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.

We also had no heating or double glazing when I was a child in our council house

I think this is it. I also have a degree which is just lying around in a drawer somewhere. Totally useless at the mo.

But the benefits of me staying at home definitely outweigh the benefit of me going to the sort of job I am qualified for. Not just financially, but I'll be damned if I pay for the pleasure of working, (after tax and childcare), when the job is not really benefiting anyone much. If I was a nurse, teacher, solicitor or even something like personal trainer, I would probably go back to work. But since I did office admin for huge companies, where people like me were and are ten a penny, I would actually struggle to get a job like my old one back and I wouldn't feel it was worth it at all.

People always say things like; "ah but what if your DH runs off with someone and leaves you to pay for it"? Well, if he did that, what use would an admin job paying approx £16k a year do me? Our mortgage alone is more than that.

So, what I'm doing now is retraining from home around the dcs.

I do think that an economy where with more families where both parents work, skews the cost of living, so that if both parents don't make a fairly equal amount of money, it can be a lot harder. We don't receive child benefit or anything, but in a household where both parents worked and their combined income is actually more than ours, they do receive it. It's great that it's allegedly easier for women to go out to work now, but I really don't think it is.

Then, when you speak to women who do make a good living and cover their childcare costs with ease, they are constantly being guilty tripped about leaving their dcs at nursery all week.

A mother's place is in the wrong I suppose!

Sorry, that was in response to @AthollPlace, who I agree with completely. I'll be damned if I go back to laying out sandwiches and making pots of coffee for overpaid men, UNLESS I'm actually earning some money to do it. I don't expect mega bucks, but I want to just break even after childcare. That shouldn't be so difficult if the idea is to get more mums back to work, as their policy on child benefit indicates.

You know, I even read a whistleblower type article having a go at some NHS department for sexism. One of the complaints was that they "got women with degrees to make the tea and coffee". I thought WTAF? That was a key part of my job pre dcs. And my degree isn't from The University of Mickey Mouse Studies. It was from a really excellent university, in a 'proper' academic subject. And here I am, unable to realistically do any job, other than witnessing in the evenings, (which I have done recently, just so I can do something at all other than child care), while some arseholes look down on me for being a SAHM. FFS.

Bitter? Moi? Just a bit.

@thisneverendingsummer

Taking inflation into account, compared to some 4 decades ago (and further back,) house prices are three times more expensive than what they were then... (much more than that if you count London/swanky areas.) And for many people, wages are a third of what they were then.. For some people, even less than that.

No wonder people are fucked, cannot afford to buy a house, spend almost half their income on rent, and have to go to food banks. The poor, and the JAMS (just about managing) in the UK are screwed, they have very little hope for the future, they can never better themselves (as it's made almost impossible to do so,) and all they have to look forward to is a pension in poverty.

In addition, as someone said earlier in the thread, no family can live on one wage anymore, so both parents are often forced out to work. People have sold their right-to-buy properties for somewhere 'better,' and landlords buy up the properties, creating transient tenants, and unstable communities...

In fact many communities have broken down... There's no (or very little) camaraderie or community spirit in the neighbourhood, and people rarely stay in the same area for more than 5 to 10 years. Crime is at an all-time high in many areas, and people are afraid to leave their own home after dark.

There is also no such thing as a 'job for life' now, and many employers don't care about their workers, and will happily tell them 'there's the door if you don't like it...' And zero hours contracts are at an all time high. Lots of people have very little security... in their job AND their home.....

It's no wonder some people choose to stay on benefits, because they are often worse off working. And don't even get me started on what this Government has done to people on disability benefits, with the grossly incompetent disability assessments declaring ill people fit for work, when they're not, driving them into depression and suicide.

Then you've got the extortionate price of a university degree, pushing young 20-somethings, into debt - with that - til they're in their mid 50s, and people who have worked hard all their lives to pay off their mortgage, having to sell the house for their care, whilst others who didn't buy their house get it for free.

It's an unfair, unjust, rotten-to-the-core society, and life in general for many people now is fucking awful. The gap between the rich and privileged, and the poor, is enormous. Bigger than it's ever been... in MY lifetime anyway. (Born 1960s.)

