To feel poor compared to when I was a child growing up

[Keepgoing88]

I'm curious to know if there are many people out there who as a family are less well off than when growing up? We are not poor but I do feel a lot less well off than my parents were. We haven't been on a foreign holiday for few years (prob could afford a not so fancy one though). We could never afford the house I grew up in and sometimes struggle to break even on a month (large mortgage etc). It gets me down that I feel the standard of living we have is less than when I grew up. Does anyone else experience a similar situation? My DH feels fine but we are considerably better off than he was growing up.

@rattusrattus20 I'd agree with that, broadly. The things that really make you financially secure and constitute the bare structure of your life are more difficult now but the peripherals are easier.

For eg when I grew up in the 70s homes were not in as good condition or as well equipped. Sure, my parents bought a house on one wage. However it didn't have radiators in every room and those we had didn't work very well. There wasn't a shower and hot water only went on at limited times and again wasn't always reliable. A house in that condition now would be deemed unacceptable but it was quite normal then.

There was little choice as a consumer.
Carpets were more expensive and furniture was too. Even things like wallpaper and paint you couldn't shop around and get cheaply. Clothes were extremely expensive compared to incomes - I've seen clothes shop adverts from that time and basic non designer jeans were a tenner! I pay that in Primark now for my son 35 years later.

We didn't have a phone until I was seven because bt supplied the line and as it was a monopoly again it was expensive. Didn't own a telly either.

However life was set up in a way that accounted for that. There were phone boxes on every corner and you could rent tellies and washing machines for not much money and get repairs as part of your contract.

Cars were expensive proportionate to household income and they were really unreliable compared to cars today. However public transport was cheap and reliable - this is not the case today.

So again the nuts and bolts that go towards making up day to day activities were easier to access for people on low incomes. Now if you can't afford white goods or a telly you have to go to brighthouse and the like. If you can't afford a car then getting around costs a lot of money - it's £20 a week for a weekly bus ticket here and the service is patchy and unreliable.

I think it depends on how poor you were when you were a child. My parents were refugees and came to the UK without anything - they managed, through working 2-3 jobs, to buy a house and save. In comparison to my dad at the same age I am a lot more well off than him despite having a similar amount of education (didn’t go to uni, but still managed to get a professional job) because I’m willing to take more of a risk. Eg he would never have commuted to London for a higher salary as he didn’t want to commit to the expensive season ticket.

Swings and roundabouts.

My parents could afford to buy a house on one wage when newly married. However, that house (which i grew up in) had no central heating, no double glazing, was furnished pretty cheaply. My siblings and I wore hand me downs, meals out were virtually unheard of, a cinema trip might be a once a year birthday treat and our holidays were camping in the U.K. My mum didn’t work until I started secondary school and even then she just did a part time bit job. This was nothing unusual- Most of my friends lived in similar houses with similar lifestyle

In contrast, buying a house was much harder for dh and me. But overall our standard of living is much higher and I see it as an advantage that I’ve had the opportunity to access childcare and have a career. When people hark back to the ‘golden age’ of having only one parent working they often forget that in reality this meant many women never getting the opportunity to develop their potential and get the personal satisfaction (or income and pension!) of having their own work life.

So overall I’d say it’s too simplistic to talk about who is ‘better off’ as it’s actually quite a multi layered issue

Much poorer than when I was braking up.

growing up 🙄

Certainly I don't feel like we're better off than my parents. On paper, we make about twice what my father did.

In practice, we could never afford to live the way my parents did (and still do.) Property has doubled in price so we're living in a much smaller, much older home than the new build my parents put up in the 80's, we need two incomes to support the household where my mother was a SAHM, and we don't have as many treats (no yearly domestic 2-week holidays, DC can't join every club & activity going, etc.) Christmas and birthdays are much more modest in our house, though thankfully my parents love spoiling the DC so their special days are just as plentiful as mine ever were.

However my father has a fierce work ethic and runs his own business, something I could never do. He was out of the house early, came home late, and I'm sure it caused a lot of stress. DH is much more involved in the DC's lives than my father was with mine (although he is an excellent granddad.) So I guess we're less well off in assets but better off in time? I'm not sure!

