AIBU to think my adult life is average rather than privileged?

[Finchell]

Prepared to be told otherwise and of course I know I have had some degree of privilege. As a child I had a good education and opportunities and I accept that is probably classed as ‘privileged.’ But I don’t think that overall my adult life is, I think it’s pretty standard.

Had 50k towards house deposit (everyone I know had had financial support to buy a house)

Gifted 2k to 3k a year (again over birthday and Christmas etc this would seem usual to my friends)

DD has (small) house on trust from grandparents. I only know one other family who haven’t been in a position to make some provision for their grandchildren, not necessarily a house but cash etc

Earnings 71k, again this is of course not a low amount but in terms of household income it’s not a lot these days.

You make twice the average salary (£71k puts you in around the top 10% of the population for salary) so you’re nowhere near average there.

Most people aren’t gifted anywhere near the amount you received for their first house. They have to either work for it and/or if they are very lucky, given a very modest contribution by family members but nowhere near the amount you received. The majority of existing homeowners are homeowners because they bought their house decades ago when houses were much cheaper compared to the average salary, not because they were gifted tens of thousands. Nowadays it’s very hard to save up for a deposit hence why most people will be lifetime renters. If the average person is being gifted that much for a house like you think they are, why do you think anybody currently rents?! Just for Lolz?!

A huge proportion of the population can’t cover a £100 emergency bill. 20% of the population have £0 in savings and most people are living paycheck to paycheck (both working class people and middle class people).

I’m actually astonished that someone making a salary of £71k has no concept or understanding of averages, basic statistics, pays no attention to the news, economics or actually opens their eyes and looks at the people around them. Even a basic conversation about economics with their parents growing up would have given you a clue. How can someone who earns that salary not understand that what is normal in their circle or friendship group isn’t true on a population level? How can you not understand how your experience is relative to your intermediate circle and not relative to the rest of the population?

And that’s just comparing yourself to the rest of the UK. Compared to the rest of the world population, you’d be in the top 0.5% or less when it comes to privilege!

I know very few people who have been given money by parents as a house deposit
My own DC who are 33 and 34 were given £5k each by their DF and £2k each by me - we were given nothing
My parents gave us some money towards a sofa for our first house
I earn £50k plus and am the highest earner of most of my friends - but as a lone householder with a mortgage of £1000 per month it doesn’t go far - I also help out friends and family who are worse off than me

As someone who starts the thread by saying they 'had a good education' can be so ignorant, and unaware of the world around them beggars belief.

I consider myself to be privileged as we now own our house outright. But I am retired, and both dh and I worked all our lives. I saved for my deposit for my first flat by living at home for 7 years, to save, and worked 2 regular jobs plus some ad hoc babysitting on top.

In terms of salary - you could use an internet search engine and look up the salary for most jobs in the public sector - teachers, nurses, firefighters, social workers, physiotherapists, admin, police officers, paramedics, speech and language therapists, and so forth. All careers I am sure even you are aware of ? Careers that need good A-levels and a degree to apply for.
Or, here's a thing, you could chat to the person that cleans your office, (or your home?) or the concierge or security person on the door, or the person who does your nails, or the person that serves you in the supermarket, or delivers stuff you order on the internet, or the school crossing patrol person, or the person that does your nails. Ask them what they earn, or their partners, or what their weekly budget is for food. Or, if you want to make even more of a fool of yourself, ask them how much deposit they have been given to buy a house.

Or as someone else suggested, you could try volunteering at a lunch club or Warm Welcome place, or a Food Bank, or any of the Debt Charities that operate, or at a Night shelter, or anyone or 1000s of small charities that do great work across the country.

Are you serious? They save up!! My DS and his GF saved up over £20k between them and bought a three bed semi in the north west. They lived at home for over a year and had already started saving while at uni as they both worked in the summers.

I am a university lecturer. I do not have a single friend as far as I know who was given anything remotely close to £50k as a house deposit. No one has a DC who has a house in trust for them.

You are hugely privileged.

I would say your salary is pretty average (or low in London). But that’s not down to privilege either way but rather down to what you have done personally.

but being gifted £50k is ridiculously privileged.

and having a trust fund for a house - the same.

£2-3k in gifts a year - of course that isn’t normal.

im truly shocked that you have the nerve to ask these questions. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that there are food banks, huge waiting lists for council properties, increasing numbers of homeless people (homeless doesn’t just mean living in a box but so much more) - and even moving away from that - obviously most people are not gifted hundreds of thousands of pounds.

perhaps do some learning and volunteering because you are shockingly naive, entitled and uneducated.

you asked how people afford houses - to be honest most people i know (including me) grafted and saved to buy a pretty tiny first property and went from there.

own and accept your privilege - don’t be ashamed.

but do better in terms of understanding what else is out there because it’s a lot more than what you see and know. Utterly shocking

Yes, you are privileged, both financially and also in seemingly being entirely unaware of the circumstances many, many other people live in (and I mostly don't mean that snarkily!).

Help from family with housing deposits - where I grew up, nobody's parents owned their own houses never mind helping their kids do so. Certainly I doubt their parents are in a position to be giving them thousands a year in gifts. (And 'a small house in trust' made me laugh out loud, sorry...!)

