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!

Would you be able to cope with a 15% mortgage? The so called Baby Boomers had to cope with that.
its good that your husband can be around to look after your child in the school holidays and you can have a more relaxed home life because of this. That is a great situation for your family.

maybe he could retrain and do teaching

Would you be able to cope with a 15% mortgage? The so called Baby Boomers had to cope with that
They did not on a mortgage of 500K
More likely 50K

The issue in those days was it was difficult to ride it out.
No mortgage holidays,mass unemployment, no credit cards to get you through.
It was stark-miss a payment and it was repossession

You can’t tarnish a whole generation with the same brush. There were economic circumstances that many benefited from but there were also a lot of people on the bones of their arses then too. My boomer parents didn’t own a car, house, go on foreign holidays, never ate out or bought ready meals. My parents worked multiple jobs and as soon as we could we all did too. I had three jobs when I was at 6th form! (I’m gen x) Every meal was padded out with bread and beans and we had hand me down clothes but we didn’t feel poor. I think our perception of poverty has changed and we expect more (not necessarily a bad thing) and yes whilst some people did well, that’s the same in every generation. Look at how much millennials and gen z are making with social media. It’s easy to forget that we’re not all having a homogeneous experience.

I agree, but there is a shortage of some medium-pay jobs (huge teacher shortage for example...yes it's a professional job but hardly big bucks).

'Boomers'.....if you really are prepared to use that term, didn't keep North Sea oil money for themselves; that was Thatcher's decision. Unfair to blame people of a certain age for the extensive damage she did to this country.

Agree with all of this. Lifestyle expectations are off the charts. People in their 20s and 30s expect to live with the ease and amenities of those who have put a couple additonal decades into working and saving.

Also the post-war economic stimulation had its effect. Those are circumstances beyond the control of any generation. Yes, boomers may have benefited from some of it, just as newer generations are benefitting in myriad ways from the tech boom.

Life is no harder now than it ever was. It's just different.

And frankly, expecting life to be "easy" is bullshit. There are 8 billion people on this planet and growing,all of whom need shelter, food, fossil fuel, a livelihood, health care, education, potable water and clean air. None of which is getting any more plentiful. Scarcity and competition for resources are going to INCREASE, not DECREASE. Buckle up and be grateful for what you do have; your kids likely will have even less.

Well let me ask you the same question only slightly differently. Would you be able to cope with a 15% interest rate on a mortgage of £16000 when your combined earnings are less than £5k ? Everything is relevant - it’s not only house prices which have risen since boomer days, but salaries as well. Could you cope with the mortgage payment initially taking up every penny of one wage and then eating significantly into the second when mortgage rates rose to their peak at 17.5% ?

I know. People in this thread and elsewhere constantly banging on that double-digit interest rates were no big deal because mortgage loans were lower clearly aren't good at maths.

To expand on this more the people I see who moan the most about "rich boomers" are the children of wealthy individuals (or at least above average) who are pissed off that mummy and daddy aren't sharing their money as much as they believe they should. Or just have really high standards for life after being pandered and spoilt by mummy and daddy for their whole childhood.
My boomer parents were/are far from rich and I know they're far from the only ones.

Same goes for older people moaning about young people maybe consider just because your own children are little shits that doesn't mean EVERYONE their age is.

Its a your family thing not a generation thing.

OP's post quoted here pretty much answers all if her own questions and gives the reasons for them too.

She's enabling her selfish lazy husband to ride on her coat tails into a pretty bleak retirement....

He's been there 10 years.
He's happy and settled.
He doesn't think he's capable of being or wants the stress of being a teacher.
He's working (?) at the school for 7.5 hours a day plus one after school class and he and she seem ok with that being classed as part time.
He could get the same job at a public school and be paid more, but won't.

Stop whinging about problems of your own making that are limiting your earning potential as a family.

So.... YAB(F)U.....

When we were kids in the late 60s and early 70s and the ice cream vans would go by, my mother always refused us one. We'd watch some neighbour kids run up and select 10p ice lollies or whatever. Not us.

