To think these baby boomers are missing the point?

[Hundredacrewoods]

I grew up in an area where house prices have quadrupled since 2000. I consider this an intergenerational equity issue. Whenever the topic of house prices and 'millennials' comes up with my parents' generation, all I hear is how hard they worked and how much they sacrificed to get on the property ladder. AIBU to think that they're missing the point? No one is denying that they worked hard and sacrificed. The point is that if they worked just as hard today, and made the same sacrifices, it wouldn't be anywhere near enough.

"What frightens me most are the teens coming through at the moment who seem to be more depressed ,stressed and anxiety ridden than previous generations. "

I agree. I enjoyed my teens and did fine academically in between having fun.
I do not think I would even by put forward for A levels if I was a teen today, At least not without sacrificing the carefree fun elements completely.

Theyre under SO much pressure. Even the "vocational" routes are highly pressured/stressful for teens today.

all my friends born in the mid to late 1950's have paid off our children's uni debt, given money towards homes, and now setting stuff aside for the grand kids.
i don't notice that mine are any worse off than we were. all three have homes, are paying off mortgages, and have invested in retirement funds (same as 30 years ago).

YY @ train re false economies spouted @ milleniums

Pancake yy, and for all the bleating about frugality you don't often find a boomer who didn't have a record-player or a hi-fi,or indeed a TV, despite these costing equivalent to an iPhone at the time.

I was looking at a new TV today to replace my 10 year old one which is on the blink - the equivalent one today in all identical features is a third of the price my current one was ten years ago. Of course lots of tech gets cheaper and smaller, that's what it does. Smartphones are a total red herring in the debate, and boomers who spout stuff like that are only displaying their economic illiteracy. So today's young people buy smartphones costing a couple of hundred pounds? Well houses have more than quadrupled in real terms, pensions are rapidly devaluing, job security is like hens' teeth and waged have been stagnant for now of the longest periods in modern history.

The economic data from the long boom shows that people under 30 were the only group to see a real-terms decline in income levels since 2001, where income for boomers and pensioners rose significantly. This is the first time in history that the average retired person is actually better off than the average working person (in income and assets terms). In my occupational pension scheme current pensioners are taking out annual incomes greater than the average income levels of the working people in the scheme! No wonder it's about to collapse (those of us in it have already had those entitlements removed, so we're paying for current pensioners to take out £40k+pa pensions when we're now projected to take out around £12-4kpa equivalent - this is how vastly unequal pensions are between boomers and gen X/Y. Most people don't even understand this yet - but the double whammy of massive house prices versus tiny pension entitlement is going to break our economy.)

All the obfuscation about how decadent the young people are is a form of refusal to face up to the fact that you can't maintain a top-heavy demographic where the over-60s retain the vast proportion of assets, income and taxation benefits without some younger workers actually generating some income to pay for it all. And you bet when it all collapses they will be blaming the young people for the fact that they themselves sucked up everything in the system and then didn't understand that they'd bled it all dry! Well you can't pin that one on us!

all my friends born in the mid to late 1950's have paid off our children's uni debt, given money towards homes, and now setting stuff aside for the grand kids.
i don't notice that mine are any worse off than we were. all three have homes, are paying off mortgages, and have invested in retirement funds (same as 30 years ag

Now maybe I'm miss-reading the tone, but you seem to be saying this as if it's a good thing?

How is it fair that the options available to Millenials these days are dependant on what BBs throw their way?

Where does that leave social mobility, people with lots of siblings, people whose B&B parents are BAD with money and have it all tied up in dodgy schemes?

Where does that leave millenials whose plans aren't what their older BB rellies think is worth helping with?

We've been offered a chunk from our BB relatives once. For something they think is a good use of money and we think is a money pit. So while appreciating the gesture we declined. And no money has since been offered, nor do we expect it, but point is that our options in life should not be dependant on whether BBs think that our choices are worthy enough

But that really isn’t any different than what most parents do for their children. My grandparents born in the late 1890’s-1910 did the same for their children; passed down family values of home ownership and higher education. The lessons my grandmother learned in the 1930’s depression were very valuable in the 1980’s recession.
Some of what you say, poor family difficult dynamics is not unique to millennials.

