AIBU to feel there is a lack of hope for this generation?

[floridapalmtree]

Is there any hope for this generation?

My daughter has worked hard through school achieving good exam results. Studied hard at university to get a degree, worked during a placement year. Started work and is working long hours. Living in London paying most of her salary on rent, bills and basic living. Not earning enough to save much each month. It seems impossible to buy a property or start a family. We have encouraged her to work hard to achieve a better life but she is tired, stressed and has little hope for the future. Unless there is a large family injection of cash I can't see how this generation can progress towards a decent life.

The posters saying "London has always been expensive" should consider what it's like for young people now in as time when the growth in house prices has drastically outpaced wage inflation. If it was expensive then, imagine how hard it must be now. Despite Covid, London still has more career opportunities than most other places and many young people have family tis to London and the South East. It's not as simple as saying just move to another part of the country.

Hmm.
I arrived in London in 1980. There was hardly any affordable rental accommodation that was half way decent because of tenancy laws at that time.

My DC are 23 and 26. DD at 23 is living at home, in Surrey, having graduated. She is doing a low paid job as a TA whilst deciding if teaching is for her. She has free parking and a free lunch and is getting fantastic experience from a sound home base. Neither DH nor I had that privilege.

DS is finishing his PhD. His gf lives in a House share in SW11 and it's lush compared to the house shares dh and I lived in. Our accommodation in the early 80s took about 40% of our income plus bills and fares. GF pays about 30% - and has ...................CH and double glazing!

The ops dd I'm afraid needs to battle through the first year or two until her income increases. It will be character building.

We can all wang on about House prices in London and the relative differentials. I can also wang on about 60% tax in the mid to late 80s and interest rates at about 12% then hitting 15%. Our DC and their respective bf/gf however will have the privilege of more help and more inherited wealth in due course. Notwithstanding the fact that everything is cyclical and we may well see wage inflation against static House prices over the next five years augmented by many btl's coming to the market and driving down prices as rents don't keep up in a saturated London market.

Swings and roundabouts. All my grandparents' money, or nearly all, went on death duties accrued in the 70s.

@RosesAndHellebores so you are saying your dc live at home and in a house share with double glazing & will inherit lots of money. I'm not sure what your point is as I assume the OPs dd is not in the same situation as your dc.

RosesAndHellebores,you and me both. Except we moved to London in 1970 with ex,H job,a couple of rooms, one electric fire, share bath and toilet. Hated London. Moved to Surrey, bought a caravan to live in. Ex H was a Jeweller and Horologist,shop had a burglary, owner closed down. I trained as a nurse
He became a manager of Woolworths.

There definitely is hope. My DP skipped uni and went straight into working in London for a while before meeting me. (We met young 24 and 21) He then took a local job for 18 months as it saved on commuting until he decided he wanted to return to London but start a new career. He has spent the last 4 years working his was up his career ladder and has done really well. Hes now in a permanent job WFH which saves a huge amount on a season ticket. I worked a local job skipped uni as well and was earning a decent wage but the share of income on rent and bills etc helped so much. We still rent but can comfortably live off DPs wage as I'm SAHM. We have a 20 month old and another baby due early next year and still able to save a bit each month towards eventually buying a house.

We dont spend a lot on clothes etc unless needed and eat out only on the odd occasion which saves a lot of money. We did a few holidays before our first child was born as well.

I think a lot depends on how and what you spend your money on, your priorities and finding ways to save if that means moving jobs to earn more (my DP is on his 5th job in 4 years which has helped to increase his salary a lot) or where you live to be better off and saving on travel costs if you can. We moved to a new area closer to his work before he changed to WFH which helped a bit and also moved house a couple times.

It's not as simple as saying just move to another part of the country

I'm biased as we did it so I do think it is a worthwhile point. You can scrimp in an expensive city or look for a better quality of life, I did the latter and no regrets.

@JumperandJacket

Londoners face discrimination and bigotry outside of London from locals elsewhere,

This really isn’t true.

Just popping quickly back in to say Oh Yes It Is...

You can see it here on this thread. Posters attacking priced out Londoners for moving to 'their' areas and accusing them of pricing out so called locals.

Oh and London hasn't always been unaffordable to locals (and incomers). Selected parts, yes, but the expensive mostly central areas aside (London exists outside of zone 3) there was plenty of affordable housing for low and middle income families. There even used to be housing for vulnerable disabled Londoners.

Well, we moved out of London donkey's years ago because we knew we would never be able to afford to buy anything. In other parts of the country property was a lot cheaper; you have to be prepared to move away from all that London has to offer in terms of the social side of life and decide to make your life elsewhere.

@userisi

It's not as simple as saying just move to another part of the country

I'm biased as we did it so I do think it is a worthwhile point. You can scrimp in an expensive city or look for a better quality of life, I did the latter and no regrets.

It's fine for people not from London and also for some Londoners. But it doesn't work for everyone.

Insular locals complaining about priced out Londoners coming to 'their' areas aside (and if everyone moves to cheaper areas than, yes, those areas will no longer be cheap), do you really think it's ok that London councils are socially cleansing vulnerable families and individuals away from much needed support networks?

Also who does the essential but low paid jobs if all the low (and increasingly middle) income workers move out?

