Does the State Pension increase every year?

Silvertabby

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

MaxiRobriguez

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

The one graduate in the UK that wrote their final thesis on Kardashians is a nice story which perpetuates the myth that the young are feckless and entitled.

I work a 55 hour week, earn in the top 10% of incomes, put away 60%+ of it, got a 2:1 from a redbrick in computer science and maths a decade ago. I am the absolutely archetype of what some in the older generations say young people should be - yet I can't afford a four bedroom place, even when adding in my wife's salary. What are we doing wrong?

I really don't think some older people realise how broken our system is, nor how much they lucked out. It's almost like a form of survivorship bias.

sevenhills

Silvertabby said:

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

Blair introduced tuition fees because there had been a steady increase in student numbers, making them pay tuition fees would not encourage more into University, but the numbers did increase.

Silvertabby

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

The one graduate in the UK that wrote their final thesis on Kardashians is a nice story which perpetuates the myth that the young are feckless and entitled.

I work a 55 hour week, earn in the top 10% of incomes, put away 60%+ of it, got a 2:1 from a redbrick in computer science and maths a decade ago. I am the absolutely archetype of what some in the older generations say young people should be - yet I can't afford a four bedroom place, even when adding in my wife's salary. What are we doing wrong?

I really don't think some older people realise how broken our system is, nor how much they lucked out. It's almost like a form of survivorship bias.

Based on what you have said, I'm sure that you'd be able to afford a house like ours.

4 bed, 2 bath, separate dining room, utility, garage plus off road parking for at least 2 cars, decent sized garden in a very nice market town.  Yours for just over £300K.

The only thing it doesn't have is a London post code.  Choices, choices......

MaxiRobriguez

Silvertabby said:

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

The one graduate in the UK that wrote their final thesis on Kardashians is a nice story which perpetuates the myth that the young are feckless and entitled.

I work a 55 hour week, earn in the top 10% of incomes, put away 60%+ of it, got a 2:1 from a redbrick in computer science and maths a decade ago. I am the absolutely archetype of what some in the older generations say young people should be - yet I can't afford a four bedroom place, even when adding in my wife's salary. What are we doing wrong?

I really don't think some older people realise how broken our system is, nor how much they lucked out. It's almost like a form of survivorship bias.

Based on what you have said, I'm sure that you'd be able to afford a house like ours.

4 bed, 2 bath, separate dining room, utility, garage plus off road parking for at least 2 cars, decent sized garden in a very nice market town.  Yours for just over £300K.

The only thing it doesn't have is a London post code.  Choices, choices......

I don't live in London, I live in that notoriously well-to-do and expensive area of..... the East Midlands. A 4 bed like you described above, with a reasonable school to send our nippers to, starts at half a million. We're about £75k short, and whatever we save the affordability actually gets less each year.

SouthCoastBoy

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

The one graduate in the UK that wrote their final thesis on Kardashians is a nice story which perpetuates the myth that the young are feckless and entitled.

I work a 55 hour week, earn in the top 10% of incomes, put away 60%+ of it, got a 2:1 from a redbrick in computer science and maths a decade ago. I am the absolutely archetype of what some in the older generations say young people should be - yet I can't afford a four bedroom place, even when adding in my wife's salary. What are we doing wrong?

I really don't think some older people realise how broken our system is, nor how much they lucked out. It's almost like a form of survivorship bias.

As a 56 year old I totally sympathise and yes the system is broken. However until govts decide to do something about it I am afraid it will stay as is. Everything is built on a house of cards I think there will be a tipping, when who knows?

Silvertabby

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

The one graduate in the UK that wrote their final thesis on Kardashians is a nice story which perpetuates the myth that the young are feckless and entitled.

I work a 55 hour week, earn in the top 10% of incomes, put away 60%+ of it, got a 2:1 from a redbrick in computer science and maths a decade ago. I am the absolutely archetype of what some in the older generations say young people should be - yet I can't afford a four bedroom place, even when adding in my wife's salary. What are we doing wrong?

