Generation Skint

WTF?_2

http://money.uk.msn.com/consumer/article.aspx?cp-documentid=8348191

With our fast cars, handheld computers and digital television sets, it's easy to feel better off than the previous generation. But there's more to prosperity than electrical goods - and in many ways today's 30 and 40-somethings are worse off than their parents.


Hits a lot of good points although I wouldn't believe the official unemployment figures and more than I believe the official inflation figures.

thriftybabe

I often say to my mum about how things were when she was a young mum. I feel they were worse off but my mum says "the pressure on you young ones is just as hard". I agree to a certain extent that outside pressures make things difficult and a lot of people feel they have to give their kids the same as all the other kids however my OH and I have never been like that. We can well afford to do it but don't. We want to keep our kids unspoilt and have decent values and for them not to expect that everything is given to them on a plate. I notice others in my family who are not in a position to give their kids everything get themselves into debt to keep up and think its nonesense. They must look at us and think we are miserable!

BACKFRMTHEEDGE

Hi all,

I'm sorry but I find the idea that we are worse off laughable:rotfl::rotfl:. I'm only 45 but I can remember my mum doing her washing (for a family of 7) with a soap board and mangle. And then they made the first commercial Hoover washing machine (they have one in the science museum) and she saved up like mad to buy one....no electric kettles, toasters, "hoovers"...not to mention a tumble drier and dish washer and central heating (it was huddle around the fire - smokeless fuel if you were lucky) No TV.:D Go back one more generation. They had to live through two world wars....We don't know we're born....:cool:

carolt

Undoubtedly living through wars was worse than just being short of a bob or two!

But for those after the war, from the 50's on, I think life WAS better. Yes, there were were less material things around, but hhow much happiness do you really derive from owning thousands of gadgets? I hardly ever watch the telly personally, and don't let my kids watch much; wouldn't miss it that much if we didn't have one.

My parents were able to buy a 3 bed house in a very nice area on 3 times one wage; and my dad was a manual worker at that point, on a very average salary.

How many manual workers on average salaries could afford 3 bed houses in a nice bit of London now? (current cost: about 500K.)

You may feel you'd rather have a washing machine and telly.

Personally, I'd rather have a home.

Obviously, our ideas of 'essentials' are different; I certainly find yours rather bizarre.....

Kez100

Not many could afford homes when I was young. Allmy mates lived on the council estates and, while we didn't, we had been on the list but then the council offered Mum and Dad a fixed mortgage rate (for 25 years if they had stayed there) to buy themselves their own home, so that's what happened.

It was harder then but there was a lot less stress. No watching your back at every turn, nit picking if you didn't follow some rule to the nth degree and HS rule guidelines constantly being pushed further to keep boys in jobs.

borntobefree

carolt wrote: »

I hardly ever watch the telly personally,

Neither do I am too busy surfing the net:rotfl::rotfl:

borntobefree

carolt wrote: »

Obviously, our ideas of 'essentials' are different; I certainly find yours rather bizarre.....

What you don't see a washing machine, hoover, kettle, toaster and central heating as essential Where do you live? What's bizarre about kitchen appliances?

Benefits_Blagger

the problem with comparing technological items is that they are always getting advanced and most importantly cheaper. go back to as short a time ago, as the early eighties, things such as CD players, microwaves and home computers were more expesive in nominal terms and much inferior to the products avaialable today. yet these items were then only affordable by very few households but are now easily affordable by anyone these days on benefits.

however then as now, there are large sections of the population who are unable to afford decent housing, fresh food or even to heat their homes in winter. these are the necessisities of life and what we should use when measuring the "quality of life"

PasturesNew

When I was 15 I did LOADS of babysitting. 2-3 times a week. I did this for months ... aaages.

And I saved every penny to buy my first cassette player.

It was fab. It was mono and it was a radio-cassette player!! So I could record from the radio onto a casette. How great was that???

£70 it cost me!

Damned thing these days would be so cheap I could earn the money in just one half-a-night's babysitting

Oliveru

carolt wrote: »

But for those after the war, from the 50's on, I think life WAS better.

I think directly after the second world war there was intense rationing and the UK government was in a lot of debt, then we begged the US for a big loan which was eventually granted and that allowed the government at the time to form the NHS and the economy boomed.

So you can imagine that did us well for a couple of decades, then along came north sea oil which also did very well for us so we decided to use it up fairly quickly. But before that loan people really had it hard, a very meagre ration.

Then oops, it started running out in the 90s. So what was left? Credit. Due to a mix of factors including the Japanese yen carry trade, banks passing on risky debt to 3rd parties and the UK governments tight controls on planning permission they were able to engineer an unprecedented boom in house prices. This easy credit also found it's way into the e-commerce bubble around the start of this century until that crashed.

Now here we are again, coming to the end of our last magic solution for the economy and what is left?

Consumer culture?

Nope that will die when inflation slowly erodes our income.

What about our gold? Brown sold most of it a decade ago at well under it's current market value. Yet despite that public debt has still been rising a lot over the last decade, along with private debt ofcourse.

What about the financial sector, surely such a large part of our economy will carry us through these hard times?

Actually it was the financial sector which caused the boom in the first place so it's safe to assume that will bust with it, I could go into details but if you are that interested then do your own research.

But we are Britain! We had the biggest manufacturing sector, biggest shipbuilders, best inventors, richest country in the world! Well I'm sorry to say our manufacturing sector is dead, shipbuilders have all moved to Asia where labour is cheaper and expertise is now high enough to handle it and many of our intelligent citizens have done the intelligent thing..by moving abroad for oppurtunities.

I know a guy who has a masters in physics yet can't get a good job in this country and he is moving to Germany, another is moving to Singapore- Other countries appreciate real skills as they are investing in the future, not investing in corrupt asset bubbles.

ruggedtoast

In one of those endless summers that 18 year olds get as a rite of passage, back in '94 I was in the college library and my friends and I were talking to a new chap. Suddenly a beeping started emanating from his pocket. What on earth was it? We watched dumbfounded as he removed a mobile phone from his pocket, went bright red and said "its my mum". We erupted in laughter that someone our age would have something so pretentiously expensive for talking to his mum.

Back then kids who's parents I would have considered affluent lived in nice houses, maybe had one foreign holiday a year and were able to run an old secondhand car that would have cost around a £1000 (no small beer for an A level student in the time of Teen Spirit). Everyone had a Walkman,not many had a really nice one, some people had tvs in their bedrooms, and a £5 entrance fee to a club was a special occasion. I was vaguely aware that credit cards existed. And on the whole kids were if not exactly happy, felt like they were part of something that made sense, and would lead them somewhere if they stuck together and put a bit of work in.


It seems like I'm talking about some bygone age but this was less than a decade and a half ago. Its like the legs have been kicked out of what used to make sense and the world has become so shiny, hard and greedy. What you earn, who you are what you make, its all that matters now.

I dont care how many iPods they have, I dont think kids should have to live like this or look up to some uncharted world of greed and who has what trainers. Its not fair - why cant they have what we had. Its us 30 and 40 somethings who should remember.