To think “Side Hustle” can get in the bin?

[courageiscontagious]

I am so sick of my feed being full of people “girl bossing” their “side hustle” like it’s a good thing.

it feels like propaganda to make us think there is anything empowering about having to work a SECOND JOB in this dumpster fire of an economy.

One generation ago a man could buy a house and support his family on his one income with only a high school education.

Now, my husband and I have five degrees between us and we both have to bust our arses to support fewer children than my parents had.

FUCK SIDE HUSTLE CULTURE. It’s just another way to make us blame ourselves for being poor when there are systemic and structural factors fucking us over.

end rant.

Just dislocated my eyeballs from rolling them too hard.

what “action” should this generation take, enlighten me.

I think the pont is that almost every second thread is about how people cant have their kids sharing bedrooms, MUST have a holiday abroad each year, the countless en suites houses have now, must have a car and it must be on finance.

People choose to have lifestyles that necesitate a double income.

I love when boomers step in. Knowing exactly how very different life is to how they were young.

Well pretty obvious we'd know what life was like because we lived it. Still living now so we can also see that.

some of the main changes have been much higher housing costs relative to wages and reduced employer contributions to pensions.

your post suggests you don’t understand economics @TheignT

I know the economics of buying a house at the peak of the market and seeing it worth much less a year later, of seeing my mortgage interest rate increasing 3 months in a row (fixed rates not really a thing back then) and I definitely know the economics of needing to find work as no maternity leave and needing to find a job with a toddler and baby, hardly any nurseries and record unemployment.

So maybe experience versus theory.

Well, you could stop buying your double decaf capuccinos every day, for a start! (JOKING!!)

I was born in the seventies, very working class family. Both Dad and Mum worked two jobs for as long as I can remember. But, and it’s a very big but, we lived in a lovely council house and my higher education was free. Regardless of salaries keeping up with inflation, or the need for a ‘side hustle’, the money required for decent housing now (as a percentage of salary), is just ridiculous.

Interesting thread.

I agree with this, but can we get away from the 'My parents brought us up on one wage and lived in a mini mansion' trope. It is bollocks. Yes, house prices were lower 50 years, but so were salaries. Mortgage rates were astronomical compared to today, I laughed the other day at a report on the news that mentioned the high mortgage rates. My daughter has just remortgaged at 3.8%. When we bought our first small flat rates were at 17%, 10 years later we thought we had done well to arrange a 10 years fix at 8.99%, it was an hours commute from where we worked, couldn't afford to buy any closer, it took both our salaries to afford the mortgage, we both had to get bar work at first as the bills were higher than we anticipated. It was a struggle. I know it's difficult for this generation to get on the housing ladder, but for most it has always been a struggle. This generation also have the benefit of massive inheritances coming their way in the next 10 to 15 years too.

I agree @courageiscontagious
Side hustles sound dodgy anyway and I think most employers should be wary of hiring people with side hustles. Mainly because those people would be more tired as they are working extra and would not be able to give 100% effort and focus as others who have the 1 sole job

Agree

I agree that the notion of buying a big house and living a comfortable middle class lifestyle by today’s standards being possible on a single average wage 50 years ago is fanciful. But you have generalised hugely by assuming all young people will receive a ‘massive inheritance’ - most won’t. The issue is stagnant wages in the UK. A one-time cash injection one might receive in their 50s or 60s won’t solve that.

Is there actually judgment though? Mumsnet is obsessed with Vinted. If people disapprove of selling on Vinted, then how would they find their Reiss dress for £15?!

One generation ago was the year 2000. People weren't buying houses on one high school grad's salary then.

I’m amazed by this. People don’t want to pay £10 for a whole homemade cheesecake? They’re about £5 a slice in some coffee shops. Are these colleagues particularly hard up?! Or just stingy?

Yeah I get your point but it’s more a “fiver in Tesco” mentality - they’d be happy paying massively over the odds in Costa.

