Are Parents Really To Blame

No problem Neversaydie

My friend's DD and SIL lived in Cambridge and were able to buy a nice flat because they had paid off their mortgage in a cheaper area of the country.

Have now read the article Do not think the youngsters are typical .

I don't know any like that, Nsd
But neither do I know any selfish parents like the father of the first girl who is moaning!

These young people must have taken interesting Degrees, Screenwriting and a Freelance sound very difficult ones to make much of living from very quickly, someone should have pointed them in the direction of Degrees that would lead to paid Professions. If they didn't want that kind of job why go to Uni?

Our early work/married life was pretty hard, our families didn't have much money and we started off in a small rented flat. Our first home had a bed and table and chairs to start with plus a cooker not much else.

Bucket toilets
No television
No car
No exotic veg or fruit
No 24-hour supermarkets
Free education but no gap year.
5 days a week at Uni not 12 hours a week
No spare money for drinking and clubbing no hangovers and definitely no drugs
One change of clothes, not designer gear and the latest trainers
Part time job not bank of Mum and Dad
Hitchhiking not flights
Tea not designer coffee
No gap year - straight to work
hard work for 40 years
and now we'll have some fun- get over it
While your at it consider our parents and grandparents two world wars, rationing, fatalities and destruction - Every generation has good and bad - millennials have it better than they think.

Round of applause BRedhead59. Very well summed up.

No junk food or takeaways either.

plus ça change....
50 years ago,after saving and having lived in a very frugal fashion (Both professionally qualified). we had a deposit of £3000 in a building society and wished to buy a house ( Kent) which required a mortgage of a further £450. Although we were both in secure employment, we were turned down.
We had to wait a further 6 years before we were granted a mortgage...... leaving me with £43 to furnish the property. This I did through auctions and DIY books to learn about house and furniture refinishing.
Our children all have far higher expectations and do not understand how we live, and require, so little. We are quite contented with our lot but they need to call in expensive aid to extend their dream properties.
There was no 'Bank of mum and Dad) for us or any of them but all encouragement now seems to be outdo their neighbours in throwing out anything deemed out of date and following the latest trend.
Celery with bread and butter for supper , anyone? Not now

Except the people in the article are talking about their parents, not their grandparents.

Parents in their 50's.

What really needs to be done, instead of the tabloids printing articles that just winds everyone up, is to explain to these AC that they are going to have to think differently.
For starters, no one begins life in their 20's expecting to buy a 4 bedroomed house. You work your way up to it. If that's what you want.
Another thing that's taking their money, the girls anyway, are vanity treatments. I know one mum who despairs because her 29 year old daughter's credit card debt is over £30,000 yet instead of working to pay it off, she's spending more money on botox and other treatments.
The debt issue has caused a rift between the girls parents because mum wants to use some of the pension fund to help pay it off but dad says a firm no.

So on top of all the other expenses, there are now things such as nails, hair extensions, botox, lip and eye brow treatments, etc, etc.

I don't think we ever had any of those expenses. I still don't. I work in an image conscious industry but even with this, I don't spend money on any vanity treatments. I used to have a friend who was TV make up artist and she told me all the tricks plus what actually goes into some of the cosmetic products on offer. The plastic and subtance content alone is dangerous.

I am just outside the baby boomer bracket being a mid 1960's baby but my 3 adult daughters are millennials they certainly feel hard done by 2 of them have been through uni and have student debts they are all married (or living with partners) now and have 4 children between them. Despite the fact that all three households have greater income than me with my single salary they constantly come to me for financial help! I have now used up all my savings and taken out a loan to help them
besides this the youngest has been living with me,and throughout the 6 years since my DGS was born, I have taken on extensive child care duties including collecting and taking him to school on my way to and from work, being sole carer at weekends and financially paying for his after school care and clubs as well as supporting them both with no contribution from her.
I have to say that the article made me cross while I can see that this generation will struggle to get on the housing ladder so did we my husband and I lost a house in the recession of the early 1990's and it was many years before I was able to own my own home again. We struggled to pay mortgages at a time when interest rates were up to 7% or above! The cost of living was horrendous too. So we didn't have it easy by any means. In addition I doubt I will ever be able to afford to retire. My private pension pots are tiny and the Government have now raised the age I can receive my meagre state pension to 68 already I feel exhausted and stressed heaven knows how things will be when I get to 68.
So I don't think parents have a duty to support adult children or take on unpaid childcare roles! Many of us do things because we love our families but should not be told that it's a duty.!

Jenpax, I hear your story a lot. The DM article isn't far off the mark unfortunately. Make sure you take care of your on needs and give only what you can spare.

Life has always been difficult for young people though, hasn't it? Moving out is very expensive, I only managed it at the age of 20 because I got a job with accommodation included and this wouldn't suit everyone. Then I moved out into a grim bedsit (sometimes surviving on cream crackers at the end of the month), back home for about six months, then a flat share with boyfriend.
Today's youngsters are used to having 'things': mobile phones, the latest fashions, season tickets for football, drinking in expensive bars, weekends away. All these can be enjoyed while living at home with parents.
Moving out and paying rent is a shock to the system and with an insecure job they could be boomeranging back and forth. Looking back though it was a way to grow up and take responsibility for oneself. I'm not sure if you can become a 'proper grown-up' whilst at home with parents and many generations blame the one before for their ills.

