Generational wealth differences

[KeenGreen]

My first AIBU so let’s see what I’m in for!

First to make clear none of the problems now are the fault of previous generations. It is not a blame game!!

So AIBU to be frustrated with the rhetoric that todays generations of young families have it no harder than previous generations in terms of wealth and they just need to be more frugal to have the same standard of living??

I am sick of hearing the idea that older generations. So called boomers (for the record I don’t like this term) didn’t have it easier than younger generations.

I am 38 I have worked since I was 16, lived independently since 17. Put myself through university all the way through to PhD. My husband is 39 works in a school as support staff (LSA) and takes up circa £1200 a month. He has a degree.
I work in a university and earn just under £50K before tax so our household income is probably about £65K not the lowest by any stretch but enough for us to struggle to balance costs. We claim child benefit but otherwise no extra help.
Husband only works term time of course, but that means he’s around for our child during holidays.

We have one DC age 5, and can’t afford any more.
Our closest family lives over 2 hours away, so we have no family support with childcare or help if there is a sick day or anything.

We have a mortgaged small semi detached 1930s house with 3 bedrooms, It needs a lot of work but we haven’t been able to do much because of time and money. Current mortgage fix ends in 2026 and I expect our mortgage repayments to go up by about 50% extra £300 a month.

We pay off student loans and my pension contributions are also high.
I took only 6 months maternity leave because I couldn’t afford to go to half pay for long and not into no pay at all.

My husband had virtually nothing in his workplace pension because of low earnings.
Mine is keep being devalued because of sector changes and it’s definitely not the best pension in education. (Teachers pensions are better).
I can’t even imagine what it will be like to try and live off my workplace pension alone and I would have to go all the way up to retirement age which I can’t imagine myself doing in a stressful job.

Retirement age for us is currently 68, that means we have 30 more years.
But with the way things are going I have no hope that there will be a state pension at all for us, or the age will be pushed even higher, so will probably be dead! Despite the fact I will have been paying in with tax national insurance for 50 plus years by that point.

I just feel frustrated about this idea that I hear people say that our generation just needs to work harder, or get better paid jobs etc because it’s not that easy. We both work hard in the education sector. Enjoy our jobs for the most part and find them fulfilling albeit stressful at times!

Like I said not about blaming previous generations for the picture we are in, but I don’t like the rhetoric of ‘well interest rates went up to 15% in my day’ etc when house prices were so much lower in proportion to wages and the cost of living right now and inflation over the last 10 years shows wages haven’t increased in line with this.

ps I know we are not the most hard done by! But still feel the pinch and we certain don’t live an extravagant lifestyle!

I think for a lot of people, it’s very easy to forget what life was like 40 years ago. It’s a bit like how grandparents today are like, I wouldn’t have tolerated my toddler screaming in public like that. Meanwhile, in actuality, their toddlers were screaming a lot and they were shoving chocolate buttons in their mouths to make them stop. But memory has whitewashed that a bit.

Certainly, my parents bought a very nice house and my mum also got a mortgage on her own to buy my grandparents a house (they paid her the mortgage as rent). Neither of them had a university degree. My dad I don’t think had more than some technical qualifications of some sort (worked as a technician in a chemical factory). My mum went to like a 2 year business college and took some secretarial and accounting courses. She walked into a corporate job with no degree in the mid 70s and ended up retiring earning about £65k a year in the mid to late noughties. A very nice salary and big private pension for someone with no university education. She also had a mortgage free house because my grandparents paid it off.

Now Dh and I have done very well. We have a nicer lifestyle than either of us had growing up (MIL also had a house given to her as it was a cottage on family farm, so has never had a mortgage and only ever worked PT). But that’s mostly down to working hard, working FT, and being very financially savvy. We haven’t had the advantages that our parents had.

I assume you’re nowhere near the south/southeast? Twenty years ago £15k would have been a fairly low salary, but £30k for a house would be only in very few places - we bought in the early 2000s; £90k for a run down ex-council 2 bed fixer upper flat.

Someone upthread posted this
She had the opportunity to go to university which none of my parents’ or my generation (X) could do.

