Why do Boomers get so defensive about mortgage interest rates???

[Aztecs27]

Yeah, that is pretty worrying. My wife and I have had help when needed from our parents over the years. It's hard to imagine ourselves ever having the means to be able to do that for our offspring.

I *think* my father in law has a bit he's stashing away for his grandkids as he's lucky enough to be mortgage free and on a RAF pension, so not short of a few quid....so hopefully they'll have a bit or something and hopefully I'll be in a position to help the kids out as well but I can't see our situation changing much in the 10 years before our son turns 18.

House price craziness is the main culprit for us. Our mortgage has gone from a very manageable £850 a month to over £1300, with very little in the way of pay rises in between.

 

[IanM]

Life was way easier then, but nothing to do with the state of the housing market or the economy.

The accurate analysis of the housing market (which I was heavily involved in) would involve politics (so is ultra vires) and the rest of the correct answer wouldn't be accepted by most under 40s.

If this 62 year old has any wisdom on the subject, it is this.

Every generation has it's challenges. If one thing is easier, you can bet something else is coming to cause turbulence. I see plenty of that in the news right now.

 

[Aztecs27]

Recall as a child the parents & friends playing trivial pursuit boomer edition.

This paraody account can be quite amusing, especially the comments not realising it is as such ...

View attachment 61598

haha, this has been my new favourite account for a few weeks. It's brilliant.

 

[WorldHandicapSystem]

I’ve heard of the term “Boomer” but didn’t know until today as I was born in 1964 I am one.

I joined the Army in 1980 at 16, all the old boys would tell us we had it easy compared to them, if you ask guys who joined in the 90’s they had easier than us, the guys who joined in the 2000’s had it easier than those in the 90’s etc etc, you get the drift.

I don’t think it’s a case of people burying their head in the sand, it’s more been there and done that relevant to when you were born.

Owning your own house or even considering it in your early 20’s at my age was just simply never crossed my mind, Council house if you were lucky and that was it, house ownership was just something for “rich” people.

To me it is levels of expectation that today blow my mind, the pressure on young people to drive a car, own a house, have all the latest mod cons, to go on foreign holidays is unreal.

But that also doesn’t mean we had it easy, we just faced different pressures relative to our year of birth.

If you think you’ve got it difficult, just imagine how difficult it’s going to be for those behind you.

It’s not really pressure. People just want nice things. Which seems to upset some people.

When we bought our our first house in our early 20s, we bought a nice 3 bed semi in a nice area. It was nicer than my parents house and some of my aunts and uncles houses. We got called all sorts, in jest of course for getting above our station and being flash. Not wanting to start at the bottom of the ladder in a cheap terrace like they did and my cousins were doing. It baffles me why people, particularly family would want us to live in a worse house in a worse area.

Family gatherings were even more fun when 18 months later we sold up and bought a 4 bed detached with a big garden. Oh and a new car at the same time

I would hate for my kids or my nieces and nephews to have to live in a shithole just to get on the property ladder.

 

[PaulMdj]

It’s not really pressure. People just want nice things. Which seems to upset some people.

When we bought our our first house in our early 20s, we bought a nice 3 bed semi in a nice area. It was nicer than my parents house and some of my aunts and uncles houses. We got called all sorts, in jest of course for getting above our station and being flash. Not wanting to start at the bottom of the ladder in a cheap terrace like they did and my cousins were doing. It baffles me why people, particularly family would want us to live in a worse house in a worse area.

Family gatherings were even more fun when 18 months later we sold up and bought a 4 bed detached with a big garden. Oh and a new car at the same time

I would hate for my kids or my nieces and nephews to have to live in a shithole just to get on the property ladder.

I’ve no issue with people wanting nice things, no issue whatsoever, but some are putting themselves in to debt or over extending themselves and putting pressure on themselves or their relationship.

Some are also weak minded that they see “Bill & Jo” buying a house, having the latest tech and having foreign holidays and want the same, with no idea of “Bill & Jo’s” circumstances.

 

[Imurg]

This is prevalent in almost every walk of life...it's almost impossible to compare eras.....
Some bits were better, some worse, some much the same.
And people's struggles differ wildly as well.
We shouldn't try to compare the 70s and 80s to now.....completely different in almost every respect....
Times weren't necessarily better or worse back then...simpler, maybe....

 

[Lucifer MorningStar]

I/we bought our first and only house in 2005 after being married for 18 years, luckily housing came as part of being married when serving.

I have no idea how people cope with the uncertainty of interest rates or, without overstepping the line, how some people believe they can afford a house and kids.

I’m not being flippant or rude, but part of the issue is the ridiculous rise in house prices.

I honestly believe if I lived down south and could move up north to a decent job I would seriously consider it, house prices down south are just stupid.

