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.

I'm 44 and think I was luckier than both Boomers and Millenials. No 15% mortgage rates. Post property crashes (conveniently forgotten the mass repossessions in the 80s and early 90s). Easier access to credit than for Boomers. Property still affordable on an average wage.

But, when I bought my first (tiny, one bed) flat it still floored me financially. No holidays, car, luxuries, takeaways, watching every penny, working as much overtime as possible. A lot of my friends rented and lived off credit cards and had a superficially better lifestyle than me.

The current situation is shit and unsustainable. But don't blame the boomers, it's not their doing.

Things that definitely helped me were:

Living in the cheapest area
Living in a less sought after location (next to pub/school etc.)
A very small house
No 'niceties' like central heating
No garden
Didn't own a car
No £30+ a month commitments like phones
(We rented a tv)
Basic, second hand furniture
Frequently eating jacket potato and beans
Working two jobs

Yes, it was a struggle and yes, 15% interest rates were very hard to cope with even with a relatively small mortgage.

But that doesn't mean it's not difficult for people starting out now.

Most people are incapable of thinking in general terms and therefore judge everything by their own limited experience, particularly if it relates to "life" things.
As someone once said, think how stupid the average person is, then remember 50% are even more stupid (average being median in this case).
I'm constantly surprised the human race has ever achieved anything useful. I guess we get lucky every billion or so people.

YANBU OP.
Of course the boomers worked hard but the elephant in the room is that huge amounts of the capital tied-up in their houses (that many now own outright) is due to capital gain.
Any suggestion that this generation need to accept that their capital should pay for their old-age care, goes down like stale sick.
My generation (the X-ers) don’t have the capacity to do the elderly care ourselves, as we are flat-out paying our own mortgage with 2 earners in each family (ok sweeping generalisation) and bringing up kids. Neither us our our parents (the boomers) should have any expectation that this money can be passed down the generations while expecting the state to pay for nursing/residential care.

Ah! the Baby Boomer Myths... as others have said, it only applies to some of them.

And you all do know that in about 25 30 years your own kids and grandkids will be abso-fuckin-lutely furious with you for having had easy access to all sorts of things you take for granted, because at this moment in time they are the norm, but in a decade or so won't be?

You do know that, don't you? Or are you truly so deluded that you really do think that a single generation had the absolute acme of human achievement and have stolen that opportunity from you?

Maybe that was a bit wordy... maybe Grow up! Every generation has it challenges, just as every generation has it luxuries. Nobody, whilst trying to live their life, thinks "Fuck! I better hadn't enjoy this, or buy anything nice/expensive or my children will vilify me, forever!"

Everybody tries to make the very best of the life they do live. It only makes you bitter, distracts you from the good in your own life, to so concentrate on the inequities of life.

You can tell them that young people can't and won't be able to buy a property because houses are now over 10 times the average salary until your blue in the face.

IN SOME PLACES

I live near Gloucester - a lovely place.

A small basement flat in the middle of Gloucester goes for between 48 and 55K. A single salary on minimum wage is over £15K - so a couple would bring in £30K - so the flat would cost under twice the minimum wage for a couple let alone average wage.

But even here people still whinge. Because they don't WANT to live in a tiny (affordable) hovel and have nothing for a bit.

I'm a youngish baby boomer and worked bloody hard to buy my first dilapidated house in London in 1989. It was such a wreck I basically lived in a bedroom for 5 years and washed up in the bath as the interest rates went up to 15% and it was hard to manage on my £8k salary.

However, before I got to that lucky point, I moved to London for work as the North was virtually closed down, lived in a variety of London hostels and YMCAs for two years and then rented a room in a shared house for another 2 years. I couldn't afford children or driving lessons till I was 36.

I don't get much of a feel for today's generation living in shared accommodation nowadays. Does that still go on?

I have advised my two DC to head North when it comes to job hunting so they can afford a house. 😣

Baby boomers who don't admit that it was easier in their day to get on the housing ladder make themselves sound stupid.

It's not just the housing ladder per se, it's better housing, on a London street its not atypical for the older generation to be in trade type roles but the younger generation to be in well paid professionals to afford the same houses.

BUT the issue with millennials is that they don't even seem to try and save for a deposit. The ones I know seem to regularly spend hundreds of pounds at ASOS, use Uber rather than the tube/night bus, have an expensive gym membership, a cleaner, buy Starbucks coffee every day and buy benefit / Mac makeup rather than rimmel like I did at their age. And they genuinely don't think that they're wasteful and could cut back their spend.

