Things in life you’re glad you got through before it got harder

Got through school and uni before tuition fees and social media!

I think tuition fees were just coming in, must have been for the year below me.

Learnt to drive at 17 as a named driver on parents insurance, for about 20p extra premium.

Had 4 years at university with a finishing loan totalling about £3k. And thought that was a lot.

Bought a house. The average house is like 74x average salary now. It. Is. ShitNuts.

Yeah,  got through uni with 5 years of loans, no fees, no social media or smart phones. Drove at 17, no theory test, got big stuff on my license.

Student loans now? Well that’s more of a graduate tax/ ignore the headline figure sort of deal now, so kids just crack on anyway. The only big thing I am properly glad that I didn’t have is social media/smart phones/ all that connectivity.

Tuition fees were introduced in the year I started uni, BUT I was a ‘mature’ 21 year old student so I was exempt. Uni debt at the end was ~£14k in total so better than the cost these days.

I’m 6 years off completing the mortgage and owning the house outright, cost £174k to buy, will obviously have spent more than that on it, but it should be worth ~£300k in total.

I’d say both these things are harder now, but not impossible.

I absolutely agree with the ‘buying a house before prices went crazy’ – I pity anyone trying to buy a house now. Hopefully, I won’t hang around too long and my girls get their inheritances at a relatively early age.

I’d say both these things are harder now, but not impossible.

It very much depends.  As a public servant in a expensive city its impossible.  I would have to live and work elsewhere to be able to even rent my own flat rather than flatshare and buying is just out of the question

Being active on this website from the beginning when it was a fun, friendly and speedy – and not the ‘feature-laden’ bloatware it’s now become.

Being active on this website from the beginning when it was a fun, friendly and speedy – and not the ‘feature-laden’ bloatware it’s now become.

[posting this from my alt-account as I can’t post from the account I pay for!]

[EDIT – my original post has now appeared after taking 4 minutes to think about it!]

the-muffin-man
Being active on this website from the beginning when it was a fun, friendly and speedy – and not the ‘feature-laden’ bloatware it’s now become.

The hamster used to go for fag breaks quite regularly back then IIRC! 🙂 Some legendary threads though, badger, picolax, owned with bombers etc.

The high intrest rates where subsidised…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_interest_relief_at_source

i dont really see that things have got harder.

My degree was free (to me), graduated debt free.

I bought a 3 bed house 10 min walk from the centre of Cambridge for 3x a graduate salary and paid it off it 10 years without even trying hard.

My graduate job also had a fantastic final salary pension which I cashed in for £200k when it closed having paid only about £7k in.

None of those things are possible now…

but life in general is not hard.

today, thinking about both world wars.young blokes going and not returning. whole villages left without men.

a whole generation gone. or miners and steel workers, going to hard harsh dangerous jobs. for nothing or as near as.

hard today isnt hard at all really.  hard is when you have nothing.

everyone has a mobile phone which costs a bomb, and some kind of pay per veiw. and a car. and this app and that app for food deliveries and other shyte.

hard times now……….. nah.

.

Well compared to the black death and life before antibiotics etc, young blokes going off to war had it pretty easy. Black death wiped out somewhere between 5% and 40% of the world population with no health care and no social safety net.

I’m not really sure what your point is, someone else had it worse, so everyone else can’t complain?

It’s pretty obvious that financially, the latest generation entering the workforce will have a much tougher time achieving the same relative level of wealth as the generation before in terms of home ownership, pensions etc. I suspect my parents generation will be peak wealth accumulation due to asset price rises.

Yeah. If people would just cut back on the avocado toast.

I’m not really sure what your point is, someone else had it worse, so everyone else can’t complain?

not trying to make a point mate. just saying i dont think life is hard.   nothing more than that.

the latest generation entering the workforce will have a much tougher time achieving the same relative level of wealth as the generation before in terms of home ownership, pensions etc.

which makes me wonder, what was the best year to have been born (in the UK) and benefit from free univ, affordable houses, decent pension, reasonable job market, cheapo overseas hols etc—I’d plump for 1964! graduating c.1984, mortgage paid by c.2000s, retiring around nowish…!?