That last bit is bang on. I’ve already said to Mrs M when my time comes to Demob we have 2 options move abroad or move up north. Even though I’ll have the full pension plus a bit house prices down here are just simply beyond the means of a normal family. Where we currently live a house below 450k is non existent, we need at least 3 beds and again based on our area that’s getting closer to 700k and they’re not even that great. It’s absolutely ludicrous at the moment anything on the London commuter belt it’s just pricing people out of buying. Yet a rented property you’re looking at 2-2.5k before your bills.

 

[clubchamp98]

What’s a boomer

300+ yds.

 

[clubchamp98]

I’m 68 and one of these

I feel sorry for younger people now as life is so expensive.
But modern technology has made it like this.

We just followed the rules at the time but politics is to blame they are the ones setting the rules.!

Like football when we won the World Cup , we can’t compare with today.

Bought a 3 bed semi in the 70s ,took us 2 years to do it up.
Did most of it myself, (while doing a 3 shift job ,)we had to we couldn’t afford tradesmen.
Plastering and gas is the only thing I paid for.

But let’s not set boomers and young people at each other
Just circumstances dictate

 

[Crow]

Just remember; life is and then you die.

 

[Billysboots]

I'm 65.

In my 20s and 30s there was no internet to pay for. No smartphones to buy and monthly contracts to maintain.
TV licence and telly and then nothing more to pay.
Those things are a drain on finances now.

I found the 1980s to be very tough for many people. Highest unemployment ever. Wages stagnated. Low income families hit by the poll-tax.
Life was actually quite grim financially for many.

Similar times right now for those in their 20s and 30s I think.
Improvement in the lot of the middle and lower income households will not happen overnight. Current situation will take at least 10 years to turn around.

I’m 59.

Purchased my first house, a terraced 2-bed, in 1990, for £36k. From that day until I met my now wife and she moved in 8 years later I hadn’t a pot to piddle in.

The bottom fell out of the property market within weeks of me completing, all of which ultimately meant that, when I sold up in 1998, I sold for the same price I paid. So whilst my contemporaries, who bought a few months after me, were buying three bed semis in suburbia for less than I paid and ultimately making a decent profit on them, I was stuck in a terraced street on the edge of the city centre and treading water. I took in a lodger to help pay the bills, but when he was gone it was a real struggle.

I’m not bemoaning my lot. Far from it. But it’s all relative. We are all children of our time, and victims of circumstance. I absolutely get that it’s a struggle for youngsters these days - I have two kids in their early 20’s and I worry about how they will get on the housing ladder. But it was absolutely no picnic in the 80’s either.

 

[PhilTheFragger]

We used to live int cardboard box int middle of motorway…….. Luxury

As others have said, it’s futile comparing budgets from different decades.

Let’s just look at 1 statistic
Average earnings to average house price

In 1980 average gross salary was £6500 a year

Average house prices were £23000

So around 4 x salary

Now the average salary is £39000
But the average house cost is now £268000.
Which is 7 x annual salary

There are obviously huge regional differences , you could be earning £80000 but you live in london where the average price is £572000 , still just under 7 x salary

 

[PhilTheFragger]

Hit post too early Doh.
On 80k you get 4750 a month
A £550k mortgage costs 2900 a month leaving you 1850 for everything else, utilities phone council tax, full time child care is 1800 a month, car, food

It sounds like a good salary, but you are just scraping through

It is tough and us auld Pharts need to recognise this.

And the most surprising thing on this thread is that @Arthur Wedge didn’t google the word “boomer”

 

[Old Boy]

16% interest on £20500 mortgage= £3280

6.5% interest on £240000 mortgage= £15600

£3280= 50.4% of 1980 average salary

£15600= 40% of 2026 average salary

Draw your own conclusions

 

[louise_a]

I am not going to play the you dont know what it was like card , but I can remember in the early 80s moving to a new house and paying just over £300 a month mortgage, within 12 months the mortgage payment had risen to over £400, which was crippling.
Back then you could only borrow something like 3 times your annual salary, I don't know how people get on these days when I believe it is something like 4 or 5 times.
One thing i do know from experience is that if you can afford to buy do so, I am now renting and paying well over half my income on rent.

 

[Tashyboy]

Flippin eck I thought the LIV thread was tough.