I really don't think some older people realise how broken our system is, nor how much they lucked out. It's almost like a form of survivorship bias.

Based on what you have said, I'm sure that you'd be able to afford a house like ours.

4 bed, 2 bath, separate dining room, utility, garage plus off road parking for at least 2 cars, decent sized garden in a very nice market town.  Yours for just over £300K.

The only thing it doesn't have is a London post code.  Choices, choices......

I don't live in London, I live in that notoriously well-to-do and expensive area of..... the East Midlands. A 4 bed like you described above, with a reasonable school to send our nippers to, starts at half a million. We're about £75k short, and whatever we save the affordability actually gets less each year.

East Midlands?  Wow, that's a shocker.  If you really want that particular area, could you go for a 3 bedroom with room for an extension/loft conversion later? 

MaxiRobriguez

Silvertabby said:

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

The one graduate in the UK that wrote their final thesis on Kardashians is a nice story which perpetuates the myth that the young are feckless and entitled.

I work a 55 hour week, earn in the top 10% of incomes, put away 60%+ of it, got a 2:1 from a redbrick in computer science and maths a decade ago. I am the absolutely archetype of what some in the older generations say young people should be - yet I can't afford a four bedroom place, even when adding in my wife's salary. What are we doing wrong?

I really don't think some older people realise how broken our system is, nor how much they lucked out. It's almost like a form of survivorship bias.

Based on what you have said, I'm sure that you'd be able to afford a house like ours.

4 bed, 2 bath, separate dining room, utility, garage plus off road parking for at least 2 cars, decent sized garden in a very nice market town.  Yours for just over £300K.

The only thing it doesn't have is a London post code.  Choices, choices......

I don't live in London, I live in that notoriously well-to-do and expensive area of..... the East Midlands. A 4 bed like you described above, with a reasonable school to send our nippers to, starts at half a million. We're about £75k short, and whatever we save the affordability actually gets less each year.

East Midlands?  Wow, that's a shocker.  If you really want that particular area, could you go for a 3 bedroom with room for an extension/loft conversion later? 

Yes, we're on the look out for those as well - most of those are right at the top end of our ~£400k budget. Some you can get for £300k if they're in a complete state of disrepair, which would be fine but wife is due to give birth in six weeks so not really appropriate!

MaxiRobriguez

SouthCoastBoy said:

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

The one graduate in the UK that wrote their final thesis on Kardashians is a nice story which perpetuates the myth that the young are feckless and entitled.

I work a 55 hour week, earn in the top 10% of incomes, put away 60%+ of it, got a 2:1 from a redbrick in computer science and maths a decade ago. I am the absolutely archetype of what some in the older generations say young people should be - yet I can't afford a four bedroom place, even when adding in my wife's salary. What are we doing wrong?

I really don't think some older people realise how broken our system is, nor how much they lucked out. It's almost like a form of survivorship bias.

As a 56 year old I totally sympathise and yes the system is broken. However until govts decide to do something about it I am afraid it will stay as is. Everything is built on a house of cards I think there will be a tipping, when who knows?

I'm not convinced anything will change until, without wishing to sound macarbe, the baby boomer generation are no longer here, at which point my generation will suddenly find themselves inherit expensive properties they have no idea what to do with. At that point though many of my peers will be mid-50's, so the houses will be used to fund retirements that they've underfunded for the past two decades.

SouthCoastBoy

One problem we have is that the young middle classes get lost with regards to govt legislation. There is plenty of welfare help for work shy and low earners with working tax credit (never understood that as just encourages employers to pay less as they know govt will pick up the tab), its govts interfering with the free market. Then we had Blair  encouraging Btl and now Tories pedalling help to buy  all creating house price inflation plus the ridiculous short sighted decision to sell council stock in 80s. They've all dabbled and created the current position.