Plenty of us Boomers have helped our kids and others' financially. Your general premise make me, an ex serviceman, a coward for not going to war. There wasn't one! Boomers can't be blamed for everything. (Like selling off the housing stock cheap.)
Anyone concerned by interest rates rising re mortgage?
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Anyone born around the 50's and 60's have had the best few decades ever - both financially, environmentally and enjoyed huge chunk of peace time. Further education was a doddle. No giant greedy corporates smashing small business to bits. Town centres thriving.
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so your logic is that the oldies did not suffer in any way shape of form during the "old days" of regular (8% minimum) to high (19%) base rates, currency devaluation, hyper inflation and low employment. The oldies are to blame for reckless Gov policy of money printing and bank bail-outs?
30+ generation are about to feel the burn...welcome to our world
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spoken by someone who has no idea of context
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This is the interest rate over time.
I still remember my brother buying his first house in the mid 1990s, if we look at the chart the interest rate was bubbling just above 5%... he paid £38,000 for a 2 bed end terrace, this was considered an eye-watering amount of money to borrow at the time but had to be done kinda thing, that house is now worth around £150,000.
My mate bought a similar property in a town 30 miles over, this would have been around 2002 I reckon, he paid £68,000 for that property and I remember thinking "Holy Hell, that's almost double what my bro paid", he sold that his before the 2008 crash for around £170,000... you can see the interest rate at that time was around the same level as the 1990s.
Had salaries increased significantly in that time? Nope... I know my bro was earning far more than £15k per year in 1998 and my mate was probably on more than £30k per year in 2003 because he was an offshore oil worker.
So, no matter how people try to spin it now, the housing market spiralled out of control throughout the 2000s but salaries haven't increased in line, now you have people forced into taking mortgages at levels which are unprecedented, living on the edge of what's affordable and now the interest rates are spiralling which will throw many of them to the wolves.
Meanwhile, people who bought places in the 80's and 90's want to sit there and be smug about "having paid off their house" and "seeing whose really living above their means"... those are the Boomers that someone else asked me to clarify who I was referring to, people who bought their place in the 80s for what is the equivalent of half a years salary for most people these days.
The average working class 'Boomer' suffered as many hard times as good times over the years. It's a bit misleading to say they all had it away though. The ones that will benefit most are their hard done by Gen x, z kids, who will hop and skip down the road with the inheritance.
Those "oldies" are still in power now, we're run by a bunch of old people and Octogenarians clinging to the power they've held since the 70s, it's time for you lot to move over, stop voting against young peoples interest and let the younger generation deal with things. Well, Sunak is young enough but he's the son in law of Billionaires so how connected to the everyday man can he be?
By hard times they meant they had to put coal on the fire, didn't have Playstations, holiday at Butlins and ate ****ty 80s Brit diets.
When they left school you could have walked into a job, so long as you were doing a decent job it would have been more or less secure, a family could get by on only one income generally speaking, you were offered your ex-council properties to buy or houses on the open market were very cheap, albeit you had interest to pay on your mortgage but it wasn't 4-5x the combined salary of two people.
Now you have kids who have no hope of buying a house, unless they are given money by their Boomer parents who benefitted from better times, until often well into their 30's. This is the reality for most young people who have to raise the 10-15% deposit in an economy where the average pay (and I'm talking about nurses and school teachers here) doesn't cover their rent, food, transport and utilities for the month.
Add on top of that the spectre of AI which in 10 years time will replace thousands of jobs in the job market. We can no longer sit back and allow the class of older people which now have it great to make decisions for the majority of people suffering at the bottom of the pile.
And what do you think these youngsters will do, given the choice?
When I was running a training centre for a charity that dealt with school students, the local authority looked into the possibility of a student Union, giving them more choice over their education etc. They came round to my place and asked the students for suggestions for changes that they would like to see. They said, for example, they could suggest things like starting later, finishing earlier and having longer lunch breaks. To a student, guess what they suggested? Yep, starting later, finishing earlier and longer lunch breaks! Yes, let’s let the young who can’t see any further into the future than Friday night make the choices………..
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They benefited from
free university education
homes at low multiples of wage
Gas and Oil Boom from North Sea
EU Membership (we were sick man of Europe before we joined)
Final Salary Pensions
You were born at a great time so your benefits accrued from that ontop of whatever you did yourself but you started off with a better hand that current kids are growing up with.
What have we left our kids? Precarious jobs, insane house prices, rising government debt and an aging population.
These problems can all be solved but not with the prevailing economic policies.
On a cheerier note, our one year 2.58% fixed bonds with Kent Reliance mature on the 29th. Same company are now offering 5.3% I dunno if that takes todays rise into account.
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And what do you think these youngsters will do, given the choice?
When I was running a training centre for a charity that dealt with school students, the local authority looked into the possibility of a student Union, giving them more choice over their education etc. They came round to my place and asked the students for suggestions for changes that they would like to see. They said, for example, they could suggest things like starting earlier, finishing later and having longer lunch breaks. To a student, guess what they suggested? Yep, starting later, finishing earlier and longer lunch breaks! Yes, let’s let the young who can’t see any further into the future than Friday night make the choices………..
This is a strawman, I'm not talking about handing the reigns of power to college kids who just left school but people in their 30's-40's at least.
It also plays into the old trope of "you kids just need to get more work ethic about you" when at lot of these young kids are working multiple jobs and pulling 12 hour shifts. It's that kind of attitude towards them that's the reason I'm being particularly hard on the "Boomers" today.
Look at these increases in the interest rate for example and the attitude of the Bankers applying them, the mindset is that inflation is being driven by reckless consumer spending and if we can only just squeeze them till their pips squeak, then they won't have the money to cause the strain on the supply side. Ignoring completely that the supply side problems are not due to too much demand but simply not enough supply because of other factors.
On top of that, they also have callously allowed the energy companies to run rough-shod over everyone with token efforts to help... while these giants are posting massive profit increases year on year.
Why energy companies are making so much profit despite UK windfall taxes
Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year caused oil and gas prices to surge, triggering a cost of living crisis in many countries, including the UK.
BP’s profits labelled ‘heinous’ as calls grow for tougher windfall tax
Oil and gas company beats analysts’ forecasts, with profits reaching $5bn in first three months of year
www.theguardian.com
British Gas owners Centrica report record profits as energy costs soar
Centrica's 2022 financial results showed performance at British Gas was not as strong as its parent company - profits actually fell despite an increase in customers.
news.sky.com
I'm hardly a spring chicken myself but people are sick of being told to just "suck it up sunshine" in some smug manner by other people that don't know the half of what they'll need to deal with in the next few years.
I d go on to mention Thatcher decimating the north in the eighties throwing millions on the dole.
Remember this was the time when this country was moving from being in the common market morphing into the eu and privatising what wasn't nailed down and selling it off. Apprenticeships became a joke and imported cheap labour was the order of the day.
I could go on.
Clueless more like.
I've just locked some away with Nationwide for a couple of years at 4.75%On a cheerier note, our one year 2.58% fixed bonds with Kent Reliance mature on the 29th. Same company are now offering 5.3% I dunno if that takes todays rise into account.
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