To cancel my guardian supportership

[SmallBuisnessOwner]

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/money/2018/jan/29/can-you-really-save-for-a-deposit-by-ditching-coffee-and-avocado-toast-i-tried-to-find-out

Ridiculous story's like this of someone 26 with a well paid job working in the media and London spends over 500 a year on coffee. Outside London I don't know anyone like this. Most go out once a week to the pub and get a cheap takeaway occasionally as a treat. I don't think articles like this help anyone.

Wayfarer - no one is denying the hike in property prices. But hyperbolising weakens your argument. You can live in Zone 5 in a £250,OOO flat and be in Central London in 30 mins.

Zone 5 to central London in 30 mins? £250k for a flat? You really have zero idea of what you're talking about, don't you? Never mind, a childhood spent in 40s austerity clearly didn't have much room for luxuries like knowing what you're talking about before wading in....

Wayfarer - just google flats in the London Borough of Bromley. Zone 5. Bromley South is 15 mins from Victoria. I easily found one within walking distance from the station. St Mary Cray, Zone 6, has flats quite a bit under £250, and is still only 29 mins from Victoria. Other stations take you to Charing Cross, Blackfriars and Cannon St. Probably cheaper in LB Bexley.

And there's no need to be so rude.

I like the Times and it's my paper of choice. However, I'm continuing to read the Guardian/Observer for Victoria Coren Mitchell, David Mitchell, Anna Timms, Annalisa Barbieri, Hadley Freeman and a very small number of others.

I think you can still find relatively cheap small flats in Zone 5, but Guardian journalists wouldn't buy them - they'd be living near people with white vans, which really wouldn't do 😂

I think, Thymeout, that you clearly haven't any experience of either commuting, Bromley (where I've actually lived and commuted from, as it happens), or of current property prices. Especially if you think that commuting from Bromley to a workplace in central London actually only takes 15 minutes (more like 1.5 hours door to door on a good run...) And Bromley South is super-expensive, especially anywhere within walking distance from the station - more like houses costing 800k than cheap flats, I'm afraid, unfortunately you have hit on exactly where I have experience of! I used to walk 25 mins to the station there every morning - rented a boxroom in someone's flat and I certainly wouldn't have been able to buy it - it would have been just as plausible for me to fly to the moon.

But then basing what you think on a quick Google rather than on any actual experience is pretty rude, too, and you're being bloody rude to anyone younger than about 45 by continuing to spout all of this load of guff in your posts. Pretty much all of it is an elaborate fantasy of what you would like to be true rather than what is actually true.... you might like it to be the case that older generations were virtuously hard-up and today's yoof have an amazing standard of living, and houses were always just as hard to buy, but the data and economic facts just don't bear that out, I'm afraid.

What about low-income young people, ThymeOut? You have to admit that social mobility has really decreased in the past decade or so.

Kids are told to work hard in school, get educated and save hard and they can do well but if you come from a poor background that is less possible than ever. There is terrible inequality and fewer ways out of it now.

You might know mainly middle class kids who’ve grown up with a high standard of living and have unrealistic expectations but spare a thought for young people who didn’t grow up with money and are more screwed over than ever in a society with high income inequality.

I find the Times very uninspired. It’s centre right and Murdoch to boot.

I’m not reading a paper that is basically a mouthpiece for Murdoch business interests.

I sometimes read Matthew Parris and a couple of others.

Otherwise I read the Guardian and the FT, and also the Telegraph - to keep an eye on the fascists.

Wayfarer

I take it that you haven't Googled house prices in the LBB. I don't know why you should think that I 'clearly have no experience' of these issues. You're wrong on all counts.

I live in Bromley and have done since 1972. I frequently travel to central London and fast trains to Victoria do take 15 mins. Look it up. I can be in St James' Park with my dgd in 45 mins, door to door, including a bus to the station.

I've no doubt that, if you lived in Bromley and worked in, say, LB Hillingdon, a commute might well take 2 hours each way. But why would you? I used to work near Oxford Circus. Central London by any definition.

London is a big place. Even in a Tory borough like Bromley, there are cheaper areas and cheaper properties where a commute to Central London doesn't involve the 4 hrs daily on public transport from the half million flat you were talking about. As I said, hyperbolising weakens your argument. Get your facts right.

I'm not getting into this inter-generational war, fostered by people with an agenda to divide and rule as a distraction from the failure of successive governments to address the housing shortage and social inequality. But anyone with a family, like me, is well aware and directly involved in the problems faced by succeeding generations. I'm also in a better position than someone your age (I'm assuming) to compare them with those faced by mine.

As I said, yes, it's more difficult. It will take longer. And it shouldn't be like this. But, as psychomath has illustrated in her post, Martin Lewis is right in his advice, even for someone whose total take-home pay is the same amount as the journalist's disposable income. She needs to apply the same focus and drive as she has given to her career on saving for her future.

