TO think Millennials need to get their act together and

[brownmouse]

Form a political party:

• stop Brexit
• prioritise housing
• impose at least 50% tax on all inheritance
• impose second home taxes

And other stuff. But they should be IN CHARGE now. They need to rise up and sort things out.

I keep telling my DC but they are too busy on instagram. AIBU?

I agree that this should be directed at Gen X if anyone at all.

Generation X has fuzzy dates too though. It starts between 1961 and 1965 and ends somewhere between 1978 and 1981. Those at the cusps can identify more with the bordering generation.

I fall into this category.

With women having children later, it also means there are a lot who technically are gen x but have very young families still. This is more common and characteristic of millennials than gen x.

Thus many are also in a similar position to those who fall more firmly within the millennial category, particularly if their partner is.

Myself and DH have two very distinct circles of friends because we are so close to the generation dividing point. You can see people in similar careers and career paths in each generation having distinctly different interests and priorities and politics.

Generation X often don't share the same problems of housing with millennials for example. A sizeable percentage were able to become home owners. You can pretty much guess whether someone is gen x or millennial round here from their address alone. Even if someone is on the same career path and salary progression. The difference is very stark.

Thus housing isn't the same priority for many Gen X, although many do have concerns relating to their own children coming of age.

While their middle aged parents fucked up the younger generation's working conditions when climbing the career ladder in management themselves? No, I doubt the millennials do as you suggest. Did you, OP, have to clear the older gen's mess when you were in your 20s, or wanted to live and have fun a bit?

. Did you, OP, have to clear the older gen's mess when you were in your 20s, or wanted to live and have fun a bit?

There wasn't much of a mess to clear up. I bought a house when I was 18 with 12% interest rates and a deposit that I put together by waitressing through the my teenage years... I graduated for free, got a job, etc etc.

It's the housing boom that has fucked up equality in this country and I think it's so sad that these younger posters want to maintain the status quo. Particularly around inheritance. You must just see your parents' deaths as some kind of ghastly lottery win. It makes me very sad TBH.

If the housing market doesn't crash and inheritance be taxed and redistributed, the pool of who is well off will just keep getting smaller and smaller. But so many people here seem happy with that - as long as they are in that pool. How depressing!

It's the housing boom that has fucked up equality in this country and I think it's so sad that these younger posters want to maintain the status quo. Particularly around inheritance.

OP, you are being utterly unrealistic.

The housing market is fucked. I don't know what it would take to unfuck the housing market. To make house prices come down to the level where ordinary people can afford them again, there would have to be a really spectacular economic shock. Huge falls in house prices generally come alongside repossessions and people losing their homes. So it would affect people who have scraped together a deposit and stretched themselves to borrow as much as possible to get onto the housing ladder in the last few years. Those are the people - ordinary people, young and young-ish people, families - who would be at risk of losing everything if house prices collapse. Not pensioners sitting pretty on mortgage free homes that they've owned since the 1970s. Not foreign investors or cash buyers. (Although those are exactly the kind of people who would swoop in like vultures to take advantage of a fire sale.)

All people can really do is try their hardest to get on the property ladder themselves and hope that it doesn't come crashing down around their ears once they've taken their first tentative step onto it.

And if inheriting a chunk of money from your parents is the only way you're likely to be able to do it, then no, funnily enough, you don't want to pay loads more inheritance tax!

Of course it's nott fair and it's not right and it shouldn't be that way, but what is the solution?

Come up with a solution that works, and maybe people will listen to you.

But you're just wibbling on about how disappointed you are that millennials want to preserve the status quo and don't want to stop Brexit and don't care about inequality. This isn't true. Most millennials I know would love to do something about all of these things.

But forming a new political party in August 2018 isn't going to stop Brexit. And whacking up inheritance tax isn't suddenly going to make house prices come down or millennials' salaries shoot up.

Just think about what you are actually saying.

I do think it’s sad that for today’s children whether their parents own or rent will have a big impact on their life, no matter how hard they work.

OP I mentioned this thread to my DF. Your point on inheritance tax, he asked why does the government deserve a cut of his money?

I grew up in a council house on a council estate built in about 1969. My parents had the house from new and I was born 10 years later.

Mrs Thatcher introduced the Tight to Buy and it absolutely decimated social housing stocks. Why would councils build social housing if, after 3 years, they have to sell it at prices below market value? They have never replaced them.

People were fooled by Right to Buy. Mrs Thatcher conned them into voting for her by pretending to represent the working classes and demanding they should be allowed to buy their council houses. She knew exactly what would happen.

Council housing - most of which was cheaply built after WW2, in not the most desirable of areas- was costing a great deal to repair and huge repair bills were looming. Like all Tories she wanted the state to have less responsibility for any kind of welfare state provision. So selling off council housing, knowing it would not be replaced, meant the need would have to be filled by private landlords buying up property and renting it out for profit, and by private builders building housing that private 'social housing agencies' would rent out with no responsibility on the state. Meanwhile, the people who bought their council houses were left with the very substantial repairs at their own cost and now have houses still worth much less than other houses on the market (some were lucky and bought solidly built council houses from the 1930s).

As Tony Benn said of Margaret Thatcher 'She knew the price of everything and the value of nothing' (I think he was quoting Oscar Wilde)

Look at the mess it has caused us. We now have very little council owned social houisng. It is owned by private companies who want to earn profit from it at any cost - hence the tragedy of Grenfell. What we need is a large stock of good quality social housing that remains social housing, not something people make huge profits from.

Right to Buy, not Tight to Buy

@brownmouse

I am a millennial. “Mid” millenial (late 80s baby).