I am a homeowner but want to see asset prices fall. If this continues our generation are going to be absolutely screwed because during our working years we will have been paying too much for over inflated assets and investing for our retirement.

As it stands I'm 37 and we are supporting our parents and our children at the same time. We both work long hours in multiple jobs. Our society is a mess because of the shifting demographics. We are far too top heavy and there is little to no support for parents to both continue working once they start a family because childcare costs more than most people make.

All these little policies individually make sense but when you look at them collectively it's a huge mess.

Want2bSupermum. your parents would have been part of the late boomer generation or the following group? why are you supporting them?
i'm asking because the pretense is that those born in the late 50's had it so easy and life handed to them on a platter. i think it's a huge group and generalizations are not helpful.

My father is sick and we live in NYC these days. I fly home every month now. My PIL were a janitor and health visitor so never earned much. They did well with what they had but DH wanted them to have a nice home so bought them a nice place with elevator access and parking under the building. They are Danish and property prices are a lot lower (but their place was still quite a bit). My SIL is very sick and my BIL is in the final stages of cancer. We paid off her mortgage and she has a credit card for spends that we replenish monthly. We then have 3DC, 2 with ASD. Childcare isn't cheap and both of us work.

oh wow Want2b. that is amazing generosity and truly challenging.

All this 'worked hard and sacrificed' nonsense.
I work hard and sacrifice....but Ii sacrifice because there is mot enougb money to get by....not because im saving for a mortgage! Its a struggle to get food on the table tbh after rent.

But the message was often to sacrifice family by moving to prosperous towns and sacrificing a particular interest for a lucrative job. Marrying for long term security.

FruitCider Yes dd would struggle to do what the majority of adults do.
And why should she go down that route.

From what has been said on here you have a generation who are not leaving school at 16. They are going on to do A levels and a degree and 5 years later have run up a load of debt so they qualify to work in an office or somewhere else where no matter how hard they work or how many hours they put in they get paid a fixed sum of money each month which isn't quite enough to save the amount they need to buy their own home.

Maybe we should go back to the drawing board and actually cost out how much things are going to cost and how much per hour people are actually working for.
It is no good saying you have a job that pays £25000 per year for a 9-5 job and thinking you are doing well if you are having to get to the office at 8.30 and you don't leave before 6.30
The approximately £12 per hour ends up at closer to £9.60 per hour. Then you have to take off tax, NI and paying back your uni loan. Then there is clothing and travel and maybe lunches and coffee. No wonder no one has any money.

So yes dd would struggle like the majority of adults if she went down this route.

There are alternatives. They might not be jobs that most people want. They don't come with fancy job titles but they pay by the hour and you can choose which shifts you want and if you work 5 hours per day you get paid for all the 5 hours and if you choose to work 12 hours you get paid for the 12 hours. You are definitely not being paid for 9-5 but working 8-6.

Ivebeenroundtbeblock you must have friends who are very well off. I was born a few years after the late 50's and haven't been able to do any of that. I wish people would stop assuming that all boomers are in the same boat. We're not.

Ivebeenaroundtheblock you are wrong, it is not the same as it's ever been with regards to needing family money to get on. There have been many periods of social mobility but this is NOT one of them.

Take my previous example of my relative who got a permanent professional graduate position with a third class bachelors degree.

I have friends in the same field. We are not millennial we are in our 40s.
They did it without famly money. It was MUCH harder but they did it:
FREE degrees & grants but they had to get a first not a pass
They needed Masters but there were all kinds of funding at the time
They needed to do unpaid internships/experience, but at the time you could rent in cities with just the money from an evening and weekend job leaving them free to work unpaid during the day
They are now on short contracts which is a bit rubbish, but doable due to not being up to their pits in debt from their studies and internships

Now imagine being a millennial wanting to go into this field (If your parents can't or won't fund it)
Now the degree and masters parts are just about doable if you shoulder the debt. But How do you get over the hurdle of the internship?
An evening & weekend job wont pay your room rent in the cities that offer internships in this field.
So your only option is to take a year out and work work work then do an internshipp
But what then? The (highly saught after) contracts are short and unstable. Its a highly competitive field so a second job isn't an option when you've got to show you're going above and beyond to be kept on. My generation cope because theyre not STARTING OFF in debt...but for a millenial without family money....the sums dont add up.....

