To wonder why the older generation can't admit that things are harder for millennials?

[ExtraPineappleExtraHam]

So we just had our meeting with a mortgage advisor. They will lend my dp £45,000 (not even enough for a bedsit in this town) and so I'm not even bothering to do mine as I earn less. We work very hard (44 hours and 27 hours) we just have low paid jobs and pay childcare for two under 5's!
I talked to my stepdad who compared it to when he had to borrow £36,000 to buy his first house in the early eighties. That was 3 times his salary and his wife stayed at home. He paid it off in six years. It's not the same. He was given a mortgage which was enough to buy a nice house in an area close to family and where he worked. He didn't have to have a bank manager saying 'well if you move to Wales or up north?' He didn't have to rent forever and have nothing to pass down to his children. It's not the same!

My parents are in their mid-80s and live very close and the thought of putting them in a home wouldn't enter my head.

Well then you care more about your own pride/honour then you do about them.

Because at some point you'll fall asleep. People with dementia often stat awake all night. What you gonna do tie them in like a dog so that you can retain your badge of honour? Or just let them wander naked down dual carraigeways at 3am so that you can keep feeling superior to people who can put their parents needs abovs their own pride/honour?

I think the tide is changing with social care and people better understand the problems as we first witness the issues with longer life expectancy.

Those of us who have helped with care, dealt with difficult relatives who fought care homes etc even when they were desperately needed won’t make the same mistakes. I refuse to be a burden to my children, with the exception of a sudden illness or lack of capacity I’ll make sure I arrange my own care.

Things like home ownership will change for the next generation. My husband and I have no intention of growing old in our 4 bed family home, we are intending to downsize and help our children when they’re in their 20/30s, when they need it, as opposed to letting them hope for an inheritance when they’re older themselves and have it be used up by our own care.

Kaybush Tue 20-Feb-18 13:41:37

"There's a lot of talk on here about the cost of caring for elderly parents, but what about moving them in with you and caring for them yourselves, which is much more common abroad?

My granny lived with us for most of her elderly life, until the last two weeks of her life, when she was in a hospice.

My parents are in their mid-80s and live very close and the thought of putting them in a home wouldn't enter my head."

I might have thought that when MIL was 80. By the time she was 81 she was paralysed and had to be lifted everywhere: neither her house or ours was large enough to accommodate the kind of apparatus it took just to get her onto the commode twice a day. Our hallways were too narrow for her wheelchair, our stairs too narrow for the lift she would have required.

She tried to stay home for as long as possible, but after she had been dropped 3 times by the two trained carers who came in twice daily to lift her, even she realised that it wouldn't be doable. If I had attempted it on my own, I I would have dropped her the first time and quite possibly killed her. She could no longer be left alone in the house because of the risk of falls, so I would never have been able to go to the shops or keep a doctor's appointment for myself, let alone look after my children or take them to the doctor or the dentist or anywhere at all. And she lived for 9 years after that. Could you cope for 9 years without leaving the house? Because that was basically what her nursing home provided: 24/7 staffing for 9 years.

My ex-SIL works in a nursing home for dementia patients. She and her colleagues are regularly assaulted by the patients and one colleague was put in hospital. Yet they can call on back-up: what would you do if you were alone in the house? Not to mention that you would have to do both night and day shifts to make sure they are no escaping or setting fire to the house- so, unlike a nurse in a nursing home, you would never actually sleep.

It's also worth noting with the higher divorce rate, many millennials parents will be living in separate houses, making caring for them more difficult.
I'm my divorced parents only child. Realistically, I'm only going to be able to take care of one of them should they both end up with caring needs.

Nobody should criticise anybody for arranging professional full term care for ailing family. I am watching a family members health totally crash through helping their spouse at home with very advanced MS. Every adaptation was made and nothing more can be done by them ~ but they feel it is their duty to keep caring at home. He has given up everything to be a carer ~ work, friends and activities. Finances are now non existent.

Worse ~ there are 2 very very ill people.

I wish with all my heart they had pursued a specialist care home option.
Don’t criticise until you walk in their shoes.

Not to mention the people with elderly relatives who either refuse their help or dont meet them half way.

I have a relative in their 80s who "downsized" (cough, to a 3 bedroom house with maintenance issues???) to a house with split level internal steps on the ground floor and (this was actually a selling point for them despite having had 2 recent falls) A FUCKING SPIRAL STAIRCASE!!!

Basically nobody will be able to help care for them in their new house and theyre going to end up in a home sooner than they could have done had they bought sensibly and not got a strop on when people pointed out the issues with the house. If they dont crack their skull in 2 on all their period features first that is.

I mean FML some people WONT be helped so dont shame their families!!

corythatwas
You have given a good insight about the sheer pressure of physically hoisting/lifting a person in and out of bed. Additional pressures include the fact that laundries won’t accept urine soaked bedding that needs changing several times a day, that you can’t go to your own hospital appointments because you cannot leave the house. ‘Care workers’ who visit with a huge patient load who come to put the ‘patient’ to bed at 5pm! Seriously ~ 5 pm for an adult. I could go on....

