Youngsters cannot afford to buy a home?

CKhalvashi

berbastrike wrote: »

Because some young people will spend huge amounts like this -

Iphone - £500 per year
Clothes - £1500 per year
Ibiza holiday - £1500 per year
Alcohol/partying - £1000 per year


Thats almost £5000 pounds, over 3 years, theres your (or lack of) house deposit.

Sacrifice = short term failure = long term success

My iPhone costs £220 a year, and is about 4 years old.
Clothes - I don't spend much, OH spends a lot.
Holidays (usually 3-4 back home and 1 elsewhere) about £4k for the ones home (typically 8-10 weeks a year), and the other about £2k (typically 2 weeks a year). This is for 4.
Alcohol/partying - £0

I've spent the last 10 years working hard to build up a business. I'm early 30s and own my property.

Nada666

penguingirl wrote: »

My brother and his girlfriend live in London and each earn approx 20k. Their rent is about 1200 a month for a one bed flat.
[...]
Many of my peers have little job security/low hour contracts and high loans (often from funding postgraduate degrees), plus many struggle to understand financial products. Plus if you are single I think it is very difficult without the help of parents.

Again the puzzle is not about those in London or those without full-time salaried positions (or the large number of middle-class positions that are being pushed down to close to minimum wage salaries). Their plight is taken as read. The trouble is the many others around the country who are on adequate wages who also plead it's impossible.

If you're in a normal city where a room is £325 or less per month there is no reason why you can't live pretty well on a £400 spend per month and have £5,000 each year to save. Plus another £700 left over for a summer holiday and a couple of European city breaks.

Nada666

fairy_lights wrote: »

But in some parts of the country rent is so high that is uses up the lions share of your wages, and then you've got council tax, utilities, transport costs to and from work to pay as well as food and other essentials.
After all that you might have enough to save a little bit every month but then what if your washing machine gives up the ghost, or your car fails it's MOT and you have to use up those savings?
And even if you do manage to save enough to buy a property, there's no guarantee you'll be able to get a mortgage or won't have been priced out of the market by the time you get the money together.
I don't blame people for choosing to spend their money on holidays and ipads instead of saving for a deposit, when home ownership feels like such an impossible dream.

But most don't. £325 rent, £100 bills, £200 food, £100 leisure. That's £725 from a £1200 net salary.

Large numbers of people live in towns and cities where they do not need cars or need to commute to work. They can easily have £5,700 left over every year after a generous monthly living allowance.

Washing machines are the responsibility of the landlord.

fairy_lights

Nada666 wrote: »

But most don't. £325 rent, £100 bills, £200 food, £100 leisure. That's £725 from a £1200 net salary.

Large numbers of people live in towns and cities where they do not need cars or need to commute to work. They can easily have £5,700 left over every year after a generous monthly living allowance.

Washing machines are the responsibility of the landlord.

You're basing that on people renting rooms in shared houses though, people who rent flats have a lot less left.

ViolaLass

Nada666 wrote: »

Again the puzzle is not about those in London or those without full-time salaried positions (or the large number of middle-class positions that are being pushed down to close to minimum wage salaries). Their plight is taken as read. The trouble is the many others around the country who are on adequate wages who also plead it's impossible.

If you're in a normal city where a room is £325 or less per month there is no reason why you can't live pretty well on a £400 spend per month and have £5,000 each year to save. Plus another £700 left over for a summer holiday and a couple of European city breaks.

£75 for food, transport, spending money, clothes, water, electricity, council tax, pension etc?

Really?

Bossypants

Nada666 wrote: »

If you're in a normal city where a room is £325 or less per month there is no reason why you can't live pretty well on a £400 spend per month and have £5,000 each year to save. Plus another £700 left over for a summer holiday and a couple of European city breaks.

Wait, £75 a month to cover everything excluding rent? Transport (bearing in mind that there will likely be a significant commute from that very low room rent), food and basic hygiene, and some form of communication with the outside world (i.e. internet or mobile phone?)?


Edited: I really shouldn't take 5 minutes to compose posts, should I? Glad to see I'm not the only one who finds the idea absurd though.

Newlyboughthouse

fairy_lights wrote: »

You're basing that on people renting rooms in shared houses though, people who rent flats have a lot less left.

This is another compromise many younger people aren't willing to make, thus their savings take a hit. I lived in house shares from 16 - 25. And I have huge social anxieties too so I HATED it but I knew renting a whole flat wasn't financially viable. There will always be house shares available EVERYWHERE, but many youngsters want the 'glamour' of a whole flat.

Nada666

ViolaLass wrote: »

£75 for food, transport, spending money, clothes, water, electricity, council tax, pension etc?

Bossypants wrote: »

Wait, £75 a month to cover everything excluding rent? Transport (bearing in mind that there will likely be a significant commute from that very low room rent), food and basic hygiene, and some form of communication with the outside world (i.e. internet or mobile phone?)?

Eh? Where are you getting £75 from?

£325 for rent, (that is a high rent, not low) and £400 for other bills. (£100 household bills, £200 for food, £100 allowance for sundries.)

And, yes, I'm talking about a shared house. How terrible.

Callie22

Nada666 wrote: »

I wish someone would explain why anyone on a reasonable salary cannot save a deposit over three to five years.

If you're on a minimum wage or zero hours you're out - but anyone in a profession or even with a starting salary of 15 to 17K has no excuse. And there are plenty of people starting on more than 20K who also seem to plead they need help. The whingeing simply does not add up.

I think it's easy to forget how expensive renting is. One thing you need to factor in is the cost of moving. My OH and I moved practically every year for ten years - sometimes through choice but more often not. I'd conservatively estimate that each move cost us in the region of £2k, when you take into account fees, deposits, moving costs, time off work etc etc. So that's nigh on £20k (a good deposit!) we've spent just on moving, and it's incredibly disheartening when you're trying to save for a deposit and every time you save a few grand it disappears because you have to move. That makes saving for a deposit very, very hard. You're also working on the assumption that people will have a fixed amount coming in over a few years - realistically most people won't. Partnerships change, as do circumstances - people take time off work, change jobs, get made redundant, go self employed, have kids. All of these things make saving hard and sometimes impossible.

We bought a house about six months ago and even with moving costs and the few renovations that we've done (including a new boiler), I'm a bit blown away by how much easier I'm finding it to save. Our 'housing' cost is fixed for a few years and I know that (all being well) we won't have to move for the forseeable future. I've managed to save a heck of a lot on utilities as I've been able to shop around and I'm not being forced to use key cards. Even stuff like our car insurance has reduced. More generally, I'm in a place that is mine and where I feel comfortable to relax, so we rarely go out anymore because we don't feel the same need to 'get away' from LLs and LAs. We have got renovation costs which we are having to budget for, but even with that we are 'better off' each month than we were when we were renting.

Nada666

fairy_lights wrote: »

You're basing that on people renting rooms in shared houses though, people who rent flats have a lot less left.

Yes, I am. And?