To feel there is no future for children unless they

[Honeyyourfamilar]

unless they start a business or are super academic or excel in their careers.

I grew up in a working class neighbourhood in London (zone 6 so maybe not London London) and so many of the parents were normal working class people who owned their own homes: postman, bus drivers, dinner ladies, mechanics. There was a couple who both worked in supermarkets and they owned their own home. In a few families only the bloke worked and that was enough to sustain the family - I am maybe showing my age.

These were people in their early 30s who were financially secure. Now those houses are worth £500k plus and there is no way someone working a low paid job could afford that.

Two people making £30k a year will get £240k mortgage, where is the other amount going to come from?

I think that young people don't have a future here anyone.

The only way someone who isn't earning a decent wage can afford to buy a house is if they get an inheritance or if their parents sell their £500k house, that they purchased for £30k, and downsize, and give a deposit to their kids.

The amount of families renting and dependent on housing benefit is just a disgrace. It also means people stay in horrible relationships because they cannot afford to leave.

This country is a ***.

A lot of things have affected house prices and even rented houses. . So many single parents requiring houses meaning two households requiring housing. Housing benefit subsidies have increased prices. Huge increase in population.

Yes, if the solution is that everyone just leaves the south east, who will teach, clean, deliver letters, care for the elderly?

And there you have it, another poster assuming everyone in the South is loaded.....

Lots of people can afford a mortage but it is saving the deposit that is the killer.' yes, this is always overlooked.

I’ll be absolutely flamed for this but I do think that people in their teens and 20s these days generally spend a lot of unnecessary money, that my generation didn’t (unless they were wealthy).

I think younger people today have less disposable income vs older generations when they were the same age. Obviously the ones who live at home for free likely have more disposable income

1% of tradies are women. That’s just the simple statistic.

something/ somehow is not encouraging non academic girls into these roles.

i just wondered what the lucrative trades for women are? I mean I know the answer…. When women do ‘female’ works it’s underpaid as if women still worked for pin money.

Did you really just type that? How embarrassing for you.

Your problem is that you are one of these parochial types who think there is no life outside London. Have you ever travelled to other places?

BBC:London is becoming a city without children

It's already closing schools.

Having said that rural areas where we are - are mainly full of older people as so many retire here driving house prices up - and services for younger people get cut so encourages more young to leave - and then there are issues getting people to fill roles like HCP so prompts complaints from population.

Plus anyone earning a decent wage will get hammered by tax. Taxes will only keep going up due to demographic shifts.

This has happened to me and i fully agree with you and its far worse now !!!

i am from single parent background (bus driver parent) so we had no support financially growing up at all !

off i went to study medicine at a very very good university 20 years ago graduated and worked full time since (unheard of amongst my peers) During uni i worked three jobs at times (god knows how i passed) rest of course mates were asking ‘why do you have to work’ ‘just ask your parents’ - it was humiliating constantly.

i worked full time, no gap years no locuming and still could only afford (in scotland the offers over system) a flat worth about £150k in a ‘rougher ‘ area. All of my peers had inheritence, help outs from family or had married so were able to get on the ladder quicker. I was once again subjected to comments about my spending habits and how if i had not bought this or that surely i could afford a more suitable doctor style house. This was always from married friends who had inheritence or family help. Makes me angry!! For five years i did not once go on holiday always making excuses to peers ‘i dont like flying’ - i was paying off my 120k debt for nearly £800 a month in my 20s!!!

one peer failed her first medical job year several times and never worked again. However she was in receipt of an inheritence from her grandfather as a sole grandaughter. She despite never working since she was 23, and attending one of the best private schools in the country and being a qualified ‘doctor’ lives in a 500k house with her two kids. Uses the inheritance interest as her bills and flies off on holiday to south africa etc twice per year

i have reflected alot on this and can honestly say that despite working hard as a doctor in the uk i still could not afford anything more materialistic ‘better’ than a house / flat of around that price in my 30s. The only reason i was not renting life long was because i was lucky enough to eventyally be able to save on my salary. So i have utter empathy as if i was that hard for me, what hope does other professions and honest workers have?? Its even worse now !!! its a disgrace !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i could write a book about it !!!!!!!!

