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 your generation work very hard and don't have it at all easy.

You are at the age when things are hardest. It was the same for me at your age (I'm now 75), and through my forties; we didn't have a penny to spare and there was an awful recession late 1980s-90s with people losing jobs and houses, negative quity, businesses going bust. Then things gradually improved.

Life is ups and downs, has always been so. There's nothing new under the sun.

Things will get better for you, bit by bit. Then it will be your child's turn :).

I am almost 70 & have still not been able to retire as have been self employed for most of my working life so pension is very poor. I am now working as long as am able to save as much as I can to counteract this but will probably have little energy left to enjoy what retirement there will be left before I peg out !

Baby Boomers 1945 to 1965
Gen X 1966 to 1980
Gen Y 1981 to 1995
Gen Z 1996 to 2010

Whatever the relative wealth of different generations, the OP is always going to struggle if her dh can not, or will not, pull his financial weight. His low stress lifestyle is a massive luxury that it doesn't sound as though they can afford.

I agree with all of this. I’d also like to point out that many young people (my own DCs included) have had extremely privileged childhoods, far beyond their own parents’ and grandparents’ upbringings. As parents, we were driven to provide them with everything we didn’t have - foreign holidays, regular days out, extra-curricular activities, clothes, warm homes, a wide variety of healthy food, enough toys/books to necessitate their own ‘playroom’, tech devices, driving lessons/insurance/car etc.

Because that’s all they’ve known, they don’t appreciate just how lucky they’ve been. They look to their comfortable grandparents and believe that those grandparents have always had a lifestyle comparable to their current standard of living. They’re angry that they have to take a ‘step down’ as they embark upon adulthood, and make sacrifices to be able to afford to put a roof over their heads. They don’t understand that the generations before them made sacrifices too.

My DS told me off for ‘spoiling’ him by bringing him up in a big house, and it’s not fair that he can’t afford a nice detached house. No, nor could I when I was 24, mate! I rented a grotty two-bed flat, and had zero left after I’d paid the bills and bought food.

I lived throught most of the circumstances discussed above, and in every case there were other factors, the main one that doesn't seem to have been addressed much is inflation.

At 18 (1971) my husband and I bought a house for £4,000. You could not rent if you had a child and the council would only house us in a local 'bad' area so we looked at buying althought it was not usual for young people then.

The house we bought
was the cheapest in a 3 mile radius! and the mortgage rate was 8%

We moved in with a table and four chairs and a cot (all donated). Never felt poor or sorry for ourselves, just didn't spend a penny we didn't have to. I remember one freezing night out we stood at a bus stop for 30 minutes, next to a taxi rank didn't occur to us to get a taxi.

Moving on from this, I get very annoyed with people who go on about how hard they worked. Turning up every day for a job when your salary went up with inflation is not working hard, it just was the time.

Well said, @Anonym00se

It amazes me that people in the first half of their careers expect to have all the trappings of middle-aged households that have put in far more years of work, earning, saving, etc.

You were one up on me;😂 I rented grotty ONE bedroom flats until my very late 30s when I finally could afford an old 2BR cottage, which at nearly age 62 I still am in. No upsizing here! But then again I can sleep at night not worrying about debt and finances.

YABU - Low aspiration and complacency is a large part of your problem. It's easy to point the finger at others when you and your DH are making choices which limit your earning potential.

Pointless comparing apples with oranges.

THIS! And I wish that word BOOMERS would die a death! (And I am not one, I am Gen X!)

8%! I remember 14%

My parents are 'boomers' with three kids, we didn't have holidays abroad and take aways were a treat. We used to go to cheap caravan holidays until we were late teens and knew no different. Most of my friends were the same. I have a 3 bed semi one is a box room. We earn similar to your joint incomes. We go abroad once a year, we have takeaways, if I want a coffee I buy one. So it seems to me we are better off than they were at the same stage in life. Or maybe they just saved and didn't waste money on material things.
If you are referring to their houses going up in price, mine has too its more than doubled in the 15 years since I've bought it. My mortgage was high when we bought our house compared to our wages and it needed loads doing to it. Homes always go up in value. I just think it's pointless to be so bitter and be thankful as you probably have a lot more than most.

I think there’s different hardships with all generations.Today we definitely have a lot more luxuries than my mum and grannies time, washing machines and dishwashers etc etc. we pay for entertainment, eg Netflix and other tv subscriptions, internet and phones. but things like bridging loans and most people having the possibility of owning is huge.

