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.

Yanbu at all. Everything has gone to shit. Apologies for using generational labels but - my parents are boomers, have a large house in a nice area on normal seleries. My older siblings are gen x, have a nice house in a cheaper area on normal salaries. We are milenials and live in a much smaller house in a crappy area on normal salaries. We were only able to buy because of inheritance, or we would still be renting. It's the same for most people as far as I can tell, there's been a massive decline

The flip side is once you reach my age (early 50's) people start to inherit in large numbers, several friends from university are currently buying "dream homes" following significant se England inheritances. We are yet to see how this will pan out because this is the first generation to have parents with such high home ownership due to right to buy.

The other point is that this is still a se England issue principally - my dd is buying solo at 23 with no help from family, yes she's on a grad scheme but not not that well paid, it's just where she is you can buy for £140k

IMO The house price inflation since the 1990s is basically at the root of the cost of living crisis. It's just put money into the pockets of people who were already rich who drove the property bubbles that hooked up he whole market. Plus the fall out of right to buy and lack of supply.

Essentials like food and nursery fees would be more affordable at fair prices if housing costs weren't out of control.

I understand. I earn multiples of the average salary but because I live in an expensive area I couldn't buy a property until I was 38, and it is far smaller and not as nice as the one I lived in as a child (my parents were early 20s when I was born)

The problem for me was saving the deposit while also paying extortionate rent, in a market where prices kept jumping. Just as I'd get to 10%, prices would shoot up and I'd suddenly have 5%. It was so frustrating

The housing crisis is going to cause such a huge influx in mental health issues and something seriously needs to be done about it.
My parents purchased their house in 1970 for around £15k. Their house is now worth around £650k. They have zero idea how much younger people struggle these days. Dad is always moaning that younger people are complaining about nothing and according to him they are always on holiday, driving Range Rovers and putting in new kitchens etc.
My mum never worked.
They have no idea.

Good point - and it's the same with many other ministerial jobs. A) They are moved into the job but have zero experience or background of the role and B) they are only in it for five minutes before they are moved again. Ridiculous. I also think Buy to Lets should be limited per landlord -this would most be a quick way to increase housing stock.

YANBU. And it’s additionally frustrating that many of those people who benefitted from cheaper housing, free university education etc refuse to acknowledge the difficulties faced by the generations below them.

So many problems would be solved by the UK embarking on a massive home building programme which would increase housing stock and reduce prices. (There are other benefits too: more construction jobs, less homelessness and greater home security, lower housing benefits to be paid etc). But no government will do it because it would crash the prices of those older people who benefitted from cheaper house prices. And those people actually go out and vote.

When we bought our first home in 1976 the rule was we could borrow 2 x dh’s salary and half of mine. We bought a tiny semi, the house for sale opposite was detached and £1500 more and we could not afford that. We also had to have a 10% deposit, banks and building societies had very strict rules.

Ironically sex equality in the workplace meant men didn’t have to fight as hard for a living wage because they had two wages coming in, women could also borrow 2 x their wage which meant a couple we’re borrowing 2 x the joint income. This pushed up prices and right to buy made the housing situation worse too. Mortgage lenders began to lend even more and some mortgages didn’t even require a deposit.

It’s sad but by the time your generation @ColdNow have become adults salaries have been kept artificially low, housing has been underinvested in both the public and private sector and years of low interest rates have encouraged older people with an inheritance to buy to let which has pushed up housing prices.

I don’t know the answer, i did my bit by giving dc deposits for their homes.
It’s shocking what the two youngest generations of adults have had to go through.

All I can say to reassure you is everything is cyclical and this too will pass.
You do need to fight for better wages though.
People protest for Gaza, against police corruption and against oil.

Protest for yourselves and the right to be a part time worker on a decent wage so you can be a present parent too.

Why would you want all the green spaces built on? That’s just really strange. If there isn’t enough housing it’s because we’ve got too many people. It’s not complicated.

