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?

Many over 35 year olds went to uni possibly took a year out and only started earning in their mid-twenties. Many over 65 year old left school and went straight into work at 16 so were nearly ten years ahead with their savings, salary levels etc.

Thanks for clarifying! The homes are both lovely homes and in a desirable street. You sort of wonder why they’re not at least rented out but I can see why that’d be troublesome too.

It was quite sad, last year I saw (I walk
round the park at lunchtime) the elderly woman who lived there with her daughter (she was calling her “mother”) and handling her a bit harshly and roughly and the poor mother looked upset and confused as it was probably the last time she’d see her home. I knew the mother a bit as when my cat went missing for a week about 3 years ago I knocked on doors with fliers and asked them to check garages and sheds and she invited me in for tea and I popped round to see her a few times after that for community and neighbourly reasons (there’s a local WhatsApp group for the area). She was really sweet if a bit elderly and frail. Apparently her daughter (seemed quite upper class) rarely visited her or rang her. The woman did say, I tentatively asked, that her DH had left her very comfortably off as he was a businessman but she got lonely and the house was getting a lot for her to manage. She told me she didn’t want to go into a home but said her daughter was pushing for it.

Ten years ahead? Most people graduate uni at 21 not 26.

And even then... isn't a university education supposed to mean you are earning more money and so able to afford a home?

Have you missed the bit about property being vastly more expensive than it was in the past?

my point is that WE ( me and my DH nor any of my siblings) have not and will not receive any ‘family money’ we own our homes because we prioritised that over other things. Yes we have nieces and nephews but we aren’t in a position to give them money we are only in our 40’s and could live into our 90’s

We were very fortunate in that we bought property at the tail end of the 1980s. I had a one-bed flat in NW London, and DH bought a cheap Georgian terraced house with no garden or parking in Cornwall. Both cost £60k, and both were a stretch on one income. When I moved into his house, I let mine out. It cost me £250 a month, every month, to subsidise the tenant living there, and it took a decade of me subsidising the rent before interest rates fell enough that I wasn't paying to not live in it. When prices starting rising again, everybody wanted to buy it. When I did sell it, a few years later, I sold into a rising market. But there are always sharks circling; I asked the letting agent to get a valuation from their sales team on it, and they came back with a price £40k under the market valuation. They clearly thought I was zipped up the back!