For those who think we had it easy...

Poppy9

tr3mor wrote: »

I don't know. But you seem to be tarnishing us with the same brush.

I have tried hard not to tarnish all people of whatever generation with the same brush.

tr3mor wrote:

A 12 year old can't make sensible choices about money. How can it be her money anyway?

aside from her pocket money (£20 per month by bank credit) her money comes from birthday presents, so it's hers, just the same as it would be mine if I had birthday money. I disagree that a 12 year old can't make sensible choices. We encourage her to do so. The mobile phone is a good example. I sat down with her and showed her how the £100 granny had given her to buy a mobile phone for her birthday would really cost her £160 over a year (assuming £5 top up per month). I then showed her how with a cashback contract (I've only ever had cashback deals for the last 5 years ) she could spend just £5 per month (£60 a year) on a mobile. She wouldn't have the latest model, but she wouldn't have for £100 either and at the end of the 12 months she could sell the phone for about £30 (the average I sell mine for) and use the £40 saved from previous year, plus the £30 to finance a phone for a second year.

She is a normal 12 year old. She comes home from school and I can hear the hints clanging on the floor when she says "so and so has x". We tell her she too can have X if she wants to spend her own money on it. It clarifies her mind!

[/quote=tr3mor]How is inheritance any use to your daughter if she wants to think about buying after uni? Are you planning on popping your clogs in the next decade?[/quote] I hope not but as by the age of 24 I had lost both my parents I am realistic that it can and does happen. Possible inheritance is form of security as on average children outlive their parents and so will inherit at some point. The chances are either my OH will inherit his mothers house or else our DD will as the only grandchild.

No one surely expects to leave uni one year and own a house the next year just as no one expected to leave school at 16 or 18 and own a house before they were 20. Most people expect to have to work for a good few years to get some money together.

guppy

CYBERCIDERSAVER wrote: »

Are you an estate agent??:eek:

Not 3 times.....

about 2.61 times:D

Are you a pedant?

It's 2.6086956521739130434782608695652 times anyway!

Lavendyr

Poppy9 wrote: »

can she use it though:D

Amazingly, yes, though her texts often take a bit of deciphering :rotfl:

Poppy9 wrote: »

I meant TVs:rotfl:

Oops, sorry!

Poppy9 wrote: »

OMG worse than turning into your mother you are turning into me:rotfl: :rotfl: In 20 years time you will be saying "well we decided to spend our cash on buying a house which is why we own our own home"

We do want to own our own home, but we will want it to be a home, and we will want to keep the debt to as little as possible. Which is why I do understand and agree with what people like Running_Horse are saying, in essence, as I am certain that there are people like he/she describes out there, but I despise the generalisations made that assume that every young person/FTB out there is frittering away money - it's simply not the case.

(and yes, I am turning into my mother, it is horrifying :rotfl:)

minimoocow

Interesting debate!

My mum has mentioned how difficult they had it when they bought their house 30 years ago with interest rates on the rise etc.

I don't doubt it was tough for them and many others but at the time she was a teacher and my dad probably earned a similar wage. Their house is now worth about £450k - there is just no way a couple of newly qualified teachers earning a joint income of £40 - £50k could afford that even with a 10% deposit!!!

As for me - we bought a few years ago (in a much cheaper area!) just before all the 100% mortgages came in. We had a deposit but struggled to get a mortgage as my OH was still a student. This was despite the fact the mortgage was £100 a month LESS than the rent!

And maybe we are the exception but we have just this week signed to get a new kitchen installed having saved up for it for the past 4 years!!! We inherited the oven which was in a poor state and needed replacing at the time (along with the rest of the kitchen!), the door fell of last year and we have to shut it with a brick!!!!

We painted what we could when we moved in and managed to replace the shag pile bathroom carpet with the bit of the lounge carpet the previous occupants had under the sofa! We found some old wardrobes in the cellar which my OH took apart and turned into a desk for the spare bedroom!

What I'm trying to say is some of us "youngsters" do make do but given the availability of cheap credit and the fact most young people who have been to uni see debt as a way of life I can understand why they are reluctant to wait when buying now is so easy - after all you only pay later!

BrandNewDay

franklee wrote: »

Which illustrates another side effect of high house prices, trebling your husbands commute, as has happened for many, wasting precious fuel, polluting the environment and causing traffic delays.



Well I hope it works out for you but looking at the figures round here the rental is the better deal financially. Ex-council houses on cruddy estates are going to be extremely vulnerable to price falls. I fear this was a bad decision and cannot see the rationality of wanting to buy at all costs.

As a household, we drove just as much up there, actually. I had to drive 24 miles round trip to take our son to nursery, and that's assuming I wanted to spend 2.5 hours sitting in Lochgilphead rather than going back home and making the trip twice. I don't have to drive at all down here. So, my husband's commute trebled but we don't consome more petrol than we did before.

We would have had a hard time buying a house up there even if we'd had a lot of money. There simply aren't very many houses to be had. Very little on the market. Of course, it doesn't help that 10% of them are second homes, and that's part of the whole housing market madness. I did see that the buyers of the house three doors down from us weren't able to make any money as a holiday let and have put it back on the market less than a year later.

The house we did buy is a nice little house, in excellent condition. And, it was only £62,000, which means that our mortgage is significantly less than our rent had been. If the price drops, we'll ride it out because we intend to stay in it until the kids are grown.

