General life is different to years ago

[kmr24]

Hello,

I'm just thinking of how everything thing has changed over the past 5 years . No one has a lot of disposable income , rent and food is higher and just general things are not the same... I've heard taxes are going up now also! I feel low with it all and I need to find a new house I've been in for 10 years as the landlord wants to sell and I can't find anywhere to rent. And the council have a very long waiting list. There's a lot of people in this boat it's sad how we have to live like this.will the climate ever change or is this how it is now?

I get a £10 02 bundle….unlimited texts and calls and 8gb of data…..you put it on yourself ,….so if you haven’t go it you don’t put it on

I look at vintage Corrie characters for a clue. In the 60s they had very little. They were happy with what they had. The women worked as well as the men, but wages were low and luxuries few and far between.

By the 80s/ 90s they were starting to go down the consumerism line.

Nowadays they all have or expect everything.

A lot of dissatisfaction is down to expectation. And comparison.

This is absolutely the stand out biggest issue. That's been fuelled by greed.

@MrsBobtonTrent no spinster relatives in the box room,

That made me laugh, because in the early 1970s when my brother and I were preschoolers, my Mum worked 3 mornings a week and left us with a lady called Mrs Thompson who had a silent DH, 6 older DCs and 'Auntie Alice' who lived with them. Auntie Alice was Mrs Thompson's elderly auntie.

As an adult I often pass their house and think fondly of Mrs Thompson - but also am utterly bewildered by the fact that I KNOW those tiny terraced houses and they are all built the same. Kitchen, front room and downstairs bathroom. 3 small bedrooms upstairs.

Where do we think Auntie Alice slept? They had 3 girls and 3 boys. Girls were 15, 14 and 11 and the boys were 17, 13 and 9 at the time. I'm assuming boys in one room and girls in another - and then Mr and Mrs Thompson (and Auntie Alice?) in the third room...? Or did Auntie Alice bunk in with three teenage dds?

It's been a mystery to me for donkeys years.

It’s awful.

I remember that Sarah beeny property show in the 90s where they’d ignore all her suggestions of how to improve things and the houses would go up in value regardless.

Poor Auntie Alice was in the coal bunker 😂

1998: New Labour are "intensely comfortable with people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes". Peter Mandelson, trade and industry secretary

2013: Lord Mandelson has admitted he is no longer "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes", given rising inequality

Without hoards of landlords competing for properties to rent out, house prices may start to level out and may even fall, making it more possible for renters to find somewhere affordable to buy, particularly if we have a few years of levelling out and wages starting to increase.

Rents are getting higher and higher because of reduced availability

I'm not sure it's even availability. What's available is being bought up to rent out.

Renters are paying way in excess of mortgages. And yes people have deposits but lose out to though with even more capital available. It not those on zero hours contracts. It's couples on normal steady wages.

But even renters are struggling to find places to rent. In many places, they're even struggling to get viewing as demand is so high, that estate agents fill their viewing slots within an hour or so of a listing going live. Even if you manage to get a slot allocated, it's take it or leave it, for whatever reason, if the slot is inconvenient, you can't just ask for a different time or a different day.

With us, the estate agent only had six viewing slots for this particular flat, between 11am and 12 noon on a particular day, of ten minutes each. No flexibility. All six people wanted it after viewing. EA put forward the "top 3" based on situation, offer, etc., and the deal was done by 1pm the same day, with a deposit required to have been paid by close of business that day to secure it!

People really don't appreciate how demand is outstripping supply in some places, not just London!

Love that! Auntie Alice used to come down the stairs to greet us, clutching a patchwork, crotcheted blanket that she was forever working on. Perhaps it was like Victorian factory workers, and they slept in shifts?

Maybe Auntie Alice was allowed the bed from 2pm to 10pm - but then had to vacate it for someone else and roam the house at night?

