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!

I was chatting to my teen the other, I was saying
at your age...
I had no PC/tablet/Laptop
I had no phones
We didn't have a TV
We lived in a One bed flat (4 of us)
never had a holiday
never been out to a restaurant
never had a birthday party (unless you count a cake with candle with mum, dad and relatives)
only had second hand clothes and 1 pair of shoes
dessert was only at grandparents' house (home made cake)
ice cream in the summer was a treat
only had one battered small car

She looked at me and said "how did you survive? I would have killed myself"...............................

I am 31 and probably will never own a house. Life still goes on whether you pay mortgage or rent.

Apparently OP also owns a house left to her by her mother. Advanced search can be useful

Yes it would appear re advanced search.

OP also passed her test last summer then in December couldn't drive The DH seems to have lost twenty one hours work too depending which post you read, he works more hours when the OP wants somebody else to clean the house or mind the children and then suddenly works less when sympathy is needed money wise.

There are lots of inconsistencies but it is half term

Yes I don't think it's a competition, but I think it's useful for the OP to see that many people she defines as the "older generation" had it very hard, and as most said, had far lower expectations at the same age.

Ah, the poster owns a property and works part time. More than I have ever done - always worked full time even with babies and that is not easy.

"
Do you think they did not work hard for what they have? - that it fell into their laps."

Yes, actually for many it did. If a house costs 3 times your annual salary, it's obviously very different to the situation today.

I think that the idea of blame is unhelpful; and rather silly really. Making such a blanket accusation in a thread title is just plain silly.

and this weekend is half term most places as they are just finishing or just starting.

"Do you think they did not work hard for what they have? - that it fell into their laps. Yes, actually for many it did."

None of my contemporaries had a comfortable life dropping into their laps - they worked very hard indeed, as we too did. You have been misinformed.

Oh yes life was so much easier back in the day. We weren’t forced to spend our money on WiFi, mobile phones, fancy coffees, ready made sandwiches, ready made meals, iPads, laptops, designer clothes and shoes, Sky TV.
Oh yes those were the days.

Slates and tabs at shops were to buy basic things at shops that knew you well. So nappies and milk. Not furniture.

" yet they spend all their money on the latest expensive gadgets"

Not this again. This is not why millennials can't buy a house. It's because the cost of a house in relation to earnings is too high. It's not because they sometimes buy a sandwich in a shop rather than take their own to work or because they avodcados.

OP also passed her test last summer then in December couldn't drive grin The DH seems to have lost twenty one hours work too depending which post you read, he works more hours when the OP wants somebody else to clean the house or mind the children and then suddenly works less when sympathy is needed money wise.

Ah. Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive....

Apparently OP also owns a house left to her by her mother. Advanced search can be useful

She's obviously got too much time on her hands.

My Mum couldn't even withdraw her OWN earnings from her OWN bank account without my Grandfather countersigning the withdrawal slip. Then when she married, my Dad had to countersign it. Her own damn earnings. Her work, her pay.

My childhood home was a wreck - single glazed windows, ice on the inside, all four kids in one bedroom, no heating apart from a coal fire in the living room, windows covered in ice on the inside, the 1970's power cuts, a black and white telly, hand me down and mended clothes, never getting anything new, Dad cycling to work (10 miles each way) all year round cos fuel for our van (no posh car, it was a bedford van for us and the dog) was too expensive, camping holidays in a leaking tent, an ice-cream being a real treat....

I don't feel remotely hard done-by. I loved my childhood.

OP, your post makes you sound like a spoiled brat.

"You have been misinformed."

I have not been misinformed about houses that used to cost 3 times one person's salary.

I disagree about an English lit degree. I've got that and have a very good and high paying job in the civil service. I'm probably a bit older than you though op- am nearly 40 so not a millennial.

So the many families who could not afford to buy in the past obviously had it harder including mine the poster will no doubt have to admit.
Also even in the 80s no teachers could easily be recruited so we started married life in a school provided flat - only way they could get teachers down here as house prices were so very very high at least double or more even in grotty bits of outer London than in the North and the London weighting was an absolute joke compared to housing costing 3 or 4 x the North. It was not a bed of roses then.

You are dismissive of your bank manager but you feel hard done to because you want to stay where you are.
You can afford to buy if you move or different county . Teaching is one of the professions that is permanently recruiting all over the country. My parents had 2 children in their early twenties, not a penny of help from anyone else and we moved 3 times across the country before I was age 10 (including a spell in north Wales) as my dad sought better roles.

Op, if you didn’t have children, all that money you spend on childcare could be saved towards a deposit. It’s all about choices.

You've prioritised having a family.
We prioritised earning money, saving hard, buying cheap, doing up. At one point I was doing 4 jobs (this was when interest rates hit 15%)
No fancy foreign or even UK holidays. Secondhand car. Secondhand white goods and secondhand 3 piece suite - in a now trendy grey has only just, after 22 years, been replaced.
Sadly we left it a bit late and only managed 1 child, maternity pay & leave was rubbish back then, no tax credits or nursery fees let alone rights to paternal leave, & no parents to help either.

It's all relative to the times.
Do your children get treats? When I was a child in the 60s, we had after lunch at weekends 'Something Nice To Finish With' - which was usually a chocolate bar eg Crunchie cut into 5, 1 piece each. Or 3 or 4 Smarties each (the tube or pack would last for a long time). I see people today thinking nothing of putting on the conveyor belt at the checkout for EACH CHILD to eat after shopping (not after a meal but as an extra snack) a whole chocolate bar.

(My child was only bought chocolate/sweets by one of their 2 grandparents, so never thought to ask/demand/cry/make a fuss at checkout with me, bliss!)

"why did you have 2 kids before sorting out your jobs and buying a property"

This is really a rich person's question. The assumption that people are in jobs that pay progressively more with time. Most non-career jobs are not like that. Your income doesn't necessarily increase so many people have to have children without/before buying a house because it might never happen or not while they're still fertile.
I also don't think it's 'wrong' to have children while renting.

"I have a 2:1 degree in English Literature that qualifies me for admin work or teaching."

When you chose to do that particular degree what did you expect it to qualify you to do?

Genuine question. It might be that educational and career advice given throughout school years is part of the problem.

For example, some research has listed English Literature in the (lowest section of the) bottom ten degrees, in terms of future earning power.

Would you have been influenced if someone had advised that you opt to study for a degree in Business Finance or Computing, instead?

Would you have been interested if it had been pointed out to you that you may earn much more by doing a training apprenticeship in Plumbing and Heating, instead of studying English Literature at University?

Housing is more expensive now, but you can get more on the mortgage-that's at least one reason why it's more expensive.
When my parents bought 4xsalary (and usually one salary per couple too) was considered to be quite high, and that would be with 20% deposit too. Now you can get 100%mortgage and I've certain come across 8xsalary.

Then we have cars. We're unusual round here in a having 1 car. Most families have 2. When I was little half my friends did not even have one.
And talking of of cars, ours is worth less than the latest iPhone...

People have a lot more, expect a lot more and throw away a lot more nowadays.
I don't think we have it harder. We have it differently difficult.

Gwen and it falks into some millenials laps as well. I know one who had a flat bought for her outright by her mother, from money inherited from her father. Some people are luckier than others, some people scored big on the property boom without really trying, some people work really hard, or are more confident than others when it comes to job interviews and just do better in their careers, there are so many variables.
The world I grew up in wasn't the one where the Dad was in a nice secure professional job and could afford a nice big house while Mum was a housewife. I think some millenials think life was like that for everyone - well it just wasn't.