We’re considerably more well off than either of us were growing up. I had 3-times handed down clothes, toys etc, batch meals were made for the whole street, we had days out and uk holidays - my mam said they would go without lots of things as memories were the most important thing. We had one holiday abroad.
That said, my parents bought their house for nothing under right to buy and my dad’s pension means they want for nothing now so its swings and roundabouts. They had a 25% interest rate on their mortgage though!

Now I don’t know a kid above 10 without a games console and a phone, so I think people generally have more stuff and the expectation of being able to have the latest stuff, but the basic roof over our heads, proper food etc is not as easy. Some people have their priorities wrong / are shit with money and some people do genuinely struggle.

I think each generation has its pros and cons.
My husband had a hideously abusive childhood so he is much better off as an adult. He actually lived by himself for a time at the age of 12 and no authorities batted an eye lid.

@Acciocats agree completely about women working. My mum has more qualifications than my dad (a levels as opposed to o levels - none of my family went to university and actually my mum and dad were the first in their families including among their siblings to stay at school past 14) but she had to give up work because their employer didn't allow married couples to work together and of course the man was never going to lose his job. My mum is a very intelligent woman but she spent a lot of years doing unskilled work for pin money and when she was eventually able to commit to an office job with regular hours (lack of childcare meant she couldn't before) she was considered too old to progress - I think she herself thought this to be the case and her stupid employer definitely did. Women's lives are much much less limited now.

But surely this entirely depends on how wealthy your parents were?

If your parents were incredibly rich then your not going to be as well off as them, but it doesn't mean your doing badly.

I am better off than my parents, DP worse off. Yet we are the same household. It's just DPs parents were a lot better off than mine.

You also have no idea realistically how your parents had to budget as a child. My childhood was fantastic, but looking back it was obviously tight for my parents. I just didn't notice. My parents spent lots of time with us, took us out all the time, but everything was free. It felt like we had loads of great things, and life was good. But as a child I wouldn't have realised how tight it was for my parent's to provide that, and how much they would have had to budget. I didn't notice what we went without.

Clothes were extremely expensive compared to incomes - I've seen clothes shop adverts from that time and basic non designer jeans were a tenner! I pay that in Primark now for my son 35 years later

Definitely agree with this. I remember when I was at uni about twenty years ago, there were not really cheap fashion shops like now...no Primark. I'd pay £20 for a plain top. Can buy them for a quarter of that now.

Exactly the same situation as many on here. As a family, we're considerably poorer than I was growing up. I was born mid 80s and grew up in huge four bedroomed house in an affluent area, with two or three Dorset/Devon style holidays a year. It wasn't a flash lifestyle, but certainly comfortable. We weren't spoilt children (no piles of toys at Christmas) but our parents paid for university fees, driving lessons, first cars, helped with house despots and wouldn't have dreamed of charging us rent, etc. I distinctly remember my Dad cracking open the champagne when I was 11 (he would have been 39) as they had paid the mortgage off. That was on one wage.

In comparison, we struggle every month, we will be paying the mortgage on our crappy, miniscule 3 bedroom terrace until well into our 60s, and have never had a holiday that my parents haven't paid for us to go on with them

My DH grew up in a council house and also has no aspirations so thinks we're doing just fine, but I do sometimes find it all slightly depressing to be honest.

When people hark back to the ‘golden age’ of having only one parent working they often forget that in reality this meant many women never getting the opportunity to develop their potential and get the personal satisfaction (or income and pension!) of having their own work life.

On the other hand national surveys shows that the majority of mothers wish to be able to spend more time with their children. Remember that the majority of working mothers aren't actually on any sort of career path. They are the women who have no other choice any more but to sit for 9 hours a day behind a checkout in Tesco or in a call centre or as cleaners or low paid childcare workers. And have lost out on the choice to be the ones at home raising their own children because housing costs mean that the tiny amount their salary brings in after childcare costs is now necessary.

Lets not always look at this from a place of utter privilege if you have a job that is some sort of vocation and is utterly rewarding you are lucky and not actually the norm. So, so, so many more women are being denied the years spent doing what they would find rewarding, being with their children, in order to spend their days in often miserable jobs contributing to nobody's wealth but the bosses they will never so much as meet. Meanwhile their own family financial situation is more precarious than that of the previous generations who got the opportunity to raise their children.

