To think, actually, hard work doesn’t pay off?

[AkaBaka]

I have had a typical millennial experience. Raised by a single mother in a council house and wanted better, so worked hard at school, went to university, graduated into a recession, built up a career, and bought a house. Am now scraping by in a similar sized house to my childhood home, raising my kids in a similar way as my mother did in terms of hobbies and lifestyle.

I have stepchildren who, much as I love them and they have many wonderful qualities, are lazy and unmotivated with little drive. I am forever telling them that hard work pays off.

But does it? For their generation, especially for non-academic kids like them, there seems little point in striving. Now I have kids of my own, I’m seeing the benefit of working fewer hours with less stress over a “successful career” that doesn’t even give me a very comfortable lifestyle.

AIBU to think hard work doesn’t pay off?

The only way you can even that up for your children is to ensure yourself to the Hilt
At 50 you can probably still get half £1 million worth of life insurance for about £100 a month.
The maths still works in that sense providing that you die before your 80 which most of us will

Hard work I think used to mostly pay although there were always lower paid workers too. However making a good living has become much harder.

I think it all comes down to a few things.

House prices - it used to be that everybody even young people starting out could afford a house. Even if it was a one bed flat they could get on the ladder. So people were motivated to work and put down roots/be stable. That has become a complete shitshow now. We have those who bought years ago who are mostly ok, we have those that did BTL and made an absolute killing. All those that missed the cut and ended up in rented accomodation are screwed unless they can get together a deposit to buy something (often impossible as rents are so high so can't afford to save). My first house cost 55K in Guildford, Surrey. 2 bed ex council house bought in early nineties. That same house now selling for 350K. Madness.

Benefits - because lots of people are now in rented and you can get your rent paid if you are on certain benefits then this makes being out of work and on benefits more profitable than working. If they stopped paying peoples rent this might change. I never really understood why if you lose your job and can't make ends meet you get your rent paid for but if you have a mortgage then tough shit. I mean what is the reasoning for covering renters home costs but not owners if they are both struggling.

The UK has been through tough times - for example I graduated in 1991 and the country was in a recession with people getting their houses repossessed. Still the country seemed in much better shape. Immigration had not really started yet and so we were less crowded as a country. You could get a doctors/NHS dentist no problem. I think the UK goverment basically sold off everything they could to keep the country afloat over the next 20 years (council houses, our industries, our gold) and so now we have nothing left for a rainy day.

I got a grant to go to uni and no fees. I came from a poor working class family but the way the system was set up I could still 'escape' the poverty trap by working hard.

I feel incredibly sorry for the youngsters today. House prices have really messed everything up for them. Without a stable base how can we expect them to put down roots and work hard and have families.

Add in this idiotic goverment who are quite frightening to watch them be in charge.

Love or hate Maggie T - she had strong views and a strong backbone and took decisive action although it was her that kicked off the selling of council houses. I think her view was that then everybody would own the roof over their head and thus be more independent and motivated. It was actually quite a good plan that all went horribly wrong with immigration and too much demand v not enough houses. Even if council houses had not been sold we would still have too much demand in the housing market. Immigration, more people living alone, broken families needing two houses etc

I made plenty of mistakes and wrong turns and ended up in a modest new build house but it was bought and paid for at 46. When I hear people my age (fifties) being in rented accomodation worrying about their retirement my heart really goes out to them. That is no way to live.

And of course as a side note to the housing market booming prices we have lots of youngsters who will inherit or get help as their parents made a killing. Those kids will probably be okay. For those who's parents couldn't help them or were in rented all their lives they are probably screwed. So it's causing a big devide and it seems now that youngsters lives are less influenced by their jobs and their own hard work and more influenced by how much money their parents/grandparents made on the housing market and thus how much help/inheritance they get.

I suppose i didnt go to university and didnt equate it with the only type of hard work, or harder work than going to work and doing work based training. I just saw it as academic aptitude and being interested in a subject or part of the training for a profession like medicine.

If teachers said that kind of thing at my school, they'd be insulting so many of the children's parents. It wouldnt have gone down well all.

Hard work does pay off, when you compare it to not working at all. Your situation isn’t brilliant, but would it be the same if you hadn’t worked hard?

Also, hard work doesn’t have to be solely about getting to the thing that earns you money.

