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?

It's where it all started. Blair/New Labour had 13 years to roll back on the damage she caused and just carried on most of it, even if they did at least invest in public services. 14 years of Tories since have accelerated things a lot further.

Adding to this, divorce is almost inevitable in many marriages nowadays. Nobody should put up with abuse for example (and sadly many women did in days gone by ) but that aside, I do think divorce is considered socially acceptable now and hence an easier option - hence creating financial ruin (concentrating on financial aspect and that's what were talking about)

People saw settling down and getting married as a life option , I think especially in more working class families- so many were married at 18- 21 with a home and kids already on the way. Career was left to the man. Ok, through a feminist lense and modern way of thinking, many will baulk at it. We look at those people and choices through an almost patronising, scoffing eye. But In some ways perhaps they'll all feel sorry for us and our modern way of entering the rat race. We all look at it as women being repressed and assumed as 'stupid' - but part of me wonders , did they actually realise that someone had to stay at home and nurture the family and that was the consequencial set up. Method in the madness.

And going back to finances, if you married young , stayed married and had kids fairly young, it's not so hard to see why mortgages were paid off by 40s, kids left home to do the same at a young age, and disposable income increases.

I'm not saying any of it is correct. But you have to wonder, our modern, 'right' way of doing things (and our generations do so arrogantly think we're always 'right' and 'progressive' )..is it all working out well?....

Families where both parents work full time (or the single parent works full time) are a goldmine for a capitalist society. And prices rise to absorb the additional income, so it gets harder for a family to choose to have someone at home more. Families have to outsource more and more (childcare, cleaning, cooking (I would include takeaways and processed food in that - not just personal chefs!), adults need a car each to get to work etc. etc.). And the more we work, the more taxes we pay and the richer massive multinational companies get (who have an increasingly influential hold over government and other policy makers). Government and industry benefit massively the more we work. And I think we benefit less and less.

Reisistance to this trend is becoming harder and harder. And it can feel lonely until you find your tribe.

I don't think divorce is necessarily reducing, people just are not getting married in the first place. Alternatively they start a family and get married later on rather than the other way round

My parents married young at 22 and 21 years of age. My father was in military so the only way to get a married quarter was to be married. Other people of the same generation got married because work had a tied cottage only made available to a married couple. Also the stigma of illegitimacy meant that 'doing the right thing' and getting married before a child was born was a real issue. The only single mothers who were not judged were those known to have been widowed or possibly deserted by a 'wrong ' 'un'.

Parents born 1925 and 1934 Dads earned a decent lecturers wage with zero qualifications which enabled my mum to stay at home.
No childcare costs, low house price and mortgage. Secondhand furniture and one car meant holidays and higher discretionary spend on food.
State schools were good.

Dh and I born 1958/1968 free further education which we didn't utilise, relatively cheap housing, ability to be self employed and pay off any mortgages quickly.

I could stay at home with children, private school fees were doable.

Two cars, motobike, campervan etc.
Amassed property and land without forgoing amazing holidays.

DD born 1999 has university debt, house prices are ridiculously high and money just doesn't go anywhere. Last months spend was one trip to the vets for antibiotics £200+ (dog is insured but pointless to claim)
Actually thinking about it a lot of her spending is insurance.

There's business cover, pet cover, AA, travel cover, vehicle insurance and so on.

Luckily we can subsidise her accommodation so she can work in an industry she loves on a low turnover but friends her age are spending every penny just existing.

I wouldn't personally say that affordable housing is "very little" though, it's actually quite a lot.

In the 60s you could have bought a house for 3x your annual wage

Now, it's 7.3 and that's assuming you're not in London (where wages aren't always higher anyway!).

Houses also got smaller on average so you're paying more for less.

Factually it's simply incorrect to say people had little, especially when you also consider people who bought in the 60s have seen their houses appreciate massively despite paying a tiny mortgage in comparison to a mortgage today. This in turn has provided people with a lot more financial security for retirement.

Even when interests rates were sky high in the past it was still a % of a much smaller amount making it more manageable.

Try paying 1k on rent while trying to save up on a house that costs 7.3 times your annual wage - do you believe you could do it just through lowering your expectations?

Totally agree, we are all pleading poverty but actually we just expect too much. My grandmother came to my daughters birthday party and we started speaking about how her birthdays were as a kid, she was 1 of 10, born late 1930's. She didn't even get a birthday card until she left school, she said they just didn't have spare money for those things. Her mum and dad would of wished her a happy birthday and they might of had a nicer tea or but no gifts/cards. I've heard many similar stories from other older relatives/friends, if you couldn't afford it you just did without. Life was simple, you needed money to eat and keep warm, everything else was a luxury. People now put themselves into debt to have fancy cars, holidays, the latest iPhone, huge piles of christmas presents for their kids, then moan they have no money and it's someone else's fault they can't have the same as their neighbour who is actually also just over spending on unnecessary luxuries! Genuinely, most of us don't know we're living

It's unfair though to say that we shouldn't expect so much as we do today

Why should we accept things going backwards?

