My parents brought up 3 kids on one and a bit salaries, and were always careful...one foreign holiday in my entire childhood (camping in France), one second hand car at a time, saving for stuff rather than credit, that sort of thing.
I took my first steps into adult responsibility in the early 80s, got stung by high interest rates and narrowly avoided negative equity in 89/90 when the housing market crashed, so also had to live a fairly frugal, cautious lifestyle for a while.
In the mid 90s after getting made redundant (no huge payout though) I went to university full time as a mature student just before tuition fees became a thing but still had to rely on student loan payments and deal with the £10k debt that resulted as I was still paying my mortgage on the family home. I worked 30 - 40 hours per week on top of my Uni studies for 3 years doing anything I could get in order to keep my head above water and it was tough, really tough at times.
But I wasn't special, or exceptionally driven, I just did what I thought I had to do in order to get what I wanted out of life. I'm comfortable these days but not through luck.
2 of my grown up kids have houses, mortgage, kids, all the stuff I have but apart from the kids, they have cheaper versions of what I have. They are happy with what they have believing that they can gradually improve their lot over the coming years. They keep credit to a minimum and still save up for things, taught themselves some useful DIY skills and are generally doing well and staying solvent.
None of us had to do it in London though and house prices were and still are relatively affordable in the part in the part of Somerset where my parents and kids still live (Chilco country) so I can only speak for what I know, and what I know is that all 3 generations of my family have faced challenges, all 3 generations have gone without in order to achieve an end, and all 3 generations were and are still careful to live within our means.
My parents had those values instilled out of necessity being born just before WW2, I had those values passed down to me as good advice (which I actually listened to unlike most if what they told me
) and in turn, I tried to pass those values on to my kids. It seems to have worked.
My point, after that ramble is that with a bit of luck, and a lot of hard work, it is still possible to make your place in the world, to own your house, and to get to a position where you can afford to bring the next generation up. Same as it was for me, and the same as it was for my parents.
But my real point is that I'm not typical, nor are my parents and neither are my kids - but there are large numbers of people who did exactly what I did, just as there are large numbers of people from all 3 generations who didn't or couldn't and didn't have such an easy time, so the whole idea that an entire generation can be better or worse off than another kind of grates because it just isn't true. Some people will always do a bit better than others given the same starting point, some areas will always be cheaper to live in than other however moving to where you can afford to live is an option that often doesn't get considered but can make a difference to what people can and can't afford.
Stereotypes are usually frowned upon these days, yet the generational stereotypes thrown around so casually by both sides of the arguments about who had it better or worse seem to be acceptable and I don't understand why.
I'd better stop now before I get RSI in my finger
I took my first steps into adult responsibility in the early 80s, got stung by high interest rates and narrowly avoided negative equity in 89/90 when the housing market crashed, so also had to live a fairly frugal, cautious lifestyle for a while.
In the mid 90s after getting made redundant (no huge payout though) I went to university full time as a mature student just before tuition fees became a thing but still had to rely on student loan payments and deal with the £10k debt that resulted as I was still paying my mortgage on the family home. I worked 30 - 40 hours per week on top of my Uni studies for 3 years doing anything I could get in order to keep my head above water and it was tough, really tough at times.
But I wasn't special, or exceptionally driven, I just did what I thought I had to do in order to get what I wanted out of life. I'm comfortable these days but not through luck.
2 of my grown up kids have houses, mortgage, kids, all the stuff I have but apart from the kids, they have cheaper versions of what I have. They are happy with what they have believing that they can gradually improve their lot over the coming years. They keep credit to a minimum and still save up for things, taught themselves some useful DIY skills and are generally doing well and staying solvent.
None of us had to do it in London though and house prices were and still are relatively affordable in the part in the part of Somerset where my parents and kids still live (Chilco country) so I can only speak for what I know, and what I know is that all 3 generations of my family have faced challenges, all 3 generations have gone without in order to achieve an end, and all 3 generations were and are still careful to live within our means.
My parents had those values instilled out of necessity being born just before WW2, I had those values passed down to me as good advice (which I actually listened to unlike most if what they told me
) and in turn, I tried to pass those values on to my kids. It seems to have worked.My point, after that ramble is that with a bit of luck, and a lot of hard work, it is still possible to make your place in the world, to own your house, and to get to a position where you can afford to bring the next generation up. Same as it was for me, and the same as it was for my parents.
But my real point is that I'm not typical, nor are my parents and neither are my kids - but there are large numbers of people who did exactly what I did, just as there are large numbers of people from all 3 generations who didn't or couldn't and didn't have such an easy time, so the whole idea that an entire generation can be better or worse off than another kind of grates because it just isn't true. Some people will always do a bit better than others given the same starting point, some areas will always be cheaper to live in than other however moving to where you can afford to live is an option that often doesn't get considered but can make a difference to what people can and can't afford.
Stereotypes are usually frowned upon these days, yet the generational stereotypes thrown around so casually by both sides of the arguments about who had it better or worse seem to be acceptable and I don't understand why.
I'd better stop now before I get RSI in my finger
. Who said the capital was expensive? 