I think you have a very limited narrow view of “having a future” if you think the only decent future is to have a mortgage and ultimately own a house outright.

I rent, am on basically minimum wage, but have a charmed life really, full of beauty and magic and laughter, I have enough money to never be hungry, I am healthy and have a family I love. Will I ever have a flash car or go on regular foreign holidays? No. Will I ever own my own house? Perhaps, with some luck and inheritance, but it’s definitely as likely I won’t as I will and I’m ok with that. It’s just a chunk of bricks at the end of the day. I’ve got a nice chunk of bricks I live in, and that’s fine. House ownership isn’t a universal right.

Really!!

No it doesn't at all. There are already loads of tradies, it's a HUGE industry already.

Trades thrive on personal reputation, if your are good at your skill and trustworthy people will pay because you come highly recommended by their friends and family. Doesn't matter if theres 100 others in the town.

I have a family member who is a tradie and doesn't even advertise (NEVER has) he is booked solid all year round and every single customer is a word or mouth recommendations from previous customers. They even reference the person who recommended when booking 'Hi is this xyz trady, I hope you don't mind me calling I got your number from Carol who said you did her kitchen rewire' etc...'. Very few jobs are just blind pick of 'oh I saw them on Bark and they where cheap' etc...

These are some of the variables that changed yes. But undeniably the global economy has changed.
Britain and lots of western countries except Germany and France, lost manufacturing as greedy capitalist factory owners outsourced and outsourced. Manufacturing isn't popular anymore it's low class, lowly jobs. Finance, insurance, tech tech tech, highly educated high service jobs are encouraged. Tech makes morr money with much fewer people than manufacturing. Working class are servants to the high brow service industry in serving cafes, driving the buses. Gaps have widedened and will continue to do so with this maximally capitalist society. (disclaimer: Regarding manufacturing I really hate to sound trump like, don't agree with any of his idiotic policies.His main goal is to create chaos and volatility and get his buddies to earn from it at the stock market. However, a u turn from global supply chains that destroy the environment, human rights and local economies would be a good outcome)

It's already closing schools.

Because of the way funding works falling rolls are also a problem for schools that are open but not full.

If you move North it is perfectly possible to get a really decent size house for £240000 …and the jobs ARE there. It’s very expensive to buy in a place like York,( for instance) but if you go a short way outside and commute in
perfecrly possible. And I speak as someone born and bred in Hertfordshire who moved North from there 20 years ago.

Part of the problem is house prices themselves aren't included in CPI, they are excluded as an "investment". But you only realise that investment when you die.
As a result house prices have gone up so much faster than everything else.

Yet in terms of price rises, that's not all. As an easy example. The cost of a cup of tea at McDonald's has risen from £1 a year ago to £1.39 now. Many of the items on the menu have gone up more - 99p fries is now £1.70. I cite these examples as they are fresh in my mind but there are many other examples that we are all seeing in the supermarkets. In the mid naughties, you could invariably get a 2 for 1 voucher for loads of chain restaurants. Not anymore. The meerkat thing has reduced their reductions from 2 for 1 to 25% off.

We very rarely eat out, but these are examples that I can cite off the top of my head. A lot of people get a coffee at Costa, I don't get one often, but if I want a tea when out, I have always gone to mcdonalds - because it was 99p.

In the supermarket we are all noticing massive rises. Holidays are also up massively, to the extent we just can't go.

Compare this with the 2% yoy rise my employer gave me, citing "inflation". And compare this with the 8% rise in nursery fees, again, citing "inflation".

When this is compounded year after year, it's not surprising we can't afford what our parents could, and my parents live in the North, as do I.

