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.

it is awful and the main reason you are in this situation is selfish women. Feminists who refused to stay at home to raise their children or just work a small part time job insisted on a high earning career. In time due to this ,two decent incomes were needed to purchase a family home.

That makes much more sense. If I had that kind of money to give for my child's wedding though, I'd prefer to give it to them as a house deposit. A fancy day or a secure asset that sets them up well?

You guys.My God some people are on the streets.Property is not an achievement.People should be given small homes and basic income.None of this is fair.Older people are also poor if they don't own and not all boomers are loaded.some people get given more and are luckier.some people do the so called right thing but are disappointed by their income.Its all unjust and random.stop focusing on what you can give your kid financially and focus on the things that cannot be bought.Fight for justice.

event so, you are still luckier than many others that you have got a property.
There are many people who I know do renting. please be positive and don't be harsh on your self.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or a genuine opinion, as it is so ridiculous and offensive. You are blaming women having jobs for property prices, and calling women who work selfish. Why aren't dads who work selfish? Argh!

Things are so much harder than they were for me aged 24, when I was able to buy a flat on my own, on a normal salary.

Life feels like much, much harder work now (I’m never sure whether this is because I’m older, though. I think it’s a combination of my age, the cost of living and separating from exH.) It reminds me of my childhood in the 1970’s. In the 80’s people gradually seemed to have more.

We need a change of leadership in this country. It feels like everything is broken and exhausted.

My parents bought the house I grew up in outright before I was born. We were not well off by any means - one foreign holiday in 18 years, frequently running out of money by the end of the month, dad bought a car in 1987 and drove it until he died mid-00s - and my dad being shit with money means we won't inherit anything when my mum dies, but it means that we never had to worry about getting evicted or affording interest rate hikes.

Meanwhile we - a double-income household, both of us going to university and moving to where the jobs were and all the other things we were told would ensure an easier life - have paid £100k in rent in the past ten years and are looking to relocate across the country with a commute back into London once a week because we are on the verge of not being able to afford rents here now, never mind buying. I honestly don't give a fuck about 'the ladder', we just want a place that's ours, which is somehow now an impossibility rather than a mark of growing up.

Of course you’re not being unreasonable, but you daren’t say so, because all the older people will come on being all defensive and calling you ageist, because the 15% interest rate hike in the 80s on a reasonable sized house that was originally bought on a mortgage that could be got with one average income was far far worse, you know, especially as social housing was much more abundant and available then before their generation bought it all up.

my parents bought a small detached house in the mid-80s for less than £25,000. They remortgaged and remortgaged for scores of thousands over the years, not because they couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage, but because my mum likes to spend money. They took out one of these endowment mortgages that didn’t cover the whole sum, so they pocketed the endowment payout, remortgaged all over again, then claimed compensation for being mis-sold the mortgage and pocketed that money too. When my dad was forced to retire through ill health in his late 50s they could no longer pay the mortgage. They signed over the house to one of these dodgy equity release companies. They can now live mortgage free in that house for the rest of their lives. My dad never earned more than about 25K per year, and my mum gets pension credits because she only ever worked part time for the last 40 odd years so didn’t pay her stamp. Don’t fucking mention to her your struggles, like having successive landlords sell up forcing you to move every five minutes into smaller and more expensive accommodation, because you can’t afford to save for a deposit or raise a mortgage though, because they had it far far harder, oh yes they did.

Oh, sod off. My brother bought a house in London for £200k, sat in it for 10 years, painted it, and sold it for £1.2million. A generation got given a huge chunk of free cash because of the housing boom and it’s ok that the people just a few years behind them resent it.

YANBU OP.

Are you saying you wouldn't have done the same if you had the opportunity?

@ColdNow I think I'm a similar age to you and feel similar. House prices went up massively in the couple of years before I bought and then nowhere near as much since. Most of my friends are a bit older and now have a similar mortgage to me and a much bigger house or a similar house and no mortgage. There's no way I'll be in that position at their ages unless something massive changes.

The thing that does help is thinking about grandparents instead of parents. In my family, that generation were in and out the workhouse and lived through two world wars in London including losing friends and family. At least the general pattern is upwards, even if there has been a blip in the last generation.