Joking aside there’s so much to discuss about this it’s hard where to start. But the date of “ boomers” is complete and utter rammel. Missis T born in 62, me I am her tomboy born in 63. Why is that relevant. Because when Thatcher destroyed this country ( and that’s not a political statement but a personal opinion). She sold off countless Nationalised industries. Some people, and I class my mother and father in that made a killing.They had masses of disposable income as they were my age now, they were born in the 30’s. They made a killing. At that time me and missis T walked to the COOP With £12.83 cash to buy the weeks shopping for us two and four kids. That’s how rich we were. Council houses, yup they were sold off as well. Back then, If you didn’t have the money you didn’t get it. Compare that to today and young folk HAVE TO HAVE the latest phone and the massive contract that goes with it. Cars, cannot afford it so PCP it is. When was the last time a young un nowadays hooked up a £500 ace globetrotter caravan and towed it down to Newquay for two weeks holiday. It has to be abroad.
The problem for me re comparing young uns to Boomers is a bit like who spends the most in the prem league over the last 5,10,15 years or since the start of the prem League. Where do you draw a line. If life gets harder and harder. try telling that to 4 yr old kids that swept chimneys in Victorian times. One thing that is always left out of the equation. How much do young uns of today get left when there parents have passed away compared to what there parents were left. My kids are now 38 and 39. We have cared for children and grand children for 39 years. How’s that easy.
Spoke to Missis T about this and says the challenges are completely different. It’s all about standards. From the 80’s onwards people can now survive on benefits alone. people are growing up getting by on benefits. How’s that harder.
For me neither generation has it easier than the other. The challenges are different. What I do know is that when the interest rates went through the ceiling. I sat at the top of the garden with my head in my hands thinking “ wtf have I just done”. Taking out a £35k mortgage. Me and Missis T doing 6 jobs between us. I would not wish that feeling upon anyone. Lads working underground on Family tax credit.
I won’t deny the challenges are extreme difficult today, but there were different challenges back in the day of” Boomer years”.

 

[Bunkermagnet]

I'm 60 now. My parents were both born int he early 30's, my dad was sent to North Wales during the war, but my mum was kept at home to help run the family sweet shop. They were used to food rationing, darning your socks, repairing clothes or even making your own. Now thats seen as something left field. They brought there experiences into our upbringing. I used to be embarressed at school, with socks full of darning thread, having to wear my grandads hand me down underpants and many others clothes (nothing undergarment thankfully ). Having passed the 11plus, I was lucky to go to a half decent school, which had the main job of providing the vast majority of the Dockyard apprentices. Whilst I was offered a place, as I knew it was closing and my year was the last intake, I turned it down.
This was when unecomployment was 3 mill, and we hadnt long had an election with that iconoic bill board poster of a snake of standing men with the strapline "Labour isn't working". If we wanted anything, we had to save up for it.
Sadly now I think society has become very much a "me "culture and "want it now".
Yes some things were better back then than they are now, but I also think it's easy to think you are having it harder than those back then just because society and life has changed now, and not always for the better.

 

[Tashyboy]

Hit post too early Doh.
On 80k you get 4750 a month
A £550k mortgage costs 2900 a month leaving you 1850 for everything else, utilities phone council tax, full time child care is 1800 a month, car, food

It sounds like a good salary, but you are just scraping through

It is tough and us auld Pharts need to recognise this.

And the most surprising thing on this thread is that @Arthur Wedge didn’t google the word “boomer”

Me I am in neither camp re which was the tougher times. But as a 7 yr old kid that emigrated from Rochdale to Mansfield in 1970 in a Austin A40. It was a strange feeling with 4 kids and mum and dad crammed into the car driving over the Pennines. We went from a coronation street 2 up 2 down terraced house to a three bedroom semi with a toilet and bathroom in the house. We had hit the big time. A house over looking Sherwood Forest. 2 years later the 1972 strike, 2 years later the 1974 strike. 10 years later the 84 strike. Me dad had already gone through Scargills illegal strike of 1969. Life didn’t seem easier pinching potato’s from the farmers field so we could have chips again.
The reason I mention me emigrating. In Nottinghamshire. A lot of people are now emigrating “ oop north” from darn south as properties a good bit cheaper and bigger. Money is going further up here.

 

[Tashyboy]

I'm 60 now. My parents were both born int he early 30's, my dad was sent to North Wales during the war, but my mum was kept at home to help run the family sweet shop. They were used to food rationing, darning your socks, repairing clothes or even making your own. Now thats seen as something left field. They brought there experiences into our upbringing. I used to be embarressed at school, with socks full of darning thread, having to wear my grandads hand me down underpants and many others clothes (nothing undergarment thankfully ). Having passed the 11plus, I was lucky to go to a half decent school, which had the main job of providing the vast majority of the Dockyard apprentices. Whilst I was offered a place, as I knew it was closing and my year was the last intake, I turned it down.
This was when unecomployment was 3 mill, and we hadnt long had an election with that iconoic bill board poster of a snake of standing men with the strapline "Labour isn't working". If we wanted anything, we had to save up for it.
Sadly now I think society has become very much a "me "culture and "want it now".
Yes some things were better back then than they are now, but I also think it's easy to think you are having it harder than those back then just because society and life has changed now, and not always for the better.

so was me dad, he was a Barnados kid.

Re hand me down clothes, it was predominantly school uniforms. I remember once I point blank refused to wear a hand me down shirt again to school. It was my sisters. The buttons were on the wrong side. That in itself wasnt a problem, but she had massive tits and the shirt was massively baggy. Lord how me skool pals took the Micky.