"Generation rent" - did ppl really marry in their 20s and buy a house?

evenasus

Andypandyboy wrote: »

It was the norm in my circle, we married in 1981

It was the norm for people I knew in my generation.

We married aged 22 & 24 in 1967 and moved into our new 3 bed semi after the wedding.
We'd saved every penny we could for three years before we married.
We had to spend on bus fares to work and pay our respective parents our board but that was about it.

10% deposits were also required back then.

Londonsu

I bought my first home when I was 19 and my husband was 25 , I left school at age 15 and married at 17, so I had 2 years of savings before I married and 2 years of savings as a couple, my Husband had been working since age 20 so he had savings from when he first started work so between us had a good deposit, however we lived in London and even then (40 years ago) there were parts of London we hadn't a hope in hell of affording

wotsthat

Percy1983 wrote: »

While I was saving for a house my phone contract was £7 a month with a free phone (still paying the same now).

So is it wasteful as I am running a smart phone or frugal as I have cut the costs to 1/4 to 1/6 of what the none frugal have done.

Neither - it's only £7.

At any age running an iPhone 6 on contract, adding a Sky package, buying a smart 3D TV and a MacBook Air is going to reduce the gap between income and outgoings. They've been duped by marketeers who are much smarter than them and who couldn't give a fig if that £100 / month (and the rest!) might have been better spent on something else. However, it's easier to blame other people/ generations because people hate to admit they've been conned.

House prices go up and down and the age of the FTB doesn't seem to be particularly correlated. Probably the shift towards longer educations and therefore delayed earning has had much more impact.

ruggedtoast

BJV wrote: »

Wish I was rich enough to class myself as a rich middle aged person.


Sorry sounds like the youth looking for an excuse. Things are difficult for young people today. True. Guess what they where difficult for the last generation as well.


You think that we can not understand, you think that things are so different. Guess what I said exactly the same thing to my parents and I bet she said the same to hers.!

The difference is that a statistician would have confirmed that an Everyman 'you' was indeed better off than your parents.

The reverse is true now.

ukcarper

ruggedtoast wrote: »

The difference is that a statistician would have confirmed that an Everyman 'you' was indeed better off than your parents.

The reverse is true now.

Where's the cut off my generation x kids are better off than I was at their age.

BouncingBean

tincans6 wrote: »

Find me 1 young person who can mend their own clothes / cook cheaply / mend domestic stuff and not fritter money away on trivia & I will find you a 100 of my parents age who can do similar.

Like it or not, the older generation (my parents) is generally a lot more frugal.

True to some extent, but not really. I can also show you many people 'my parents age' who fell hook line and sinker for the rampant credit consumerism that started to take a massive hold in the 80's. My parents came from working/lower middle class, 'make do and mend' practical type backgrounds, but still fell for it and got into financial trouble. To this day, they love their latest trinkets and ball balls, and I shake my head at the sheer staggering pointlessness of it all.

From my 20's I was living a very frugal lifestyle, no central heating or hot water, few mod cons (all essentials), making my own clothes, growing veg - (apart from the basics of gardening) these skills I learned, not from my parents, but by research.

Most baby boomers I know think throwing money at things will solve problems. That you can buy solutions to 'problems'. They think you can buy quality. They think it's very important to have home broadband AND smart phone internet connections even though they rarely use it. They think it's really important that their interior decorating is 'in fashion' and change it almost yearly. They love their trinkets and "trivia". Most importantly, a lot of the 'baby boomers' I speak to just do not get that my generation and those after me cannot afford a property, despite good jobs. To them, good jobs mean you buy a house or 5.

In fact my partners mother (a woman I like and respect), is the very epitome of a baby boomer. She has retired on a very nice pension, owns 3 properties, takes many holidays a year and is spending a never ending amount of cash on a shopping habit for tat she doesn't need (at the same time constantly throwing really good stuff away to make room for latest stuff). She hires a never ending stream of trades people to do even basic work like removing wallpaper! Even though she has more than enough time to do it herself!!!! She buys a new car every 2 years because it's 'a hassle' to deal with the MOT. She then complains that she is a 'poor pensioner' who just doesn't know how she will cope financially LMAO! If it wasn't so funny I'd cry. She wouldn't dream of mending her own clothes, cooking cheaply or doing DIY. On the rare occasions she buys a cheaper brand of toilet roll, she thinks she's really clever and frugal.

I digress, but my point being, whilst the 'my parents generation' might have higher amounts of practical skills, they have still fallen for the "trivia". Most have forgotten any practical skills they learned. Use it or lose it. This is how the current generation doesn't have these practical skills, 'parents generation' left them behind and didn't pass them on. Heck, it was my gran who taught me to knit.

I'm not sure your parents parents (or grandparents) would think much of your parents practical 'make do and mend' abilities either

ruggedtoast

ukcarper wrote: »

Where's the cut my generation x kids are better off than I was at their age.

Yes, everyone here has already donated the last tire from their Nissan Qashqai to their kids all of whom are already doctors and lawyers with multiple properties around the home counties.