The easiest and least stressful happened without me even trying. I was asked to take part in an Understanding Society survey. Twice a year, I fill in a survey, and let them take my weight, height and blood pressure. Also a blood sample. DS does it too.

They send us gift vouchers, about £100 this year for an hour and a half of our time. 🙂

There's a difference in terms of people having to pay more for convenience, i.e. a slice of cake when you're travelling or out and about, compared with a cake in a box from Tesco being price compared with a home made cake, which "look" the same.

People also know it's more costly to eat out due to having to pay for the staffing to serve you, the premises costs to eat in, the 20% VAT on the slice, (no VAT if you buy a whole cake from a supermarket!), etc.

Completely agree with you, OP! Businesses that aren’t paying their staff enough to live on should be ashamed of themselves.

I think it can be but might also be delivering Pizza in the evenings.

I have a side hustle with an old uni friend it is something we are both interested in and enjoy working together on it. It involves online retail and we make a tidy amount of “pin money” from it. We use our skill sets from previous jobs to run as a legit business so people can and do make it work.

Show them your accounts-if not in detail. Problem with boomers is that we get lumped int one unhelpful mass. There's a massive difference between the life experience of a 1947 boomer, who'll be about 78 now and a 1965 born 60/61 yr old, like my DB, still very much at work. They grew up at different times and in different economic circumstances.

It's not relevant but I exam marked as well as was very broke with first mortgage. You learn a lot but goodness it's a challenge.

All I can say is some of us know full well what the problems are and try to help with childcare, car lending, DIY, trips to the tip, whatever. If your parents are being tricky, explain the finances maybe and hopefully they will shut up and be more helpful.
Love from the boomer who with her boomer mate has just found, paid for and transported a TV unit thing for DD's shared flat. Honestly, we do try and help where we can.

@OneBadKitty

yes the single income = great lifestyle of yesteryear is a myth. My maternal grandparents were single income, low skilled and lived hand to mouth, rented whole lives, my paternal grandfather was semi skilled but my grandmother also always worked, they owned a modest house, only 2 kids though. My parents bought when I was a baby but we didn’t have a lot, one camping trip in the summer and only once my mum went back to work did the holidays and cars improve

Well not really. It's a bit difficult these days to buy a house with an outhouse instead of a fitted bathroom. Most mortgage lenders won't lend on a property without a fitted kitchen, either. So you have to buy a house that has these. Lots of houses just happen to have ensuites, the designers of newbuilds don't survey people, they just build them like that.
I'd also like to see what Social Services said about a family living in a house fit for the 1920s with an outhouse and no fitted kitchen, double glazing, electricity, indoor running water or central heating.

It's likewise difficult to buy a car at 1970 prices (even adjusting for inflation) because cars these days cost so much more to produce, to stop them being deathtraps. Side airbags, disc brakes, catalytic converters, seatbelts etc all cost more during production. There's no option to buy a car from this century that doesn't have these things because we now think that would be too dangerous. With subsequent decades of public transport cuts and urban newbuild sprawl since the 60s/70s into areas that were never on a bus/train route, people generally need a vehicle outside of major cities. Especially now that industry has left most towns so the majority of people can't just walk to the pit/factory to work.

With two people expected to work to survive, nursery fees are now needed for all children the family choose to have. Having children wasn't even much of an active choice in the 50s or early 60s, people just had them and society was set up for it. Now we're told it's a choice we make when people want to rub it in our faces, when for every other species on the planet it's just biological fact, so society have made it extremely difficult and expensive for people to actually have and raise children with so many things that society says they must have.

The NSPCC gleefully abhor situations where a boy and a girl are sharing a bedroom so unless you luck out and get two girls or two boys, that's a non-starter for most people, too.

So the only one I'd agree with you on is holidays abroad which absolutely no one needs.

The cheaper options just don't exist anymore. There isn't a choice. It's pay a bomb for the thing in front of you or don't have it at all and suffer the consequences, which in some of these cases would be significant.

Is up there with mumpreneur