‘We didn’t have expensive mobile phones”

[MidnightPatrol]

Why is this now used as a criticism of the young by the old, particularly in debates around affordability of housing etc.

No you didn’t have a mobile phone in 1974.

But that is because they didn’t exist. Not because you made a financial sacrifice.

Is the suggestion young people shouldn’t have mobile phones? This would be a little limiting in today’s environment.

In the 1970s were young people criticised for owning washing machines rather than hand scrubbing their clothes in a copper pail?

I suppose it’s because mobile phones don’t have to be expensive. No one needs one that costs several hundred (or £1,000+!) pounds. There’s also no need for a flash car on pcp, a fancy holiday every year, new clothes every season or a perfectly refurbished home. They are all wants.

Their life was very different and I’m sure my parents see us with holidays, regular meals out, 2 cars, phones, several streaming subscriptions etc and think we are utterly bonkers, and think we are very wasteful.
I totally get that they’re the generation of house prices booming, and final pensions, and it’s not just about cutting out a brunch and being able to afford to buy a home, but they also went without a lot of things (and not just because they weren’t invented) and knew to ‘cut their cloth’.

It's a way of deflecting criticism of house price inflation. It's much easier to think it is an individual problem because that person spends money on unnecessary things than consider whether it's sustainable for house prices to rise by more than 100% per decade.

Surely it's parents paying for the young people's phones anyway so it makes no difference.

I think it's just pointing out financial decisions and short term thinking. I usually keep a phone for about 5 years, and I don't buy a new one as I really don't care that much about my phone or what anybody thinks about it. I certainly don't buy a new one every year. I have friends who have to have the latest everything, latest iPhone, new car on finance etc and then complain they don't have money left over for other stuff. It's fine if some people want to prioritise those things but they should still have awareness that they are spending their money on expensive luxury items and not be baffled when they can't afford other stuff.

I still have an iPhone 6 Plus
Second hand- I do need a new one as battery drains fast.

Totally agree OP. And tbf phones don't have to be that expensive - mine isn't - and I don't have a landline either. Agree they are miserable gits trying to deflect from the fact that they could afford houses, and things are tougher these days.

They are right. They didn't have expensive mobile phones. Or any mobile phones. But the point is that nobody back then would have given their child anything as expensive as the top of the range iphone, or even a cheap Samsung.

Life wasn't about consumerism and self promotion.

You’ll be the same one day. There is always something that a younger generation is precious about that was completely superfluous to the life experience of older generations at the same life stage. People were less consumer driven in the 70s and they were quite happy.

It’s a shame no one gives a flying shit about the wisdom of older people - maybe that’s why the world is in such a mess. Hopefully you’ll be magnanimous about it when young whippersnappers with relatively little life experience roll their eyes at your Debbie downer examples one day.

I can see both sides of this. It's true that not having a mobile phone won't mean you can save up to buy a house.

But it's also true that young people spend a lot more, on average, on disposables in general than their grandparents' generation did. Phones, clothes, beauty products, going out for drinks and meals, hobbies etc etc. You can't really compare these to owning a washing machine which is a useful item rather than a treat.

I think the comment using the mobile phone by older generations is largely symbolic. “we didn’t have expensive mobile phones” represents ALL luxury items that are widely available now that were not in the 1970s. The phone stands in for- destination weddings, hen/stag dos abroad, foreign holidays, cars, flat big TVs, PlayStations, computers, tablets, eating out, Taylor swift tickets, and so on. The message is that we have more things tempting us to part with our money than they did.

I think this is the point.

A cheaper phone and going without new clothes doesn't mean you'll suddenly have a house deposit, of course, because things are completely different today in terms of housing costs as multiples of salary. But go back 40 or so years and many people lived incredibly frugally when they were young because it was the only way they could get by.

As an example, my dad used to walk 6 miles home from work on 2 days per week just to save on the bus fare as he and my mum were saving up for a fridge (they couldn't afford one when they bought the house) and there was nothing else they could cut back on. I have no idea what the bus fare would have been compared to the price of a secondhand fridge, but that's what he did. And my bedroom was the only room in the house with a carpet for more than a year - I still remember that now and I would have been 4yo at the time.

Having said that, go back another 40+ years prior and I'm sure things were harder still. Life - on average - gets better with each generation and of course expectations change along with that.

I'm not sure I've ever used that exact expression, but I'd probably say it's just an example-(although there do seem to be a lot of people who 'need' the latest phone.)

But- when I and my first husband bought our first home, we didn't have expensive anything. No car, no proper curtains, no expensive clothes, the most basic food, basic furniture, no coffees out or takeaways, no holidays...you get the drift. Buying the flat was all we could afford, and we didn't want to get into any more debt than that. And we were brought up to believe in the expression 'look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves'.

So perhaps sometimes, when we look around and see the abundance of consumables that some people deem necessary to their lifestyle, it might seem that cuts could be made.

But, of course, none of us could possibly understand how hard life is for young people these days, as we had it so good when we were young.

(And yes- today's younger generation will find out, in their turn, how wrong they are about having it hard now. The upcoming generation will let them know ALL about it!)

