To think it’s very hard to live in the uk without inheritance or family money?

[Lifesucksthenyoudie]

Just that really. Social mobility seems almost impossible at the moment without a head start. I earn a decent salary (Dh doesn’t but that’s another post) but my standard of living is so much worse than my parents and my mother didn’t work until we were in secondary school and even then part time for peanuts. Nursery fees and mortgage alone wipe us out. I haven’t inherited any money (large family, no chance) and feel a bit stuck. Not after sympathy just interested to see if others feel a bit trapped. Why is our society geared up this way?

BoringBoris, you are correct. My late parents married in 1948, me 1950, no car,no phone, they didn't own their house. Late father disabled spine crumbling,no benefits. DM did a couple of cleaning jobs, I went with her school holidays. When my DM died ,he re married, did actually buy the house, when he died it went to the widow. My youngest DD is 32, I had 4 jobs, I went back to night nursing. I didn't want to do nights, but it meant not having to pay for childcare. In the 80s mortgage rate was 16%,my ex H was at one point earning £80 a week as a cleaner at Gatwick. I live in the south east, village,you can get a decent 3 bed not far away for under £300k. We haven't had a holiday for 15 years, been with my second DH 35 years, and only ever had one new car. You cannot guarantee inheritance, because proper ty might be sold for social care.

I’m guessing the uni kids are hoping they can leapfrog onto a higher salary post university, and some definitely do. However, looking at my dc’s cohort, the ones that did apprenticeships are in a better position then those that didn’t, and some graduates are struggling to get a graduate job six months on.

Some graduates have always struggled to get a graduate job. A degree has never been a guarantee.

There are increasing numbers who hit mid or even late 30s not on property ladder and not secure in careers.

HE bad for not giving out permanent jobs till mid 30s these days - then in last decade attaching ridiculous funding expectations to them.

It why we had first to kids and then bought - DH trying private sector for permeant job and having saved the deposit ( mostly me prior to kids). We rented privately and we not near our families or reliant on them in any way.

I don't know anyone in my social circle who is living with Mum and Dad and then having kids - then moaning about struggle to buy. Is there data that's a lot of young people doing this?

Honestly we got crap from IL for not trading up like they did - but our first house we brought 3 bed - first time in position to buy I was 32 and DH 34. We hadn't wanted to wait longer for kids - me 28 Dh 30 - as there were grounds for fertility concerns which thankfully were unfounded - though we could easily have wasted another decade and started trying late 30 early 40s and then had to spend small fortune on fertility treatments with no guarantees of success. IL had seem to expect us to be a decade later but then instead of independent teens we'd have had very young kids (if lucky) when there health issues hit and they wouldn't have had time with GC - plus we'd have bought even later and settled later as pfb starting school was a driver for stability.

Most people I know who tired the trade up house ladder found themselves stuck as prices between property types increased - maybe in different areas it made sense but it seemed very dated way to proceed when we were buying.

No inheritance here either. proper working class on both sides wit Dads working in the steel industry. However, Husband and I put each other through university. I worked three jobs so that he could study on a full-time engineering degree (lessons 8-5 most day). After he graduated and had a good job with high pay, I went to university, when my daughter was one year old. No support with childcare. We always had to pay for it.
I think what helped for us is that we held off having kids until we could afford to pay for the childcare which is now at a crippling level. I also think people need to be encouraged to look at getting better educated if they didn't manage to do so straight after school.

YABU.

No family money nor inheritance. DH and I live in the SE on distinctly average salaries (combined around £70k). Two young primary DC who we previously paid nursery fees for.

We have our own (mortgaged) house, which we overpay on every month and save most months. No debt and healthy savings. However we are not extravagant on things like holidays and we do need a new kitchen/bathrooms.

We bought 10 years ago after saving for five years for a deposit (whilst renting in outer London! Albeit being quite lucky with our landlords who didn't increase the rent the whole time we were there).

No inheritance here. Only family I have left is a sibling, neither of us inherited from our grandparents or parents. DH only has one parent left and isn’t expecting a penny from there. (Second wives / families of our dads got / will get everything). DH is amazingly focussed and earns well, he has always made a point to never borrow money (apart from the mortgage which was cleared after 25 years), I used to work in financial services so knew which savings plans to use and which to avoid. We try to support and help our children in ways our own parents never wanted to as well us showing them fiscal responsibility.

I have children, I live in the SE in a nice house in a safe area. And have British citizenship now. This country has given me all the opportunities, I never claimed benefits and don’t qualify for child benefit.

I have the opposite problem (if you can call it that), being asset rich and cash poor. I've never had a mortgage and bought outright, my partner had a living inheritance (a city apartment), which they rent, and we own another property (outright) which is also rented. Even without loans or mortgages, there's often expensive things to be fixed, or problems with renters.