The reality is, for most people, the thing that dictates where they will end up is where they came from. It’s the number of privileges of birth you have.

No Thatcher’s theory of making everybody a homeowner and therefore middle class was entirely motivated by trapping people into having to work as you rightly say because renters received financial support and homeowners did not. Although they did receive MIRA’s until the late 90’s
So contradictory on the basis that Norman Tibbitt said people needed to get on their bike and look for roles outside of their communities and Thatcher trapped them within in them
Typical government not knowing it’s arse from its elbow at any period in history.

The reward for hard work often seems to be more hard work

Hard work does pay off, but only if it’s aimed at the right thing. Unless you have an inheritance or won the lottery, being lazy is highly unlikely give you a good lifestyle and comfortable pension pot, whereas working hard just might.

The trouble is that there’s a fair amount of luck involved - anticipating future social/career trends for example
or having the ability to capitalise on opportunities that present themselves. This is far
more difficult for someone with caring responsibilities to move location and take a pay cut in the pursuit of a longer term better outcome.

You don’t need to be academic to gain good qualifications these days. Not all are equal but there are some amazing apprenticeships out there now. My non-academic son has thrived on one of these and will likely out earn me before he’s 30, and I’m a HRT payer. I’d encourage your step children down this route.

The reality is that a life on benefits in the long term sucks, and even those few able to game the system will likely soon find that drying up as the country finds it increasingly unsustainable.

Wont they inherit from their DF?

@DoesPorridgeCauseRosacea So it's causing a big devide and it seems now that youngsters lives are less influenced by their jobs and their own hard work and more influenced by how much money their parents/grandparents made on the housing market and thus how much help/inheritance they get.

This is how I feel - my generation believed in social mobility in a way which is no longer true.

But in many cases, the generational wealth that’s being passed to millennials stops with them. It’s being spent. Property price rises have stagnated, COL is massive, care homes are extortionate. The money SC’s parents are receiving isn’t going to be passed down to them in any meaningful amounts.

There's also an absolutely huge reliance on benefits which I can’t see being sustainable for Gen Alpha.

So if there’s no inherited wealth, a reduced benefits system and they’re not working hard, where are they going to end up?

Yes. I agree. Unless you are lucky and/or choose the "right" career path, it's quite possible these days to work your arse off your whole life and only be marginally better off than muddling along on benefits. It's so bleak for our young people.

I'm Gen X and acutely aware how lucky I am. My degree was debt free and I was able to get onto the property ladder aged 23 just before the boom. My parents never helped out financially after I left uni (actually they did give me £1k towards my wedding but that went much further in 2000 than it would today) as I was able to scrape together a house deposit and buy/run a cheap car on pretty low earnings. Qualified as a solicitor (juggling mortgage and a civil service job with law college in the evening) and mortgage free at 40. So I did work hard but ...

My own kids aged 21 and 11 probably won't have those benefits however hard they work. I'm trying to save what I can to pay off my son's uni loan so he can start his post uni life without a huge debt. I feel that if I can then I should as I had the same benefit but it's not lost on me that this is the last generation it can happen. I would also like to help my kids onto the housing ladder although we may need to downsize from our family home to make it happen and ensure our comfortable retirement and again I think they'll still have mortgages most of their lives. Meanwhile my parents still live in their big detached house and downsizing would never have occurred to them. They did work hard but mum was very part time (and had a cleaner) and Dad retired at 55. My husband and I both went to private school but our kids didn't/don't. Money has to stretch further for each generation.

Careers have changed a lot too. When I was applying for training contracts it was 1 place for every 2 applicants. Now it's more like 1 for 20. I worked really hard and am at salaried partner level at a City law firm but I didn't have great school academics and wouldn't get a foot in the door these days. Also a lot of the low value claims work that junior lawyers would cut their teeth on is being handed over to AI so even getting decent experience is a challenge these days.

Both my kids have said they don't want to have children. I actually think if they don't, that is a good thing, it's just another stress and strain on resources (mental, physical, financial).

TLDR: we are among the lucky ones yet even I see how bleak it is.

But we need teachers and paramedics and social workers etc, and we need to make this a country where people like this have enough to do thinks like secure settled accommodation, have kids and afford child care, commute to work, eat healthily, heat their homes when it’s cold, go away for one week a year. This government failed because it isn’t allowing facilitating people to afford these things.

