Some food for Ruggedtoast's soul

zagubov

Generali wrote: »

You aren't acting in the way that the Millennials in the article are depicted.

Also right to buy doesn't seem to have impacted on your situation. A couple earning 2.5 times the average UK would never have gotten a council house.

The extension of student places seems like a crazy idea to me. Better that a university education is free for an elite than is expensive and available to all. What has happened is that a degree is required for jobs that never needed one. Working as a clerk in a bank used to be a classic way in to a well paid career for someone reasonably bright that wanted to leave education at 16 or 18. I can't imagine many bank tellers under the age of 30 don't have a degree these days.

I remember the writing appeared on the wall some years back when there was a news item that Harrods was employing 100 university graduates as shop-floor staff.

A lot of my students were demotivated by this as they thought it undermined the value of the degree courses they were applying for. I had to stress to them that we were getting to the stage where a HE qualification was going to turn into the new baseline qualification for most, if not all, new jobs, and it was now more important than ever to get as qualified as possible.

When I started as a college lecturer i was teaching day release hospital technicians in a massive technical college which has simply ceased to exist. More and more of the teaching got absorbed by the expanding new universities/former polytechnics, in the form of full-time degree courses.

As the years went by, the lecturing job opportunities switched to preparing massive numbers of sixth formers to go to uni for full-time training before they get those jobs.

vivatifosi

Jon_B wrote: »

I agree with regards the workplace pension. Our employer will match up to 8%, but j can't stretch myself that far yet.

In an ideal world you'd hope the state pension would still be there. Let's face it - the boomer retirement population will be much larger than the current working millennials, so the pension contributions should be less of a burden.

Let's not forget, people who claim a pension today are not really claiming back what they put in the pot 40 years ago, more claiming what's in the pot today.

Some employers offer a 50% scheme, where both you and they pay in a lower rate, that may be worth looking into. How old are the children? Hopefully the childcare cost burden will reduce as they get older.