My mother was well educated and had a good job but she wanted to raise her children and I am so very, very grateful for that. We were quite poor by the standards of the 80s and certainly the 90s but I wouldn't have given up a childhood as home with someone who wanted to be with me for anything. All of the best bits of childhood come from the freedom of having a stay at home parent, they just do. I never wanted anything more than to be at home with my DC either. But I was more than aware of the changing economy even as a teenager and I plotted and planned for it. I'm a very comfortable working single parent, who was a sahp throughout my DC's early childhood and can now work almost entirely around my DC now, largely due to owning my house outright. But I am extremely, extremely privileged and know that working for someone else's good while being apart from your children isn't actually most people's life goal.

Yes my parents have more money . I think ( studies show ?) that in the 60 and part of the 70 s there was more disposable income in proportion to wages - I think I read it somewhere ?
Plus , the culture of parenting seems to have changed in general ?
It was fine for dc to be told to go out to play for the day , cost nothing , and things like sleepovers and child focussed stuff didn’t seem to exist as much so parents were able to save ?
My dad also made it that until we could afford it we couldn’t have it .
I remember becoming aware of the difference when they had a paid for in cash beautiful cars each with personal number plates s well as ax split screen camper and another very beautiful car .
It was when I was on maternity leave and was ( thro choice to stay at home ) dressing my dc in hand me downs / second hand .. ( which I tho k is good anyway ) and one week we ran out of money .
I think that we are comfortable but only because we are frugal now . We could not go abroad cr to d m who has recently done India , Italy tours .
I enjoy a simple life tho .
Looking at our dc I do think that they will be worse off than us .. our first house was 18 k !
And since wealth will not be passed down any time soon they will struggle . In fact , I do feel guilty that I am living frugally and working less in my 50 s ( dh older ) in case I should be supporting the young adults in the light of this .

I think we are better off than my parents were.We have been abroad and I have the use of a car .and we have a detached home on the South Coast.I have just done P/T work to fit around School holidays .My Son had a private Tutor and piano lessons etc .My parents didnt have a Car until I was about 7 .My GC used to pay for things as well .However I think its misleading as each generation will vary from the previous one, and many more Mothers are at F/T work now .This has a knock on effect with house prices and consumerism ,as the cost of living rises and needs both salaries to keep up!,

Hmmmmm I think we are poorer, but only a bit.

My dad was well paid and this meant my mum could stay at home, whereas, my DH is pretty well paid and I was made redundant on maternity leave with dc1. If I returned to work now, we would lose money paying for childcare, so I am compelled to stay at home. So fairly similar really, but we got here in different ways.

We could afford foreign holidays but we choose not to take them. We always holiday in the UK these days.

Our house is much, much smaller than my house growing up and a good bit smaller than my PILs. We also feel we couldn't afford another child (we have two), whereas my PILs and parents had three per family. But I grew up in Ireland and now live in the SE of England, so my parents' large house probably wouldn't be all that much more expensive than our small one.

I think we feel a bit poorer because we live in such an expensive part of the country, but that's our choice to a point, although, my husband's career would be non existent in Ireland. I don't work, so we really couldn't choose to up sticks and move there.

My dad eventually earnt a LOT of money. He didn't strike it lucky on the stick market or anything, he just had a job which paid a lot (well, a lot to us). But I know there was a time when we were very small that they were really poor too.

So, all in all, I think we're fairly similar. The main difference I think will be that our children might need more help finding a place to live when they grow up and also our pensions will be nothing like as generous as our parents'. So, I think the big differences are possibly yet to come.

Oh also, because we don't have any help with childcare, we do feel the pinch a bit more. If we want to do anything which requires childcare we almost always have to pay for it. This is obviously not a problem. We signed up for it and all that. But dh and I both remember being dropped off most weekends to spend a night with GPs so our parents could go somewhere. Dc1 has spent two nights in her almost five years with a GP. Dc2 has never spent the night with a GP and he is almost 2yo. I can count on both hands the number of times dc1 has been watched by GPs, even for a short time. Dc2, I'd say it's less than five times.

I'm not moaning, but I do feel when just comparing my PILs and my parents with us, then this does make a decent difference to our lives. Obviously, living away from where I grew up makes my parents watching dcs tricky anyway - and anyway, one of them is dead! But my PILs could watch our dcs, but choose not to, which I'm completely fine with. It's their choice. But again, if you want to compare, this is one of the areas where our lives might feel slightly poorer for the lack of help.