Not all boomers are like this. I don't live near to my DGC so could not help out with childcare when they were nursery she but I gave my DD money every month towards nursery fees so she could keep working. I'm paying to take DD and DGC on holiday with us in May half term. I've paid for dhc to get passports too. I gift each of my 3 DC £500 twice each a year so maximum gifting of £3k per annum. I have given house deposits to both DS's and bought my DD a car. If a roof needs work or a boiler breaks I will always lend money to any of them for anything they need, not necessarily all wants. I give money to DGC every time they have a holiday and but their shoes. I know many parents/grandparents who do the same for their DC/DGC. My sister being one of them. I also send money to my niece at uni every month because I know her parents can't afford to help her much. I did the same for my older niece when she was at uni for 4 years too. I let any of my DC or nieces and nephews and friends too borrow our holiday home in France for free. I enjoy treating them.

I completely agree OP. One generation ago, a family comprising a full time academic and a school support staff worker with one child could expect a very comfortable life, with no student debt and a good pension building.
It's mad that people refuse to acknowledge that.

Tell me in the 1980s and 1990s, would a family of a stay at home mother and a university academic father be described as "low aspiration"? Of course not. And that's OPs point.

In the early 1990s the mortgage interest rate was nearly 15% yes. And even though a house now costing £155K was 'only' £37K then, the payments were £500 a month! Because of the high interest rates. This was 35 years ago. That's like £1700 a month now.

So people can jog on with this 'yeah but property was cheaper then!' crap. It wasn't - because the bloody cost of borrowing was astronomical!!! I remember points in the past when our mortgage (DH and I) was costing 60% of our joint income.

Some posters on here don't have a clue what people went through back then!

Why is another child not affordable? Your childcare costs would be very low with your Oh only working 30 hours pw term time so you’d have that free/funded hours for that. You have 3 beds so no need to move. Obviously they need food and clothing but on 65k nobody would starve.
I don’t disagree that the golden generation had it much economically easier with final salary pensions, low retirement ages and low house prices though.

Yes, it would have. I was born in 1963 and can only think of one friend who had a stay-home mother. All others worked, in the 60s and 70s let alone in the 80s and 90s. My mother and her four younger sisters always worked, as did extended family women on my dad's side. Husbands were engineers, sales, chemists, factory workers.

Both of my grandmothers, born 1910 and 1917, always worked outside the home.

It was just accepted when we were children that we would work toward careers and not be SAHP, in my immediate and extended family. Neither my sister, I or our female cousins ever became SAHP. My parents would have been aghast at the idea; in fact my dad occasionally quipped "Never get married before you are 30" and talked to me about career possibilities from a very young age.

Some people from the younger generation have it easier. Some have it harder.

Some people from the older generation had it easier. Some had it harder.

There were different challenges for different generations. It doesn't have to be a competition.

The council would "only" house you in a bad area, so you bought instead.
An idea so laughable today, it's not even funny.

High interest rates were a short term certainly over the life of a mortgage, now high house price/wage ratio have been here for much longer. Unlike interest rates there is no clear way how they drop.

Would you want to start again buying a house or do it as you did in the 90s ?

Exactly this. I KNOW some young people have it tough these days, but it's ludicrous to suggest that the generations before had it 'easier.' Gen X are the most fucked over generation of the lot, and Babyboomers weren't/aren't all hugely fortunate financially! Some of them have always struggled to make ends meet.

YANBU OP, many families in the 70s, 80s and 90s lived on one income and had a better standard of living than you describe. You have two (albeit one smaller) incomes and it’s still a struggle in this era considering house prices and the general cost of living. I think it’s really tough. For justification - the house prices-to-income ratio was 4 ish in the 80s, 4.5 in the 90s and is now around 8.5. It’s all bonkers.

l am sick to death of hearing about this topic. Yes. some of the older now retired generation, had real public sector cushy jobs and massively over generaous retirement pensions.

But some didn't

We also had a very stable population of around 52 to 55 million with lots of investment in he public sector. Massive social housing

As oppsed to now with litlle investment in public services and an alleged population of 70 million..More like 80 millio and still counting.

The incme tax rates started at around 30 per cent. And the NI thresholds were much lower.

However tha main differences were that we were not a nation of scroungers, welfare benefits were very low with high employment rates . Food banks were unheard of.

People lived within their means, and if they didn't have the money tough. Generally they did,nt have gangs of kids in tow they couldn,'t afford to feed or look after.

I now see a lot of so called poor families crying poverty with several pedigrree dogs and a bunch of kids in tow, foreign holidays and a car. They seem to have all sorts of benefits thrown at them.

Tattoos, hair extensions and false don't come cheap. But seem to be a priority before anything else.

Stop moaning and get on with it.