There is a lot of talk about people downsizing, and giving the money to their kids. My parents were in their 40s when I needed my own place. I couldn't have taken thousands from them then. Moreover, I have a sibling, so the money would be halved. Society can't tell people to have only one child for this purpose, because the government technically needs people to have two to keep the working age population stable.

Now in their 60s, if my parents give us their money today, the council is likely to call it deprivation of funds. It's really not as simple as giving money to your kids; the council want it, and they can look back a lot further than 7 years into your finances.

The problem is that we can't just force house prices down. A lot of normal families will lose thousands that way and will be in negative equity. Perhaps all they could do now is hold prices at what they are and wait for wages to catch up, but that could take decades.

No it doesn't at all. There are already loads of tradies, it's a HUGE industry already.

But there are shortages?

And jobs? Most jobs are south-centric and Brexit made it even worse.

the uk is heading towards a Dubai or Singapore model - rich foreigners who come in to invest their money (the tax heaven that conservatives promised), and tbe locals (ie us) working in cheaper housing servicing the foreign money (ie working in the restaurants, etc). This is why Brexit happened. Except they’ve realised the brits dont want to do the low paying jobs that Eastern Europeans did, so they’re about to sign a ‘trade’ deal with India so whereas before you’d get a Easter European nurse, in a few months it will be from India.

brexiteers are getting what they voted for - they just didn’t see it coming!!!

Society can't tell people to have only one child for this purpose, because the government technically needs people to have two to keep the working age population stable.

It's not stable though.

On the contrary, I don’t have any ‘prejudice’ other than pragmatism; I’m the person in my circle with the ‘tomboy’ (for want of a better word) daughter who loves science and is constantly doing experiments and inventing things. But her peers are not being socialised in the same way, and someone who spends a lot of time in schools I can see that old-fashioned gender stereotypes are rapidly becoming more rather than less entrenched. Unless there’s a sizeable cultural shift girls just won’t choose these jobs.

Additionally, there are undeniable physical differences between boys and girls that will make some (not all) manual trades a more challenging prospect for girls, especially over the long term if childbearing etc are factored in. And societal attitudes that mean that some men especially would be reluctant to employ a female tradesperson - yes, this needs to change too, but I don’t see any current evidence of this happening.

I would also say that traditionally ‘female’ caring and nurturing professions are equally important, and will become more so going forward, in a digital, AI-dominated world with less personal connection - we should be aiming to raise the status of these roles and encouraging more boys to do them rather than siphoning everyone into a trade (which, as a pp has said upthread, will in turn devalue those jobs due to over-saturation).

@SunnyStork your experience illustrates how ridiculous things are.

I live in Norfolk in the nicest suburb of a large town. Larger than average 3 bed semi, close to a good primary school in a family orientated area (parks, woods etc). Very low crime. 20 mins from the beach. Cost us £260,000 3 years ago! 😁

Do you really believe there are no good job opportunities for people outside of London?
London isn’t the only place to live in the UK and you can certainly get a much better standard of living elsewhere.

YANBU

No government will admit that house prices need to fall significantly. They keep trying to prop them up by relax lending rules/increase borrowing terms. They need to admit that house prices need to fall or wage growth needs to massively accelerate. If they don't want this then they need to build more social housing. Rachel Reeves' policy is to make people take on riskier debt which is disappointing and doesn't help people with disabilities or disabled kids, families etc.

If you fix housing you will fix so many physical and mental health problems. Probably would help education and overall productivity too, since if there us no social mobility people just give up. I find governments being blind to this incredibly frustrating.

But then there was a recession with mortgages sky rocketing and repossessions occurring.
This is an issue in all expensive areas move to a cheaper is a solution but not everyone can do that depending on job roles, family etc. The government need to have stricter rules for landlords. Yes they need to make an income but should it be relative not excessive.
Help to buy is now only available for people that have not bought previously but many people have to start again when relationships end etc.
There is a housing crisis but I’m not sure the government are tackling it for low/middle earners. There seems to be a lot of expensive new builds in my area starting at around £350,000 for a small home.