The generation poorer than their parents

olly300

yorkshirekev wrote: »

I would agree with you to a large extent. But where is this going to take us? It can only be a race to the bottom as far as pay and conditions is concerned.

Is it employers' fault or how British governments deal with globalisation?

zagubov

olly300 wrote: »

Is it employers' fault or how British governments deal with globalisation?

Well the government have for years been looking to ape the American system of employment and education where people educate themselves at their own expense, sparing the employers costs and making people cheaper to hire as you don't train them.

And that fits in with the idea of a flexible workforce who may leave the employer within a few years making it undesirable for the employer to invest in training you up.

Also meaning nobody's in the job long enough to get any good at it!

Frankly we've joined the US in a race to the bottom without realising it's like two suicides holding hands as they jump.

We need to let go. There was a photo recently of a woman in a developing country living in a sewage pipe with a curtain across it. How can we undercut her? We simply can't.

olly300

zagubov wrote: »

Well the government have for years been looking to ape the American system of employment and education where people educate themselves at their own expense, sparing the employers costs and making people cheaper to hire as you don't train them.

And that fits in with the idea of a flexible workforce who may leave the employer within a few years making it undesirable for the employer to invest in training you up.

Also meaning nobody's in the job long enough to get any good at it!

Frankly we've joined the US in a race to the bottom without realising it's like two suicides holding hands as they jump.

We need to let go. There was a photo recently of a woman in a developing country living in a sewage pipe with a curtain across it. How can we undercut her? We simply can't.

Seems they are already there with the poorer people in the US.

Newsnight was showing last week some families living in a motels and hostels. The kids weren't counted as homeless as they would be here.

mumps

twirlypinky wrote: »

I think part of the problem is the constant apparent need/requirement for bigger and better houses, to the extent that families become back to front in their houses. My Grandad rattles around in his big five bedroomed house, that was once full and is now empty. My parents struggled to afford a four bedroomed house when the had four children living at home (who have pretty much all moved out now) and are now filling it with agas, expensive gadgets, a fancy pants conservatory and now a pool.

My sister and her husband are living in a tiny one bedroomed flat while they're both still at uni. Their job prospects aren't looking good, and they both have massive loans.

I'm living in a tiny one bedroomed house with my husband, despite having moved out at 18. i bought a house with my ex, made a bit of money on it. By the time i moved out of the house and it was sold, it'd lost every penny of equity (2008).

My husband and i are desperate to move, but his house has also fallen in value and has lost his entire deposit. At the ages of 29 and 37 we've having to start the whole saving for a deposit process all over again.

We do not have fancy cars (a fiesta and a Ka, not new). We do not have a fancy lifestyle, I don't even own an ipod, and i saved up to buy him his first one for Christmas last year. If we eat out we only do it with a voucher. We're desperate to start a family, but can't until we move because we don't ahve that elusive deposit yet, and even if we did we don't know that we'd manage to sell our house.

Okay, so maybe things are easier now than they were then, but it doesn't feel like it to me. To me it feels wrong that in this apparently better world i'm 29 and can't afford children, yet my mother had had four by now this age and my nan had had her two.

I think we've reached a stage in this country that we've not been in before. When the people that are elderly now were young, far fewer people owned their own homes. This is a kind of first that we're reaching. Old people are in massive houses they've worked hard to buy, and don't want to downsize. And would we want them to? If they tried to all downsize they'd be buying the houses that the first time buyers desperately need.

I don't have a solution for this problem, i just think it's getting worse.

The other thing i notice is the change in generations spending. I'm 29, my parents are in their fifties, and my grandparents if they were all still with us, would be in their late seventies and eighties. That grandparent generation are still thrifty. My grandad, despite living in a massive house, hates waste. He only heats the three rooms he uses and is careful with what he spends his money on. He has said to me several times that he wants something to leave behind, which is sweet really.

My parents and their generation on the other hand don't seem to feel this need. I'm not one of those "don't spend my inheritance" types, at the end of the day they've earnt it it's their money. But it's not all is it? My parents inherited thousands and thousands from the thrifty grandparnets that have passed on. They're spunking all of it. It seems to me that my parents and their friends are the ones with the beemers and the three foreign holidays a year and the massive tellies, and the big houses. My friends and i are the ones watching all this happen, while trying to save every penny.

No one has mentioned the cost of child care either. I've got a friend who is going to work three days a week to earn twenty pounds, because she pays the rest out on childcare. Yet when she was a baby her nan looked after her. I see this over and over again...

Just interesting i think.

I guess families differ; I look after my grandchildren, reduced my hours at work to do it so it does cost me. I also help out with school uniforms and other things.

