Differing expectations for today's young couples setting up home?

grandmajet

ixion

And, while we're at it, don't get me started on honeymoons?

What about the stag do/ hen night! And when did baby showers creep in? Come to celebrate my pregnancy and bring a big present please!

My daughters friend had no less than THREE hen do's! Week in Malaga for special friends, nice meal out for mum, MIL, aunts, godmother etc and a night club party for her workmates! The cost must have been eye watering!

We had a mortgage with a very high interest rate (17% or more?) when we moved into our first one bedroom flat. We had generous wedding gifts including a double bed and a washing machine, but sat on boxes watching a tiny portable TV.
We bought a sofa and a dining table and chairs on hp. That table is tonight going to leave us after almost 40 years good service.

I think that easy credit meant that my children were able to buy new things. It will probably be going back to the way things were with so many out of work and credit harder to obtain.

Ages ago now, one item on a mostly Harrods wedding present list for BiL and Sil was a set of (wait for it) - mother of pearl handled caviar spreaders! £45. I asked the bloke on the other end of the Harrods line whether that was for the set.
No, it was each.
To be fair, he did laugh as much as I did.

I was sorely tempted to give her half a dozen of those little flat wooden spoon things you used to get with ice creams in the cinema.
IIRC I bought a photo frame instead.
That SiL has been ex for ages though - she was always incredibly extravagant with money - a shopaholic extraordinaire.

Left my parents house, went to church, got married, left at midnight to drive to honeymoon, week later collected the keys to our first house in 1970, £3250, and moved in together for the first time. Second hand three piece suite, Orlins three quarter bed and an old wardrobe from his parent’s home. My parents paid for Venetian blinds, curtains and a kitchen table and chairs. We bought a fridge and cooker and used the laundrette for our washing.
A year later we were able to afford carpets, sold up for £7250 and took off for Australia where we built a very basic house for £3500 and I went off to uni while Orlin supported me.
Our own boys have mortgages in the hundred thousands in spite of help from us but they’re fully kitted out with all mod cons, fully carpeted, nice cars. They and their children seem incapable of waiting for anything until they’ve saved up. I will say, however, that none had huge fancy weddings, honeymoons or have lavish holidays.
They seem to have spent the bulk of their money on capital assets so I suppose they know what they’re doing.

Practically all the furniture we have ever had has been secondhand and both children are the same.

We do now have some very nice antique furniture (of very little value because no one buys brown furniture these days,) but started by haunting junk shops and auction sales and renovating items and gradually upgrading them. DD is exactly the same and what she doesnt buy secondhand she makes. She is currently making a stair carpet - and I have never owned a 3 piece suite,

Nowadays Mid-century modern is all the fashion. DD got into this very early and has a lot of early Ercol furniture bought before it bcame fashionable again.

I don’t know ixion maybe it depends. My DD is in social housing, has been for 12 years, it was only last year, we all inherited money from my late Mum, did she buy new white goods, sofa etc, we’d helped out before with beds, carpeting and always GC’s, shoes even then her dining furniture was used. I had second hand in the early years, as long as it was warm and comfortable, that’s what mattered.

And I got a set of fish knives and forks !!!

Sarnia Wedding present lists go back generations. I didn't bother, ours was a small wedding and after several years of living in a bed sitter I had a collection of basic cooking and eating tools. Mostly people asked me directly what we needed and we discussed it. As I remember, bedding and towels were mainly what we needed.

Thankfully most of my family were not toast rack people, although my work colleagues gave me a strange selection of goods; plastic table mats, ditto coasters and a display plate.

I agree Galaxy but I do think some couples go over the top with their expensive weddings and fully furnished houses.
Some wedding lists read like Home and Gardens to say nothing of weddings held abroad which put guests to a great deal of expense.

And surely nobody wants their children to live without heating, washing machines etc my expectations for them are higher than that, let alone their own expectations.

Most of our generation had to make sacrifices to buy a house, those that didn’t, stayed renting and spent the spare cash from week to week. The difference is 3 fold -
1) rents were affordable.
2) more singles expect their own place.
3) far more in further education, no income until 20s

Improvements in housing quality has increased prices too, no change likely because even the current building boom won’t be enough

Every generation sets the bar higher. When we got married central heating in a house was a luxury. Now it is considered a basic need. Fridges were luxuries. Now with our hygeine obsession, a family without one is considered to be living in dire poverty. An internet connection is now an essential - and how COVID has shown us that!!!

I could tell you how we started life in a cardboard box under a drain cover, with only a newspaper to cover us, but I think such comparisons are odious

Millie22. It had a jacuzzi too!

My parents had an outside shared toilet.

We were married fifteen years before we managed our first suite. Up until then all hand-me-downs. Interestingly, I'm currently sitting on the suite we bought thirty nine years ago and.....still love it. Things were made to last then and we took time to make our selection which has resulted in not getting tired of many items.

My first (owned) house was an Edwardian terrace; it had lots of room, but no central heating. All my furniture was hand-me-downs from family, and I felt lucky to have a twin-tub washer.
I didn't live with central heating until I was 38 - oh the bliss!
Didn't choose/buy a new carpet until I was in my forties. (Houses all came with carpets and/or I had second-hand ones from family.) I rarely come across young people who are happy to "start out" like that, now.

Esspee
I'm struggling with the swimming pool!

I remember my parents receiving a wedding invitation from a nephew together with a present list, which was gaining in popularity at that time. My Dad had not seen one before and was a bit put out that instead of buying what he thought his nephew would like he had to choose something from the list. My Mum tried to calm him down saying it was a sensible idea. They would get what they wanted and not be lumbered with 3 or 4 toasters. The last wedding present I bought was from a list held by a department store. I was quite surprised by some of the gifts requested. I wonder if today's youngsters get the same sense of achievement. I was thrilled when my husband & I could pack away the 2 deckchairs for a small sofa we had saved up for.

ixion

The grateful receipt of the family's Green Shield stamps so that we could acquire an ironing board!

Ixion yes!

Oh - yes, the Green Shield Stamps!!
DH’s extra job was in a garage when people sat in their cars and it was filled up for them. Lots of people, especially Reps told him to keep the stamps, so he had a jar behind the counter for them. A set of Tower pans came courtesy of those stamps.

MadeInYorkshire. The house was in LA. ?
I never did comment on the ridiculousness of their very first home having a pool. The money had been sent. It would only have caused a breakdown in our relationship.

The grateful receipt of the family's Green Shield stamps so that we could acquire an ironing board!

In 1971 we rented a bed sit, thankfully it came with a cooker, curtains and carpeting, with a manky , mouldy cupboard for our clothes.
We had a kitchen table and chairs for a wedding present (still using the table), electric kettle was also a wedding present, we splashed out and bought a new bed settee, coffee table was a wedding gift and I had a third hand washing machine with a mangle on the top. All odds and ends, bedding etc. were wedding presents or given by relatives.
No car, phone, fridge, television, hoover.........however did we manage?
But we had no debts either.

ixion

And, while we're at it, don't get me started on honeymoons?

What about the stag do/ hen night! And when did baby showers creep in? Come to celebrate my pregnancy and bring a big present please!

GagaJo I think that would have been the exception not the rule, especially for working class people. Most wouldn’t have had the cash to lend to family.
Yes the cheapest wedding dress, the weekend by the seaside honeymoon, putting items back in supermarkets when we didn’t have quite enough to pay.
The good old days!

Interest rates of 17% on our mortgage

I'm so worried that my son and dil have stretched themselves so much that when the rates start to go up again they won't be able to afford anything. They couldn't live without a dishwasher!