Do you fear for your financial future as Mr & Mrs Average.

Weronika

Dunroamin wrote: »

Although this is all very laudable and MSE I couldn't and wouldn't live like this. Suppose (heaven forbid!) that something had happened to one of you and you had to look back on all those wasted years which could have been filled with pleasure and happiness as opposed to rhubarb and sprouts.

I'm all for being non consumerist but life is for living and not just for saving for the future.

I think this kind of lifestyle view is the biggest problem right now - just because they didn't spend money on take away and restaurants it doesn't mean their quality of life suffered. The happinesses is not directly connected to the amount of money spent!

For me is shocking that parents think they need to give £400ish Ipad to 11 yr old for Christmas! The latest gadgets are soon forgotten but how about actually spending time together instead of just watching the telly?

Also, take in consideration that eating organic fruit and veg is more beneficial to our bodies - and what better way to ensure the product is really organic by growing it yourself?

Living your life to the fullest is about more than just maxing out your credit cards!

as a side note:
It's easy to forget that without the house price crash many people wouldn't be able to afford to buy one now!

We saved for our deposit for a year, ditching the 2 bed house we were renting and living in a studio flat but thanks to that little sacrifice [and to be honest BC(before children;) ) all you need anyway to be happy is nice bed...or sofa... ] we were able to get a nice 3 bed semi and completely renovate it without getting into debt at all (extensive use of 0%CC was required though).
So thanks to price crash we were able to buy a house and we already added value to it so our house value increased £30k since 2009!
I didn't think it's that hard to go without Sky and I don't feel deprived because I don't have a £1500 Fendi handbag. I'd rather drive happily our BMW that was paid in full in cash! (and our house income is well below £30k so it's not like we are high earners)

It's not all doom and gloom!

lostinrates

FatVonD wrote: »

The reality for my generation was that in your 20s you lived in a series of house shares/grotty bedsits and if you were able to afford to even just rent a whole flat to yourself then that was the ultimate in sophistication and you were very fortunate! It was exceptionally rare that a single person would even consider they would be able to afford to buy their own property. I wouldn't have been able to save the deposit and wouldn't have been able to buy had my dad not lent me the deposit, (well, half the deposit, my partner at the time borrowed the other half from his employer) and the minimum deposit in those days was 10%.

I don't know how old you are, but wa this under current tenancy regulations and when there was more social housing per capita?

FATBALLZ

FatVonD wrote: »

My parents didn't buy their own home until I was 12 (so my mum would have been 36 and my dad 41.) They paid £7,500 for a 3 bed house, I paid £23,000 for a 1 bed flat 11 years later which I think is more than a 200% increase.

Come on now, you can't seriously be trying to argue the prices we have today are comparable with anything that ever previously existed prior to 2003?

Once you've taken inflation into account, prices before this period have never been anything like as expensive as they are today - end of story. The only time even remotely close was 1989, which was a very brief temporary spike which peaked at a full 20% less than todays ("post crash") real-terms prices and subsequently saw prices rapidly fall again afterwards.

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/indices-nationwide-national-inflation.php

As for high interest rates, give me a 12% interest rate on a £40k mortgage over a 5% interest rate on a £115k mortgage any day of the week.

Dunroamin

Callie22 wrote: »

Apologies - I used the term 'house' generically, to mean a home. Also, where I live there isn't a great deal of difference, price wise, between your average tatty terrace and your average flat, most of which are new builds are are a lot more expensive.
.

When I was in my twenties it was very difficult to get a mortgage on a tatty terrace - building societies were far happier with modern housing which obviously meant a flat rather than a house. The people I knew who bought renovation projects generally did so with special mortgages designed to encourage people to regenerate rundown areas in cities.

Personally, I think that we're very silly in the UK with our attitude to flats and apartments and would be better to change to a more continental attitude. My last place was an enormous, 4 bed Victorian flat with almost double the floor space that i could have got from a house at the same price and with a much larger garden.