Also "stock market" not stick market^^!

I am much better off than my parents were. I am cautious with spending though, kids get toys for birthdays, religious festivals but not really in between. However we tend to go out and do activities each week, park, softplay etc. We have not been on a holiday abroad in 4 years but do lots of weekends away in the UK. My parents had it more difficult in some ways relying on one wage but had no childcare bills as my mum was a sahm. We did get two takeaways a week though, dh and I very rarely buy them but like to go out to a nice restaurant every few months so I guess it all evens out.

I had a very happy childhood and I hope that I can do the same for my kids. My overarching memories are not to do with what we did or didn't have but that my mum and dad always spent time with us. Even after a hard days manual work my dad would still listen to me read and mum would check my spellings whilst cooking up a feast.

I think people of past generations were more likely to make do and not compare themselves to other people. Now maybe due to social media parents tend to think they are failing their kids if they are not doing 3+ activities a week and having the latest car, phone etc is much more important to people than before.

Re presents, we've made a choice not to buy our dcs too much at Christmas and birthdays. We do one Santa present, one from us and about five stocking filler things per child. At birthdays we get them one or two things. We could afford to buy more, but I remember even I felt we had too much at Christmas when I was a teenager! Ridiculous as it sounds. So we are trying to be more cautious about that.

DH and I both have degrees and white collar jobs. My parents got by on one income, (Dad had a clerical job) and had a decent sized family home, we are in a flat. Holidays/outings about the same, and other 'indicators'! I think we are more financially safe having 2 incomes but work much harder for our employers for about the same standard of living, the kids lose out as they see us less, and my degree and further study has not done me any good in real terms despite my parents struggling for me to do it.

Yes. My parents (and grandparents) were considerably better off than us in terms of their lifestyle when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s but then they had become SO much better off than my grandparents parents who were proper working-class poor, living hand to mouth. The economy/home ownership/the housing market was just in such a boom then that they benefited from it hugely. I try and think about the advantages I’ve had as a result in terms of education and how that’s not nothing and will trickle down to benefit my children. They also benefit from having eel-off grandparents and great-grandparents (decent savings for the kids for example).

It is what it is.

My parents bought me up to believe we were poor, I always felt poor compared to my peers.

We weren't at all poor and in fact it has damaged my attitude to money, I had want I needed but never what I wanted.

That said DH and I are probably in a similar boat to our parents but due to rising costs unable to afford private education.

About the same. However only my Dad worked and mortgage rates were at 15% then at some points.

To add to my post above, my mum was unhappy not working and would have got more fulfilment if she had done, but purely economically I think my parents (1970s) gen had an all round better deal. As an earlier poster said, two incomes pushing up prices, and rising housing costs as well as wider economic factors have taken away the economic benefits of working for some women including me. I said above that the children lose out as they see us less, but they benefit from seeing a mother at work as well as a father, and from my improved self esteem, though balancing everything sometimes feels impossible.

if you have a job that is some sort of vocation and is utterly rewarding you are lucky and not actually the norm. So, so, so many more women are being denied the years spent doing what they would find rewarding, being with their children, in order to spend their days in often miserable jobs

I am so lucky that we can scrape by on DH’s salary and I don’t have to be separated from my DC for ten hours a day just to do a shitty poorly paid job that I have no interest in. It’s only the lucky few who have a vocation or a well paid career that they want to return to. Those who’d have to sit behind a Tesco checkout all day would in many cases prefer not to return to work.

I am ‘better off’ but marginally so and only through being sensible.

We had a council house and neither of my parents could drive or own a car. We went on one abroad holiday my whole childhood. My dad drank a lot and mum smoked 40 a day we had no money and were very poor. Our house was not very nice (neglected and not clean either) and we didn’t have hardly any clothes (at all) or nice furniture.

I did once own a house but I had to sell it when I broke up with my ex. Im a single mum of 2 and have lived in various crappy private rents but I live in a really nice new 3 bed housing association house now, it is clean and I take care of it. A lot of my stuff is not brand new but I look after it. We all have clothes to wear and I have a car. We don’t go on holiday though as I can’t afford it. I don’t go out socialising as we chose to have pets