To be so sad about my slide in living standards?

[ColdNow]

I grew up in a not so nice area, but my parents had a big house with a huge garden that they bought on two fairly modest salaries when they were younger than I am now. My mum took years out of work when I was born and although things like holidays and eating out weren't a regular occurrence, my parents admit they were never really stressed about money despite having several children and easily paid off their mortgage.

Fast forward to now, where I did my very best to do the 'right' things. I got a good degree, decent and stable job, married and bought a property before TTC. I'm now pregnant and feeling so sad about our financial situation. We purposely went for a modest property with a tiny garden to give ourselves a buffer, but now with the huge increase in our mortgage repayments and other expenses we're struggling to keep afloat. I would love to work part time when I go back but it's now looking very unlikely that we'll be able to make it work without being extremely stretched. I'm always worried about money and already buy all my clothes second hand, shop at budget supermarkets etc. The main cost is housing though, because we live in an expensive city, but this is the city I grew up in and where all my family and friends are, and moving away would be a very difficult choice to make and remove us from all our support networks.

I just feel so sad that within a generation the things my parents were able to offer me (space, time) I'm not able to offer my child, despite me earning far more comparatively than they did. I'm also the youngest in my family and the older siblings are much better off than me, again just because of time - they got onto the property market much earlier before prices sky-rocketed and now although I don't earn a lot less than them, I'm only just scraping by. I notice this at work too, I have colleagues at the same level of seniority and pay to me but a decade or more older, and the houses and lifestyle they sustain far exceed mine.

I don't know what the purpose of this thread is except to just say that it makes me sad that this is the situation I'm in, and people younger than me (I'm in my early 30s) are even worse off.

There are going to be periods in life where times are hard and then times when it's one big party ,there are no guarantees in life .

in another 10 years you’ll have a lot more equity and be feeling better too - I do remember at 30, pregnant, little equity just about on the ladder feeling like this.

times change - most women carrying on working changes house prices but in the long run it’s better - many of those single women who took long career breaks are struggling pensioners but we only compare upwards. Some of those women who took long career breaks did that due to lack of alternatives.

you’ve got reasons to be optimistic - you’re on the ladder, you’re about to have a baby, maybe find a house project and stop spinning into reimagined pasts.

Most people seem to think interest rates will start to fall by this time next year.

What rung are you on the ladder? I remember when I was on first rung. I looked at a colleague a decade and an half older who had just bought a 650k house. I said howwww?!? Even though they were on a much better Director wage and I near the minimum - the salary take home just didn’t add up to house value when you account for the lifestyle he was living. Think cars, holidays and more Canada goose jackets than you could shake a stick at.

I think I even asked him. He said something like it works itself out and he was right.

Five years later we are on rung 2. We could easily jump to an equivalent home to his in the next 5 or ten years. Because if housing is what’s important to you then there’s ways to climb the ladder which have nothing to do with salary. You renovate, decorate, scour eBay and tip shops and upcycle, put back original features, learn a trade to make all this cheap. Get creative and sell a lifestyle to the next buyer. You will be amazed how much you can make with a bit of elbow grease, polyfilla and some paint.

Property prices are unsustainable.

My first house - 2 bed end quasi semi was £30k in 1990. I earned £15k. I sold it for £35k and bought a 3 bed semi in 1995 for £50k. I earned £30k.
In 1999 I sold my 3 bed semi for slightly less than what I'd paid for it and bought another larger 3 bed semi for £70k. I earned £40k.

Between 1990 and 1999 I did not see a real property value boom at all. Interest rates on my mortgages went from 11% to 14% to 7%.

In 2000 the first ridiculous boom happened. I was paying an interest rate of c5%. The £50k semi I'd sold months earlier became a £150k semi.

My DH died in 2016. I sold the £70k semi for £215k and bought a 5 bed 3 bath new build for £350k with a fixed interest rate of 2%. I over paid the mortgage.

My house has increased in value by £100k - I know cos I'm changing my fixed rate. I will either use some equity to help my DS onto the property market or sell the property to my DSs company so he can use it as a B2L and I'll buy a smaller property for my DH and I to live in and in readiness for my retirement in a decade or so.

The salary needed to get onto the property ladder is beyond stupid. I feel very sorry for people like you and the younger generations.

Lack of housing strategy is causing the alongside an increasing population and flat salaries.

I am perplexed too. A nanny is cheaper than nursery is it now. Especially with two kids.

YANBU at all.

For whatever reason older people always want to argue about the economic reality of it.

@Mouthouch

nanny is not cheaper than a nursery. They are about £15+ per hour in London. Plus
they are considered proper employees now so anyone employing a nanny must pay NI, pension contributions, withhold taxes and pay holidays and sick pay.