But what I do think is interesting - and maybe worth mulling on for you - is why someone implying you were privileged upset you? For me, I'm jealous - good for you! I wish I'd grown up with the kind of family that could afford to give me a 50k deposit, thousands a year and put properties in family members' names - and I definitely wouldn't upset about if it I had and someone else pointed out that it's privileged to have had that. I wonder if you feel like it's bad to acknowledge that you had more than a lot of people? Or like it somehow lessens what you've achieved? I know it's probably fairly widely accepted that it's easier to end up in a position where you can earn 70k+ a year when you're starting with privilege, but it doesn't mean you haven't worked hard for it - many a richer person than you has done sod all with that privilege worth shouting about.

Gosh we move in different circles! I don’t know anyone who gets any of these things, they earn their own money.

I do think there ought to be some sort of "basic knowledge about life in the UK" test before anyone is allowed to vote, so that people who are so ignorant of life are not allowed to.
You should have to be able to name 4 or 5 stories that have been reported on in the last month or so, to show you have taken some notice of other people's lives.

oh dear

I’m the first to be irritated by the shout of privileged but you’ve had a lot more than the average person

And as for presents - DH and I receive gifts/birthday or Christmas money of around £50-100 from our parents. Again, I know no one who receives £2-3000.

Council housing isn't available to all who would benefit from it.

When I was a student in Glasgow, I was in a bedsit. The other occupants of the flat - in the other two bedsits - were married couples.

A friend in another bedsit lived opposite a bedsit containing a family of three - a married couple and their teenage daughter. To clarify, the bedsit was the only room that was was theirs alone - they shared a kitchen and bathroom with all the other bedsits in the flat.

You move in/are attracted to privileged circles and therefore this seems normal to you.

You are massively privileged. HTH.

Are you privileged? Yes. But privilege is on a continuum so you know people who have received more than you. That doesn't make you not privileged it just means other people have had more or larger handouts than you. I think you are getting a hard time but you also don't seem to have a clue about the huge disparities of wealth, social mobility and access to opportunities that exist in this country. And you should because those things really, really matter.

What a shame money can't buy you tact or sensitivity or honesty - or anything of much true worth actually. Disingenuity is worse than outright lying or outright spitefulness you know and it's the modus operandi of cowards.

So basically not only are you privileged with several examples of large monetary gifts, good education and career and trust funds for your DC, but all your friends are incredibly wealthy and you don't associate with ANYONE who's family isn't in a position to outright buy them a house or give them 6 figure sums and this is evidence that you AREN'T privileged?

As others have said, you can't help if you're privileged but I don't understand how you can't recognise it and I guess it is a little shocking to hear about the bubble some privileged members of society live in.

I came from a working class background, North East comp, had a single Mum, worked since my early teens cleaning, kitchen assistant, receptionist etc. However there was help with uni fees both BA and MA in the early/mid 2000s for people like me and that made me privileged (a privilege working class kids no longer have access to eg. European social funding) and my FIL lent us £5k towards our deposit (which we paid back within 2 years of buying) I now have a professional career (although earn less than you) and own a house (with a mortgage) in a nice part of the North West (we were lucky to get on the property ladder at its low in 2013). I consider myself incredibly privileged, however I also have family and friends that are probably a little more representative of the average Brits financial situation.

All you have to do is just look online at average(median) incomes and assets to see where you sit. Your friends are probably in the top 5% but you're probably in the top 10.

I say this as someone very privileged.... yabvu.

Your income is high but not exceptional.

Where you are privileged however is in the amount you have received/continue to receive from parents & grandparents.

it sounds like your social circle is similarly privileged. Most people do not receive anything like the amounts you've had. My parents are better off than most - they were able to give me £15k towards a house deposit. My grandparents were much more typical, they left modest estates to my parents & aunts/uncles, nothing was left to grandchildren. My parents give me modest gifts for birthdays/Christmas - £50-£100 a time - this is similar to most of my friends who are adult DC of middle class professional (retired) parents.

As you are so deluded, I took a screenshot of your post and put it in Chat GPT to ask if your experience is privileged or indeed the UK average you seem to think it is. Here’s the response:

“No, this is not an average UK experience.

This person is significantly more privileged than the average UK resident, even if their social circle normalises it.

Why it’s not “standard” in the UK

• £50,000 towards a house deposit is well above what most UK first-time buyers receive from family. Many get nothing and struggle for years to save even £10k–£20k.
• £2k–£3k gifted every year is also well above average. Most adults in the UK are not receiving regular cash gifts of that size from parents.
• A child having a house held in trust from grandparents is extremely unusual and a clear marker of wealth and intergenerational asset transfer.

What this indicates

This is a person from a background where:

• home ownership is supported rather than self-funded
• regular family financial transfers are expected
• wealth is being preserved across generations

That’s basically the definition of material privilege, even if they personally feel “ordinary” day-to-day.

Bottom line

Their lifestyle may feel normal relative to their friends, but compared to the average UK resident, they are well above average in financial security and inherited”.

There you go.

Thats what privelege does though, envelopes you in a bubble

No one is this ghastly

Yes you are privileged. The way to work that out is to look outside of your social circle. It’s wild but other people do live quite differently to you and the people you know.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3w38qvz195o

The only help I got from my Mum and Dad towards buying my own house was that they bought me a washing machine! Everything else was done through my own hard work and saving.

I considered myself privileged because my uncle lent me £15k and charged me half the going interest rate so I could put a deposit on a house. What you’re describing is beyond privileged and I don’t know a single person in your position despite living in a fairly affluent area in the south east.

my kids will be in a more financially privileged position than I ever was because of inheritance but it is still nowhere near the level you are describing. I can’t fathom how you think you are average

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3w38qvz195o

@Weeelokthen

True, but I do know a lot of privileged folk and they’re still aware, humble and educated enough to understand their privilege. OP does come across as very dim.