Joining in with the general chorus of no, it wasn't easier, we just made different choices. I scrimped and saved to get a deposit together. No foreign holidays. No takeaways, no ready meals, just basic food from very basic (cheap) ingredients. I used to spend time in the library or stay late at work to save money on heating. No car. Cycled everywhere - once you've got the bike, it's near enough free. All furniture was hand-me-downs. Lived with hideous curtains and carpets of previous owner because no money to replace them. Very, very little going out, certainly not to expensive gigs etc. Second hand clothes from charity shops. Second hand black and white TV (cost me nothing and TV licence was cheaper than colour.) I appreciate that the latter isn't appropriate nowadays but even when I got my first colour TV it was still a hand-me-down from someone who got a better one.

Many millennials think they should have a high standard of living AND be able to afford to buy a house. I don't think that has ever been the case for anyone other than the privileged few. I don't accept that life is harder now.

Also poorer people on average do not live very long lives. Life expectancy varies enormously by wealth.

The general consensus is not no - I’m the first to agree that life was harder in general for baby boomers when they were younger but they were later able to achieve a higher standard of living with the same effort that anyone would put in.

Anyone I know under the age of 40 that owns a house did so through hard work:
Saving hard
Working long hours
Not as many holidays as some people seem to think!!
Second hand furniture
Hardly ever eating out
The list goes on...

The crucial difference is that by middle age, after years of hard work and scrimping and saving the older generation achieved ownership of better larger housing than my generation. You didn’t work any harder, that is a huge insult, you simply benefited from cheaper housing in comparison to your wages.

Yes interest rates were higher but wages have not risen anywhere near the inflation of houses.

There have always been feckless people who squander their money and expect something for nothing - they never ended up with nice houses. However there are many many hard working young people who could save until they’re blue in the face but never be able to give their children the security of a nice house in a nice area.

I should add that was not a rant on my own behalf - I have been lucky enough to buy a large family home but as we scrimped and saved to get it we watch prices spiral ever further in just 5 years. I pity anyone trying to buy from here on in.

Kaybush Tue 20-Feb-18 13:41:37
"There's a lot of talk on here about the cost of caring for elderly parents, but what about moving them in with you and caring for them yourselves, which is much more common abroad"

a. its a feminist issue as its always women expected to do the caring.

b. you are assuming its allowed A lot of people who rent are classed as adequately housed. But wont be if they overcrowd which would be a breach of tenancy.

You cant compare another country to the UK when the rules are different.

As a millennial born in the 90s, I'm seeing my peers struggle to afford to even rent somewhere!

I can't afford to rent somewhere at the moment. I could just about afford the rent and bills somewhere very modest by myself, but I would have absolutely no wiggle room should anything unexpected happen and would be living completely hand to mouth with no spare cash or capacity to save whatsoever.
I'm currently at the stage of saving for the start up costs.

I'm also really struggling to find somewhere that will accept pets - shitholes included!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/3170297-if-people-aren-t-owning-homes-how-will-the-country-afford-care-for-the-elderly

Just to say those in very physical jobs did work harder. Miners for example. Lots of jobs have either been mechanised or have machinery to make it less physical. The conditions of men in the mines in the 60s was shocking.

And we desperately need to bring back fair rents, the rent officer and tenants rights.

There's a lot of talk on here about the cost of caring for elderly parents, but what about moving them in with you and caring for them yourselves, which is much more common abroad

Huge assumption you are able to do this I.e. not unwell yourself or with other sick or elderly in laws, that you are not full time employed with bills to meet reliant on your income, that you live in a suitable property with room to accommodate others and with appropriate access.

Agree with the fair rents.

We were recently in a position that we could consider two mortgages. We’ve moved, and I thought perhaps it would be sensible to keep the old house on as an investment. To do so though then we’d have to change our mortgage to a buy to let mortgage (or we’d be breaking the stipulations of the initial mortgage). Our mortgage was £475 a month. To change it to a BTL pushes the repayments up to £675. Add on top of that insurance costs and contingency planning for maintenance - it would have meant we would have had to charge even more than that just to break even. However, that cost would have actually been about the going rental charge locally. We could have done it, but I don’t think that’s morally correct. So we sold to a first time buyer.

It’s the BTL mortgages which have pushed rental rates through the roof though, locally at least.

Renting a property used to be less than a mortgage

Because lending substantial amounts of money to people who couldn't afford the repayments in the long-term was a big factor (not the only factor, of course) in the financial collapse of 2008.

And anyone with enough foresight could see that the policies employed in the decades before the financial crisis, which enabled low income earners to buy beyond their means, was going to create a bubble.

The conditions of men in the mines in the 60s was shocking

Amen. Generations of miners in our family. Shocking conditions, deaths, serious injuries and industrial disease all feature.

My mother grew up in a house with no hot water and a miner as a father. It was a job people respected but no one wanted their kids to follow them. Lots of the wives and kids suffered the effects of coal dust brought in on clothes as well

YY crunchymint the way tenants are treated is shocking. Ive kept a thread going on here which highlights some of the treatment. There is the insinuation that tenants are either thick or not to be trusted simply because they arent homeowners.