I personally I earn well but have high expenses (care for a parent, disabled child with specialist needs). I was lucky enough to earn a bonus of £12k last year but will only see £4k of it as £8k will go on tax. That would have given us our first post-Covid overseas holiday without tax. Now it won’t. I feel so demotivated living here. What’s the point?

hell be spending that money on day to day costs.

Yeah for me hard work did pay off. I absolutely grafted during my 20s and early 30s. I worked much harder than many of my friends. But now I have a high paying job with flexibility and great benefits. Honestly I don’t think family money or contacts could’ve got this good an outcome- it was a promotion built on an extremely strong career track record. It’s amazing now as have time with DD in abundance. Also I feel I have respect of peers at work because of the jobs I’ve held.

If a child has an aptitude for a particular skill, then they should work hard at it as that’s their USP. Whether that be chasing formal accreditation via industry qualifications or setting themselves up as an entrepreneur.

If there are kids who are all rounders and unsure what to ‘work hard at’ to make it pay in the future, I’d probably say industries around AI such as robotics, AI software engineer, AI analysts. There are also jobs around the ethics, governance aspect of AI as well as some creative jobs around it. It’s just a case f doing a a deep dive into it and deciding if a child can find something that fits their skills set. If they did, I’m pretty certain hard work would pay off as these types jobs will have a strong foothold in the future careers world.

Do you not consider the £8000 to be a contribution towards the care of your parent and disabled child or do you think we should be covering that?

Yeah but hopefully he won’t die until they’re old too! There are three SC and we have two, so they’re each one of five. SC will each get 1/5 of DH’s 1/2 of our estate. In his 20s, DH and his brother were often financially supported by his parents to a level that we won’t be able to provide.

I think the problem is with the definition of “hard work”. My husband & I are in our late 20’s, most of our friends the same age, we all worked hard and I would say it has paid off but all of our “working hard” looks very different.

Going to uni doesn’t automatically equal working hard.

I went to uni, my husband didn’t, he chose a different path, started off as an apprentice, put himself through lots of exams to qualify in different areas and now as a broker is very successful- he earns more than I do. He worked really hard, but didn’t go to uni and wasn’t at all academic in school, dropped out of sixth form after 2 months to get his apprenticeship. He just wasn’t motivated by academia, but very motivated by a job he found his passion in. I went to uni, got my degree and from there got my dream job, so it was worth it for me.

Of our friends the same is true- they all worked really hard, just not by your definition.

Some of our most financially successful friends hated school, got rubbish grades but once they were out of school found a job they were passionate about or really wanted and worked their arses off to succeed in those areas and they have.

I agree with @mindutopia that it depends entirely what you mean by 'hard work'. The hardest working people I know are mine and DH's family members who have got up at the crack of dawn since they were fifteen to work in physically tough, not well-paid jobs like being a bin man, cleaner, delivery driver, builder's labourer, raising large families, and often taking on extra night time jobs and hosting students as lodgers as their older kids left home. And that hasn't 'paid off', if by 'paid off' you mean being financially comfortable in their older years.

DH and I were the first of our families to finish school and go to university, get scholarships to do postgrad work and work in professional jobs. We have absolutely worked hard but also tried to 'work smart' -- lived cheaply for years, lived apart when it was better for our jobs at the start of our careers, delayed having a child and only had one. It's 'paid off' to the extent that we're certainly more financially comfortable than our relatives, but it's certainly paid off less well than many people who worked smarter than us, or had family inheritances, luck etc. It's all relative.

The social contract is truly broken. I was lucky (only due to my age, nothing I'd actually done) so house prices were affordable when I was younger and no student debt. I really feel for young people now unless they have very well off parents that can help them with deposits.

A single adult, no children, no health problems, so could work, will not bring in enough benefit money to have a lifestyle of not working that they want.

I think the mindset has shifted in younger workers that they aren’t going to work themselves to the bone to create obscene profits for a company whilst they get scraps, and that is how work is going to change I think, more workers understanding that it’s their time and muscle that contributes to the profits.

But yes on the whole we are now seeing generations below facing lower living standards to those that came before.

GenX are already working for longer, there are fewer and fewer workers per pensioner, services are stretched and there are more with an attitude that people on benefits have ‘better’ lifestyles - but this is generally valued purely by money or cars, how you spend your one precious short life has value as well, more so really.

