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.

I was really really lucky when the 15% interest rates hit . I was young, had no kids, and my main job was flexitime, so I could start work before 6 cleaning in a pub, then go to work for 8, finish at 4, grab some tea then go back to work behind the bar in the pub at 6, and Friday & Saturday nights I worked from 11.15 to 2.15 in a night club nearby where the tips were good - the night club owner used to drink in the pub and he did pay well. I didn't clean the pub on Sundays as the landlady did it. Did this for over 6 months, it was a killer and it was knackering, but I survived. I don't think I'd be able to do it now - too much time spent online 😂

But plenty of my friends had to hand the keys back and move back in to parents as their houses and flats were repossessed. This came back to bite them in the late 90s as some of the ancient debts plus interest were chased up.

I do think peoples priorities/spending patterns are different now. Holidays abroad are the norm for many - it was very unusual when I was a child in the 60s. We first went abroad to France when my mother bought a few P&O shares and got cheap ferry tickets. Otherwise it was holiday near the sea where grandparents lived.
I don't remember the kitchen or bathroom being re-done other than painted, and I had only one change of carpet in 20+ years, the original wasn't fitted as it came from a previous house where it was the lounge carpet - now people seem to rip out and re-do a lot more. People also seem to spend a lot more on cars, ours are all at least 5 years old or older, just as my parents were - they didn't buy a 'new' car till I was about 8 when they bought an estate car I think from inheritance, but even then it wasn't brand new it was a year or so old, and they kept it for many years before replacing it with the same. Nowadays people seem to get a new one every 2-3 years.
In this day of click and buy I think people spend a lot more on 'stuff' than they did when I was a child. Our homes are cluttered with electronics - we just had one TV when I was 8 - again I think funded by grandparents inheritance.
Shopping, if you worked, pretty much HAD to be done on a Saturday so there was a limit to what you could buy, we didn't have masses of clothes and they were worn till they were outgrown and passed on, or wore out. My mother sewed and knitted lots. I think clothing is comparatively cheaper now.
On the plus side there's a lot of opportunity to earn well, far higher salaries are available than they were in the 70s when I started work, better equality for women too. In my first job I was supposed to be paid less than a (male) starter doing the same job, but in error they started me on the same money. After probation increase, he was suddenly paying more tax than me so I queried it to be told he was on a higher starting salary. So I told them no we were on the same starting salary and it was unfair for him to be paid more when we did the same job, and I actually had better qualifications than he did, I also worked a lot harder than him and did far more work. Eventually with the support of my immediate manager (also female) they agreed I could be paid the same as him - but they wouldn't budge and back date the 2 months they were paying me less!

Agree completely. This was and is my experience.

Parents will leave me an inheritance though which will hopefully enable me to support my dds. Hopefully I will at least have a house to leave to them. Unless it gets eaten up with care home fees of course

When my children were little I worked a few nights a week in a local pub. As it involved no childcare or travel costs it brought in as much as "real" job with all the other costs would have.

I think people also forget that adult life started much earlier as well.

Previous generations did not have gap years to go travelling and the majority didn't go to university. By 24 they often had eight years of full time work under their belts.

While housing is undoubtedly more expensive, I think a lot of extra costs come from other places. As a child of the 80s I never went out for meals, holidays were in a tent, our furniture was mid matched items passed down and rarely new, I shared a room with siblings which was entirely normal and I never questioned it, no one got nails done, had eyelash tints etc.

Weddings were much more basic. The only ones I attended were a do in the working men's club where everyone provided something for the buffet.

Hen do s were down the local not four nights abroad.

All of the late teens/ early 20s I know are doing much more in the way if festivals, weekends away, posh weddings even as a guest where they get hair and make up done etc than we did, and certainly a different world to my mum. If we want all this it defers what comes later.

What shall we do with all those people though?

In our cul de sac of nine 3/4 bed houses there are 3 widows and 2 retired couples, us being one of the couples, one empty house as the elderly single lady died and 3 homes that have families.
So a third are technically under occupied.
The widows don’t want to leave their homes. I love my home, I don’t think dh does. My ds would be sad if we sold up.
Its a difficult situation.

I'm 60, at 34yo bought a nice house large garden for 90k, i was 35k, my partner on 37k.
Extremely affordable, even with interest rates at 6% hell would be affordable at 12% !!!
& we could all get a dentist/GP appointments.

Fast fwd 22 years, my salary stuck on 38k BUT the house sold for 430k!

Its extremely hard for current and future generations plus they have tuition fees and sky high childcare costs (often not even available)

The Tories have totally fucked everything, nothing has improved, everything worse.

As the weekend report stated "UK is heading back into Victorian levels of inequality"

I feel the same. I studied, did all the right things and at 30 decided I'd had enough as my mum never had to try as hard as I did. I became pregnant, with twins and struggled for years after they were born. They are now in school full time and I've been able to return to a career. I'm putting my foot down as it's hard out there.
My mum worked part time, we had lovely holidays, we never went without and my mum was never stressed with work.

It's not your fault.