I enjoyed my 1970s childhood, 1980s teens, 1990s post-graduate life 🙂 should have bought a house sooner though, and had kids earlier–but hey ho, I’m still here 🙂

not trying to make a point mate. just saying i dont think life is hard. nothing more than that.

Until now, noones been trying to say that generally things are harder overall.

which makes me wonder, what was the best year to have been born (in the UK) and benefit from free univ, affordable houses, decent pension, reasonable job market, cheapo overseas hols etc—I’d plump for 1964!

I would say much earlier than that.  I was born in 61 and had the 70s / early 80s to grow up in / become an adult.   High inflation and interest rates, massive unemployment- and it was the decade of hellish fashion.   I’d say the folk who grew up in the 60s probably had it best.  Post antibiotics, high social mobility, increasing prosperity ?????

A lot of stuff is so much better now in many ways but the whole housing thing is so messed up

GCSE’s

I paid 17% interest on my 1st housein the late 80’s which was half my wage.

sure, but inflation was broadly speaking the same as the interest

so after a year of making (tough) payments, around 15% of the value of the loan was wiped out, relative to prices. The same the next year. Which was why folk could then move on to a bigger house every three years.

when rates were low & inflation was low, but prices high, people made a year of payments and only 2-3% of the value was paid off.

it’s hard to compare, but 30yr 6x income mortgages aren’t the same as 80s mortgages.

I’d say the folk who grew up in the 60s probably had it best.

I guess the question is, better for whom? Good luck being female/in an ethnic minority/homosexual/etc.

Free university education

Driving test with 1 lesson

Buying several buy-to-lets for ~5k

Paying off mortgage at 33

Retiring at 52 with golden pension

signed, boomer.

/s

There was a natural lid on house prices back in the 70s and 80s too. Mortage would be max 25 years and usually based on one income.

Relaxed lending critery led to more people being able to get mortages and for bigger amounts fueling house price rises.

My grandad was a miner and in the 60s he bought his own house and everyone said he was a fool with a ‘noose’ around his neck.

Plot twist: I’m glad I got to go backpacking before it got easier.

I had many trips in the 00s when just travelling across a foreign country with a lonely planet was a genuine adventure. Before Uber, AirBnB, Tripadvisor and Google Translate made the vast majority of the world so easy and familar (which I recognise is beneficial in a whole load of ways).

It feels like adventure is so much harder to find nowadays, and I’m aware that makes me sound unimaginative.

Driving test with 1 lesson

Father in law was telling me about his driving tests in the 1960s:

#1 – Netherlands, standard car – drive round the block. You’ve passed

#2 – HGV test Australia – back the trailer around that corner. You’ve passed.

But, i’d say going to uni was more achievable when I went. I had a grant, scholarships and invested my student loans as I didn’t need them to live on. Nowadays I think i’d be up to my eyeballs in debt.

Getting a job and a career of sorts without having to go to university.

This so much.  My flat bought in 1992 was 2.5 times my salary.  Now it would be 8 times the salary for the same job

in fairness though whilst there is a national trend, is it fair to say that in 1992 your flat was in an area that at the time estate agents would describe as “up and coming” ( = shit but it might improve) whereas now it is considered to be “desirable”?  You can probably get a flat of similar size for less money in one of the less desirable areas (although probably not for 2.5x salary).  However the mortgage market has also significantly changed since 1992… not all of it for the better but certainly some of it, and whilst I do hear people complaining about interest rates today they are lower and to a large extent more predictable than in 1992!

I so feel for those who are starting out in life now.  Even rentals are ridiculously expensive.  The flat at the time would have rented for 30% of monthly take home.  Now it would be 60%

bear in mind that many of them have parents, or grandparents who have benefited from circumstance like you did… the unfairness comes when some are lucky enough to have access to large gifts/loans/inheritance and others do not.  One thing which does seem to have changed in the intervening years – my recollection was young professionals sharing (and couples getting into long term relationships earlier?) whereas it seems from those I work with finding housing most expensive seem to live alone?