The young of today will work it out, like we all had to. They will eventually be in power and make the laws, so will there be a huge shift in direction? Who knows? Will the populists who make everyone think their position in life is someone else’s fault prevail or will the country start to look at where money is being earned and lost due to international taxation loopholes?

We watched a bit of live sport over the holidays and almost every advert was online gambling, almost every one. It was jaw dropping.
The days when we used to think junk food and beer adverts were the problem have been replaced with, you could get rich quick. It’s depressing.

Me and DH have good careers, decent wages, married with two children, mortgaged a house.
house isn’t as big as childhood home, and not in as nice an area, we can’t afford anything bigger or in a better area.

I recently went through a mental health decline which resulted in me needing to quit my job and reduce my hours. But even while working both full time, we lived pretty much paycheck to paycheck. I worked hard for my qualification. It’s wasted now because I can’t really do it around childcare, and because of my mental health.

i compare myself to my sister often, she and husband also have two children, live in a council home paying less than half in rent than we do on the mortgage, similar sized house, nicer area and work the minimum hours required to claim the most benefits. They’re often re-working out how many hours they need to increase or decrease to get more benefits.. they’re about to go aboard for an all inclusive holiday, they often go camping 3/4 times a year (I know camping is cheap, but we can’t afford to do it 3/4 times a year, not the equipment). I am envious and it does make me feel like we should give up, sell the house and put ourselves on the council list. But DH won’t do that (understandable, I’m just fed up of feeling like I’ve got nothing, or can give nothing to the kids as they grow up. Sure they’ll likely have a house to split when we die, but what about now when they’re young and want to have experiences? I’d rather give my children an incredible childhood instead of a house when we die tbh)

but then on the other hand, Dsister often mentions that she wishes they could save for a deposit for a house 🤷🏼‍♀️ so swings and round abouts I think.

Truth is OP your question poses more questions as one pp pointed out already (what is “hard work”) and it seems that you are contrasting and probably drawing the line of “hard work” with achieving some useful results at school and/or university and then working full time in a more than minimum wage job vs benefits and part-time work. I say this because of how you describe SC and their mother and their aspirations.

I’m sure you’d acknowledge that circumstance can not only give a leg up but bring a tower block down (as it were). There’s only so much planning careers and financial freedom etc can get you.

If you take me - I was one of the top “performers” academically in school but excelled at university and had a plethora of awards and financial awards that accompanied that. I completed an MLitt and PhD in my chosen field. My DH is younger than me but also has a PhD in same area.

He retrained to become a therapist/counsellor. I’m working 10 hours a week in a school as a lunchtime assistant.

Why? Because we had a disabled child,
that we will have for life with increasing costs.

The questions I’ve pondered over the years are whether one should ever feel (let alone think) they are entitled to a certain lifestyle regardless of what job they do or how many children they do or don’t have.

It wouldn’t matter if I had £10 million pounds in the bank - I could buy a bungalow in a different area and re-do it for DD’s needs (all over again!) but I couldn’t go on holidays - I can barely even go down the fucking road without having to worry if she has a bowel movement where am I going to change her and how.

Expectations of the 2.4 children with savings and enough bedrooms and problems free health and schooling and presumption of doing better than your parents and going to university and having holidays abroad etc. are for a very large amount of people not expectations but dreams.

I suppose the question ultimately is “what is it about working that means a number of things “should” follow”? I’ve long given up on that view (tbh I’m not sure I ever espoused it)…

Depends on how you define ‘pay off’ … every individual has their own idea of what that looks like.

I hear you. Same experience as me. Hard work doesn't pay off so well for people who grew up in council housing because we lack the network. A friend of mine's first job out of uni was in a dream industry. Did she get the job because of her degree? Partly, but also because she lived a few doors down from someone in that industry. If you go to the right school, get into the most prestigious uni, or have the right social contacts, your hard work will pay much more. Without the social contacts it's just paper.

At university I had a boyfriend who was Eton-educated and his parents actively offered to put me in contact with various exceptionally senior people in my field of work for an apprenticeship. I couldn’t accept because I couldn’t afford to work for free in London. Hopefully the apprentice system is a bit fairer and more likely to be paid nowadays. But twenty years ago, it was very much about having contacts and family financial support.