On the other issue... I'm a Guardian supporter. I like Polly Toynbee, John Crace, Martin Rowson's cartoons and the Comment is Free facility. I don't like Owen Jones and some of the feminist/safe space/no platforming articles and sometimes think Jill Tweedie must be turning in her grave. I wish its fashion, food and home sections were more down to earth. But there we go. That's life. The G has a Liberal, not Labour, and certainly not far Left, tradition, but it's the only non-tory 'broadsheet'.

I buy the Sunday Times for its political journalism, often more informed than the Observer, and skim the Mail On-line to know what the other side are thinking.

I don't think flouncing does much good. I've tried the Times, but, apart from the Murdoch factor, it seemed to me to rely too much on PR handouts.

As a 25 year old I found the article ridiculous and not at all representative of my generation. She spent more in a week than I have spare in a month. I don’t think she recognsied at alll that there are people in our age bracket who earn far less than her and genuinely do struggle to save because the cost of living is so high.

psychomath well done on the saving, hope you manage to buy yourself a nice place.

It's unrealistic to get people to buy with friends and creates a whole host of problems. It did used to be far far easier to get a house. Actually back in the 70s I didn't know anyone who bought a place by themselves. I think maybe we married and settled down younger. I knew a couple of people who by the end of the 70s had a flat or house on their own but it was always after a break up and one person keeping the house/flat on.

So cute how they do these articles about the well paid millenials with their Starbucks and sushi lunches and what have you, rather than the millenials who drink value instant and pack marmite sandwiches and are still trapped renting shithole slumlord places due to lack of social housing in their area. Oh but they're not poor either because the own an old iphone they bought for £40 on FB!

Actually back in the 70s I didn't know anyone who bought a place by themselves

I know lots! My dad to start with. His first house was almost twice his yearly salary (and it wasn't a particularly high salary). There is nothing available which is proportionately so low now.

I rolled my eyes at this too. Stupid article. Although I still like the Guardian - it's not a bad thing to criticise it sometimes. i do really feel for her generation and those younger (like my teenagers) who may never own a house. The housing market has gone completely berserk and goodness knows what the way back from it is. But it shouldn't be about saving only for a house - she just shouldn't be pissing away money like that. Save it. Save for a nicer rental property. Nicer home comforts. Holiday. Sickness cover. Pension. Anything. Bloody give it to charity.

My aunt and her friend, both senior nurses in their late 40's, could only afford to buy in the late 70s with a joint purchase. Two of my son's friends bought jointly in the late 80's. My son in law also bought with a friend in the 90's. All in SE London. None could have afforded to buy on their own.

I think Psychomath should get in touch with the Guardian with her story. To give a non-London centric p.o.v.

I live in LB of Bexley. couldnt afford it now but still massively cheaper than most of London. Zone 4. 30 mins to central London on several different lines. My husband works in HE with lots of millennials, many trying to buy in some shit hole parts of London but wouldn't dream of coming out to the suburbs as its in no way trendy enough.

FFS, when are you going in for your journey to take 45mins to St James', Thymeout? Presumably not at rush hour/commuter times as it certainly doesn't take 45 mins then. I used to walk 25 minutes to Bromley South, wait for train, train journey, ten minutes to even get down to Victoria tube platforms in rush hour, Victoria tube often closed anyway in peak times due to crush, so go across the road, wait ten minutes, 25 mins on bus, walk ten mins at end (and I worked really very very close to St James's.....) All in all, 1.5-2hrs each way door to door, once you factor in all the connections and transit times (often 2hrs+ on the way back, with a good chunk of time waiting around on Victoria concourse). I'm talking about real time rather than nominal times if you just happen to arrive just at the right connection time. In reality there is a lot of waiting about on cold platforms early in the morning, not some kind of whizzy teleportation-style journey at 11 o'clock.

Same where I live now - outside rush hour I can be into work in 30 mins door to door on public transport; at rush hour times it's 1.5 hours+, because loads of people all doing the same.

Anyway, I'm just feeding the troll now because I've had a glass of wine, and I know I've argued with you and your sock puppets about exactly the same issues on many other threads, so I'm not going to go into detail about how many of my parents' generation owned homes in their early twenties on salary multiples that would make your eyes water (my parents, fresh out of growing up in a council estate, bought their first house in 1974 at 22 and 23 on just under twice my dad's training salary); they were annoyed because they got in late and lots of their friends had bought a couple of years earlier at even less.... You always also forget the operation of inflation during the 70s, which rapidly eroded the expense of mortgage debt as salaries rose. It really was very easy to buy a house in the 1970s as a young couple: in a largely working-class/lower middle-class community where I grew up, nearly everyone owned their houses (and the rest had secure council tenancies). But then that would spoil your fantasy about how amazing your generation is, and how they struggled manfully up from the soil into five bedroomed houses through sheer hard graft and moral superiority.

Bus to Bromley South. 10mins. 15 mins on fast train to Victoria. WALK to St James Park. 10 mins. Probably quicker without a buggy.

My recollection of the 70s is of being v hard up, 3 small children, high mortgage interest rates and one salary that didn't go up nearly enough to combat the effects of inflation on our budget.

Stop whingeing. It's giving your generation a bad name.

Thymeout, I do believe I may actually know you IRL. How funny!