For my youngest two, still at university, I am saving approx £4k per year each so that they will have a lump sum at graduation to reduce student loans or start their saving for a house. I also pay their mobiles, buy them shopping at start of term and other bits and pieces to help out. I am in my 50s and my last foreign holiday was 5 years ago.

Oh and I didn't inherit anything from my parents, they didn't have anything to leave me but that was fine as they brought me up and gave me help and support when they could. I have a nice big house but if I am left on my own I will downsize and let my kids have some of their inheritance early.

I hope you get to have children soon, it is hard having to wait.

Oldernotwiser

mumps wrote: »

I am not arguing anything, just stating facts. A house was our priority, we started saving when I was 15 and just left school. Four years later we had the deposit and bought a house that was a wreck. The building society lent us the money on the understanding that it was rewirted, new windows, damp treated, all redecorated. We had no money for all that but people rallied round, friend did the rewiring, family helped with the decorating. Parents helped with cash for the windows and damp treatment.

But who would advocate dropping out of education so early just to be able to buy a house?

Percy1983

mumps wrote: »

I guess families differ; I look after my grandchildren, reduced my hours at work to do it so it does cost me. I also help out with school uniforms and other things.

For my youngest two, still at university, I am saving approx £4k per year each so that they will have a lump sum at graduation to reduce student loans or start their saving for a house. I also pay their mobiles, buy them shopping at start of term and other bits and pieces to help out. I am in my 50s and my last foreign holiday was 5 years ago.

Oh and I didn't inherit anything from my parents, they didn't have anything to leave me but that was fine as they brought me up and gave me help and support when they could. I have a nice big house but if I am left on my own I will downsize and let my kids have some of their inheritance early.

I hope you get to have children soon, it is hard having to wait.

So if your parents have no money you are screwed, and if they do your life is under there control.

Talk about keeping a generation down.

ILW

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

But who would advocate dropping out of education so early just to be able to buy a house?

Depends on whether the education is going to be of any use to you.

No point in spending five years getting a worthless degree if your skills are more of a manual or entrepreneurial nature.

mumps

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I actually had a think about this....and while you may well be correct (I'm not sure, looking at some of the figures I have seen), there are items that are classed as what I'd call "near essential" today, that come out of monthly budgets, that didn't used to be needed.

By those items, I mean landlines, internet and mobile phones.

It's ok saying you don't need them, but life IS harder now than it was if you don't have them, and no one is including them in living costs for comparions, just simply ignoring them, or berating people for having them.

Why? Libraries have closed, meaning access to informaiton without the internet is harder. Telehone boxes and public pay phones are dissapearing, meaning being without mobiles is harder than it used to be. Landlines....well you need one for the internet.

So theres 3 extra costs which are all, in my view, pretty much needed if you want to live a normal run of the mill life today. It would certainly be harder without.

I think people are looking past this and just looking at a bag of sugar and comparing the cost. What we need to also do, is compare living standards and requirements.

I'd guess there are more monthly outgoings now than there was when a bag of sugar was 10p cheaper in relative terms.

Another comparison is childcare. I'm putting my son through it now, and some of the "baby boomer" generation I work with were simply aghast to how much it costs. "We had a free playgroup in our day where you could leave them for the morning". Mum stated she just had something going with a friend who ran a nursery from home for silly money....which you can't do now.

People say "fuel cost x amount at the height of the oil crisis in 1970" but totally ignore the change in culture and the explosion of commuting thats required to get to your jobs these days...

So many things have changed, while so many of these things are simply ignored in the comparisons.

Childcare was expensive in the 70s and hard to find, well it was where I lived. We didn't have a car and I had a 40 minute walk with son in his pram then two buses to work. I don't know how I had the energy.

Looking at all the riots makes me wonder how we all cope without prams. I could load half the contents of my house into and under the pram and not much of it would fit in a buggy nowadays. The poor people who have been burnt out probably only have the clothes they stand up in but in the 70s I would have had a full wardrobe for us all.

Percy1983

mumps wrote: »

Childcard was expensive in the 70s and hard to find, well it was where I lived. We didn't have a car and I had a 40 minute walk with son in his pram then two buses to work. I don't know how I had the energy.

There is one big problem with that statement. Many could afford to live on 1 normal wage back then (so mum stayed at home with the children).

Now 2 people have to work just to get something has basic as shelter and food.

mumps

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

But who would advocate dropping out of education so early just to be able to buy a house?

Who said I dropped out? I had my house, babies, job and got my degree studying part-time on a day release scheme. Not the easiest way to do it but it worked for me.