Life was much more basic then. Luxuries have got cheaper and essentials far more expensive. I grew up in a house with no phone at all, no car, no central heating. I remember a time when we had no fridge either. Or a TV. But eventually we got those. All our furniture was second hand. We got no pocket money. I worked a couple of hours after school from the age of twelve and all day Saturdays from age fifteen to save up for clothes, toiletries, going out with mates. For birthdays a main present from parents would be an LP (a vinyl record). We walked everywhere, very rarely had new clothes, more shoes and coats that didn't fit rather than buy new.

These days that lifestyle would be seen as deprived and in comparison with most people today, it would be. But it wasn't then. We were middle class.

I had to explain this to DC because they thought we had everything so easy. We had different hardships. But I do think we were lucky that essentials like housing, dentistry, opticians, and opportunities like education to degree level were all free. For all its accessible luxuries, life is harsher now.

My parents talk about not affording wardrobes when they bought their house and using a broom handle wedged in an alcove to hang clothes. And when they were kids, they would have boiled cabbage for tea (served in cabbage water to bulk it out) the week before payday.

A day out for the kids was a packet of crisps in the pub bar park.

I’m only in my mid 30s and they didn’t any poorer than the majority.

Nowadays, a basic standard of living for most includes a car, phone, internet connection, TV subscriptions, take aways, days out and holidays.

I’m not saying giving up these things would make anything better, but I do think we’ve lost sight of how much our minimum standard of living has increased.

My parents were young and newly married in 1970. They did plenty of frivolous spending. My mum in particular - she was paid weekly and would buy a whole new outfit including shoes and bag on a Saturday. She once bought TEN pairs of platform shoes in one day just to spite my dad who said he hated them.

My parents ate out, went to gigs, went dancing, went on foreign holidays, had a dog, bought the latest fad in furniture etc.

But they did also work 2 jobs each (each worked in a bar at night) and got on the property ladder, starting with a one bed flat and working their way up via a series of moves to a four bed detached new build. Their mortgages were based on my dad's prospects at work - not his current salary. Good prospects meant he could borrow more. That said, they didn't need two full time salaries to buy a house or continue to run it, unlike now.

A few points:

• consumer goods are cheaper as a proportion of income now
• housing is much more expensive as a proportion of income now
• people feel that saving up for a deposit is unattainable (especially e.g. for single people, people working in sectors where most jobs are in a HCOL area)

-therefore, people spend more money on lil treats, like meals out. Bloomberg calls this "doom spending": https://archive.is/37hkg

Most first time buyers now buy with help from parents. Total contributions from "bank of mum and dad" have doubled since 2019:
https://www.savills.co.uk/blog/article/302871/residential-property/first-time-buyer-funding-and-the-bank-of-mum-and-dad.aspx

Most people today have VASTLY more day-to-day luxury (electronics, food/drink, holidays, whatever) than people 30/40 years ago.

Most people back then had a VASTLY greater choice of affording to buy a home. My dad repaired domestic appliances and mum was a housewife yet the house I grew up is now worth about £750k...

You simply can't compare the two things. It's like comparing a cat with a banana.

Who are 'the old' supposedly saying this about mobile phones? Smartphones have been around for so long now, I think we're all used to the fact that virtually everyone has one. I'm 57 (I guess that's old to some!) and in my small sample survey (😆) I certainly haven't heard come across people making these remarks. DP's dad is almost 80 and always has the latest, greatest mobile, far more expensive than mine. Maybe he deserves it because he's past the making sacrifices stage? When DS1 got his new phone, most of the older family members asked for a look at it in an interested way. No comments about whether he should own it.

Oh, also one in every five people in the UK live in poverty (and about a fifth of these again are at the extreme end of not being able to afford meals, heating, etc)

So just to be clear, "people" in general are not out in droves buying the latest phones

Roughly half of people only change their phones every 3+ years
https://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/studies/mobile-statistics/

"Is the suggestion young people shouldn’t have mobile phones?"

No, the suggestion would be that they have less expensive mobile phones, as opposed to buying a £1,600+ flagship handset within months of it being released. I think in some way you answered your own question by the time you finished writing the title of your thread.

In the 1970s were young people criticised for owning washing machines rather than hand scrubbing their clothes in a copper pail?

They would have been criticised for buying a washing machine if they couldn't afford the monthly payments.

No-one used copper pails to wash their clothes in the 70s. You used the sink or the bath.

Aren't old people awful. Thread 29,437.....

As a kid there were times when my family was on the bones of its arse poor. And times when life was really boring. I'm not going to judge negatively the kids today who have access to some really cool stuff that I would have loved back then!
Maybe people were content with less in the past - it's hard to miss what you never had. But the internet has made the world smaller - kids know what's out there now. I don't resent them trying to live a bit and get some of it!
It is as a pp said - luxuries are cheaper but essentials more expensive. Kids might as well have a few holidays and a decent phone, if they aren't ever going to be able to buy a house!

It was the same back then. But what people used to be criticised for having was a TV.
How can they be poor? They have a TV!!
Nothing really changes.