For those who think we had it easy...

CYBERCIDERSAVER

Running_Horse wrote: »

20 years ago there was no minimum wage.

I lived in London (yes London) on £2 an hour. £1 an hour was not unknown (I started on £0.65 an hour in 1982).

Yeah but you could get a lady of ill repute and still have change from a fiver in 1982! Oh Thatcher was great wasn't she????:eek:

Poppy9

Zebedee69 wrote: »

Its more difficult today than every before you wally!

20 years ago people were not so rude to one another!

Zebedee69 wrote:

Jobs are harder to get. Im not talking about jobs in general but jobs that will LAST longer than 3 months temp contract!

Milllions were unemployed. Redundancy was common. My OH was made redundant in 1987, less than a year after us buying our first home. We had a £17k mortgage and both earned £5k per year. He had to get a job, any job to pay the mortgage and pay for refurbishment of the house. How many youngsters would today live in a house that had no CH, no kitchen, an ancient bathroom, damp walls and furnished with hand-me down furniture?

Zebedee69 wrote:

Ever wondered how those new graduates who cant get jobs will find a house?

Most people didn't go to university. They abhorred debt and instead went out to work, any work, to pay their own way. I bought my first house at 22 after working, saving and studying for over 4 years. I didn't fritter money away on gadgets, holidays, new cars. I had no debt.

Zebedee69 wrote:

I love the way people cite the way things used to be and tell us things are all rosey in the garden?....

We are all (young and old) more materialistic now. No one wants to wait for anything now.

Zebedee69 wrote:

20 Years ago you didnt have to loan £20000+ to go to university JUST TO GET A JOB! All you did was go to the nearest factory and ask!

University wasn't an aspiration for the masses, earning money was. Decent paying factories were closing and being replaced with low skilled, low paid factories.

Zebedee69 wrote:

20 Years ago you didnt have to work for minimum wage in a skilled job because the Polish will work it for £4 an hour!

20 years ago there wasn't a minimum wage. They could pay you as little as they could get away with.

Zebedee69 wrote:

20 Years ago houses didnt cost £150000 average!

and 20 years ago I wasn't earning £30k per year.

Zebedee69 wrote:

20 Years ago you didnt need to be Polish/Have a qualification and registration number to be a Binman/Labourer/Insert non skilled job.

no you had to have father/uncle etc who worked on the bins to get you 'in'!

Zebedee69 wrote:

20 Years ago when you applied for a driving licence you got just that... Now we have to get a new licence and test just to pull a bloody trailer. This costs upwards of £1000 a pop!

over 20 years ago I was paying £7 per hour for a lesson and even after passing my test I couldn't afford a car!

Zebedee69 wrote:

So keep your wisecracks about how easy it is for us youngsters! We have to be smarter/wiser/fitter/quicker and still sucumb to years of debt to get the training to suceed in this new age.

you forgot ruder and more hard done-by!!

Zebedee69 wrote:

Oh and if you call for an Ambulance dont mention your username to the crew. It might be me and il just leave you there!

so typical of the caring face of the NHS! Even keeping children in education till 21 doesn't teach them compassion and manners!!

Zebedee69 wrote:

Sorry for the rant but I hate people like you!

and I hate the fact that we are breeding people like you!

reformedEffortMaker_2

Zebedee69

I think you have been a bit out of order to the OP. I agree its harder to get on the ladder now, but it is not impossible.

I personally think that a lot of people have spent so much time watching Sarah Beeny and Phil/Kirstie that they will not settle for anything other than a semi detached victorian with original features close to good school, station, pub, shops, with room for a loft extension and a post code to shout about

Its all about compromising. I am sure, even on a technician or paramedic wage you could afford something in the UK if you compromised?

reformedEffortMaker_2

Oh and I forgot to say, Zebedee69 , I think your comments about Polish immigrants were right on the border (excuse pun) of being offensive. As with afro-caribbean transport workers in the 50/60's and asian doctors of the 70's, I think the Polish are doing jobs that no one else wants to do (well not when the alternative is sitting at home watching Jeremy Kyle and getting social money), and in others, they are under-cutting the competition to get the custom. Sounds like the kind of thing you get taught on day one of business school to me.

Chas

I bought my first house in 1982.

It cost £21,000 for a two bed terraced house.

We had to put down a minimum of 10% deposit - there were no 100% mortgages to be had.

The mortgage was £18900 but the maximum my husband and I could borrow was £15000. He was earning £5000 (motor mechanic) and I was earning about £3500 (office worker) but the building society refused to take my income into consideration. My parents had to put £3900 in an account and the building society took a charge on the investment as additional security for the loan.

Chas

Forgot to mention the massive Mortgage Indemnity Guarantee premium we had to pay because we borrowed over 80% of the value which was about £500 and the interest rate was 15%.

It certainly wasn't easy then. I'm not saying it's easy now either.

Running_Horse

Chas wrote: »

Forgot to mention the massive Mortgage Indemnity Guarantee premium we had to pay because we borrowed over 80% of the value which was about £500 and the interest rate was 15%.

I remember that. The only compulsory insurance policy where the holder gets no benefit? Accompanied by a much higher interest rate.

Oh yes, I forgot one more piece of advice for those saving a deposit. Don't live up to your income (pretty obvious really). We go out properly maybe three times a year, have only had one holiday (a week in a honeymoon cottage), and I ride a cheap old motorbike to work which costs a fraction of a car. There are endless things we would like to do with our new house, but they can wait a few years.

Running_Horse

Zebedee69 wrote: »

Oh and if you call for an Ambulance dont mention your username to the crew. It might be me and il just leave you there!

Society could not function without the medical products I make, but unlike you I will never qualify for any "key worker" schemes.

It's called the private sector; most of us have to live in it.

iamstacie

My parents bought their first house in 1984 (when I was 2) for around £13k, when mum was working as a checkout assistant and my dad was a driver for a bakery, neither earning a decent wage, but they wanted us to have a proper family home so worked towards saving the 10% deposit needed for 5 years. It was a large 3 bed terrace with huge gardens with seperate dining room/kitchen/lounge. They worked so very hard to keep that house when the interest rates rose, my mum working all the hours possible in the supermarket, and my Dad had to go back to work in '92 (had been a SAHD since my bro was born in 86) and still when it was sold in 2000 it only reach around £35k.

I don't think I have it easy, but I'm aware that I have it a lot easier than they did. A house such as the one I was brought up in is now worth around £120k, which is very attainable if I were to put a bit more effort into saving, and even at the rate I save it wouldn't take me anywhere near as long to save up 10% as it took my parents on dual income 23 years ago.

I think a least part of the problem why people of my age find it hard to accept we'll have to pay upwards of £120k for a for a basic house is that we do remember the time you could buy a house for £30k, and its not all that long ago. (I'm not saying the house my parents bought was particularly basic, just that the area is quite rural so £120k = £180k in Manchester.

Anyway, I'm rambling...

PROFESSIONAL_LANDLORD

Good thread Running Horse

Back in 1970 my wife and I viewed a semi villa, a showhouse built by Wimpey, the price £4000 the mortgage was £ 32 PM after MIRAS being deducted it would have been £24 PM , my weekly wage was around £13 PW nett, (only 1 wage ) we couldn't afford it, a year later I landed a job were I was paying around £19 a week tax, a lot in those days, we moved 2 years later after saving a large deposit. OMG! I feel old.