- to be fed-up of people thinking that my generation had it easy regarding housing?

[PUER125]

I often read comments on Mumsnet, saying that housing was affordable in a way that it isn't now.
If we take todays mortgage of £200,000 at 3% interest, a repayment mortgage would cost £11,376 per year. This equates to 42% of the average UK wage of £27,000.
In 1990, having left my husband whilst pregnant with my second child, and buying him out of the marital home, my mortgage was £40,000 and the interest rate 15%. Repayments were £6144 per year and the average wage was £13,760. This equated to 44.65% in mortgage costs.
And whilst I am having a rant, I am also fed-up of young people complaining that they will have to work until they are 67 before they can claim their pension.
With the majority of young people going to university, they don't enter the work force until they're 21, giving them a working life of 46 years.
My generation left school at 16/18, and we too shall work until we are 67. A work life of 49 years.
Earlier generations started work at 14/15 and retired at 65, a working life of 50 years, many of them worked in manual labour.
Each generation has their own difficulties and hardships. I shouldn't like to be starting out now; nor should I have liked to belong to an older generation.
Whilst being a single-parent, working full-time, was not easy, I coped; just as countless women before and after me have.
Can we please have a little more understanding of generations other than our own, instead of the resentment so often found on these pages?

I don’t think generations should fight. The problem is successive shit housing policies from central government which started with Thatcher. She was the cause of all this talking about wealth cascading down generations
Da is 24. I don’t know how he will buy a house. He’s got an MA, and has told me that he expects to earn crap money and rent all his life. I despair at what the Millennials have to cope with.

A degree means nothing these dat, yet incurs so much debt. When l did my degree, the amount of places were capped at the amount of potential vacancies. Criminology attracts so may students. I’m a teacher and l had to deliver some scary figures the other month. There’s only employment for a very very low number of Criminology applicants. Same with law, the Uk needs very few lawyers, the industry is saturated, and will apparently need fewer in the future. Yet our children are running up debts for worthless degree😔l can’t confirm the numbers above, but they came off some national school career database.

House prices have increased at a much greater rate than wages. The first person who owned my 4 bedroom house (built in late 1960s) was a geography teacher whose wife was not in paid employment. Their household income would have been the equivalent of a teacher’s salary of £40-45k per annum today. A teacher today could not afford to buy anything in my village. Even a one bedroom flat in the nearest small town costs £160k.

It is definitely harder for young people today (and I speak as someone who paid 17% interest on my first mortgage)%

Every generation has it hard... That's just life. It does sound like it was much easier back then - being able to support a family on one wage was possible... not now.

*Bought a house in 1980 in the north for £9000. My salary was £1080. So 8 times my salary.
Sold a few weeks later as dp got a job in London.
Bought another in 1982 in London. Cheapest studio was £17000 so 8times my salary.
Our multiples 3x dp salary around £2000 and once time mine meant we had to save up over 50% of the cost of the place.

With respect, those were unusually low salaries for that time. The average wage in 1980 was £6000 (and higher in 1982 and in London). And you still managed to buy*

Only by buying with dp and us both working 90 hours per week in a lot of different jobs to raise the difference between the mortgage multiples and the cost of the cheapest flat

It is no good banging on about average salaries because for every person earning £5000 more there is another another earning £5000 less.

I know my salary for my 9-5 job went up when I moved to London but so did the cost of the properties

Only by buying with dp and us both working 90 hours per week in a lot of different jobs to raise the difference between the mortgage multiples and the cost of the cheapest flat

Just to be clear - you were both working 90 hours a week but you earned 1/6th of the national average salary?

Bet you feel a bit of a dick now, OP!

With the majority of young people going to university, they don't enter the work force until they're 21, giving them a working life of 46 years

If they do go to university almost all of the young people I know (I work in universities) have jobs during their studies. Some work the equivalent of full time by patching together part time jobs. They would not survive otherwise.

Bet you feel a bit of a dick now, OP! Why? Because she believes that inter generational conflict is unnecessary?

Does that mean you think that every generation should feel resentful of its parents?

Why? The resentment is based on someone having made the best of their lives, being born in year XXXX. What does feeling resentful of that achieve? Just get on with making the best of having been born in year whatever.. or invent a time machine, go back and see what you can do with your new life.

Or resent away... and wait until your own kids, having had such a stupid mindset validated, think the same of you!

Ridiculous!

CuriousaboutSamphire there doesnt need to be conflict, but should be recognition. I bear my grandparents no ill will for having been able to afford a family home on a single income, they made plenty of other sacrifices - but am pretty horrified when they sit around the dinner table asking my younger sisters, who spend a large proportion of their income on renting a room in a grotty share house, commuting to work and paying off student loans, why they keep going out for dinner with friends once a week instead of saving for a (completely out of their reach) mortgage.
I'm absolutely furious when they then vote for things like Brexit, that hurt the younger generation once again.