The rich and elite cream off profits and funds and stash them away in overseas accounts, while the poor don't have a pot piss in, haven't had a pay rise in over a decade, and can barely afford a day trip to Rhyl, let alone a holiday overseas.

Seriously, no wonder depression, stress-related illnesses and conditions, and suicides are at an all time high. And I don't see it getting better anytime soon either, with a Government that doesn't care about the poor, and doesn't know its arse from its elbow, and an opposition leader that's as disingenuous as the day is long, and who would bankrupt the country in a heartbeat.

I fear for the generations to come, I really do........

Brilliant post. So many good points.

And also.

@alittleprivacy

It's true that many women never got the opportunity to develop their potential and get the personal satisfaction (or income and pension!) of have 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 at 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.

Also a brilliant post. So many good points from both posts, that they deserved to be reposted.

And to the OP @Keepgoing88 you are definitely not being unreasonable! Many people these days are worse off than their parents and grandparents.

My husband and I are both better off than our parents were at our age and in better jobs. Not sure why, just is.

I’m much better off than my parents were. I grew up on a council estate and both my parents worked full time which was quite unusual then. Now I have a large house in a good area, near excellent schools, holiday abroad 4 times a year, we have 2 brand new cars, private health, no money worries. I’ve been very lucky. My parents really valued education and pushed me quite hard because I lived in an 11 plus are and on a council estate passing my 11 plus was the difference between going to a really bad school where most people left before O levels/CSE’s or going to a grammar school. Luckily I passed and then went on to university (first in the family).

@PookieDo I remember ice on the inside of the windows when I was growing up

My SIL always complains of this but she seemed to think she'd have the same life her parents provided for her without having to do very much herself. She grew up in a large house in a leafy suburb, had a pony and then a horse, went to a private school. She also was the 'golden child' and so had lots of handouts over the 30 years I've been married to DH. We're all in our mid 50s now and she lives a very much more modest life, just above the minimum wage. She only manages as PIL paid off her mortgage when she was divorced. We've had no such handouts. PIL were very clear to her and my DH that they could only provide such a lifestyle when they were children as they themselves were both only children of elderly parents plus a whole host of maiden aunts, who whilst not rich as individuals, all died in the early 1970s which meant the accumulative effect of lots of smallish bequests meant they had no mortgage. FIL also had a business in a now defunct industry, which used to pay well, but died when computers came to be, and so they had a lot less money from the 1990s onwards. MIL helped with the books but had a lot of free time at home. SIL seems to have spent her life believing that somehow, magically she would have the same lifestyle as an adult as she had as a child and her mum had. Married a man who was an average earner, refused to go back to work after having children, kept on buying horses etc, he divorced her due to this behaviour. Due to being so long out of the workplace she has few skills and so earns little. She always seems to have low level conflicts going on at work and performance issues. I suspect she's difficult to work with as she resents working. She firmly believes that she is unlucky in life and can't work out how she's ended up in this position

I guess I'm less well off in the sense that my DM worked PT from when I was born, her and my DSF bought a house in a very nice area which I could never afford now and they paid off their mortgage quite quickly and they both retired early 60s. I can't do any of that I don't think. Also they had no student debt (degrees not needed for my DM's job which it now would). They were very careful with money and they've helped me and my DSis a lot so I'm not in any way complaining as I know I'm very lucky. I don't feel poor even though me and DP earn average salaries and live in an expensive-ish city (no DC though so that might explain it)

Hmm reading this thread there is a suggestion that having a degree should somehow entitle someone to have a better life / earn money and so if a grad doesn’t they are somehow a failure. In reality it is ambition, hard graft, placing an importance on money / savings, and the ability to take risks (all traits that tend to be discouraged in girls) that enables you to earn more degree or not.

When I read about the cost of childcare on here, I don't know how people afford DC We don't have that much left over a month and I don't think we spend extravagantly (don't have a car, shop in Lidl etc.).