FatVonD

lostinrates wrote: »

I don't know how old you are, but wa this under current tenancy regulations and when there was more social housing per capita?

I'm 52, Lostinrates, and yes, this was before the Tories sold off the council houses.

FatVonD

FATBALLZ wrote: »

Come on now, you can't seriously be trying to argue the prices we have today are comparable with anything that ever previously existed prior to 2003?

You said that prices had increased by 200% in the last 15 years, I was pointing out that in the 11 years between when my parents bought their first house and I bought my first flat prices had increased by MORE than 200%. My figures were wrong though, my first flat was £19,500, not £23,000 (but that's not even comparing like for like.) The £23,000 stuck in my head was what I sold it for after 4/5 years so apologies for that.

The massive price hikes in late 80s/early 90s(?) were due to the Tories announcing a cut off date for being allowed to claim two lots of tax relief on a joint mortgage. Folk rushed to buy and prices were pushed sky high only for interest rates to rise astronomically and the housing market to collapse. It took many years for those properties in negative equity to regain their value (and that's if it hadn't been repossessed in the meantime.)

FatVonD

FATBALLZ wrote: »

As for high interest rates, give me a 12% interest rate on a £40k mortgage over a 5% interest rate on a £115k mortgage any day of the week.

It's all relative though, salaries were a lot lower then. If you had a 115k mortgage now, in 15 years with salary and price increases the next generation who have a 230k mortgage will be telling you how easy you had it!

lostinrates

FatVonD wrote: »

It's all relative though, salaries were a lot lower then. If you had a 115k mortgage now, in 15 years with salary and price increases the next generation who have a 230k mortgage will be telling you how easy you had it!

I use my dad and dhs situation as a comparison. My dad earnt a slightly above average income the year i was born, and the year my parents bought a house, a whole house, in west london. They had not bought before and had a decent but not overwhelming deposit.

Dh earnt comparitively far higher above average income (incomparable to my dad's situation really) when we noticed details for a flat in this house (now either four or six family homes due to sub division) and with a much larger percentage deposit and the area being no more fashionable we could not afford it on salary multiples.

FatVonD

lostinrates wrote: »

I use my dad and dhs situation as a comparison. My dad earnt a slightly above average income the year i was born, and the year my parents bought a house, a whole house, in west london. They had not bought before and had a decent but not overwhelming deposit.

Dh earnt comparitively far higher above average income (incomparable to my dad's situation really) when we noticed details for a flat in this house (now either four or six family homes due to sub division) and with a much larger percentage deposit and the area being no more fashionable we could not afford it on salary multiples.

Now I want to know which bit of West London you're talking about!

balletshoes

FatVonD wrote: »

The reality for my generation was that in your 20s you lived in a series of house shares/grotty bedsits and if you were able to afford to even just rent a whole flat to yourself then that was the ultimate in sophistication and you were very fortunate! It was exceptionally rare that a single person would even consider they would be able to afford to buy their own property. I wouldn't have been able to save the deposit and wouldn't have been able to buy had my dad not lent me the deposit, (well, half the deposit, my partner at the time borrowed the other half from his employer) and the minimum deposit in those days was 10%.

yep i agree. I was born in the late 1960s, working class background and working class friends/colleagues. it was normal to rent for the duration of your life, not buy. I think my sister was the first person I knew who actually got a mortgage, and that was after she got married and had rented 2 different properties first.

to be perfectly honest, i probably would still be renting now, but my OH preferred to have a mortgage instead (and our mortgage at one point was £150 per month more expensive than rent on a similar house would have been).

mr and mrs average, to me now, is someone who has a mortgage on a modest place, who sends their kids to a local decent school and hopes their child wants to go to university (again, by no means the majority of kids I went to school with were interested in a university education, including me).

actually, having written that last paragraph - mr and mrs average could be described competely differently for every person here !