I get so sick of the ageism and discrimination against both older people and those who don't have children on this site.
I'm 51 (just). I had my kids when I was fairly young by todays standards so this was late 90's. My ex husband and I graduated at the end of a recession and there were few jobs for graduates and we both spent a year or so doing low paid temping and living in a bedsit. By the time we married we had jobs in our field - medical research, but as our contracts were only 3 years and our salaries pitiful, we had to stay in that bedsit. When our first was born we were able to upgrade to a three bedroom flat in a dodgy area. We stayed there for our second child and until we split up a few years later because we still couldn't afford to move.
When my first child was 3 and when I was pregnant with my son, I decided that if we were ever going to buy anything one of us needed a full time permanent job. That was me because research is not family friendly and his career was going well (no mat leaves) so I trained on the job as a teacher on £16k.
When we split up in 2004 I had to move back to live with my parents because I could not afford even the shitty three bed flat anymore on my teachers salary. This wasn't even the South East btw.
I stayed with my parents and I quit that career to work in the NHS as the money was better than a teachers salary. It was also a better place to work but that's a different thread.
It wasn't until I had met my second husband 15 years ago that I was able to finally move into a proper house and get a mortgage. We were 35 and 40. Both professionals, but public sector so 🤷♀️.
My children remember how i was always worried about whether I could ever move out of my parents house ans the three,of us have one of our own. We didn't even think about buying then, I'd have been grateful to have afforded to rent that shitty three bed flat again.
My parents weren't able to help us because they had lost their house, that they had worked hard to buy, when the interest rates hit 15% and my father had to give up work because he had a heart attack. My mother worked, but being a middle aged woman who had taken a few years out of the workplace to raise 4 children she couldn't earn enough to cover the mortgage herself. My sister was able to help for a little while, but she was single and could barely afford her own rent. So the house ( a modest three bed terrace) went.
My sister is now married but has no children. Her husband inherited a beautiful large house in the middle of a national park. She is frequently told that she is selfish and that they should sell up, downsize and let a proper family live there. As if a couple aren't a family and don't matter to society. As it is my parents are in the process of moving into an annexe next to my sisters house ans she and her husband will provide care when they get older. It's entirely her and her husbands decision and she has told our parents that they are to use what money they have now to have fun and travel - as they've never been able to.
My children do have it tough now, at 22 and 25. But so did my generation and my parents generation.
For every "boomer" sat in a multi million pound house that they bought for £10, there are millions more older people in poverty. People who never had the opportunity to buy a house. People who scrimped and saved to do so, only to lose it in a recession.
Many of the people on here moaning about boomers will have those huge houses passed onto them. I bet the moaning will stop then.