Yanbu.
My parents - dad worked full time and mum stayed home for 5 years when we were little and then only ever worked part time beyond that. We had a large 4 bed detached house, 2 nice cars, multiple holidays abroad a year including skiing, disneyland florida etc, clarks shoes, branded food, multiple hobbies and clubs etc.
Me and my DH both degree and post grad educated, work full time, 3 bed semi and have to be very careful. Food shop is now astronomical and mortgage rates etc. DD1 does dance and swimming which costs a fortune, and we are already panicking how we will afford the same opportunities for DD2 (baby currently). Absolutely no bloody hope of Disney land or skiing!
It does sometimes frustrate me that we work so hard and have so little "fun" money. Everything goes on bills and outgoings and there is never a month where we can relax and splurge. But equally I'm grateful we got on the housing ladder at all frankly, and since I can't change it I just have to accept it and hope the natural economic peaks and troughs will swing into our favour at some point!

@Kokeshi123 and in 20/30/40 years people will look back and say houses were ludicrously cheap now. We live in a growth economy.

Part of the reason my parents home increased in value and the area became more popular was because transportation improved. When my parents bought, although cheap there were good reasons it was an unpopular spot. However with improved transport and a full clean up of a very polluted canal and lake things changed. Now I’m seeing large lots having been subdivided, green spaces belonging to churches sold off and population density skyrocketing. It will quickly decrease in popularity and home prices will reflect this.

@Mouthouch This is our first property. But we are making so little dent in paying it off and are unlikely to make much more than a dent over the next 5 years. I'm already earning near the top of my profession and I was really hoping to work part time even for a little bit when baby is here. Plus we bought at a peak so it's unlikely to appreciate very much in value in that time.

Margaret Thatcher and her idiotic Right to Buy is what went wrong.

YANBU I fear for my kids. I really do.

This is a crock of shit. I bought my three bedroom house in London for £300k 15 years ago. You wouldn't get a one bedroom flat for that in the same area now. Stop gaslighting the OP. I doubt my priorities were different to the OPs, or their working conditions better, it's only been 15 years, not 50. YANBU OP.

My single mum bought a house at 22 alone on one shit wage and a 2k deposit. She’d be in a tower block for life now. YANBU.

Build more homes. Build on the green belt. Disavow the objectors of their fixation with green belt
Build social housing
Quite simply not enough supply

At least you’ve got a house you can call your own, I live in the South East and since I separated with my ex I’ve been renting. Im earning a good salary, but can only afford to buy a flat, and only since my last pay rise. Im debating doing that or moving back up north in 2yrs when youngest of 3 DC goes to Uni. I work so hard and it’s so depressing. I earn a lot more myself than both my parents together and they had a much better standard of living

Demand has also changed due to the huge rise amount of single person households. From around 10% to 30% since the end of the 1960’s.

This is due to 2 huge changes, longevity obviously but also divorce or women willingly choosing to become single parents. It can be welcomed as a better life for many women but it has had a huge effect on society. Very much the law of unintended consequences. I have three friends all getting divorced right now. One has had an unfaithful husband the other two have a level of unhappiness that is very much there must be more to life than this with the women dissatisfied and making the break. So all of a sudden three households become six.

It is still possible to buy a house for 3x your yearly income though. Depends where you buy.

YANBU. My partner and I both earn a decent wage but after paying mortgage, student loans and bills there's little left over. We drive a second hand car, our house is cold, we shop at the cheap supermarkets. My parents had very average jobs but bought at the right time in London and got final salary pensions. Their lifestyle is so, so different to mine.

So many things have improved. Maternity pay, wfh, variety of food, leisure, women's rights, opportunities.

My parents bought their house, my dm didn't work until we went to school, and then only part time, and yet I wouldn't swap my life for hers even for a moment.

Each generation faces its own challenges.

How tough for you OP.
This too shall pass. I remember when mortgage rates went up to 14% in 1989. They came back down. Before they did so, the only way we coped was with lodgers and my dd in with me.

My kids have a lot more than I ever had as a child. More time, more activities, bigger house, more opportunities, better car. The difference is in the choices we made. We don't live in the more epensive middle of the city, we live on the outskirts. We got educated, my father worked minimum wage jobs, my mother didn't train till much later and stayed home till that point. We really struggled in the early years but have built from there, like most people do. You generally build wealth as you get older.

My ILs are another story. They've done better than my parents, but my FIL and MIL were both in more skilled professions than my parents, got on the property ladder years before my parents who rented for a long time, had private pension savings, married and had children later.

Every generation has challenges but choices come into it as well. Granted it's harder to get on the property ladder now but, in coming years, a lot of people are going to benefit from inheritances from their parents who maybe had that easier.

If you do the generational jump backwards, then people were dying at war. Yes, my mother had it easier than me, but her father almost got killed in the war and her uncle was in a concentration camp. I’m not playing at ‘who has it worse’ but I’m also very very grateful that I wake up in a little house that is mine and that I can put food on the table and my children are safe, thanks to my mother and my grandfather.

@Zone2NorthLondon And make this country even less able to feed its citizens, when climate change and war are affecting the countries that supply our food.

Well, that's not short sighted at all, is it!!