To think our quality of life can’t keep going up forever?

[Wildflowers99]

I saw a post on a thread which said if you have 3 children (for example) you NEED 4 bedrooms, because children sharing a room is unacceptable in terms of their quality of life. And another saying being able to eat things like peppers out of season is essentially a right, and therefore they should have a price cap.

It got me thinking because what we expect as a basic quality of life seems very very different to even 50 years ago. But the problem is with the advent of climate change, cost of living, ageing population and so on, is it realistic for expectations to keep going up? Have we now reached a point where our quality of life will have to plateau or even reverse a bit because the economy and world cannot support what we have come to expect?

Hope that makes sense, I’m a bit zombified after a 5am start with my toddler…

@ScribblingPixie I think maybe they paid 140k ish for approx 18 months.

My friend's mother has early onset dementia & she has a private carer now too (ex barrister so can afford it).

I think there will be a real two tier system when it comes to decent care.

I think you're right. Not a happy thought.

I want to say, again and again, not all boomers/ or properly older people (those aged 75 plus) are living the high life on these huge final salary pensions you keep on and on talking about. My parents don’t even have full state pensions. PLEASE worry about your own futures, not what came before.

And if people get their own place, buying or renting, they expect everything new and the latest, no quesion of managing with a a few cast offs for a years or two, let's hit the credit cards then blame others.

I'm not sure that access to education has made us happier. It's produced an oversupply of graduates, who are now depressed as they realise that there aren't enough graduate jobs to go around.

I think people were happier when they weren't expected to go to uni, rack up thousands of pounds of debt, and then compete for a relatively small number of 'graduate' jobs. I think people were more content when they left school and learnt a trade.

And if people get their own place, buying or renting, they expect everything new and the latest, no quesion of managing with a a few cast offs for a years or two, let's hit the credit cards then blame others.

@JudgeJ I think that a lot of this stems from the fact that society has become increasingly unequal since the 1980s. In the 60s and 70s, it didn't matter if you had crap second hand furniture, because everyone else did too. However these days, there is big divide between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. The 'have nots' feel left behind and pressured to keep up with what has been normalised by the more affluent.

Fully agree. Uni is just a (scam) business now nothing more.

And I say that as a postgrad.

I live next to the Peak District. It is having continuous and severe parking issues. And it is rammed all the time. This had only happened since Covid.

Plenty of people are going to the countryside. In fact the Peaks are now in a state of over tourism. Locals can’t travel.

I hated sharing a bedroom when I was younger so I considered a 4 bed property to be a minimum as a family of 5. If we couldn't have afforded a 4 bed, I wouldn't have had 3 dcs, I would have stopped at 1 or 2.

We splurge on days out because we can afford it and we like experiencing different things, and there's a wide selection on offer near us. We enjoy free days out at the park etc too, but if we only did free stuff we'd miss out on the variety of other things on offer.

Our spending and quality of life as a family is a lot higher than it was when I was younger - we have more disposable income and we may as well spend it on the things that make us happy.

I do believe our expectations are so much more than we had in the 70s-80s. But the biggest change for those of us before that is tech. If we can, now we do. There is no comparison, literally no comparison to how we lived before.
My parents, in their 80s, are dumbfounded

I think that phones might be cheaper but they are still an expense that wasn’t there in the past.

Even your own landline was a luxury. I remember our first phone (a lot of households didn’t actually have a phone) If you wanted to call anyone you might have to wait because you had a party line and shared the line with several other houses in the street. So Mrs Collins from number 17 might be chatting to her daughter for 20 minutes then number 23 would be calling the doctors so you couldn’t use the phone immediately

Clothes were expensive so people didn’t really buy them. Where I lived the jumble sale or market stalls were where clothes were bought but not to the extent that people buy today

You could have a dress for special occasions that would last you decades

I'm 60 and grew up in a household with one basic level wage and one very part time wage. My parents owned our home with a mortgage and budgeted carefully. A lot of my clothes were hand-me-downs and my mum went to jumble sales. My DF always worked on Saturday mornings and often did small jobs after work. We had two holidays in my childhood. One in a caravan and one in a guest house.

We never ate out. If we went for a day out it involved a picnic. My aunt lived four hours away. When we drove to see her we stopped in a lay-by and opened our thermos flasks and Tupperware boxes of sandwiches.

I agree that what were considered to be luxuries or unnecessary by my parents generation have become basics as time has moved on. I believe that is why people are finding the increase in cost of living so very difficult to come to terms with.

I blame property shows, now everyone expects a house to look like a film set.

Lots of this resonates with me. We only ever ate out when on holiday (UK, not abroad, and the same place every year), or, for an exceedingly rare treat, if mum took me shopping in town, we’d have lunch in the BHS restaurant which I thought was the dogs bollocks.

They wouldn't cope with my kitchen. It is an original 70s one, it's been painted but not modernised in any other way (except for a newer oven). The bathroom is recently modernised, but only because there was a leak which meant the bath had to be removed.

Completely agree with this, the super rich are increasingly taking more of the pie when it comes to wealth. I think the government need to tax them more.

Like in the 70s and we all know where that ended up

The rich just leave the country and go to another with less taxation

The way to get more money out of the rIch is to make taxation so low it isn’t worth trying to pay less tax

Not in any meaningful sense. The Lloyd George benefits were very minimal indeed - tightly restricted insurance scheme and a very limited pension - paid at 70, and at a low rate.

Both my parents were born during the war and both had school friends in the 50s who shared shoes and wellies with a sibling. One wore the shoes and one the wellies and they swapped day by day. FIL grew up in court housing with a toilet shared by 4 families. Both PILs had the tin bath in front of the fire until they were married in the early 60s.

Contrast that with the three receptionist staff in the orthodontists surgery I was in yesterday with DS. All three of them had lip fillers as well as professionally done nails.

💯 agree @Wildflowers99

I earn well but the level of contributions I have will only work alongside the current state pension. They really need to up the minimum numbers quite significantly.

That's quite a stereotype, I fall within a couple of years of that demographic at one end, and have none of those things.

My parents, who fell within a couple of years of the demographic at the other end, had tea sets, which were given to them as wedding gifts. My childhood home (and subsequent homes) never had an unused room of any kind. Or a grandparent clock of any kind either.

Yes agree. Many jobs for younger people no longer exist such as paper rounds, cafe jobs want over 16s.
People don't know what jobs they want any more and I think there is a feeling of less responsibility and the expectation of it will be ok as I can get benefits (I have worked with school leavers and it is very much a half and half divide of those with ambition and those with very little and belief in the state).

Woolworths or Littlewoods cafe were a favourite of my mum's!

I hate how materialistic everything is now. It's definitely got worse since my childhood (80s). I think I'm naturally frugal, I hate spending money on crap, and I don't understand people spending thousands on new kitchens, bathrooms, huge cars on credit etc when their old ones are functioning perfectly well, they might just be a bit dated. Similarly days out - we never took our kids to Legoland, Peppa pig world etc because they are SO expensive. A trip to the woods is more fun and free.
I do think expectations for a lot of people have changed - meals out are for special occasions, not a weekly must have (well, unless you can afford it) And all those horrible fake nails, eyebrows etc.
The snob in me says it's all very Love Island to overspend on consumer goods... it seems to be a growing trend. Bring back the 1980s!