It doesn't change the fact that if you look at real evidence, not anecdotal reports, Gen X and Y are worse off than the boomer generation, and will remain so until the end of their working lives, which will be 10 or more years longer than today's retirees without many of the current perks.

ukcarper

BouncingBean wrote: »

True to some extent, but not really. I can also show you many people 'my parents age' who fell hook line and sinker for the rampant credit consumerism that started to take a massive hold in the 80's. My parents came from working/lower middle class, 'make do and mend' practical type backgrounds, but still fell for it and got into financial trouble. To this day, they love their latest trinkets and ball balls, and I shake my head at the sheer staggering pointlessness of it all.

From my 20's I was living a very frugal lifestyle, no central heating or hot water, few mod cons (all essentials), making my own clothes, growing veg - (apart from the basics of gardening) these skills I learned, not from my parents, but by research.

Most baby boomers I know think throwing money at things will solve problems. That you can buy solutions to 'problems'. They think you can buy quality. They think it's very important to have home broadband AND smart phone internet connections even though they rarely use it. They think it's really important that their interior decorating is 'in fashion' and change it almost yearly. They love their trinkets and "trivia". Most importantly, a lot of the 'baby boomers' I speak to just do not get that my generation and those after me cannot afford a property, despite good jobs. To them, good jobs mean you buy a house or 5.

In fact my partners mother (a woman I like and respect), is the very epitome of a baby boomer. She has retired on a very nice pension, owns 3 properties, takes many holidays a year and is spending a never ending amount of cash on a shopping habit for tat she doesn't need (at the same time constantly throwing really good stuff away to make room for latest stuff). She hires a never ending stream of trades people to do even basic work like removing wallpaper! Even though she has more than enough time to do it herself!!!! She buys a new car every 2 years because it's 'a hassle' to deal with the MOT. She then complains that she is a 'poor pensioner' who just doesn't know how she will cope financially LMAO! If it wasn't so funny I'd cry. She wouldn't dream of mending her own clothes, cooking cheaply or doing DIY. On the rare occasions she buys a cheaper brand of toilet roll, she thinks she's really clever and frugal.

I digress, but my point being, whilst the 'my parents generation' might have higher amounts of practical skills, they have still fallen for the "trivia". Most have forgotten any practical skills they learned. Use it or lose it. This is how the current generation doesn't have these practical skills, 'parents generation' left them behind and didn't pass them on. Heck, it was my gran who taught me to knit.

I'm not sure your parents parents (or grandparents) would think much of your parents practical 'make do and mend' abilities either

If you think your partners mother is typical I think you are mistaken. People of all generations succumb to easy credit but I think it is more prevalent in younger generations perhaps because when boomers were young credit was harder to obtain and they learnt to save for things. You are very patronising what makes you think most boomers hardly use their broadband or mobiles phones do you think us boomers are Luddites.

ukcarper

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Yes, everyone here has already donated the last tire from their Nissan Qashqai to their kids all of whom are already doctors and lawyers with multiple properties around the home counties.

It doesn't change the fact that if you look at real evidence, not anecdotal reports, Gen X and Y are worse off than the boomer generation, and will remain so until the end of their working lives, which will be 10 or more years longer than today's retirees without many of the current perks.

There is no real evidence and Gen X had the opportunity to buy properties when prices were at there lowest.

BouncingBean

PlymouthMaid wrote: »

It certainly helps enormously if you do not live anywhere near London. This was actually part of my decision to leave Essex for Devon when i became a student in the mid eighties. By the end of the Eighties I was a working single parent and hated renting as every 6 months I seemed to have to move so I used every single penny I had to buy a flat for £36000. A few years later when I needed to sell ideally to move in with my children's father (who had managed to buy a large house for £34000 two years after my flat purchase), I had 10,000 pounds of negative equity so had to be a reluctant landlord for some years. When I moved into my flat (and indeed still today 20+ years later) I had second hand furniture and even cardboard boxes doubling as side tables

Fast forward to 2013 and my lovely lass and her husband were able to buy a super house for £150,000. They had some deposit help else they would have been saving for another 5 years or so. Their mortgage is only £6 dearer than the rent on their previous flat. One of the most noticeable differences is that there is not a shred of second hand about my daughter's house and it does seem that young people assume they will will fill their house with new stuff. Even in the 'house' I moved to, we had no carpets for two years as we could not afford them.

Deposits are the main issue as already identified. Outside of London it is still very possible to buy in your twenties so long as you can live at home still and save. For those paying rent it must be very difficult.

Kinda true. But earnings are less outside London as well. Another difference is that the common sentiment here is 'I scrimped to get a deposit, bought a house, scrimped for a few years more, then bought a bigger house/paid my mortgage off'. With house prices no longer being 3 or 4 times annual salary and the lack of job security, that few years of scrimping turns into something vastly different.

Where I live a 20k a year job is consider AMAZING, and there is little call for skilled work here unless you are a farmer. The average 2/3 bed house price here is about 150k.