When I was a child in the 70s-80s every family lived in the same 3 bed council house. Or a 4 bed if they had 4+ Kids. There were no flats. There were maisonettes that older people without families lived in.

My DC’s friends in the same town now - many live in flats and in the 2 bed maisonettes (with 3 kids of different sexes). With older people without families living in the houses.

I’d say the financial pressures are similar as in the 80s though - all those council houses were bought once right to buy came in, and my parents and friends’ parents therefore had mortgages through the high interest rates of the 80s. Jobs were lost too. No one had spare money for school trips, all clothes were second hand, camping holidays if any, not everyone had a car. Many families were very very stressed. Most mums also worked once the children were middle primary (no nurseries). The only people I knew who weren’t in that position were professional (eg teachers, solicitor) or ran their own business.

The difference now is the housing of course. But also the people who wouldn’t have been caught in this financial stress before (eg teachers) also can’t afford a decent standard of living.

Low inflation driving us to a prolonged period of low interest rates was only ever going to lead to increased house prices. Shared ownership, lifetime isas for house/pension will only keep adding to that.

Back in "our" day it went from one and a bit wages counting towards a mortgage - to both (it was assumed, rightly or wrongly, that a woman would take time out when she had kids, it isn't assumed any more).

And then we had buy to let taking the smaller, shabbier, cheaper starter properties off the market.

Most of these advancements are good things. All have followed the law of unintended consequences. The main one being house prices go up... and up... and up.

I grew up in a 1 bed flat until I was 7 but property successes mean my parents downsized to a large 4 bed detached. There’s only one family on their 15 house estate: all the other 4 and 5 beds belong to retired people. We can only dream of moving into a house the size of my parents: 3 bed semi it is.

Yanbu to feel disappointed, but congratulate yourself for having a lovely home of your own, and remember that you're at the hardest point of the financial/housing cycle. A mortgage always feels the most expensive in the first years - and rising interest rates make this more so; after a few years inflation means that your mortgage payments will "feel" less expensive. Also, I know it feels like you're not making a dent, but I'm around 15 years older than you and on my 3rd property, having owned each of the previous ones for 6-7 years, and even though I thought nothing was being paid off and they didn't go up much, I really did see a profit on both of the sales. Hang in there, love the home you have and not the one you don't have, and remember that with the property ladder you will see the improvements in the long term, not the first few years.

Whist I agree I refer to my previous post.
The present young adults need to acknowledge the difficulties by not accepting them. Workers in the NHS were given a 0.5% pay rise for years and did nothing to challenge it. Young adults are not political enough, they get all steamed up about trans issues, they march for pride, they protest for refugees etc.
All admirable but charity begins at home.
Unionise and fight for better pay, fight to have energy prices reduced, fight to have the NHS better funded.

Agreed.

And future generations are going to increasingly divided between those who get lottery win sized inheritances and those who get barely anything.

Hugely demotivating to work hard once you realise how little bearing salary has on your standard of living (whichever side of inheritance fence you are on).

You don't have to go back 50 years to find houses much cheaper though. You've replied to my post but not read it it seems. I bought a house 15 years ago, which in that time doubled in price. I'm not even mildly exaggerating, look up house price growth in Tooting if you don't believe me. Nothing much has changed apart from house prices and the cost of living in 15 years. Not the number of women working, not employment rights, not colour TVs and central heating. Why compare today's living standards to 50 years ago when the OP was making the point that if she'd bought only 10 years prior she'd be much better off? Why are all these posters taking about WW2 standards of living and the inability to buy a home without a husband? If the OP is in their early 30s, their parents are likely in their 50s, and they bought in the 90s. What hardships have that really gone through? I remember the 90s, it was great. Apart from a brief period when my dad was out of work, but that's not really any different to those who lost businesses through COVID. I bought a house for £35k in 2000. Yes it was a bit of a dump in a cheap area (not London that time) but it was a house. There's been no real hardship that I've experienced in the intervening period, living standards were great until recently, and anyone who also bought at that kind of time likely still has a good standard of living. Why pretend the OPs generation doesn't have it much harder? They plainly do.