Ms McGee from Glasgow is telling porkies. On £400 a month she isn't required to pay anything back on her student loan! So it has no effect on her financial circumstances at the moment. I would suggest that an unfortunate choice of "degree" subject is more to blame for her inability to find a good job.

Lovebeigecardigans1955,

'Today's youngsters are used to having 'things': mobile phones, the latest fashions, season tickets for football, drinking in expensive bars, weekends away. All these can be enjoyed while living at home with parents.

As they are now finding, they can't have all those things and hope to save up to buy a house. Money only goes so many ways and if you've got more than 3 priorities, you haven't got any.
If you want to buy your own house, this is the pot where your money goes. Everything else gets sacrificed. If they don't want to do this, then they have no right to complain or expect a hand out from the parents.

Ms McGee from Glasgow is telling porkies. On £400 a month she isn't required to pay anything back on her student loan!
good point nannieann - and if she never gets a well-paid job she will never have to pay it back.

If she goes through life with a chip on her shoulder and whingeing she may never get a job or, if she does, will be the first one to be made redundant.

Indeed, research shows two out of three of those born during the population explosion following World War II would rather spend their children's inheritance than pass it on.
(From the article)

That is rather provocative - surely it should read:

"Research shows that two out of three of those born during the population explosion following WWII did not inherit anything or expect their parents to fund their lifestyle, have worked hard, saved hard if possible, bearing in mind the financial constraints of bringing up a family and now want to enjoy the fruits of their labour in their retirement. They also want to ensure they have enough money to pay for care should the need arise because they realise that their children are too busy/selfish to look after them in their old age and they would like the option of choosing their nursing home if need be - which will drain the rest of their resources. If there is any money left after that then their children will be the lucky beneficiaries."

Well said Jalima!

Well the crisis in care available that the ageing baby boomers are facing wasn't mentioned in the article ...but presumably if they spend all their money on helping their millenial children (!!) then in a few years the baby boomers will be described as "feckless/selfish" in the media for not having saved to pay for the care they need!!!!! Can't win!

Good point Madgran77!

I am surprised at just how much the young people think they should have,
We got married in the early 70s. Our mothers both born around 1920s were so worried about us buying a house. It was a tiny flat in a none too great area. We had worried too but we managed. We later bought a bigger flat and so on. We were in a large flat when DH died. Despite all our work and astute financial ways we were near 60 and still not got a 4 bedroom house. The young one want to start in large detached house with everything included.
They don't realise that we worked and worried to get to the point we are at today. I think our mortgage was then 12 or 15 percent.
They complain about the older generation just now but as above our money from the past will have to go on care in old age so that is going to be another fault in our generation. It would never occur to them to care for the elders which used to be normal.
I don't know where all this will go. I wonder what my grandchildren will be saying about my generation and my DC's generation when they are the young adults.
I might be really old but I look at all the tattoos and trips to movies and restaurants and the things they spend money on and I think what a waste! I don't think they are acting wisely with whatever money they do have.
The other thing is that in the case of my DCs they are totally unwilling to listen to any advice. They are unwilling to compromise of the high demands they impose on themselves. They are stress running from work to home and working running a house and bringing up children. That is not a life. I know because I did it, and now that I am older I see that happiness is the main aim we should all have over the wish to acquire goods.

When I started work in an accounts office in 1959, my working day was 8am - 6pm. My 'annual income' (take home) was £156 of which I had to give my mum £100.

Eventually I joined the WRAF, had a great career, my take home pay was more and I had free meals and board!

Don't you think though, that there was a lot more conservative attitude towards money? We didn't take anything for granted because it took so long to get it. Our value system was different to how it is today.
We also learned to budget and save a rainy day fund in the absence of being able to obtain credit.

We reduced the age of legal responsibility to 18, from the far more sensible 21, having de criminalised debt and then made bankruptcy a user friendly option, creating a generation or two of young people with high expectations of being able to live independently and when they come un stuck, getting their debts written off.

Pre war people did not expect to have their own flats at 18 along with a car and a career, most people hung on at home (with the restictions) until they got married late 20's or 30's. In the 60's many of us did leave home and lived in some appalling bed-sits or shared flats, it was rare to have a car, world travel was for the wealthy.

Why people keep going on about the sodding 'property ladder' defeats me, the millennials wanted to be part of the EU, said the oldies had sold them down the river when the vote came in and yet on the continent, people don't own houses the way they aspire to here, they rent them.

Life is not a boxed set of 'Friends' after all, ours was more 'Call the Midwife'..........what do they think life will be until they accomplish things, like, 20 years at work?

Grrrrrrrrrr making debt a bit of a game means the rest of us having to forfeit things, the banks are never going to be out of pocket. This generation will spend 600 pounds on a handbag without blinkingm then run to the bank of mum and dad for a hand out.

Not all of them, but enough to make it a real problem.