Glad to have got through teenage and Uni years before the invention of smartphones/cameras documenting everything! There is evidence of those times but likely living in a box under a bed or in a cupboard. I can imagine my friends kids clearing them out when they have passed away and laughing at the photos.

Student loans were a drag when I started working but nothing compared to what debt students come out with now.

Did regret not buying a house in the 90’s though!

Housing is such an issue but given so many people at the top can’t afford for the prices to drop I struggle to see how we solve the issue.

which makes me wonder, what was the best year to have been born (in the UK)

I think the generations that had it best were (if you had a ‘good’ war and the majority did) were the folks born between the mid twenties and the mid fifties. Technological changes made everyone’s life easier, 25 years plus of economic boom – most jobs paid well enough for 1 worker to have house, car, family holidays. Free healthcare, free university, free, and generous pensions. By mid seventies, the whole thing is starting to crumble, and by mid eighties it’s done.

I’m glad personally I made it onto the housing market. In my mid twenties I managed to buy a cottage for £46K and while interest rates did go mental for a bit it was the difference between paying £300 a month to about £550 a month for it.

so after a year of making (tough) payments, around 15% of the value of the loan was wiped out, relative to prices. The same the next year. Which was why folk could then move on to a bigger house every three years.

Hmm, I am not sure I am totally on-board with that. My memory may be a bit hazy, but I almost bought a house in 1991 – it was £40,000 and the repayments over 25 years would have been about £450 a month however, I didn’t progress (I broke up with my fiance). I eventually bought a similar house in 1995 for £42,500 and the loan repayments were about £260 a month – so in that particular five-year period house prices hadn’t increased much (and they didn’t really start increasing until late 1990s). Of course there may have been other periods where house prices increased at different rates.

For comparison, I think the generation that had it worst (by a long way) were those born in the late 19thC and very early 20th (1890-1905) while empire is probably at it’s height, you’re working a shit job for very shit money with no safety and no rights, healthcare is probably un-affordable (and not really available) and if that’s not bad enough;  the great war is just around the corner, and if that doesn’t get you, then the Spanish flu is going to.

I got into mountain biking in the 90s on a nice rigid hardtail before the modern focus on e-bikes, bike parks, and international travel. I don’t think young me would find it so accessible nowadays.

I got into mountain biking in the 90s on a nice rigid hardtail before the modern focus on e-bikes, bike parks, and international travel. I don’t think young me would find it so accessible nowadays.

I paid £437 for my first rigid, steel MTB in 1994, when we’d pedal for 20 miles just to link a few interesting sections of singletrack together. Today I can buy a similarly specced MTB, except with suspension, hydraulic brakes and decent rubber for the same price – noticeably better to ride – and have two areas of permitted MTB trails within 5 miles, numerous unofficial trails, and two or three trail centres within 20 miles. Because cycling in general is now more mainstream, I can ride to pubs or cafes run by riders, access riding groups virtually without ever having to meet face to face and see where all the locals are riding just by checking my phone.

I can’t see where the barrier to entry is?

AFF. Any later and I would have been too old to really enjoy the first few hundred jumps. As it is I kind of wish I had done it years ago and got more of a headstart on it.

I’m so glad I got into 29″ front / 26″ rear full suspension park jump track downhill enduro, before it got harder to choose the right bike tyres to make the car park come alive.

Drink & drugs – started in the pubs at 15, seems it’s a lot harder to be an underage drinker these days & also happy enough with the strength of dope back then, not sure I’d had come through that phase in life unscathed if strong skunk & spice had been readily available.

Drink & drugs – started in the pubs at 15, seems it’s a lot harder to be an underage drinker these days

My kids are between 13 and 21. I can pretty much guarantee that underage drinking isn’t really any more difficult than it used to be.

@ampthill

Sorry if already asked but where was the desert pic of the old Bedford truck taken mate? Going to guess at Morocco? Loved the pics and write up by the way. Your daughter is a picture of happiness there. <Thumbs up.>

Growing up before the digital & social media age.