As an adult I asked my mother why, assuming it was some nutritional reason. She said "Honey, we simply couldn't afford it." The ice cream cost about the equivalent of a pound or less in today's money. "We were on a very tight budget. If I saw them on offer at the supermarket I'd get them, but the ones from the van were just too much."

Compared to the way even 'poor' people order up takeaways and deliveroo today.

Exactly. This is not a societal problem, this is a very lazy DH problem.

Sorry you're supporting a man child. Mental health indeed. I've close friends who teach in private schools. In the holidays, they tutor either one to one or in school clubs.

I'm sorry @KeenGreen he saw you coming. His parents should be so grateful that you picked up their load.

I coped on a mortgage of 58K interest rate 10-17.5%

I was there and it was for a very short period .
My salary was considerably more than 5K though- let alone combined.

The whole world is different.. Our family had similar occupations to yours but in the 1980s. It wasn’t easy.

Times were different.We had no financial support for childcare at all, state nursery places were extremely hard to come by and only for rising five year olds. There were just mother led playgroups, which were of no use if you were working. Our first mortgage took up half of our income each month, before other bills and my salary almost completely went on childcare. We never bought any new furniture, the kids clothes were hand me downs. We never went out for meals and coffee would be in a friends house not a coffee shop. I used to dream of being able to go into a supermarket and buy all the food we needed instead of scrimping and making do. We did not pay for any out of school activities and we had one small television. We also managed without a car for ten years, while living in a rural area, once a week I would take three small children and a buggy on an unreliable local bus to do some basic shopping and lug it all back again.

I’m not saying families have it easy today but I do think expectations have changed.

Thatcher left office in 1990 and boomers have been running the country ever since. Currant PM is 62 so I think that makes him one as well? Not 100% sure when the cut off is. Not one govt after 1990 has done anything differently to thatcher regarding North Sea oil - except the current idiots who won’t even allow further exploration and therefore blocked additional income for the country!

No I was pointing out that it wouldn't be 15% of 50K but 15% of 500K these days for probably a similar house.

It's Gary's economics innit.

I had a sharp intake of breath when I read your arrogant and ignorant post. I am a boomer and I have no recollection of a stampede to the polls every election, some people always voted, some voted occasionally and some never bothered, a bit like nowadays. I always vote, less to do with my advanced years and a lot more to do with the struggle that ordinary working class men had to get the vote and of course because of what women went through to gain the same right. There is a tendency for people to become more right wing but let me spell it out for you one more time, we are individuals, just as you are an individual shaped by what you have expericenced in life.

I remember that, as a single mum I was panic stricken and worried about losing my home. I think that things are extremely difficult for young people today and they are being denied the chance to be in control of their futures.

I think most people would be dancing if they had a £16000 mortgage on 15% and £k a month coming in

Has anybody mentioned the damage done by people repeatedly borrowing in the 00s.
I had a friend gen X who bought a 3 bed semi for £50000 at the same time as me they remortgaged in 2001 and again in 2003 and again in 2005 then owing more than the house was worth because house prices fell then the 2008 crash. The 2001 remortgage was for a Disney holiday and a Primark shopping spree. Loads of people were using their mortgages as a personal account and banks were letting them.

I'm well aware of when Thatcher stood down; do you mean current PM?

"I don’t like the rhetoric of ‘well interest rates went up to 15% in my day’"

There is an easy answer to that one. Ask how much the mean house price was compared to earnings back then compared to today, what income you would have to earn and what deposit you would need to get a mortgage for a typical small family home (say two bedrooms), what proportion of the average earnings would have been spent on a mortgage compared to today, and how long were the interest rates at 15% and how long have house prices been pushing ten times the mean wage and how muich longer are they likely to continue to do so. The truth is people love to trot out rhetorics as though they can explain everything because it doesn't require any effort to logically analyse i.e. think.

....but the OP must also share a substantial portion of the "blame" for putting up with the "situation".... and for sooooooo long......