Why should we accept the inequality in our society?

Just because a previous generation grew up in a slum with barely enough money for food doesn't mean we should want to go back towards that

I agree with a lot of what you say but I think that in the 1960s home ownership was not that prevalent. Lots of people rented or lived in houses owned by a local business and let out to workers. Women's wages were not taken into account . (wives still needed their husbands permission to have a bank account, but that's a thread for another day). Also not all houses were bigger. I live close to where my parents grew up and there are plenty of two up two down terraces which have had a back extension for a kitchen below and bathroom above added on. Some houses were built bigger in 60s/70s but older existing housing stock round by me is not all that size generous.

@Halloumiheaven I can see what you are saying.

From a feminist perspective there is a huge assumption that caring/homemaking/nurturing has to be performed by women.

For the majority of my DCs' lives DH was the SAHP. Employers, colleagues, managers, even to an extent family and friends all saw us as freaks.

Women's careers are routinely stunted by assumption that they are the default carer even when they are not.

Women frequently miss out on career development opportunities because of this assumption. When a woman has a baby it is assumed she will be less interested in her career, that she will be less available. When a man has a baby it is assumed he will be more interested in his career, more available.

Employers continue with the assumption even when evidence to the contrary is in front of their eyes.

It isn't going backwards to reject excessive materialism, which is damaging to individuals and to the planet. Having relatively few possessions and eating simply (and more healthily) doesn't equate to living in a slum without enough to eat. It's living well and with consideration for future generations. I agree it's almost impossible to put the genie back in the bottle though.

Because we live on a finite planet with finite resources. Because our recent affluence has come at the massive cost of environmental degredation and financial inequality. And I'm not convinced it has made us any happier.

If you are concerned about inequality, consider that if the world's resources were equally shared out our standard of living would be much lower than the lifestyle we would consider "normal" in the UK. An adjustment "downwards" is appropriate, given that we have been living high on the hog for the last 30 years - far beyond our economic and planetary means.

I don't think anyone is saying we should go back to living in a "slum with barely enough to eat". Just that expectations need to change because the last 30 years were not normal.

Wages aren't the same proportion to the price of houses as they used to be. I'm fed up of being told things like,

As a nation we're just not willing to compromise on our lifestyle. I don't know anybody who would go without a mobile phone or swap their car for a bike to save up for a mortgage deposit for example.

Mobile phones and internet access have become essential to modern life. Not just considered essential but actually essential. You can't access NHS fully without using a website for example, and you can't park a car in many car parks without an app. A mobile phone with some data is considerably cheaper than running a landline and broadband. Mine costs me £10pcm (I haven't upgraded the handset since my hand was last forced some 6 years ago) and if I needed it to also supply all the internet I need for everything it would be £25 all in - a landline plus broadband would be would be around about that each.

I don't have TV subscriptions, a TV license, or any other entertainment subscriptions. I have amazon prime for around 3-6 months a year at times when I'm actually making use of the postage/benefits. But I can assure you that it's not my unwillingness to somehow go without my old communication device that is making it impossible for me to save up for a mortgage deposit. Nor is it some kind of invented addiction to avocados or netflix. Life is more expensive for my generation, and I'm running with a bit of a duff hand, compared to my parents, and compared to some of my peers too. It's just the way the chips have fallen. I'm desperate to get back into a career that would pay me more than I currently earn, but that is proving tricky. I have become the middle aged invisible woman.

Silver lining to this cost of living crisis, it's made me a lot less consumeristic that's for sure. A shopaholic, I used to just buy shite for fun/ entertainment. Now, I have enough shoes/ clothes etc from the 'glory days' that I don't need to buy any more. Plus I try to buy second hand/ from the charity shops and return stuff I no longer love there too so someone else can enjoy it.

The thrill of finding some long lusted after Kurt Geiger trainers in exactly my size in the chazza whilst on holiday far exceeded any thrill I may have got in former years from buying similar when it was available on demand ( at a much inflated cost).

How? Because they use cheap labour to get rich in their business?

@MrsBobtonTrent

I agree with you when it comes to material crap, endless wardrobe updates and the like - we don't need endless stuff and even "experiences" often have a huge environmental impact ( over tourism , flights et )

But I was more thinking about being able to eat good quality food , have homes with no mould - we had a great program getting rid of squalor in the later part of the last century - enjoying simple things like an ice cream at the seaside - and we are going backwards

The trick with saving the planet is to show how people move forward, lives get better whilst saving the planet . Which is possible and does require some value shifts . Saying that living standards going backward is good for the planet is long term not a direction I think we should take , and I don't think we need to either

This. People seem to conflate the ideas of better life and materialism to what millennial/Gen Z are aspiring to. Yes, planet is finite etc etc but the life goals of me/my family/our friends don't relate at all to having huge wardrobes or masses of gadgets. I'd like a better quality of life by having nicer foods, ability to do hobbies, options for working less hours etc. I'd like my child to go to uni without a huge debt, and I'd like to be able to retire at a reasonable age without the fear of starving. I'd like less stress when I think about the future. In comparison, my grandparents and parents are massive hoarders and value physical belongings much more than they should because they grew up with very few possessions, but then again take their big houses/free higher education/state pensions as given and can't seem to understand why I feel stressed when i think about my life in 20 years' time because the very basic things they had seem so unattainable to us.