Neither myself or my partner earn much, so the rent keeps us going (currently one renter has just left and the other has stopped paying and things have gone legal), but we have no luxuries whatsoever and nothing much to spare. Of course, if we had to, we could sell up and the cash problem is resolved, it's a safety net, so I'm not bemoaning our situation. It just makes me think that if we're struggling without debt/mortgage/rent/loans etc. I don't know how other people make it. You have my sympathies.

Other people make it by working really hard and not expecting to be able to buy a decent family home in a nice area in their 20s.

All my friends including me are doing well and don’t have either of those things.

Thanks for posting OP as this is an interesting topic.
My parents are both self made and reasonably well off, due to nice circumstances, luck and some hard work,, however no money literally none) has ever come my way. I realised very early on ( aged about 8) that I was never going to get a penny from them, so my sole aim in life was to make my own money and be financially independent as I couldn’t rely on them, , or more importantly have any agency over my own life, if I waited for money from them, even though they had spare cash.

At uni I focused on jobs in high paying sectors, and living within my means and saving, saving saving. I was right inasmuch as I have always been financially independent and had well paying jobs and a financial cushion . My parents continued to not give a brass farthing to me ( siblings a different matter…). At uni I was astonished that no other girls were focusing on job applications in the same way I ( and lots of the boys) were. But they had parents ( rich and poor) that would sub them / help them / that they could turn to.

i don’t even know (or care) if I will inherit money from my parents. If I do, the amount won’t make a difference to my life.

And what if you wait until your thirties and still aren't on the property ladder and still aren't secure in your career?

Do you risk waiting until your forties or do you just think "fuck it" and do it anyway?

If you really want a baby then the fact that you rent or work in a poorly paid job isn't going to be a restriction.

Where I live house prices have gone from ‘OK’ to ‘unreasonable’ in about 5 years. It’s not just a case of - ooh 20 years ago it was cheaper - in some places it was less than a decade since house prices have shot up, people have been completely outpriced in that time. I bought juts before they went mad and the hosue has almost doubled in value in that time. So great for me, not so great for people trying to buy. The real kick in the teeth is that the houses are not that nice! the area is ‘in demand’ so you might say ‘well just look in a different areas’, but the things that make this area popular are basics like transport, some green space, shops, a library, some OK schools. The basics really. ‘Looking elsewhere’ means looking in places that are not served by basic public conveniences. It’s pretty bad.

The problem with your post OP is that people of different generations and in different areas of the country will respond differently.
A 60-year old from North Wales will give you a different opinion to a 20-year old from the South East.

And what if you wait until your thirties and still aren't on the property ladder and still aren't secure in your career?
Do you risk waiting until your forties or do you just think "fuck it" and do it anyway?
if both partners worked FT and lived a low luxury life, I would question why they were not in a position to buy a flat by 35yo.

you can of course at that stage decide to go for children. You might close to being to buy then anyway.

If not, you deal with the choices you've made.

This is it. There are so many people who don't appreciate this and think their circumstances must be comparable to the wider population, and that just isn't always the case. I'm like you, I bought my house 5 years ago and now the exact same style houses on the same and neighbouring streets sell for £60k more. That's about a 25% increase vs my purchase price 5 years ago for the equivalent. It's mad! I'm so glad I was able to get on the property ladder when I did, and even then I massively overpaid vs what people 5 years prior to that paid. People who claim that hard work is the only thing that got them where they are should take an honest look at the state of the U.K. right now and contextualise their own experience within that.

OP, I take it you aren’t a history enthusiast? If you study the past you will see that it has ever been thus! For a short time last century it looked like conditions for the working classes were greatly improving and their was the idea that if you worked hard, ideally after getting a qualification, that you could aspire to home ownership and 2 or 3 children.
Labour governments weren’t perfect but they and strong unions were the only protection workers had and like turkeys too many voted for Christmas and lost the protections they had and the rich ( indigenous and foreign) took advantage to make millions.
Im too old to fight any longer for the causes I believe in and it’s depressing to hear young people here say they can’t even have the family they want because of the expense — that ability is generally confined to the rich or indigent and were told in the future we’ll need to use the youth of other nations to support the NHS etc etc
Madness

I don’t live in the UK but I do live in Ireland where the cost of living is exponentially higher than in the UK (a study showed at the end of 2023 it cost 14% more to live in Ireland).

