I am just recovering from an onslaught of snowflake / millennial envy.
We had some young relatives over and the talk got around to getting a job and buying a house. Apparently, in my youth you could walk into any job and houses were dirt cheap.
Well, I don’t remember it that way at all. In the mid 70s I tramped in and out of employment agencies in central London looking for work. I recall plain as day that when I said I wasn’t interested in one particular job the consultant gave me a lecture about 3 million being unemployed. Then when I did secure a modest post no way could I afford even a flat share in the city. Instead I commuted at a cost of £1K a year on a salary of less than £3K. Mortgage? In Herts? You are joking.
They were bloody hard to get then, there were the high street banks who were as tight as a drum or a few building societies who wanted you to save with them for years first. When eventually I did buy a flat at 26 we had to move miles away where property was cheaper. Will they listen? Will they hell.
Now I am not saying that today’s youngsters have it easy. And George Osborne made it harder by placing the burden of debt on Joe Public rather than the greedy, grasping fecking banks and doing away with 100% or even 95% deals and introducing “affordability” criteria. Most youngsters who pay rent could afford to buy if they didn’t need to find £20-30K deposit.
Even so this generation has no interest in saving at all. Get it spend it. I say to them put away £200 a month and in a year you have £2.5K. Don’t go abroad for holidays (dumping £1.5K in Ibiza) don’t order takeaways or eat out, buy a few less designer clothes and you can double that. They look at me with disgust. What? Go without all my luxuries for a few years? To buy a house? Never. OK, interest rates are crap now but what good was 15% pa when inflation was raging?
They laugh at property prices in the 80s but I try to tell them £30K was a LOT of money when you only earned a fraction of it. I don’t think maths is their strong point.
Nope, they are convinced. We had it easy. They’ve got it tough. All our fault. We ruined it for them.
What a bunch of entitled whingers!
Nominated by: Lord Helpuss
(Hmm. Take away their phones, tablets and computers for a week, and see how they cope the way we had to! – DA)