I think on top of some of the great observations pp have made, already we also have a couple more influencing factors:

1. Social media, which shows endless snapshots of 'perfect bodies and lives' in which houses are pristine, with the latests trends, new suff everywhere, any human flaw is removed. Everything is sanistised, clean and unblemished. Years ago you just didn't see stuff or people like that really - you tended to see the homes of whoever was in your family or social circle so there was much less opportunity to covet something different or see images that made your own homes and lives seem inadequate.
2. Low mental health making people vulnerable to the above and leading to them thinking that if only their lives and homes were more perfect, if only their phone were newer or their car bigger, their hair smoother or shiner, their lips fuller, they would be happier.

Both are lies. But we humans do like a good lie

And then we have availability. The internet has made so much stuff available to us, so easily and quickly. If I fancy a new pair of shoes, I can browse millions of pairs, buy them within seconds and have them here tomorrow. When you had to go into town on Saturday morning and only had what was in stock, your choice was less and your chance to impulse buy was far less.

I think you've hit on a really good point there, and the link with poor mental health.

I think modern life and the expectations that come with it have destroyed us to an extent, dramatic as that sounds.

I'd secretly be relieved if smart phones went defunct (and the internet) and I'm in my 30s. I wonder how many other people secretly feel like that...

Adding to that, I also think a good proportion of men have either a low level or full blown porn addiction and consequently view women and sex in a really warped way . That's all thanks to the internet - it's just so available and easy.

I wish the government would just pull the plug on it all to be honest. We're all babies addicted to a dummy with our phones and the internet and need the adult to just take it away and go back to a simpler life !!!! ( Or maybe I speak for myself only 😅)

I think modern life and the expectations that come with it have destroyed us to an extent, dramatic as that sounds.

I think that's a really interesting point. I do feel - as someone who grew up in the 70s - that I'm increasingly looking back to my grandparents' way of living to keep my life in balance. I think the first half of the 20th century disappearing from living memory is a real loss to our society.

I agree with @Halloumiheaven ’s point I'm not saying any of it is correct. But you have to wonder, our modern, 'right' way of doing things (and our generations do so arrogantly think we're always 'right' and 'progressive' )..is it all working out well?...

It’s not working out well (for many reasons). Dual income households are a necessity now in order to ‘just’ scrape by, rather than a choice made by the family in order to maximise income or because both parents want to have demanding jobs.

I have known many singles and couples who have sacrificed a lot in order to penny pinch, but some of the ideas thrown out on page 1 (forego a phone, sell your car) are very rarely feasible. Giving up your mobile phone would make life 10x more difficult for very small financial savings - if you can’t check emails, sign job offers on the spot, log into online portals on the go, you’re not lending yourself to being the ideal employee/job candidate/prospective tenant/loan applicant - should that be the case? No, but it is. People want things done quick and will not wait for you to get to the local library or home to your laptop. Plus, you need a mobile number to get verification codes for everything.

Being car free would be great, but people can’t rent in the areas they work in because it’s too expensive. They need cheaper rent to save. Public transport (where I live anyway) is not going to get you from A to B. If it did, that would be great. Lots of people do forego their car to bike to work, but a car is generally needed for so much more than just your job. Older, beat up cars are also subject to crazy insurance prices these days. When I got my first car a few years ago I wanted the oldest most crap model I could find but I couldn’t get insured on anything older than 8 years!! I cried at the amount I had to pay, and I didn’t want to spend it.

But we are paying for an extortionate NHS. Go back to 1970s even, I went to see a professor performing a new fangled ultrasound examination of a pregnant woman as a trainee then -I mean run of the mill scans, routine hip ops etcetc were few and far between but how many of you have had these exams or are on a repeat prescription - that is where money is going. Leaving less for everything else. But you wouldn’t want to do without these

I think the internet makes it far too easy to buy things especially when you are at a low point and faced with influencers on social media flogging ‘happiness’ and self esteem.

The availability point made above is important. When I was young even if you saw something you liked in a magazine the chances were it was only available in major cities. I can remember when Gap was opening their first stores outside London I was disappointed to find they were all in towns like Windsor which already had easy access to London.

Even for hobbies such as knitting and sewing there are now ‘essential’ accessories promoted online that my mum and gran managed successfully without.

I’m in agreement with @Halloumiheaven that I’d love someone to save myself from my smartphone addiction. I try to limit usage everyday with limited success.