Aside from Brexit (which despite being what I would describe as eurosceptic, I voted against and I agree is a mess) none of your list appeals to me.

I have a degree (which I paid for - student debt repaid thanks to the good job I got as a result of the degree).

I have my own home (see above re: job obtained as a result of degree). Most of my (also millennial) friends are also home owners.

I do not want to pay 50% inheritance tax nor do I want my children to have to pay it. That would be a vote loser for me.

I aspire to own a second home, ideally as a holiday home. DH and I hope to make that happen in the next decade, 15 years at most.

Well said lulu

you could say Right to Buy led to Tight to Buy

50% inheritance tax for something I worked my arse off all my life for to give my son financial security?

Fuck off.

As mentioned, I was born early 70s.

So I benefited from a free university education - loans were just coming out when I was studying but I only had about £500 of debt and paid it off very quickly once working.

I bought a flat when I was 25 and then moved up a small house and then the larger house I have now which is mortgage free (partly due to an inheritance, but my father's estate was well under the IHT threshold anyway, but had it been over, I'd have only paid tax on the bit over).

So I'm comfortable on the housing ladder and have no debt. I am too young to benefit from the gold plated pensions though.

I have considered buying a second home so my son can either live in it or rent it out so use the rent to pay to live somewhere else - to make sure he is never homeless. But not as a holiday home.

I'd also like to see more carrots to encourage empty nesters to downsize to free up houses for families.

Your point on inheritance tax, he asked why does the government deserve a cut of his money

Because it's sitting in an account or a house doing nothing. Spend it. Give it away. What's the point of holding onto it until you die? And because it is the most equalising tax there is.

50% inheritance tax for something I worked my arse off all my life for to give my son financial security

So give it to him now. Not when you die. That is my point. I just don't get why people hold onto so much money when they could help their kids in their lifetimes, IHT free as long as you survive 7 years. And very few of us actually work our arses off, actually.

Sorry for the two actuallys!

Also, you bought a house at 12% interest rate with a deposit you’d saved from waitressing?

Are you going to donate the additional money it takes as a housing deposit to a scheme to help millenials buy a home?

No I don’t think you are.

Everyone tells millenials to fix a problem that we didn’t start in the first place, get off your high horse op. You form a bloody political group to sort out the shit of the baby boomers that we and our children are saddled with.

Bullshit like this thread boils my blood.

@runningkeenster

Are you suggesting I sign over the rights to my home to a two year old?

Lol wtf

People often talk about the high interest rates they had to pay, but the amount they'd borrowed was much lower. I think it would the fairer to compare the percentage of incomes that went towards mortgage payments for a similar sized house then and now.

And I completely agree with the PPs who said Right To Buy has caused a lot of problems.

Hazard

inheritance tax should be aboloished totally agree

DH and I have both inherited money - me smaller amounts from my parents who did not own property, and some from aunts and uncles who had no children. DH from a grandma and a grandad. It amounts to about £325,000 in total. It sounds like a lot but it isn't. We used some to help us buy our current house and the rest is in ISAs and bonds.
We may inherit some more from PIL or they may have spent it on care . I would rather they enjoyed themselves with their money. We will have, hopefully, money to leave for DS and DD. What scares me and other people who save and inherit, is what will happen as we get older. Will we have old aged pensions from the government at all, or will we have to be 80? Will we have to pay for huge care home bills. My uncle spent over £300,000 on care home fees between himself and my aunt. In 40 years time you could probably triple that for me and DH.
If DD and DS want to go to university I want to be able to help them. I want to be able to help them with deposits on a flat- contribution towards not whole deposit.
I think these are normal things . My parents helped me and they were certainly not rich.
We have considered buying a small cottage in England- maybe Yorkshire (DH Yorkshireman and proud) but it would be cost prohibitive because we wouldn't want to rent it out, you pay more stamp duty when you buy and when you sell it costs you a lot in capital gains tax and we are being told about a houisng crash. So the government are actually punishing the small investors- the people who have a bit of money they would put into property but can't risk losing it so don't. They would spend time at a holiday home and money in those communities but keep it in the bank instead worried about the future.

I think the government's mistake was to raise the level at which inheritance tax is paid and stop there. They should have done that but also raised the rate at which it is paid on estates over 3 or 4 million so the people who could affored to pay more contribute more.

When I retire, if ever, I expect to be asset rich.

When I die I expect to leave no inheritance to tax because it will all have gone on care fees and helping my children.

I expect anyone younger than Baby Boomers to be the same. Inheritance tax will be irrelevant. 50% of zero is identical to 0% and 100% of nothing.

Lulu: What's you describe as 'not a lot' is more than more people with have as assets in their lifetime. You have very poor perespective if you do not realise that you are very well off.

lulu

325 k is a lot

Do stop with the faux naïveté

Im really chuffed for you..lit would be lovely to get the same

But its a lot

Average wage of 26k in the uk you would have to be either

A) not very aware of current affairs and the lives of 'normal' people

Or

B) very disingenuous

It isn't a lot if you look at what I have said about care home costs.

It would barely buy you a nice but small 3 bedroomed 1930s semi even up here in the north-east.

But all of those people who left the bits of money to us worked all their lives in low paid jobs for those bits of mney they were kind enough to leave us. My dad's life savings were £18,000. My aunt's were 17,000. No property and both worked all their lives.

In London, my cousin has a 3 bedroomed semi worth £700,000 + in not great condition and a not very nice area. £325,000 would not buy a 1 bedroomed flat where he lives.

I am not being naive or disingenuous.

Err yes but Lulu that is not how normal/average people live. how would someone on the average wage ever have that sort of money? I'm pretty sorry for you if you can't see how rich you are.