Another plus is that, because we were only up there for my husband's job, if something happened to his job, we would have been stuck out there. Down here, he has many more options for good jobs.

granville_2

Running_Horse wrote: »

...buying our houses in the 1980s, a quick history lesson:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday

I was sitting on a National Express coach visiting a relative at the other end of the country, when it came over the radio that interest rates had been raised twice in one day, and that Norman Lamont would keep raising them forever if necessary.
[SNIP]
Yes, it is hard to buy a house today, just as it always has been, but interest rates are low, incomes are higher on average, and multiples are high. If you want to buy a property, start saving a deposit now. Think of commuting, from a rougher area if necessary. Buy a flat for a few years instead of your dream house. Take a part time job, or lodgers. Get more qualifications and consider other career options.

If you can't do this, then I am sorry, but home ownership is probably not for you.

20 years ago, wage inflation was much higher.

In this supposed low-inflation - low interest rate environment we live in (yeah, right!) it is going to take a *lot* longer to pay mortgages off.

carolt

Poppy9, you may not mean to, but are you aware that you come across as UNBELIEVABLY patronising?

Possibly all the young people you know/are related to (with the exception of your 'good' nephew) fit into the stereotype that you describe, but as young person after person on here has informed you, that is not at all how we live our lives. I'm another one for whom all our furniture was hand-me-down's from family (not quite - a couple of weeks ago there was great excitement in our family when my OH brought home a 'new' table and 6 chairs bought for £50 from the charity shop - and very smart they are too ); my mobile was recently replaced by a much newer one for a total cost of -2p, with 200 minutes of free calls included, thanks to the helpful tips on other mse boards, etc etc.

Please don't forget that you are posting on mse, which as its name would suggest is full of people (young as well as old) who value saving rather than spending money.

Maybe there are young people who live lives like the ones you describe - but the chances are they don't spend their Saturdays posting on here about how hard they find it to buy a house...

So mind who you stereotype.

And for the record, all surveys/records show that house prices relative to average incomes are far higher even than at the peak just before the last crash, that percentages of salary spent on monthly mortgage costs by FTB's are the highest ever, etc.

So it's not OPINION that those buying earlier had it easier. It's FACT.

Note I say easier, not easy - it may not have been easy for those buying in the late 80's either, for example. But it WAS easier than now......

lieutenant_dan

I'd loved to have at least had the opportunity to save hard for a deposit, and then acquire a mortgage, as many in the 70s/80s/90s did. When people in those eras overstretched, it tended to be to secure a property a bit above the minimum they could afford. Now, we're talking about overstretching (iff you're lucky) just to get a one bed flat or even studio flat in some cases.

This debate will get nowhere until some people acknowledge the facts as you say though. And they are facts.

Another good example above with the girl whose parents are teachers, buying their equivalent £450k house now, no chance.

£50k combined salary may get them a one or two bed flat at most (where I am anyway) and try raising a family in the former.

Zebedee69

Poppy9 wrote: »

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

Yes they were, it was just hidden from society and not talked about. A bit like the child abuse that was hidden under the carpet.

Poppy9 wrote: »

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?

Iv lived like that too, and iv been made redundant twice. Snap!

You forgot the mice though.... Lots of mice, cute little fellas but they ate dinner:rolleyes:

Poppy9 wrote: »

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.

I no gadgets too! I cant afford them!

Poppy9 wrote: »

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.

Its a little different now but the callcenter movement to India is a good example of this for the modern age.

Poppy9 wrote: »

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

Minimum wage means nothing! If a business wants to get away with paying sub £5.35 they will. Iv been called a contractor before now to shy away from paying Min wage and taxes.

Poppy9 wrote: »

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

Neither am I and I dont expect to in the future. Good on you though for bagging a decent paying job!

Poppy9 wrote: »

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

Doesnt work like that now! You have to be foriegn/a layabout waiting for Labour to come and snap you up for their "Return to work action team" - Working for a fair employment.... Or some other crap!

Poppy9 wrote: »

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!

And today is different from then.......... Ah, yes the lessons are 4 times the price, how silly of me!

Poppy9 wrote: »

you forgot ruder and more hard done-by!!

Aw ya poor lamb.....**HUGS**

Poppy9 wrote: »

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

Im very compassionate and my manners are top notch:D. So im sure you will join the call for random beatings for under 30's;) Your right about uncaring NHS though. Unfortunately most people dont get to even scratch the surface of how uncaring it can be! All il say is if an 80 year old woman is holding a bed and the targets aint being met........ Guess who goes home to die because she needs more care? (Frequently happens)

Poppy9 wrote: »

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

My mum is very proud of me. Thats all I care about im affraid:beer:

Im just wondering if iv been the victim of those people who bait forums to get someone to have an argument. Cant remember the name of it now.......mmmmm:rolleyes:

More high horses than the Royal Family visiting Blackpool Tower...... Its the MSE forum ha ha:D

notatroll

It took a while in this thread but eventually it is at the basics now: self-satisfied-but-somewhat-insecure ‘wise’ properly owners against ‘i-am-even-wiser-(but-more-insecure)’ i-rent-because-i-choose-to-and-not-because-im-somehow-inferior renters. HPC class wars all over again, certainly, - fuelled by generational shift in standards of living/expectations and eternal father-son conflict. Good reading + low flames, thanks.

Hands off the government by the way – they are doing a brilliant job.