I get that London is unaffordable to buy for most but there are plenty of areas within commutable distance which are still affordable. If they can save a deposit for a flat in Essex / Kent etc they're at least on the housing ladder even if they rent it out whilst they choose to live in London.

Of course the boomers worked hard but the elephant in the room is that huge amounts of the capital tied-up in their houses (that many now own outright) is due to capital gain. Capital which is worth exactly 0, zilch, nada to them whilst they need a home to live in. It is only worth something to their kids... perhaps! You know, probably the family home that parents paid for whilst raising those self same kids. The home that those kids look at and think that that is what I deserve... why can't I have it? Ah! Because parents won't move out of the house they bought 40 - 50 years ago, turned into a family home, loved, paid for and now, apparently, are utter bastards for not simply giving it away!

And what the fuck is wrong with someone owning their home outright? Isn't that the dream of every poster who is bemoaning Baby Boomers?

I despair! Yes, life is unfair, it is shit for vey many normal people at very many times. But do you really need to show such naked hatred for a generation simply because they had an opportunity based solely on the year they were born?

www.newstatesman.com/2017/08/yougov-research-brexit-proves-baby-boomers-hate-their-own-children

My dad was forever commenting on how silly we were only buying a two bed because the cost of moving was so high,we should just buy a 4 bed and stay put.

The same dad whose 5 bed seaside home was affordable on one good salary (as well as private school and a yacht), as was a comfortable retirement at 54. That house was sold for well over three times what it was bought for. The subsequent house was bought for 250k in 2000 and sold for just shy of 800k in 2013. They joked it would be perfect for us when we were looking, to which I replied that it would be, at the price they paid 13 years before! 😂

Love them dearly, but no recognition that things are different.

I'm a baby boomer and I know we were lucky in being able to buy property, however the rented flats we had to live in beforehand were shite, really grim. The standard of rentals is much better these days.
But that's just an aside. I do despair at property prices -- there is no justification for the sky high prices. I'm no Daily Fail reader and would be delighted to see an end to the price boom, a correction is long overdue.
We had a trip to Bordeaux recently and looked at prices of apartments in a development (just out of interest, not looking to buy) and there was a clause in the pricing - one lower price for owner-occupiers and a 25 pct or so higher price for buy-to-rent. Seemed a good idea to me, especially for big cities. Something for Sadiq to think about!

But do you really need to show such naked hatred for a generation simply because they had an opportunity based solely on the year they were born?

Read the OP’s post again. You’re missing the point.

Really Helmet ? You really believe that garbled, half baked trite crap?

Ah well!

Curious- no you should stay in your home for as long as you want/need to.
BUT- when the time comes that you can no longer manage at home due to illness or infirmity, either your kids care for you IN your home (usually not feasible due to their own commitments and the fact that nursing the frail elderly is a specialist job) OR the house you own needs to be sold to pay for elderly care!

But don't blame the boomers, it's not their doing
It's not their doing.
But it wouldn't hurt for some of them to shut up and stop going on about bloody tough their life was and how they 'only ever went to brighton for their holidays instead of these fancy trips' when it's cheaper to get a week in europe than at some british places.
Maybe it's just me but it's the 'you don't know hardship' crap that annoys me.

Equally, i've got my own house but don't go to America, didn't spend a year travelling round Thailand, don't have a PCP, own my cars outright and run them til they break, don't have the latest phone/games consoles, don't do spa days and cocktails with 'these girls'. In my area housing is affordable. I have a nice house in a nice area. The way some of my friends go on you'd think that owning a house was out of their reach. It isn't in our area. They seem to prefer the splash the cash lifestyle. I see that side too.

Read the OP’s post again. You’re missing the point. Oh! I a sorry. Is a thread not allowed to move on? Is there no room for extension of debate?

I am not missing the point at all! I am responding to the usual Baby Boomer hatred that posts like this seem to stir up. Unthinking, blinkered and, in a nutshell, self defeating.

I think it is ineffably sad that there is even a small % of one generation of adults who focus so much time on 'hating' a previous whole generation because a % of them benefitted from being born in a given year.

Not only is it divisive, it is pointless, wasteful, a distraction from simply appreciating the good things in your life. I'd hate to live my life like that!

The thing is, its not just baby boomers, which is why I don't understand why some of the baby boomers stance. I'm (I think) generation x and it was easier in my day too. My much younger sibling is a millennial and the whole housing market changed from when I was able to buy to what he is looking to buy. My generation could do it if they were together by their mid 20s or missed out if they weren't for whatever reason.