Because they weren't academic probably

I can't agree more - people should not vote selfishly - most of my acquaintances who are not competing in low paid jobs with East Europeans, don't live in social housing and are moneyed, with children going to private schools, voted against Brexit - exactly because of the above. All they wanted is cheaper cash-in-hand non-British workmen to upgrade their homes, cheaper labour on their farms, and most of all, as one told me, an opportunity for their little darlings to exploit the Erasmus student exchange programme - as if with their wads of cash they could not pay themselves for their dc to study in Europe for 6 months, a year, 2 years, etc. I agree, people vote selfishly.

I have recently hit retirement and saw my private pension plummet in value by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and I have no way to build it back (except a recovery in value… in our post Brexit uncertain world).

It was always v modest anyway because most of my working life was before it was mandatory for employers to make any contribution, initial trashing of my teeny pot in 2008 etc.

I still have my marbles and can see that housing costs and COL are a huge difficulty for young people / young families. Even with the help that is available to them (free nursery hours, FSM in early years, UC for working families).

It is a scandal that normal wages need to be propped up by the state while shareholders laugh all the way to the bank.

I am also aghast at some of the salaries I see being mentioned as normal for 30 somethings on MN. The value of cars I see on the road in my scruffy not-wealthy neighbourhood. The COL doesn’t affect everyone. Polarity is a problem . Talk about that.

My mum had to work 2 jobs and no childcare so she took on jobs where by she could supervise us whilst she worked. A corner shop where were able to sit in the back room with colouring books or reading books.

And do you think you can just rock up to your job now with dc? 😆

Or just start I thread "can I work from home & look after my baby?". The responses won't be supportive

Yeah I agree- we bought 25 ish years ago in London and it was a 2 bed new build flat in east London and that cost £230k. I appreciate that that flat would now be worth a lot more but certainly that required a parental loan at the time for the deposit. We also had to rent out the second room to afford the mortgage.

OP hasn't got multiple home, it just the way it's written, they live in the home they bought after selling their first home so just moved up the 'housing ladder'

I've been reading in detail the OP's posts, and it's not clear.

Even less clear is why she'll create a post about "Generational Wealth Differences" when she textually said "and a home that will be paid off before we retire, and be passed on to our child through inheritance."

There is a serious incongruity between her initial post, and subsequent ones.

Yes this is the problem and it's unpalatable.

We need to tax wealth, so less inheritance, and use that money to build a fairer society.

Yes exactly sorry for the confusion it was written poorly.

we bought our first home sold and bought our current home.

Goodness if I could afford two homes this whole thread would be pointless 🤣

You spent a fortune on further education yet are earning less than if you stuck with a bachelors degree and made different work choices.
your husband has a degree but appears to be earning minimum wage at best.
these are choices you have made, which I would not have made because I wanted a decent standard of living and more children.
not too sure what you are moaning about really. If it is that in the 70s an academic working full time with a spouse earning pin money in a part time job would have had a better standard of living, then yes, they probably would have done. Life has changed. Well noticed.

People could also afford big families on fairly normal jobs. I now have one baby and would desperately love another, but it will be a huge strain financially. This then creates the issue of less children coming into the workforce, and ageing population, which comes at a huge societal cost.

And many, many people lived in what we would now think of as slum-like conditions, with outside loos, ice on the inside of their windows in winter, a single open fire for heating and a tin bath in the kitchen. A diet that a modern dietitian would be horrified by. No car, only a day-trip to Southend or Blackpool as their holiday, only three or four changes of clothing... And of course, until the 1960s women had very little control over their fertility. You assume that every woman wanted a big family: they didn't have much choice in most cases.

I read Jeanette Winterson's Why be Happy when you could be Normal?, for my book group recently. It's about growing up in a deprived area of Accrington in the 50s and 60s. We really need to stop holding up the 50s, 60s and 70s as some kind of Utopian ideal of life and the family.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves This is the most sensible post I’ve read on here. Thank you MrsB

The second big difference though is the expectation among some just starting off that they should have it all. Try suggesting that they should begin with second hand stuff, cut down on Instagram-worthy holidays and salon procedures in order to save and all the rest and all too often you're met with horror

You are totally missing the point @Puzzledandpissedoff

I don't go on Instagram worthy holidays. We can only afford modest UK holidays. I've never had any kind of cosmetic procedure. I made a point of seeking out as much second hand stuff as possible for the kids. Yet we still can't afford to live in a house where my kids have their own rooms, despite dh and I both working full time.