(We only went in a morning, so I'm unaware of Auntie Alice's afternoon routine)

There are far fewer rental properties now than in 2019. I can't remember the exact figure but it was something like 350,000 properties to let now fewer than in 2019. LL's are selling up. Every year since 2019 LL have sold far more properties than they have bought. That's why rents are getting more expensive. I've just had a renter give notice to move out as he's moving to Bristol with his job. Within 5 days I've had 3 other people contacting me asking if they can rent it. I'm assuming the tenants moving out have told their friends or colleagues because I've not even advertised it yet. Last time I advertised a 3 bedroom terraced house with a back yard not a garden EA had booked 13 viewings within 1 1/2 days and then stopped allowing viewing appointments. Of the 13 9 wanted to rent it. Tbh 7 of them sounded suitable. It's hard picking which renters to choose. By the way I read yesterday house prices are on the rise because mortgage rates have dropped a bit. I'm assuming all the people with a deposit who have been waiting to buy until mortgages went down a bit have now started buying. Also it's rumoured RR might significantly lower the amount of relief on first time buyer properties from land tax in a bid to fill black hole.

And yes the cost of leisure activities has gone through the roof! We went to the cinema as a family last weekend, I actually felt sick at how much it cost.

Saturday was £4pp for National Cinema Day. Please tell me you didn't miss out and are just talking about the price of snacks.

@Hatty65 I am so pleased you that you remember Auntie Alice. It seems to be a part of social history that has died out from memory. Growing up (abroad) we always had people living with us - older single people, relatives too ill to live alone, younger friends/family who had moved for work and needed somewhere to live while they established themselves. These people would contribute to the household with a bit of money, or light childcare/housework. It was a country with a lot of queuing and having someone to go to queue to pay the telephone bill or buy loo roll was really useful. Talking to older people in the UK this was more common here in the past, but has died out - we all like our independence and our privacy, but these is a financial (and social) cost to it.

(I would hazard a guess that Auntie Alice slept with the girls and the parents took the smallest room. Unless Mr T worked shifts)

I didn't know! We went on Sunday 😩

Yes my Mum stayed at home with 5dc until the youngest was 7 or 8 and then she got a part time job to help pay for her elder DC going to uni. Holidays were a week at a local beach staying in a caravan or guest house. No foreign travel until youngest DC had finished uni.

Oh no! Sorry! For future reference, Moneysavingexpert.com has tons of cinema deals eg five Vue tickets for £22 with Groupon. I just cannot pay the full prices, they horrify me.

(I would hazard a guess that Auntie Alice slept with the girls and the parents took the smallest room. Unless Mr T worked shifts)

I think she must have done. Mr T worked for the council and spent much of his day leaning on something. He could frequently be seen leaning on a broom in front of the Methodist Church car park. Or in the CofE graveyard, leaning on a spade, or in the allotments, leaning on a garden fork. Mr T was out and around throughout my teenage years and I saw him frequently. I'm not sure we ever spoke.

The 6 children were very useful to my mother as she used them all as babysitters for us so that she could go out to badminton matches and bridge evenings. They were nicely spaced so that there was generally someone studying for exams who would come and babysit us for an evening in return for some Lucozade, a butterfly bun and (knowing my mother) probably well below the going rate for a babysitter.

I don't think everyone is strapped to pay the gas bill. I was agog at the recent "how many holidays do you have a year" thread.

Hi , can u tell me what phone co pls? I need to chang3 mine👍

@wavingfuriously have a look at ID mobile, my SIM is £3.99 a month unlimited text and calls and plenty of data. Teamed with a Nokia Smart phone handset if you need a new one which was less than £150 outright and I much prefer it to my work iPhone.

Yup - all these people saying we just need to accept we can’t have it all / adjust to lower standard of living similar to years ago. Smacks of, don’t be too greedy, had it too good for too long. But it’s not everyone by a long shot. Many many people are fine and even better off.

The gap between rich and poor absolutely is growing.

I know of many many people for whom the cost of living crisis hasn’t affected them at all. Expensive houses - Gained £££ over the years with increase in property prices. Massive pensions. Generational wealth passed down. Good salaries with increases in pay, big bonuses.

Even when I look out my window I see lots of extensions, house improvements. I’m sure some people are in debt, but surely that’s a short term ‘solution’.

Yes, and parents weren't pressured into .buying every child a top of the range phone.

Thank u 👍

@Farmhouse1234 There have always been very rich people and very poor people with an unimaginable difference between their lifestyles. The difference is that a lot of people have pretended to be rich who aren’t. We live on a finite planet - we can’t all live like billionaires. If wealth was shared out worldwide our lifestyles would be nowhere near the UK middle class dream.