There are alternatives. They might not be jobs that most people want. They don't come with fancy job titles but they pay by the hour and you can choose which shifts you want and if you work 5 hours per day you get paid for all the 5 hours and if you choose to work 12 hours you get paid for the 12 hours.

Even things like labouring and care work are increasingly asking for vocational qualifications and experience.

Things like retail and hospitality aren't "just walk in off the street" jobs any more, they are quite competitive

When I left school you could get an auxiliary job in a hospital or work in a hotel with no qualifications or experience at all

As a 16 year old with zero work experience I did a summer job that you now need an NOW or BTEC for.

And you didn't need GCSEs to do non professional work.

"NOW" = NVQ

Thanks to the government a lot of previously entry level jobs have been replaced by "apprentiships" which pay just under £4/hr.

This is the case at my children's nursery. All of the helper staff are apprentices being paid sod all.
The staff who actually get paid properly all have level 2 qualifications at least.

Yes all my early jobs did not need qualifications. I am mid 50s. It was quite common to start off on very low paid work, get experience, and then get qualifications. Mind you lots of us left school at 15 or 16. Staying on until 18 was then what schools were pushing. Only a tiny minority went to university.

The other side is if you were disabled but not in a special school, school did not cater for you at all. You were simply "naughty".

TBF you were better off in a regular school being ignored/berrated than going to one of the old style special schools

These days you get a diagnosis..but very little actual help.

I think comparisons between boomers now and millennials now are misleading. We should really compare the disposable income and what sort of lifestyle it maintains between millennials now and boomers when they were the same age.

No young people that I knew expected to have the same standard of living as their parents. And there are areas where spending has become grossly inflated. Even comfortably-off people didn't spend nearly as much on weddings, stag/hen nights etc as seems to be done today.

The problem lies in the fact that we did aspire to have the same standard of living when we were older, and now that seems to be an impossibility for some. Ime, over a lifetime, every generation experiences its ups and downs. Millennials have had the most cosseted early years in history. Other generations had WW1, the Depression, WW2 and Austerity. Sometimes all four over a lifetime. It's understandable that they feel the draught in tougher times. They've never had it so bad.

But don't knock the elderly. All this talk of them sitting on fortunes made through housing inflation. Who's going to benefit from that wealth when they die off? And sitting on a fortune doesn't mean having money to spend in the bank. There are many pensioners who are asset rich and cash poor. Those with modest savings have been hit hard by the low interest rates that benefit those with mortgages and loans. Income that they hoped to get from savings to pay for bigger expenses like insurance and house maintenance has been cut to the bone. They can't get an evening job to pay for dentistry and new glasses.

Above all, direct your anger at successive governments, not individuals who had just as little control over life events as you have.

"Who's going to benefit from that wealth when they die off? "

Not necessarily their children
I'm sick of this sentiment: suck it up because you MIGHT inherit SOME of it SOME TIME in the future......maybe..

We're not all only children of parents who are sensible with their money and will will it all to us!

I'm not that far from 50. Benefited from a first house at only 35k. Bought a few more homes now mortgage free in an ok house. It's by no means my dream home

I have boomer parents who own outright. So does dh. Who knows maybe we will get some money one day but by no means am I counting on it.

There are medical issues and care to consider. If there's any left after inheritance tax than lovely but my kids will need it more than me anyway

It's the under 30s I really feel for.

No - but we're dealing in generalisations. The vast majority of inherited wealth goes to successive generations.

You don't have to go back very far for the majority of the population to be living in rented accommodation all their lives and no inheritance. In my own family, if my grandmother hadn't paid a bob or two to the Coop insurance man every week, we'd have had to have a whip-round for her funeral. It was the norm.

It's not house-ownership that's the real problem. It's the lack of social housing and a profiteering rental market.