‘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?

Unless the area has gentrified, a house worth £750k now would have been an expensive house back then.

^ 👏🏻👏🏻This.
Sooooooo many wants these days and does it add to life, make people happy? Not so sure about that.

Only while they are at school. My children paid for their own once they were at Uni and working.

There are cheaper mobile phones and expensive ones. My first was about £80, probably £150 with inflation, bought with my own wages at 16. I paid £130 for a phone last year. If my teen had wanted anything better than that then they'd need to earn the money themselves.

The older generation will always moan about younger people and vice versa. It happened when I was young in the 70s. Wasting money on LPs and fashionable clothes. Drinking and going to see bands.

It's a different world today.
People saved up back then.
Women had a bottom drawer and collected things for their home when they were married.
People didn't expect things on credit or to have them immediately.
People didn't generally get pregnant first as they do today and then think afterwards about where they were going to live and how or expecting someone else to bail them out.

Interestingly a home phone in 1970 was about the same monthly cost as an iphone today when adjusted or inflation

“People saved back then”
how far back are we talking as paying on the never never has been around for donkeys years.

I think all this 'stuff' is a distraction. We're all so busy consuming stuff we're not interested in much else and sort out our boredom. I'm just as bad but yearn for something simpler sometimes

My parents house cost them around £120k. It is a 7 bed house, with several acres of land outside Henley on Thames. I hate to think how much it is now worth. My mum didn't work, never has.

In contrast, our house cost us £600k for a 4 bed semi detached about 20 miles from them. Both of us work bloody hard to afford it.

No amount of cutting back on phones or other 'luxuries' would allow us to be in a position to buy something like my parents place. As it is, we don't have foreign holidays, we rarely eat out, only replace things when they break, not when they are out of fashion. Clothes have to wear out etc.

And we are a highly paid couple. Lower income families will be in far tougher position.

How old are your parents? I certainly don’t recognise any of that from my parents’ upbringings!

It's grumpy and uninformed people who don't understand economics that you're dealing with here.

The "avocado toast" theory of why people in their 30s with full time jobs can't afford a home of their own has been thoroughly debunked. But people who have failed to notice that the house they bought for 10k in 1979 now costs 750k fall for it.

You can't argue with stupid.

I agree with that.

My dc had cheap mobile phones on Payg. I put £20 on once a year. They knew data was for emergencies only. As adults they still have payg or cheap contracts of less than £10 a month. So do I and dh. I've only recently started paying more than £5.
My dnes (same age) had one on a contract for £30 and when dsis was complaining about expenses, that was something I pointed out didn't have to be as expensive. She said it did because anything less wasn't worth having.
So that was £120 a month (4 of them), nearly £1500 on something we paid £100 a year (5 of us) plus cost of phone (dc's were normally second hand)

Growing up, if things broke we knew if it couldn't be repaired we would be waiting until birthdays/Christmas for a new one. Even then we might not get another if the price had gone up. We walked, mended, made from left-overs, almost never ate out, bought second hand etc.
Someone on here recently was saying they can't afford to get carpets. We had bare floorboards throughout the house for at least 6 months, if not a year when we moved house as a child. And df put them in too. My bedroom never got them in; dm made a rug for me out of spare fabric, and df varnished the bare floorboards so it looked nice.
And my parents still have most of them still in - beautiful 70s designs, if that's not a contradiction in terms. We looked after them with protectors and rugs because they were expensive.

I'm not saying that's a good way to live all the time, but we accepted it. Now the expectations of people have gone up. They don't expect to mend. They don't expect to have to get second hand. They want to get a coffee/lunch from a shop rather than take their own.
And I'm as guilty as anyone, especially of the latter.

And I think on the mending, part of the problem is that df and dm were taught at school how to do DIY, wire a plug, put up shelves, mend a hem, darn etc so they were able to do it. I suspect a lot of people just don't know how to do basic DIY. But most people will throw away rather than mend.

Yes, this will not change the income to get a better house. But saving up and spending money wisely would help some people to be able to choose luxuries that they want rather than just spending it and not noticing.
I hold my hands up guilty too.

Not if the house is a 60s or 70s 3bed semi with a decent back garden in a southside Dublin suburb, or any other area that has seen exponential rises in house prices.

The frequency of replacing the phone is irrelevant when you consider what people are paying for them each year.

From that link of yours:
"Between August 2022 and August 2023 a significant number of people took out mobile phone contracts through Uswitch. The average cost of a mobile phone contract during this period was £903.48"

It's mad. 70 year olds of today don't live like the 70 year olds of the 1970s either. Times change.

I think the baby boomer generation had their parents saying they'd been through the war and boomers didn't understand what that was like - the best the boomers can muster is that they didn't have smartphones.

And I think on the mending, part of the problem is that df and dm were taught at school how to do DIY, wire a plug, put up shelves, mend a hem, darn etc so they were able to do it. I suspect a lot of people just don't know how to do basic DIY. But most people will throw away rather than mend.

@MargaretThursday the thing is, manufacturing practices have made make do and mend uneconomic. It might be better for the environment to repair, but it's usually cheaper to buy something new than spare parts.

You can't buy wood for less than the price of an IKEA bookshelf. It costs much more to make your own clothes than to buy them. Those things have become costly hobbies because they're minority pursuits.

I'm still a bit confused by the cost of living in previous decades. I know many went without what most consider to be basic living now but I know my mums salary in the mid 70's as a teacher was £3000 and she bought her first home on her own for £10000. Later she bought a large detached bungalow with my dad in the late 80's for £80000 while her salary was around £18000 and he was on minimum wage. She said she was glad they didn't over stretch themselves when the interest rates shoot up. There is no way DH and I could afford either of these houses today.

Interesting. But that would have been a phone for the whole family ( not just one person,), that wouldn't need replacing,/ updating in a few years time and was unlikely to get stolen or lost.

@transformandriseup Teachers used to be much better paid.
There was no minimum wage in the eighties.

@transformandriseup your mum probably had a guarantor. It was hard then for women to get a mortgage on their own.
In the eighties the maximum you could borrow was 2.5 times male earner and 1.5 times female earner.

@ShyPoet yes they were better paid although they were no TAs either. No my dad didn't earn minimum wage he was on piece work and didn't earn a lot.

That is puzzling. She would not have been able to borrow the necessary amount on both their salaries. Maybe she had an inheritance or gift from parents?

My parents bought in 1980 for £30k, if it had risen in line with inflation it would have been worth £145k but it is now about £450k - it is in a village so not much change in the area itself

As the subject of property as opposed to goods has come up I’d like to chip in on that.

For quite some time I’ve been reading that old people have ruined buying a property for young people and I don’t understand that. Old people are unlikely to get a mortgage so who is currently buying property?

Where I live is not top end, but it is London so still expensive. Property gets sold fairly quickly and I notice it is mostly bought by young people.

Is that because those young people prioritised buying a property when the young people who complain about the property market were prioritising other things (travelling extensively comes to mind)?