I agree. My DM was living in a small village due to house price inflation in the 70's but working was difficult to find part time. She didn't want to teach - she was a fashion designer by training. She wanted to stay at home but said she did nearly go mad. Options were far more limited

I was discussing this with friends - all of us in well paying jobs, earning a lot more than our parents ever did, but none of us live now in houses bigger than the ones we grew up in - we simply couldn't afford it.

And the mortgages on our places swallow up so much income, our standard of living isn't quite as good either.

I think the answer is to not compare. Yes it can be frustrating being in a small home with a family. But at least you have a home. Everything is expensive and most people are working hard to keep afloat. Timing is everything with housing unfortunately.

Pisses me off that the govt literally picked our pockets with that disastrous mini budget

That posters’ mother was. Just because it didn’t apply to every woman doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to anyone.

Yes, some older people experienced a comfortable upbringing like your parents, but many of us didn’t. I’m in my 50’s and we still had an outside toilet when I was growing up. We had no central heating so you wore extra layers to bed in winter. My mum eventually got a grant to help pay for an indoor bathroom and central heating with a coal boiler, when I was about 15yrs old.

I bought a small 2 bed house in 1989 with my ex. with a 100% mortgage. We wouldn’t have been able to buy otherwise.

I saved my money and didn’t go out much or have foreign holidays and spent around £8k on doing it up, new windows, kitchen etc. I sold it in 2002 for £65k and made £20k profit.

I moved down south for a better paid job but couldn’t afford to buy down there as the prices were much higher than in the north. I was renting a bed sit room when I met DH to be. Luckily, he had bought a 2 bed terraced house and so I moved in with him and when we moved about 12 yrs later, we moved to somewhere where we knew no-one but it was much cheaper and we could afford a nicer house.

I have got a degree but I studied p/t and worked f/t whilst studying. Sounds like you enjoyed the benefit of a full time degree course? So did my Ex, at my expense!

Yes, it’s easy to look at folks better off and whine about it not being fair, but I prefer a glass half full approach and to look for opportunities and accept that we’ll never be wealthy and afford posh cars and holidays but we’re not in massive debt, because I’d rather go without.

Never going to happen in a million years, there are around quarter a million empty properties in England supposedly and a ton of AirBnB etc. that will get sold or go back to private rental if the recession arrives, plus mortgage applications and house sales have plummeted and all those people no longer applying/buying still live somewhere? The problem is too much cheap mortgage debt for too long, not number of housing units.

I don't have central heating NOW. We're in a flat with panel heaters and it costs £££ to run. We also don't have a car (though, to be fair, we don't want or need one).

I wish these threads didn’t always turn into the misery Olympics. This is getting like the Yorkshire men sketch.

The reality is that my generation (I’m 70) was incredibly fortunate. We did all the things expected of us - bought a house we could afford, paid into our pensions, saved what we could - and we got everything we were promised. We’ve advised our kids to do the same thing not realising that the result we got was a time limited offer. We’ve raised their expectations and complain when they’re disappointed. I’d be disappointed if I were them.

You're right about property, the ratio of average income to average property price is so much worse than it was historically. I don't think buying second hand clothes or shopping in budget supermarkets is anything to complain about though? I do this as the norm, it's more eco friendly / why pay more. I think you need to be grateful you have a house and a baby on the way.

" 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."
Yes, because they are a decade or more older than you?!

Good idea. Also taxing rental income at income tax level and not allowing the tax loops that are legal but immoral.

I’m very grateful to have my little flat in SE London.

Yes, it could have been a house in Islington had I been born a couple of decades earlier, but I wasn’t. That’s life!

Focus on the positives and don’t compare yourself to others, including past generations.

Totally agree with you OP. My partner and I make substantially more than my parents did. They could afford a detached 3 bedroom home in a very lovely suburb with a huge garden. My mum gave up work completely when she had me and never worked again.

I live in a tiny flat, no garden, no chance whatsoever of giving up work. And still my mum tries to convince me that they were “not well off” when they had me.