The job market also changed hugely. I left school with good A levels and there were lot of full time proper contract jobs in offices I could take and employers half heartedly supported training. Now there are a diminishing number of proper graduate jobs, paying what I earned after A levels despite 12 years of inflation or there are zero hours, work for free internships or non graduate jobs asking for a degree with the associated debt.

Maybe because it literally changed for me and my brother I can see it so clearly but with some baby boomers they think of course times have changed and see things like the quality of housing now and washing machines, dishwashers etc.

I think there's a mixture of both circumstances and approach.

Circumstances:
Property prices in some areas are batshit. London in particular is completely unattainable for most ordinary people, although interestingly the bubble of luxury apartments seems to have burst - the Graun had a good article yesterday about how thousands of them are unsold as foreign investors are nervy about Brexit and Londoners can't afford to buy them anyway. The multiplier of income required for a mortgage sufficient to buy has gone up significantly in most areas, and the days of being in an average-waged position with one party at home as a SAHP and still being able to afford a decent family home, are probably long gone for most areas.

However -

Approach:
There are different expectations today from some young people in terms of the quality of life they expect to lead. Nicer clothes, holidays, high end makeup, nights out, eating out regularly. Nothing wrong with any of that, but it does become a question of priority.

When we bought our first house we didn't go out at all. Groceries were bought daily at the end of the day when they'd been discounted. I walked everywhere because we didn't have the money to spend on driving lessons because we were saving for the deposit. Clothes came from supermarkets or charity shops. We didn't go on holiday at all. When we got the house we had to save up the money as we went along to do it up - we didn't even have a proper bed when we first moved in! Having rented fully furnished for years we had to save up to buy it - so we had an air mattress on the floor and an old sofa we'd retrieved out of a skip.

So whilst stopping buying avocado toast and Starbucks on its own is obviously not enough to address the gap between earnings and house prices, there are still some areas of the UK where buying a house is achievable - the average for a semi in my area is £127k. But in order to do that then saving for the house has to be a priority which takes precedence over nights out and clothes shopping.

In our 50s. When we bought our first home all our friends were in basis houses..pipes coming through walls waiting for money to buy radiators. No proper kitchen just saved to have one put in. In lreland so mostly self build. We all lived away from home renting before marrying and paid college fees and accommodation at that time. We came from big families so no help from home.
Now young people here are building mansions with ensuite bedrooms and fabulous fitted kitchens before they move in. A lot of them have done a year at least travelling and wear gorgeous clothes have tan done and nails etc. That was unheard of for us. Their weddings of up to 300 people cost a fortune combined with a month in various destination honeymoon. We went to the coast for a week in freezing lreland. So come on!!
Recently things have got worse and l do feel sorry for young people coming along now as rents are so high but they is no poi nt in each generation putting down another one. Ye need to respect what older peopke have achieved not envy or critisise them.

when the time comes that you can no longer manage at home due to illness or infirmity, either your kids care for you IN your home (usually not feasible due to their own commitments and the fact that nursing the frail elderly is a specialist job) OR the house you own needs to be sold to pay for elderly care!

Yes... that is what happens, has happened to every generation. Everyone has to work out how they will age. A house can be used in a few different ways to pay for care and, if family can't or won't, then it will be used to pay for care that the home owners, if their health allows, will choose.

So, given that, can someone explain why Baby Boomers are selfish not to give their houses away to their kids?

Oh! I a sorry. Is a thread not allowed to move on? Is there no room for extension of debate?

Well, it can move on to yelling at people for stuff nobody actually said if you like, I suppose, but it doesn’t seem the best use of time

Baby boomers being able to afford their own houses in their youth = not a problem.

Baby boomers being able to afford their own houses in their youth, and then assuming it’s just as easy for young people today and blaming them for not doing it = a problem.

The rented flats we had to live in beforehand were shite, really grim - yes and not necessarily that cheap either. My friends and I lived in a basement flat that was totally damp downstairs (where the bedrooms were). We had mushrooms growing in the bathroom for while.

I don't personally know any baby boomers who sneer at Generation X and Millennials BUT I would say life is different to what it was. Yes, they had the money to buy cheap properties compared to income but many lived very frugal lives - it was certainly not the era of all (if many) mod cons by any stretch of the imagination.

Live in Essex so house prices are pricey. I know many people under 25 who don’t bother saving because what £200 a month going to do when you need £50k for a deposit.