Redistributing wealth between the generations

I married in the '70s. Oh yes it was much was much easier financially for us back then. All mortgages were 2 1/2 times husbands salary and half wife's salary. Bought a flat for £5,400, sold it 3 years later for £15,000.
Promptly bought large family house for £32,000 (husband wanted to spend £22,000 max ... Misguided man).
That particular house is now worth a whopping £1 million!
Though we moved on about 12 years ago. I was still all for playing the property market game (husband wanted to play it safe) and current house has received an offer if almost £1.5 million.

My point being that without the massive increases in property values, I doubt many of us would be fortunate enough to 'help' our adult children.

My two are, however, both totally self sufficient having been encouraged from their first jobs (paper rounds) to work and save ALWAYS! Neither use credit cards, both have great lifestyles.

I do occasionally surprise them with a generous financial gift because I want to!

They do complain about how hard work is nowadays and I would entirely agree. Lunch hours (10 mins max). Leaving work in time (rarely). And all the rest!

They both know of course they'll have a nice nest egg coming their way one day .....
But they have never asked for money and that's the way I like it !!!

I can’t remember exactly how much we earned in 1969, but we bought a lovely semi in nice area for £4000. We were teachers and pay then was not as good as now, we got £48 a month in 1966 when we started earning.
I think it’s much harder for young people now.

Yes, the harder I worked the luckier I became.

God bless you Supergran. I agree.

This is a different generation - yes I struggled too with mortgages, but while my first house in 1970s cost 3x average salary, my children's first house would cost 10x. My mum borrowed our deposit (her credit rating was better than ours) and I paid her back. I couldn't borrow a deposit now for my kids.

Anyone else think this thread is turning into a Monty Python sketch?

Seems to me young people have heard that they can't get on the property ladder, so they don't bother to try - saving is not a word they're familiar with, can't get on ladder so might as well have a good time and spend what we have got.

We managed a small two bedroom terrace Victorian house in the early seventies - but no central heating - an oil heater in one room, no television, no car, no washing machine, no garden - just a small back yard - no holidays - all these things have come with time and a lot of hard work - but today's youth don't want to live like that and seem to be doing things in reverse to us.

Let’s face it friends we have created a generation who believes they should live for today, have a good time and get what they want when they want it. They have no concept of self sacrifice or being without. Poor to many of them means not being able to get a mobile phone signal. Their attitude is we have it all, we didn’t have as much as they have now and what we do have we’ve had to work hard for. Let’s stop giving in to these kids, make em stand on their own two feet, living in rented accommodation paying their own bills will soon make them realise their priorities are not eating out and partying at our expense. There is a self satisfying sense of achievement in this far more gratifying than a forgotten Pizza night out.

Our children lived with us until they could afford to rent their own place without relying on housing benefit. Our son bounced back twice but we charged him rent just to keep him in the real world.

We raised our children not to depend on the state for their housing so they studied, worked, saved and chose their lifelong partners well to buy their own homes; except for our son.

He married and bought a lovely four bedroomed bungalow in Texas, but they sold it and moved to rent in Muswell Hill. They now say they no longer want to buy their home and would rather rent so they can readily move to live wherever their careers take them.

All three of our children know that we would try to help them financially if they asked but their pride makes them study and work instead of asking.

Why is everyone so bitter about the younger generation? I have three grown up kids who do not have expensive holidays, own cars or are in any way extravagent. I would do anything possible to help them get on the housing ladder without a sniff of resentment. What's wrong with you all? If your kids are bad with money then maybe you should look at how you brought them up!

Although we helped our children out in minor ways as they were entering adulthood, that’s been it...and they’ve both managed to save, purchase their own homes, getting onto the property ladder...and still have had extraordinarily good lifestyles. If they can do it, a lot of others can. I believe many just wait for their misguided parents to dig into their pockets. It shouldn’t be happening.

Not bitter at all, I have 2 daughters, we help both, but our youngest will probably never own a home of her own, she struggles just as we did.
But appointing blame to the different age groups won’t solve the problem.

This article (and many like it ) has probably achieved what it set out to do .
Can’t believe some of the posts ...

“Young people go to the gym” “young people have holidays “ etc. So much bitterness .

Many young people will NEVER get on the housing ladder !

House prices in relation to salary were much cheaper in our day. but interest rates weren't! We were paying as big a proportion of our salary in monthly mortgage payments as they pay today.

House prices rise to meet the maximum amount that there are still people able to pay. If they are priced too high either they do not sell and the price has to fall or, in the case of new houses, builders stop building, until they can sell at a price that gives them an adequate return.

We were in better financial position than several posters on this thread but when we bought our house, the only carpet was in the living room and we had deckchairs rather than LR furniture. Other furniture was begged, borrowed, although probably not stolen.

What’s worrying is the many of the younger generation believe all this guff. Add in that we are allegedly the reason the NHS is clogged up and there’s a bad feeling towards our generation on many fronts.

