1.6m people aged 20-40 'living with parents'

Ronaldo_Mconaldo

Why do people always seem to refer to living with their parents as "living at home", a few people here have done it and I've known lots of others do it. I own my own house, I live at home, as in I live in my home.

p00hsticks

Zekko wrote: »

In some cultures it is quite common for people aged 20-40 to still be living with their parents.

And I think that, until relatively recently, you could include the UK in that. In the last century it was common to remain living at home until when (or if) you got married. My 78 year old father was one of seven children, three of whom remained unmarried and living with their parents throughout their lives (two surviving sisters still share a home).

In my experience, it's only in the last fifty years or so that single people have tended to move out of the area in which they were raised in order to work, and have set up homes of their own.

kabayiri

A changing market of how and when people buy houses will not be lost on the more astute house builders.

Some of these 20-40 group simply will not be in a position to buy their own homes; some will actively prefer to live at home. A neighbour's son falls into the latter - he is quite happy to be at home, and spends money on an expensive sports car.

Regardless of which group, will we see newer houses designed for multi-generational living ? I'm sure future governments would love it if we had more of our elderly living with us instead of expensive care homes.

FATBALLZ

chewmylegoff wrote: »

Perhaps, being a young person without much experience, they didn't earn the average salary, but earned much less. It would probably take a young person today earning minimum wage a long time to save up half an average salary - minimum wage being about £11k and average full time salary being £26/27k or something like that. Unless "saving like mad" entails not eating, or paying to get to work etc.

Although I must say I hate the "saving like that" expression. Right up there with "hard working families" as a piece of utter bollox.

And "living like church mice" lol.

I understand your point however we could also assume the person bought a reasonably below average price house. If they did start work at 21 then they presumably had a degree and should have been making half decent money for 4 years, or if they left school with no qualifications then they should have had at least 9 years of saving up their possibly crappy salary. With almost no outgoings that doesn't sound like they were trying all that hard.

Callie22

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

A simple enough fact to understand, but one that seems to be totally ignored by the majority. The proportion who save for "stuff" [like cars/TV etc.] let alone for retirement is now miniscule. It's a buy now/pay later society.

Debt has been normalised for the younger generation. It's also much, much easier to obtain credit now, and in a lot of ways it almost necessary to be using some form of credit in order to be able to function in society. For example, I had massive problems trying to rent somewhere when I left university. The main reason for this was that I had, to all intents and purposes, no credit record - I'd never been in debt, never had a credit card, never been overdrawn, never taken out any kind of credit agreement. I was brought up to believe that you saved for emergencies, then saved some more for luxuries - if you can't afford, you don't have. No doubt a few years ago (were I not female) that attitude would have been enough to get me a mortgage fairly early on, and was the right one to have.

Nowadays however you can't even get decent utility contracts without being credit checked (and don't get me started on getting a private tenancy!) so young people see having debt as a normal, necessary and accepted part of life. And then they go down the route of 'well it's only another £100 on my credit card' and the banks push the credit limits up and up so people think that it must ok to be that much in debt. You can't really blame most young people when the 'spend, spend, spend' mentality is rammed down their throats at every opportunity. And lets face it, they've got to have learned that somewhere. Many will have been brought up by parents who had the same attitude, and who simply got away with it because of the times they lived in.

Brallaqueen

FATBALLZ wrote: »

And "living like church mice" lol.

I understand your point however we could also assume the person bought a reasonably below average price house. If they did start work at 21 then they presumably had a degree and should have been making half decent money for 4 years, or if they left school with no qualifications then they should have had at least 9 years of saving up their possibly crappy salary. With almost no outgoings that doesn't sound like they were trying all that hard.

A degree is no longer a guarantee of a job that makes 'half decent money'. I was in admin and for this 16k starting salary, a degree was required.

FATBALLZ

Brallaqueen wrote: »

A degree is no longer a guarantee of a job that makes 'half decent money'. I was in admin and for this 16k starting salary, a degree was required.

It was (as much as it ever could have been) in the time period I am referring to (a boomer poster who bought a house at 25).

ukcarper

FATBALLZ wrote: »

It was (as much as it ever could have been) in the time period I am referring to (a boomer poster who bought a house at 25).

I don't think anybody apart from you said they didn't start work until they were 21.

FATBALLZ

ukcarper wrote: »

I don't think anybody apart from you said they didn't start work until they were 21.

No I said they've probably worked between 4 and 9 years. 4 years if they went to University, 9 years (or possibly more?) if they went straight into work after school. Either way they seem to have taken a long time of 'saving like mad' to save actually very little.

Loughton_Monkey

Mr_Matey wrote: »

You've touched on a key point. Britain's demographics have changed significantly. It is much more multicultural than it used to be. People from a Mediterranean or Asian background are often encouraged to stay at home until marriage.

Loughton, comparisons with countries such as China or Korea always seem a bit strange to me. Savings are lower in the UK, because a lot more money is tied up in property and pensions, which are used to fund retirement. What's the pension/support system like in Korea, and do people generally own property or plan to rent through retirement?

Also, I'm not sure about Korea, but in a lot of Asian cultures, a young person is expected to look after or help the older generation, effectively meaning you are paying for retirement when you are working (assuming your kids look after you). So you would need to start saving a lot earlier for this.

In other words there's a lot more to this.
.......

Well certainly I agree there are other factors at play. They do save both for their own retirement and that of their parents - who they are expected to support. Also, mortgage to buy are extremely rare. But renting is a rather unique system where you still have to find about 80% of the value of the house as a deposit! The landlord's "rent" consists of the interest on the deposit - which you get back after, say, 3 years.