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!

Who are buying the houses now?
Is it a cabal of 50 somethings snapping up semis in Chorley and Southend and even London?

I have genuine sympathy for younger people. They do face a lot of challenges I didn't but that doesn't mean 'old' people had it easy.

That mindset is whinging.

"Rather than blame somebody else, why not look at the choices you made. Nobody made them for you, you did that as adults. "

People don't generally CHOOSE to be in low-paid jobs. Well, maybe some mothers, but singe people don't generally go "Solicitor or shop assistant, Oh I'll go for the shop assistant option".

I did English lit, went into advertising and at one point in my life earnt very highly indeed. Of course you can't afford to buy a house if you work part time and have two kids! Why on earth would you assume that you could?

Yes buying a house is much harder at the moment. I am happy to acknowledge that too.

Yes I can see buying a house is harder. But so many other things are easier!

noeffing yes I was the same. When I was working full time, I also had two pub jobs to top up my income and save. I was knackered.

Suicide in teenagers and young adults has overall fallen.
But there is a contagious element which is sadly I am guessing why the OP knows 4 young people who have killed themselves.

"But if you had chosen say, chemistry as a degree you probably wouldn't be doing admin. And i say that as an English graduate working in education. I made a poor and ill researched choice in hindsight"

Lightof, it might not be the case for OP, but some arts graduates wouldn't be able to do STEM degrees. It's certainly the case for me. I didn't CHOOSE to do a 'useless' degree that only got me a low-paid admin job, it's just the reality of how life works out for people like me.

Marketing, advertising, pr - all well paid, all open to those with an English degree

We rented in the 90s and earned £1000 a month with rent £806 so all other costs came from £200.
We didn't have stuff. I know we didn't because I have that stuff now and it is a luxury in my head.
As 70s child, holidays were visiting relatives or camping. We didn't t have a car until, I was 15. We had an allotment and grew veg, no central heating till I was 12. I remember having holes in my shoes and new things were a treat. I remember being delighted to get a calculator for Christmas. There was a great deal of civil unrest, riots, terrorism, mass unemployment.
We didn't try to by a house till our 30s because we were so scared of the interest rates. A friend of mine sold her flat for less than she paid and spent years paying of the difference while working in France.
We rented a telly, someone gave us ancient mini, we made things, got hand-me down furniture, went 'skip shopping'. All my first DC baby clothes were second hand and I tie dyed them different colours.
Hospitals in our area were terrible as were schools.

I just don't think you realise quite how much expectations of living have skyrocketed in this generation.If your expectations were managed better, you may not feel so hard done by.

Wake up and smell the caramel salted frappacino, you are a massively lucky generation!

It was different, no better or worse. Yes we could afford to buy houses, but every stick of furniture we had was second hand or donated by a relative. No holidays, no meals out (only for very special birthdays), no mobiles, no tech stuff, just a small black and white tv. We couldnt afford a car for a long time.

So you takes your choice.

crunchy same here, but then there was the crash around 92/93 which made buying much more affordable. Downside of that crash was ugly for thousands of people though with lots of repossessions.

FFS this again?

Yes mass unemployment and high house repossessions. I remember those too. Some of those adults never worked again.

Hilarious. Chemistry degrees are so easy that anyone could do them and get a higher paid job. That is officially the wankiest post I’ve ever seen on Mumsnet.

Perhaps if people managed to get these many well paid jobs, there’s be nobody left to clean your houses.

I'm in my fifties.

As a teenager, there were several years when my family had neither a car nor a television because we couldn't afford it.

There wasn't free child care.

There was no IVF - you had children didn't have children, or adopted.

When I left school, less than a third of people with A levels (nationally) went to university.

Fountain pens didn't have spellcheck - you had to learn how to spell!

I got turned down for a banking job "Because we had a male candidate".

I was refused professional training because I was female.

I was refused a transfer in one job, and a secondment in another, because I was female.

In my first job, women who got married had to ask permission to stay employed.

There was no parental leave for fathers.

There was no flexible working - hours were fixed.

It took me over ten years to save the deposit for a studio flat, during which time I never smoked, never owned a car (I still don't), went to the pub possibly five times a year, and rarely had takeaways or ate out - basically, I worked, came home and read or sewed.

I've never been on a city break.

I've only ever had more than one holiday a year three times (and that was in the UK).

In my twenties and thirties I had friends who were too frightened to come out as gay for fear of how they would be treated at work.

Friends of mine lived (and died) in the stigma and panic of the advent of AIDS.

When my husband (who worked for the same employer) was dying of cancer, I wasn't allowed compassionate leave as "the hospital staff are caring for him, not you". I was, however offered "as much overtime as you like to take your mind off it".

I accepted lower than average pay for a traditionally "secure" job - which I lost when it was moved to another country.

On redundancy, I wasn't "qualified" for the same level job as I didn't have a degree, only experience.

Ten years later I'm still struggling to get jobs as they're going to "younger, better qualified" people.

Around two thirds of my invested savings (for retirement) were wiped out in a stock market crash. I pretty much had to start again.

I was in my mid-thirties before I owned a mobile phone. Before then, if something went wrong (like missing a train and getting home late) I had to sort it out myself.

Computers? Try working in a financial role with a pen, paper and calculator.

Millennials have their problems, my generation had (and still has) theirs.

phoebe I moved out of London just before the crash because I was so fed up of paying a fortune to rent often a crappy room.

Gwen the OP isn't a shop assistant. She's a graduate. She does have options, she just seems to be unwilling to improve her situation.

"but did you not consider that doing a degree in English lit was not really the best choice for a high earning career."

When I was young we were actually told that many graduate jobs went to people with a degree in any subject. I have still kept the literature with this official advice.
Even then I did wonder about this, after all if a degree in any subject was fine, why wouldn't a person without a degree be able to do that job? But I think it was probably true a decade or so before I started working because so few people went to university a degree was valuable in itself.

Goady lying post?

The poster already has a mortgage, as stated previously.

So, which is it extrapineapple? Do you already have a mortgage, or not?

I'm one of the older generation. I was talking about the other recent thread with my DH the other night, (when interest rates rose to 15%) he remembers our mortgage doubling within two years of buying our first home together - no, our salaries didn't doubt to match this! But hey, things were so much easier for us in the late eighties

Each generation makes sacrifices, no-one has a perfect life. We all make the best of what we have.

I don't have to 'admit' to anything. Yes, it is harder to buy a property now, but it wasn’t a great deal easier when we bought our first house. Interests rates at 19% were difficult, and now we're retired, interests rates are not helping our savings at all.

I don't understand the point of these posts.

Yes and I was told at school that we would all be working less hours and that the biggest issue facing us as adults would be what we do with all our leisure time.

Yes the school lied to you, but they probably believed it at the time.

To pay off 36, 000 in 6 years on an income of 12,000 pa seems a bit unlikely. DH earned more than that and afte,r 6 years when we moved we'd paid off about a couple of thousand of the mortgage. (House cost 32,000) and hadn't moved in value.

"Years ago, fewer people went to university because fewer expected to or had the opportunity. So most who did, went with an idea of a career in mind, rather than for the opportunity to study in great depth, a subject that they were interested in."

Yes, and you were actually advised to do something that interested you and told you'd be more successful in something like that.
I do think some immigrant communities were more ambitious though. Goodness gracious me had a sketch about British Indians studying literature etc., they were known for doing business studies and sciences.