people say, "We didn't have central heating," or "We didn't eat out." I was a 70s child and no one ate out. There was nowhere to go! You might have gone to a stuffy restaurant for a particularly momentous occasion, but otherwise, no. And coffee out? There was nowhere locally to have a coffee, only fusty tea rooms. I never went out for a coffee/drink with friends even in the 1980s. I'm sure we would have done if there had been Costas etc in those days. We weren't being abstemious, any more than a 16th-century person was by not driving a car.

5rivers7hills In the past most under 35s had been working from 16 or 15 years of age. And they worked long hours. A standard working week for ordinary people used to include Saturday morning.
So hardly surprising that someone graduating and not starting work until their early 20's, earns less when young. At that age current young people are new to the workplace, whereas in the past they had usually been working full time for 6 or 7 years, and had worked their way up a bit.
I don't know who overall is better off, but lots of housing then was of a very low standard. Sadly with the sell off of social housing we are slowly returning to those times. Many people had no bathrooms, and shared outside toilets, and were very overcrowded. We should not be moving backwards.

We will also be looking to pay upfront
That money will have to be repaid - sometime

I expect this will appear in the papers somewhere over the next day or so. OP has returned to the thread maybe twice?

Ladyincement They did not exist, because few had the money for them.

I do find the idea that all boomers are rolling in it and rattling around in massive, paid for houses quite laughable, really.

What is actually happening is that we are going through a bust time, in spite of what the Government says. We had it in the 70's and 80's, we have it again.
It is not a bust time to the very wealthy, but it is to ordinary people. These things are cyclical and there are always groups of people who are wrongly blamed for it.

Knope worth checking if you get a discount for doing so. Ds's uni gives a 2% discount for paying in full upfront. As he's returning there for his MA we should get 12% off; 10% returning alumni discount, and 2% for up front. Not quite a grand, but better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick!

Mother As the man says it doesn't matter what the amount outstanding is, you will only pay back 9% over £21K pa At the moment - what guarantee have you that this will always be the case?

Ah, good old divide and rule. The government must be pissing itself laughing, watching people bicker about which generation had more than the other. We are the 5th or 6th biggest economy in the world. There is plenty to go around for everyone, or there would be if there was a will to distribute wealth more equally, address the chronic housing problem and go after corporate tax avoiders etc.

Also with pensions, those on defined benefits pensions have done well. But younger people will have a higher state pension than most people my age.