I had a similar upbringing...as did my friends. I went to private school and it was packed full of girls from very 'normal' backgrounds. Mum who worked as a secretary and dad a cabby or middle management etc. Totally normal jobs but they could afford nice homes and to put their kids through private school. Nowadays those doing comparable jobs will be absolutely skint. It's horrendous.

@Scaraben What? You've got your generations mixed up. The OP was probably about eight years old in the year 2000. Fairly certain women were allowed to work after marriage at that point

What are you blathering about? I recounted about my mother. Yes, obviously this was WELL before 2000 as I am not young. My point was that OP felt hard done by considering generations previously. I disagreed.

In fact, I could say all the same stuff now regarding my adult kids. But the reality is, they are still in a better space than previous generations in regards to choices and opportunities.

I think a lot of this is quite regional as well.

My parents moved North in the early 80s to buy because they couldn't afford house prices in the south east.

I have lived in the south east for 25 years in the house price of my first house (2 up 2 down) has increased by x5 in that time.

My parents house has not.

I'm now downsizing and moving significantly to release money to give my kids a deposit. I now have a big 5 bedroom house but it's very rural and the schools are crap so it was cheap.

I also think a lot of jobs have salaries which they do not expect people to be able to live on. They are for young people who still live at home or women who have husbands with 'proper' wages.

I feel like people often say young people are extravagant and attribute this extravagance at least partially to why we can't buy properties. But realistically, even if I ate out every week and bought fancy gadgets it wouldn't have harmed me much anyway, because the amounts spent on those things don't even touch the sides of a house deposit. I get why young people might spend on holidays and nails, because it feels pretty hopeless and why not enjoy yourself for a few quid.

As it is, I drive a car that's over 10 years old and is scraped, have an old TV and computer that doesn't function very well, shop at Aldi and buy my clothes second hand, so I don’t recognise the high-flying lifestyles people describe amongst millennials and Gen Zers.

I take it you’re renting?

@PolkaDotStripe Also despite needing to work women are still discriminated against in the workplace. Lots of jobs are not flexible, lots of companies ditching remote working, companies having cultures that aren’t really compatible with child rearing. There was even a post on here the other day where there were employers openly said (anonymously on this forum) that they don’t hire women of childbearing age

Yes, and that’s why you put head down, tail up before having kids so you are in a position to dictate, not be dictated to in all of these aspects!!

What’s the solution then kill off the people who are already here? They need to live somewhere. Personally I think more of an apartment living culture like Europe where families regularly live in well built and insulated apartments which shared open space and sense of community.

That’s what I did. Took a fuck tonne of sacrifice early on but paid massive dividends and allowed me the flexibility with kids.

YANBU, OP.

Haven't RTFT but I hope there are no idiots on here telling you that if you ate less avocado on toast you would be able to afford the same sort of house as people born 20 years before you.

I live near a city with multiple universities. I had a Uber driver recently explained that over the last couple of years, the rules for international students have been that you can bring your family members over on a student Visa. This means that the students no longer require a single student residence, they require a house and many international students are purchasing houses when they come over to the country and then continue to own them when they return to their country.

The Uber driver said that he emigrated to the uk 30 years ago and he’s struggling to buy a property for his son who was born in the city, but knows of several students locally who have returned to their countries owning multiple properties in our city and continue to rent them out at really high costs.

I know this isn’t the entire cause of the issues but it certainly explains why my shabby run down town has become a dormitory town for the city and prices are almost the same!

It's quite unrealistic to expect all women who wish to start a family to have high powered careers where they can dictate the terms.

@HoppingPavlova Hope you won't think I'm rude if I ask how old you are that your mother had to give up work upon marriage? That was common in the 1930s but much rare during/post-war.
I'm quite old (born 1963) and my mother married in the mid 50s. She not only continued working until she had children but went back full-time when I was 4.
Not saying any posters are "wrong" on this thread but even three times one's salary back in the 90s made a house purchase way out of reach for me at one point until the property crash in the early 90s. And my parents lived a ridiculously frugal (by today's standards) lifestyle when they managed to scrape together buying their first house (only because of an inheritance giving them the deposit). They had no central heating, no carpets and they ate off a dining table made from an old packing case, sitting on non-matching metal stools my grandfather's neighbour had thrown out. They never went out beyond walks and visiting local friends, and holidays for many years were spent at my grandparents' house as they (fortunately) happened to live by the sea.

I know DH feels the same about doing the right things and still not coming out as winners, and we're a great deal older than you, OP. We sacrificed many years between us to learn and train for better things, then life threw us some curve-balls that meant we didn't benefit from housing inflation in the same way as most of our contemporaries.
We live now in much the same style as we would if we'd left school at 16. Probably worse. But despite still living in the way someone alluded to upthread, with mismatched furniture, old carpets, no holidays and so on, we consider ourselves very fortunate that the burden of a mortgage has finally been lifted from us. Even if it was only by raiding our pension funds that we were able to do it. Younger people are stuffed, frankly.

Population of UK
1990...57million
2022...67 million
And we wonder why there's a housing crisis.

MIL often bangs on about how we’re all entitled to think we should be able to own a house, in other countries they’re happy renting etc. from her large mortgage free 3 bed 🙄