I don’t have either of those things, I also don’t have a partner and am a single mum of a 5 year old with another baby due next month. I do just fine, I don’t worry about a mortgage as I rent a
house just big enough for us, and get assistance with my rent so I pay €1000 per month after the €400 council assistance. I worked full time on a decent wage (50k-ish per year before tax, around 38k after tax), I have one loan that I am repaying at €120 per week for my nursing degree, I drive a car that is 10 years old and I don’t owe any money on it. I’d love a mortgage but I can’t realistically afford rising interest rates and still maintain a decent savings account for emergencies. I’d love a new car but I refuse to go into debt for one.

my childcare fees up until maternity leave were around €200 per week, but now I can pick my DD up from school each day so I’m saving money there. Our food shop for the week is around €100, and then I have all the other usual weekly bills. I don’t get financial assistance from my child’s dad, and I refuse to ask anyone for financial help which is why I maintain a savings account and ensure i put as much as I can in it each week.

I think if we all lived within our means, things would be much better.

Yep. I'm flat hunting at the moment so have email alerts from ShareToBuy, which is where shared ownership (all I can afford) properties are advertised. I constantly get sent adverts for 2-3 bedroom ugly new build houses built in the arse end of nowhere, often surrounded by industrial wastelands and with no local amenities. I've had one just now in fact... full market prices of 450-550k.

In my city, the cheapest shared ownership resale 1 bed flats have a full market value of at least £300k. Even though I've lived here for 18 years and bought my shared ownership flat in 2015, I've been priced out of my area. So now I'm looking 30 miles away for somewhere remotely affordable, and it's slim pickings.

I agree with several previous posters that much so depends on where you live, and on the age of the parents you're comparing yourself with.

I'm 63. My parents had just one car; my brothers shared a bedroom when we were children; during the whole of my childhood we had only 2 foreign holidays (usually we went to a B&B in Devon, or we stayed at home); I can't remember ever going out for a family meal at a restaurant; and the only takeaways we had were when my dad occasionally went to the chippy on a Friday.

I'm not saying this in a Monty Python 'Four Yorkshiremen' way - it's just how things were for a lot of people in the 1960s and '70s. There are lots of things that are miles better about life now!

Yet my parents did own their house (with a mortgage), and my mum was mostly a stay-at-home parent.

And I benefited in other ways too. E.g. I went to university and paid no tuition fees - I even received a maintenance grant.

I and my then DP (in our late 20s) bought a two-bed flat in London in 1988 for £78,000. An internet search tells me that £78k then is worth £211.5k today - but that particular flat was sold two years ago for around £535,000.

Tell me how two teachers/nurses/social workers/carers/cleaners in their 20s could afford that kind of price today.

(Obviously, that kind of property will be much more affordable today in other parts of the country, but I imagine that not everyone can find a job in those areas.)

Also, as suggested upthread, one huge problem is the cost of rents. I lived in rented flats for seven years in the early/mid 1980s, and my rent was never increased. Now I have a friend nearby (not London, but the SE) whose rent has increased every year since 2010, to the extent he's now paying almost double what he was paying 14 years ago. In such circumstances, how can renters ever save enough money to raise a deposit on a property?

I don't have children, but I look at my nieces and nephews - four of them at university or in the last year or two of school - and I wonder how they will manage to pay rent/save up a deposit for a place of their own, while also paying back their student debts, let alone spending on day-to-day living.

@Lifesucksthenyoudie Not at all unreasonable.
We left SW London as it would have been impossible to have bought a house there as 20 somethings.
Rent took a huge chunk of earnings.

Thankfully have a house now, but where we are now has seen prices rocket.

It is FAR harder for young people now to get on the housing ladder in some parts of the country.

Houses in real terms have skyrocketed in relation to earnings. in certain areas.

But those with 'wealthy' {Property owning} families have inheritance that trickles down from great grandparents and down and down... there are some who are now mortgage free in their twenties because of generous inheritance.

Others {the rest of us} have to save.

As PPs have said, so much depends on where.

I live in a small south Midlands town. It is possible to commute (2 hours chair to chair) into the City of London IMO 2 hours is acceptable if in a hybrid role.

In this town you can buy a 3 bed house with off road parking etc for £225k. The town is rough around the edges. It's not a smart town. No farmers market/cheese shops etc. Schools aren't outstanding. Perhaps this lack of 'smartness' is what has kept house prices down.

Yes, but they are in crap areas miles from any decent jobs and you'd be better off up North anyway.

We are down south and the shit hole we bought was five minutes walk to a train line into London in a hour. Its still a shitty area. But it's no longer cheap. The rise in house prices has out stripped our wage increases. It will never become gentrified either. That's one issue. Even the shiity areas have inflated. I remember we looked at 45k semi in a nasty part of Nottingham. Where's the opportunity to utilise a house anywhere for a few years adverage years wage now?