You are at the stage where it is a bit of a head down trudge. The capital mortgage repayments feel tiny to start with.

You say you are near the top of your profession. Do you need to think about changing profession? What is your partner's situation?

Look forward not back. Those tiny repayments do make a difference and slowly, slowly, slowly mount up.

It is easy to look back at the past with rose tinted spectacles. We can't afford the nice, leafy commuter town I grew up in but TBH it was dead boring. The 1920s house I grew up in looked nice on the outside but my parents weren't into home improvements so it stuck in a 70s time warp.

The life we have now wouldn't have been possible for my parents. I'm the main income earner (would have been a total outlier in my parents' generation) NMW means that DH's retail job is better paid than DM's clerical job was.

I remember the 90s, it was great.

It really wasn’t. We had a recession in which unemployment went through the roof and people were being repossessed or handing their keys back to the building society. As a result house prices fell and a lot of people were in negative equity. I first bought in 1991 and repossession was so common I had to make it clear to the estate agent that I wouldn’t buy one, she thought I was bonkers because that’s where all the bargains were.

There was definitely an acceleration in the last 20 hears.

Mr Monkey is Gen X and was able to buy a small one bed ex council flat on a single public servant's wage in his mid twenties. Many of his friends used equity to upsize to London houses in their thirties (he didn't due to various life events)

I am 9 years younger than him and am an older milennial. Most of my friends did not buy flats until their mid thirties (if at all) and will only be able to upsize through inheritance or leaving London/the South East.

As others have pointed out there will be another great inequality schism opening up when Gens X and Y inherit all that boomer housing wealth. Mr Monkey and I, both coming from poor families who rented, are resigned to being left for dust financially by most of our social circle when this happens.

Exactly @Hayliebells - there's a big wealth gap between just my oldest sibling and me (age gap of 10 years) and not because of what we studied or earned, or priorities as others have said. My sibling lives in a much better suburb in a much bigger and nicer house, because they got onto the property market at an earlier and better time. Things have deteriorated significantly in a decade.

I agree. I grew up in a small flat, my parents bought most things second hand, they had one car that was old, life was simpler and people expected less in general. There was also no need to provide all the electronics kids have now.

My kids have a five bedroom detached house with a good section, we have two late model cars, we buy things new - but we started out on the bones of our backside for many years.

I don't expect to inherit anything. We have bought what we could afford, where we could afford, in an area far from where we grew up because that is one of the most expensive parts of the country and we can't afford it. We grew up lower working class. We went to university and would now be more middle class.

Agreed. I bought ten years ago - just, by the skin of my teeth - and even then it was far more expensive to buy the same house than it would have been 5 years earlier. I',ve watched our house price go up by eye watering amounts in the last 10 years and I didn't even feel remotely celebratory, it was obvious it was going to create a horrendous barrier for the next generation.

We - solicitor and accountant - bought our first home, aged 28, from a middle aged care worker and school caretaker who had bought (right to buy) at the same age we were. When we sold it 5 years later (2015) it was to a couple in their late 20s, both doctors, who were only just about able to stretch to afford it because they were being gifted most of the deposit by an elderly relative

And my parents were not considered wealthy at their time either - as mentioned we lived in an area many thought was grim, but I'd not be able to live in a house in their 'grim' area now!

This is just a thought experiment, but if we want to reduce inequality don't some generations have to be the same or perhaps less well off than their parents? Else surely the divide continues to exist? I guess, is it preferable that everyone moves up a rung on the ladder or do we make less rungs? I'm thinking myself in circles now.

I'm fortunate I'm better off than my parents, not without struggle and some good fortune. However, inside I'm still a small child wondering why my parents aren't eating and the electrics been off all week.

ETA I'm not sure the top 1% find their children struggling. Wealth vs income is a huge factor here

current new first time buyers facing high interest rates and high house prices are probably at hopefully the lowest point of all of this…