Are young people today worse off than their parents?

ollyshaw

Leighthal wrote:

Olly,Education is still free

Sorry, that should be higher education.

Olly

wibble68_2

movieman wrote:

Worse than that, though, the BoE is promising 2% inflation forever. If true, that means that they won't get big wage inflation to wipe out their debts the way that the post-WWII generations before them have. And, since it's not actually true, it means that real inflation is running faster than wage inflation, so they're starting out poor and only getting poorer.

My thoughts exactly.

The governments wonder economy is based on low inflation and low interest rates. Which as you say, if true, future generations will get poorer and poorer.

jennifernil

Our son (36) is certainly much better off than we are. He and his wife have paid off their £75000 mortgage in 7 years, we are about to retire and have a £150000 mortgage to pay for our daughters Uni flat and a car for our retirement. This will be paid off by hubby's lump sum in August.
Then we will have to help our daughter to the same extent as we helped our son. (must be fair!) She has a guaranteed job for July 2008 starting on at least £25000, so not bad.
So I think if they budget wisely they will be just as well off. I think the main problem is that their expectations are well beyond ours, and are unrealistic.

aqueoushumour01

sorry but this 'economic' argument doesn't actaully make much sense. Ok in the short run a burst of inflation would erode debt but this wouldn't persist as interest rates would catch up to curb inflation. Low inflation and interest rates are necessarily better than high and unpredictable movements in these rates which would introduce a lot of instability into the economic system.

Average wealth has increased over time, although with house prices as they are, wages relative to property values are maybe lower than in the past (haven't got any data on this so am not sure). Wage inflation is above price inflation but house price inflation still outstrips them both so this situation may persist for quite some time unless house prices significantly slow down (which they have done in some areas) or fall (although a sharp fall is unlikely)

barnaby-bear

wibble68 wrote:

Stuart Law, MD of Assetz said the nearly £200,000 average asking price was out of reach of many first time buyers.

He said: "Young people today are the first generation to be considerably worse off financially than their parents, so we will see more people in their fifties and sixties releasing equity from their homes to help their children onto the housing ladder or enjoy their own retirement, perhaps even investing in a holiday home overseas.”



Any thoughts on this?

Wibble

I think we're worse off in terms of family life quality. Two parents having to work to house (yes even renting not buying) the family, kids stuck in nurseries / with child minders. Loads of people with SKY (a luxury) who plonk their kids in front of it rather than take them to the free library. People living further away from families with no support. Kids with parentswho can't cook cabbage etc

TJ27

My parents are FAR better off than my grandparents ever were, economically, health wise, property wise, job wise and probably happiness wise too. I think my grandparents were at least partly responsible for that.

I am FAR better off than my parents in just about every respect too. I think my parents probably made sure of that.

My children are only quite young at present but already they are financially reasonably well off. (Although they don't know it yet) I like to think that they will be healthier, better educated and generally better off than my wife or I. Only time will tell.

It does worry me that they might grow up to learn the price of everything and the value of nothing. I'm working on making sure that doesn't happen.

As a slightly rubbish comparison, I've just paid a £400 energy bill with hardly a second thought. But I remember thirty years ago, like it was yesterday, when my uncle had to buy my grandfather a sack of coal every so often because he couldn't afford to keep warm.

I guess everybody's different but from my own experience we're now better off a hundred fold.

Robert_Sterling

The answer to the OPs original question is some are and some are not.

Generali

My thought is that the poorer and richer parts of society are better off - check out the prices achieved for the best 2005 Bordeaux and the recent art sales in London for the rich, check out the falling prices of food, drink, holidays and consumer goods for the poor.

The middle class, on the other hand, are being squeezed by rising prices for school fees, cars and housing. Most importantly, they are being hit with massive tax bills which can only rise in future due to an aging population and increasing borrowing by government (esp. off balance sheet stuff like pension promises, Public/Private Partnerships and implicit gurantees to New Railtrack).

Daisies

I don't think my generation (I'm 27) is any worse off than my parents. They really had to struggle financially, especially when they were my age. If my generation lived more like my parents did we would be a lot better off. I hate the "have it all now" culture, the way people can't seem to save up for something (and therefore really appreciate it) or take care of their possessions so they last longer instead of chucking things after buying them on credit in the first place. I think we've forgotten how to enjoy the simple things about life - like going for a walk on a Saturday afternoon instead of going shopping? Who actually needs several foreign holidays a year, when you can have a wonderful cheaper time in this country? People seem to feel that they have to run a car - yes, some do because of their jobs or because of caring commitments, but a lot could manage without, they just don't want to.

[Deleted User]

The young people I know are must-haves ie they must have at least 3 holidays in exotic places every year, the nice house with a garden, the nice furniture, the good tv etc Now these are nice people and I should think are pretty representative of the part of the younger generation that works and has ambition.

The younger ones in other families ie the children seem to get such a lot of material goods and the whole family goes on foreign holidays to places like Florida. They `need` two cars and money for all sorts of extra activities etc

The older generation on the whole made do. Most of them never went out of the country and cars were rare. We walked and we mended and made clothes and our parents put up with clean houses with yards in poor areas but we were taught their ethics. Our extra activities were cubs, brownies, guides and scouts

When it came to our turn to buy a house, we absolutely scrimped to get the best we could AFFORD and never mind that it was filled with hand me downs and second hand goods. We still didn`t go abroad but we went camping.

Little did we know that our house would eventually stand us in such good stead. I can answer the question now: no we were not better off at all but we got our priorities right