Anyway, even if someone is spending £100 a month in a salon, that is not going to make up for house prices increasing more than 2.5 times faster than earnings in the last 30 years.

'This group also owns 80% of the housing stock.'

This is untrue.

Care to show your source @OpenOliveCat

@OpenOliveCat

The golden age postwar rebuild is done. It's never coming back, and it has nothing to do with work ethic despite the contrary controversial opinion of that generation.

Agree. People are products of their time and the Boomer generation are statistically, the wealthiest generation in history. They just got lucky

The problem is when people like the OP thinks generational wealth is unfair to them but wants to continue passing her wealth to her child.

Hypocrisy is one word that comes to mind.

TBH, isn’t the whole thread pointless anyway? Between you both you’ve spent £100k on education, and now have a 3bed house and one p/t worker who is available for all childcare and housework, all on one decent salary really. You have a decent lifestyle with jobs you have both chosen and love. If you want a more money lifestyle, then you’d need to sacrifice one or more of those choices, rather like previous generations did.

Interesting to read your opening post again @KeenGreen.

Our DC are 30 and 26. The 30 year old is an ECR, earning a bit less than you. He got funding for his PhD and we helped out too. He is thrilled to be doing what he does and has recently had his first monograph accepted. In addition he does a bit of commercial/corporate writing and earns a bit more. His wife has a more corporate role and earns twice as much as him. .

The 26 year old is a secondary school English Teacher, focusing on the SEN stream and on £42.5k with allowances. In addition she tutors two children every week netting an additional £80pw I think. Her boyfriend has qualified with one of the big 4 and earns twice what she does.

I'm afraid it seems to me that you and your partner could and should be working a bit harder and more productively. Perhaps if you both channelled more energy into graft and less into woe is me, you would be rather better off.

You also seem to fail to realise that us nasty boomers have also paid shedloads and of tax and ni, as well as pension contributions for decades. In a year or two we will reap what we have sown. That's what happens for everyone, we reap what we sow and our decision making plays a significant part. Sadly your dh has chosen to work in a low paid job for less than full-time hours. You are the architects of your fortunes - nobody else.

My husband is 39 works in a school as support staff (LSA) and takes up circa £1200 a month. He has a degree.

Here is the issue as so many have said. He needs to earn more - your child is 5 so there shouldn't be an issue with him getting a better paid career now. As everyone else has said he could retrain to be a teacher and double his earnings in relatively little time. If SEN is his thing then once he's qualified as a teacher he could look at SENCo qualifications. Or he could investigate postgrad to be an EdPsych - they seem to be able to write their own paychecks round here as good ones are like golddust

And most people in the “boomer” years couldn’t afford that stuff either; kids had to share rooms, the houses they lived in were often slums with outside loos (don’t let the m/c MN experience skew the view), and diets were generally poor and expensive.

Agree with PPs who say this is stirring up intergenerational hatred.
I'm 65.
I have absolutely bust a gut to earn money my entire life, went into banking when few women did and was not qualified for it either, so it was a hard bloody slog, lots of discrimination, and I still work full time (although don't need to tbh). I only had one child because I was single and couldn't afford more (no help from his father, ever, not a penny, no help from family either). I didn't go out socially for years because couldn't ever have afforded a restaurant or even a takeaway, used to walk miles instead of getting a 70p tube fare. I know this sounds like a sob story and I'm laughing myself reading it because it's so cliche. But I honestly don't see young people putting in the sheer graft that I did, and I work with plenty of them. You couldn't be late for work, you couldn't take sick leave if your child was sick, you worked weekends from home, no work life balance, no one remotely interested in "mental health", I had 16 weeks maternity leave then back full time with ds in a nursery from 8 till 6. So honestly, I just smile whenever anyone says I've had it easy. Yes I have money now and I put him through private school and paid for the nanny, but god it's been a very long graft. Having kids is exhausting - for every generation.

North. It was in the late 1997 we bought our terraced so more 20 years ago. More like 30. Grey matter clearly can’t do maths today lol