@dayslikethese1

YY, in the area of Surrey, where we lived when we had dc1, childcare for one baby, at a perfectly nice, but not fancy, nursery, was £90 per day. Imagine if you had twins and an ordinary salary? Impossible to afford. It really is a terrible state of affairs in this area. We'd have left for another country long ago if it wasn't for dh's job. Our childcare costs are among the highest in the world.

I earn considerably more than my parents did, but feel poorer a lot of the time simply because I live in a house that's half the size of the one I grew up in, courtesy of (a) the housing market and (b) the distinction between growing up in Somerset and now living just outside London.

@GrumpyHoonMain

I think it's that, in previous generations, a degree was a good indicator that you would get a better job. So people of my parents' generation would've scrimped and saved to send their dcs to university, believing this would set them up for life.

The truth is, that graduates are everywhere now. It makes little difference in many jobs, whether or not you have a degree.

Of course, a degree should not mean you get a cushie job for life without hard work. Nobody sensible would suggest that. But getting into tens of thousands of pounds of student debt and spending three quite stressful years getting a degree, one might think would count for something. But in fact, it doesn't these days in many, many cases.

This is an example people have been using to compare the generations.

It's important to point this out, as I think the assumption is often there that people should get a degree before they think about a career. I think this WAS true in previous generations, but competition for jobs is so tough now, that saying you have a degree means very little to lots of employers. Except for a few graduate schemes obviously.

I also mentioned degrees earlier, as mine is completely useless to me at the moment. However, I don't believe that will always be the case, so I don't regret doing it or think that I should be entitled to a better job automatically because I've ticked that box.

For me, it isn't that I regret spending time and money getting a degree, it's that after university, I was unfortunate enough to graduate (2008) into an economy where there were fewer jobs. That was bad luck. This was how I ended up doing admin jobs. Then we had a family and the rest is history.

But, the good thing these days is that nobody is safe in their job - bear with me here. It is a good thing in a way. In my parents' generation, people would find a cushie job and sit in it for life. This is no longer possible and I actually think that's a good thing.

We're not as well off. My dad worked most of the time but sometimes we were on benefits and my parents drank heavily.

Dh works full time and I do as many hours as I can in the evenings and on weekends (usually about 28) but we still can't afford the sort of lifestyle I had growing up, with reliable cars, UK holidays and a mortgage.

Wevve managed 2 short camping trips in the last 5 years and have no chance of buying our own home.

The thing about degrees is that lots of people, especially people who don't have them, would see three years of intensive work in the office as a decent building block for beginning a career. But if people say they have a degree in a subject, they are very dismissive, which is actually a little unfair.

Again, this doesn't apply to me at the moment, as I do not intend to use my degree for the time being anyway, as I am a SAHM and likely to be for a few more years yet.

But generally speaking, there is inverse snobbery about graduates in some industries. Another thing young people need to think about before they decide to do a degree.

@ BeatriceTheBeast - that tends to occur when employers aren’t choosy enough about the graduates they hire. For example hiring inexperienced English graduates over experienced non-grads into risk management / IT project roles; or choosing a foreign trained / experienced person with no UK experience just because they have a degree. But employers, particularly blue chips, are becoming more aware about soft skills too.

I'd say I'm pretty similar to my parents, but only because DHs parents were able to help us buy our house.

We don't have a lot left over but we have some luxuries such as DSs swimming lessons (non-negotiable as neither DH nor my DF can swim and I nearly drowned as a child), fast internet (needed for when DH works from home) and Netflix.

Me too. Parents household income was 15x what ours is now and that's without inflation.

Agree Bromley

Absolutely. We went Christmas shopping at Harrods, I got everything I ever wanted for birthdays etc. Foreign holiday every year for at least 3 weeks. The house I grew up in is worth over a million now. We're comfortable but not rolling in it and I certainly live from pay cheque to pay cheque. HOWEVER, I'd rather my kids grow up in a humble and loving home. I had a rough childhood/teenage years and would hate for my kids to go through what I did.

I’m single but the basic fact of house prices is my issue

I imagine the same is true for many

Also, the pensions they got, wow!

Worth noting my dh grew up very poor and he thinks we're all fancy now. Lol

This thread has got me thinking will my own DC one day be thinking they are poorer as adults than my DH and I were at their age.?