I too could add to the discussion, back at work 6 weeks after birth, my wage (even as a professional) not taken into consideration when applying for mortgage, juggling children, career, house, cheap camping holidays (if any) make do and mend, only very basic household gadgets, saving and scrimping, hand me downs, the list goes on. There’s no way we could have survived on one wage so this idea that is bandied around that this is something new is so wrong.

If ever, just once, my own ‘children’ ever express such rubbish, then I’ll be looking at equity release and blowing the lot on my own holiday in the Maldives!

I would have been very happy with an Average wage in 1971, and we never found an average price house either.

That’s the problem with averages.

www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2462753/How-items-cost-risen-line-house-prices.html

Whenever anyone tells me that I've "been lucky"; I always respond with "Yes, I was. And the harder I worked, the luckier I became".

Well maizie our annual wage in 1970 was £860.00, houses were far more than 3 times that amount. And we had a child too. Still not sure how we managed but as others have said we didn’t have a fridge, washing machine, TV or a car and we didn’t have parents who were in a position to help us apart from the occasional Sunday Roast. Living 13 floors up in a Tower Block was the incentive to save.

Interest rates were as high as 17% when we had a mortgage

I'm sure many of the young moaners should give our lifestyle a try and see how cushy it really was
Quite.

Add to that redundancy, high interest rates when we had a mortgage and no savings.

I don't think the article was meant to be at all serious...

But.

House prices in relation to salary were much cheaper in our day. It was a hill to climb, not a mountain.

From the Office of National Statistics (ONS)

On average, working people could expect to pay around 7.6 times their annual earnings on purchasing a home in England and Wales in 2016, up from 3.6 times earnings in 1997.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/housingaffordabilityinenglandandwales/1997to2016

I seem to recall we reckoned on about 3x salary in the 70s.

I try to avoid the conversations about the older generation being lucky because.....they are usually inaccurate in the least and very offensive.Like most others in their 60's we worked our socks off ,no maternity leave for me I left hospital with baby on the Thursay and was back at my desk with her in tow on the Friday .No holidays for years ,my OH worked 14 or 16 hours a day to build our business and our first flat might only have cost £14k but it took us 8 years in a council house to afford the deposit and still no holiday ,no expensive nights out etc etc etc .I'm sure many of the young moaners should give our lifestyle a try and see how cushy it really was .

Married the day after my 17th birthday and a month after his with a baby on the way we had NO money! We lived in a grotty flat with a shared bathroom. We had no tv, no phone, a car that died the week the baby was born and certainly no holidays apart from one my in-laws took us on when my son was 2 on a houseboat. We worked - hard - we eventually had a house thanks to a £200 deposit from my in-laws which enabled us to get a 2 up 2 down. It was 7 years before we were able to get another car and regularly had to dig down the sofa to find 10p to put in the gas meter to cook the dinner and by pay day each week could only afford egg and chips. We had odd food handouts from both sets of parents when things got very difficult. Did we think we were hard done by? Of course not - most couples we knew back then were in the same boat. All we have now has been achieved by sheer hard work, forgoing holidays and years of scrimping and saving especially in the early and later years of being self employed. My own AC have done the same - they have had some help from us but in the main have got where they are through their own determination - eating tinned peas and instant gravy in the case of my younger son when he left home who didn't tell us at the time how hard up he was! Our parents lives were even harder. It is so frustrating that (some) of the young of today feel the world owes them a living but of course they could never know what life was like for the generations which have gone before.

Jalima

I think the three stages could be termed:
Optimism
Realism
Stoicism

I am hoping that my wealth will be redistributed but not just yet!

The young people I know who are 'hard up' have gym memberships, regular nights out, drive and go on holiday. (And think nothing of regularly buying coffee at £3 a paper cup!)

I know this isn't the case for all young people but we were POOR as young people starting out in the 70s. We budgeted all the time to make money go round, had second hand furniture and were (in our case) forced to take on crippling endowment mortgages. We ran one old car and rarely had holidays. Times were hard. yes, property prices may have gone up but we still needed a roof over our head.

I know so many pensioners who are still supporting their adult children and providing lots of free child care for their grandchildren.

I suspect many people over 60 did not have parents they could rely on for money, nor did they see their parents as baby minders.

Right now we are having a bit of a dilemma. One AC and her partner seem to think our time isn't precious. They asked us a while ago to have GD on Saturday while they went to the gym with friends to play squash. Afterwards they wanted to 'chill out' with said friends and have a pub lunch. They have already taken bags of washing and ironing around to his mothers so they get a laundry service at the weekend too. They come and collect GD at 6.30pm. We have both said we feel mean taking a stand because we love little GD but we can see this becoming a regular thing, their Saturday off.

They are 'so tired' after working all week, you see. This is the third week running we have been asked to take over while they 'chill'.

Really, some young people have no bloody idea what it is to become working parents and live in the real world. I am sure there are many of us on GN who could tell a tale about the exhaustion we felt as young working parents, the economies we had to make, the things we went without, with none of the child-care the perks available today. (I know my friends daughter REALLY does have it hard, and has little disposable income, but surprisingly she doesn't expect her parents to carry her load at the weekend.)

It's like a parallel universe!