I'd be equally shocked if at some point millenials en masses decided to massively defund aged care.

It's about being sympathetic to changing circumstances and the needs of people at different life stages, (and if choosing not to keep up with latest realities, at least not whinging about it online or, ideally, voting accordingly!)

*en masse! No thanks to autocorrect...

I think you had a lot easier in terms of wages vs mortgage ratio which made it easier to buy house. Lots of your generation also have final salary pensions so will get a lot better retirement.

I lived at home for two years to be able to afford a deposit. Of course it's harder. Most of friends are still in renting as they simply can't afford a deposit, and don't have the luxury of living at home like I did.

It's about being sympathetic to changing circumstances and the needs of people at different life stages Can you not see that works both ways and that when you are older your own kids will probably be fucking furious with you for a lot things you think / believe?

I have little to no sympathy to my mother in law moaning about having no money after buying a new caravan. Between my inlaws their pensions from manual labour jobs is more than we earn.

It makes me really angry that the complacent, unempathetic, Brexit voters define my generation. How anyone can possibly be so blind they can't see how crippling student debt, ridiculous house prices, unpaid internships, etc are impoverishing an entire generation is beyond me.

The world we've created for young people is shocking and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they punish us big time in 20 years time. Frankly some of us richly deserve it.

*Only by buying with dp and us both working 90 hours per week in a lot of different jobs to raise the difference between the mortgage multiples and the cost of the cheapest flat

Just to be clear - you were both working 90 hours a week but you earned 1/6th of the national average salary*

We earned a salary for our 9-5 jobs then we earned extra by doing other jobs every evening and every weekend .

Average salaries might have been £6k per year but I don't know who earned them.

Dp is a qualified professional person he left school at 18 and did a day release type qualification but because of the post qualification experience he had to do for 2 years his salary was kept artificially low because you couldnt just move jobs as it would impact your career.

My last job where I earned a salary was in 1987 and was £3500.
So even 7 years later I was still massively under the average salary. I remember dp going for a job in 1987 and being asked the question. "Well how does it feel to be getting a 5 figured salary"

Something must have gone awfully wrong because these average salaries people are telling me were around in the 1980s don't match with what myself or those around me earned.

£6000 was a huge salary in 1980.

If it was so hard for the previous generation, and so easy for this one, why is it that this generation isn’t buying houses, but the previous one, generally, own one - mostly mortgage free.

Forgive me if my heart doesn’t bleed.

Why should your heart bleed?

No one sensible would say that there isn't any disparity between generations, there is, always has been. But why all the anger, the hate ? Why waste your time and energy with it?

I am fortunate, late 40s and able to buy in London in my mid 20s. I do think it will be harder for my DC.

However, that doesn't mean it wasn't a struggle for people of my generation. We did have to contend with higher interest rates, higher unemployment for the 1980s and much of the 1990s and fewer employment rights. (Unemployment rate was over 8% for 14 of the 20 years between 1980 -2000; it has gone over 8% once since 2000)

The shortage of housing is due to a lack of available stock and the lack of a decent social housing alternative for many people (particularly in the SE). House prices would not be so high if there were more properties available. You cannot simply blame the middle aged and older generation without looking at the wider picture.

They're not blaming us (much) for what we have or the time we were born. They're blaming us for saying they don't work hard, shouldn't buy Starbucks et al, shouldn't have smart phones, holidays, nights out. They're blaming my generation for voting leave.

Oh! So they are blaming you for having an opinion! That's OK then!

But... help me out here... why is that just an intergenerational thing?

The outpourings on any 'Baby Boomer' posts make that really clear. the MN zeitgeist sees Baby Boomers as a 'problem'

If it was just Person A things Person B would get further if they didn't do X Y and Z there wouldn't be so much Baby Boomer angst on MN!

What part of we are a problem don't you understand. My generation shat on those behind.

Salaries haven't actually gone up that much over the last 20 years. Maybe doubled at the very most but I don't even think they've gone up that much. The deposit for my house (bought just a few years ago) was £45k. Many of the posters on here that bought 20/30 years ago had a mortgage of that. How anyone with a brain in their head can't see how much things have changed, is beyond me. Even two doctors working full time would struggle to buy anything half-decent in many parts of the country.

I started working full time at 21 after going to university. Current retirement age is 67, so 46 years in employment. My dad left school at 16 and retired at 57, so 41 years in employment. My dad is very critical of people going on to further and higher education as they should get out into the work place like he did and stop being lazy.

In-laws got a mortgage for a three bed detached new build bungalow from the local council on one 21 year old's electricians salary (MIL was pregnant with DH so not in work). They still think they have had a hard life.

I admit they all had much harder childhoods with rationing, strict upbringings and not much in the way if material possessions but they have seen there standard of living improve in ways they could not have imagined. They don't see things re getting harder for their children and grandchildren.