Oh come off it, @Tealightsandd, you’re being completely paranoid. Noting that people moving from X to Y affects house prices isn’t “discrimination and bigotry”. I’m a Londoner. I’m well aware of how prices have risen (for all sorts of reasons, not least non-Londoners moving to London). None of that means that Londoners face discrimination from non-Londoners. You’re making a mockery of the term.

@Lockheart First of all I didn't laugh at women not having mortgages. I laughed at the comment that the equality acts that were around didn't allow women to get a mortgage. Which is untrue and, honestly, ridiculous. You decided to take that point further and claimed that Women were often refused mortgages in their own right way into the 1970s and 1980s. I asked if you knew anyone who had a mortgage refused and I guess from your avoidance you didnt. So we agree on one thing because neither did I.

However you sent me two articles to read that you feel support your statement so I read them. The first quote is from the Guardian...
As late as the 1970s, working women were routinely refused mortgages in their own right, or were granted them only if they could secure the signature of a male guarantor
So firstly, your statement that women were refused mortgages in the 1980s is not stated anywhere in the two articles. I know its not true because I had a low paid job, as did my colleagues, and I know no one who was refused. That's anecdotal if course. But you have given no evidence to the contrary.
So let's look at the 1970s. First of all the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act forbade women to be denied mortgages based on their sex. However, a quote from the Evening Standard expands on the Guardian's.
as late as the 1970s working women were refused mortgages in their own right because few were employed continuously.
So women who were refused mortgages were done so for financial reasons and not sex reasons. They could still buy if they had a guarantor. So they were still allowed to buy property. None of that is much different from today. People are still asked for guarantors if income is inconsistent.

But further on in the Standard's article it quotes ...
it wasn't until the 1960s and 1970s that women really became a force in the housing market
Hence proving that women were buying properties in some number even before the 70s.

So you've provided articles prove that many women were obtaining mortgages in the 70s and 80s but they had to have the correct finance.

Yes, all of the big employers and decent jobs are in London.
Everywhere else has yokels with dial up Internet and cars like Fred Flintstone as they're in some shitty job living in a two up, two down.
If Londoners move out they are run out by said yokels.

I'm not sure it's helpful for posters to talk about today's young people maybe lowering their expectations because when they themselves moved to London in the 80s, they had to share rubbish accommodation, didn't have this or that facility etc. The 80s were 40 years ago. That's the equivalent of those "80s young people"'s older relatives saying to THEM in 1981 "well, back when we were starting off in 1941, it was awful, we had to live in a slum, everywhere was damp, there was mice, your granddad had bronchitis because of the pollution, and we had 4 kids sharing one double bed. Of course, we didn't have an inside bathroom like you have access to. We often went without food the week we had to pay the rent. And don't forget the rationing. But we did it because we had to, and we worked our way up."

Someone starting off in the 80s would have been horrified at the standard of living the generations above them had to put up with. Things progress, living standards improve over a period of 40 years. Or should. I think it's unfair to suggest that living standards should be the same for today's young people as it was 40 years previous, when they themselves have benefited from hugely improved living standards between the 1940s and 1980s.

Basic, affordable, clean, warm housing, with some quiet, private living space is a human right, IMO. It's not a race to the bottom or a competition over who had it worse. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world and if we can't offer our young people the basics of an affordable home in which to raise the next generation then something has gone wrong.

No one heard of DFLs - down from London?

During the pandemic they were all apparently heading en masse up North to spread covid during christmas according to some of the threads on here.

In reality I think people were simply visiting their families 😆

@CurlyhairedAssassin

I'm not sure it's helpful for posters to talk about today's young people maybe lowering their expectations because when they themselves moved to London in the 80s, they had to share rubbish accommodation, didn't have this or that facility etc. The 80s were 40 years ago. That's the equivalent of those "80s young people"'s older relatives saying to THEM in 1981 "well, back when we were starting off in 1941, it was awful, we had to live in a slum, everywhere was damp, there was mice, your granddad had bronchitis because of the pollution, and we had 4 kids sharing one double bed. Of course, we didn't have an inside bathroom like you have access to. We often went without food the week we had to pay the rent. And don't forget the rationing. But we did it because we had to, and we worked our way up."

Someone starting off in the 80s would have been horrified at the standard of living the generations above them had to put up with. Things progress, living standards improve over a period of 40 years. Or should. I think it's unfair to suggest that living standards should be the same for today's young people as it was 40 years previous, when they themselves have benefited from hugely improved living standards between the 1940s and 1980s.

Basic, affordable, clean, warm housing, with some quiet, private living space is a human right, IMO. It's not a race to the bottom or a competition over who had it worse. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world and if we can't offer our young people the basics of an affordable home in which to raise the next generation then something has gone wrong.

OMG you are so right!

This is actually the first generation where they are not horrified at how their parents had to live 'in their day'. Things are actually worse for them!

Our accommodation in the early 80s took about 40% of our income plus bills and fares. GF pays about 30% - and has ...................CH and double glazing!

Oh berlooody hell, lucky her! 40 years later and her accommodation has central heating and double glazing! These youngsters don't know they're born!
🤔

Oh, actually in the late 1960s my DH DID actually share a bed with his DF and DB while DS and DG shared the other bed. Yes, London, South Norwood,council two bed flat rented by granny