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better or worse off

  • 16-03-2010 7:15pm
    #1
    Posts: 0


    if you are young, don't have any kids do you think you will be able to afford the same life style as you parents....got thinking about this when i read an article about parents still helping ( financially ) children that aren in there mid to late twenties......caused by the fact that it's getting harder and more competitive to establish a well paying career..

    if you looked at you parents they may have got married in there twenties and brought a house and had a family and even people in ordinary jobs were able to do this ..a fitter in a factory...low ranking civil servant...hairdresser....


Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 17,689 ✭✭✭✭OutlawPete


    What's the question?

    Have it now.

    We are better in some ways and worse in others.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 81,220 ✭✭✭✭biko


    When your parents grew up it was harder times and everyone worked their butts off for scraps. That was the done thing.
    Yes, you are better off than your parents, and they were probably better off than their parents. And so on.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 17,689 ✭✭✭✭OutlawPete


    lonad wrote: »
    Are you going to have kids and be able to feed them?

    I thought it was are we better off now than back when our folks were young?

    Kids are expensive.

    /on the black market


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,345 ✭✭✭landsleaving


    lonad wrote: »
    Are you going to have kids and be able to feed them?

    The real question for me is, if I have kids, do I want to feed them?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 16,391 ✭✭✭✭mikom


    mariaalice wrote: »
    even people in ordinary jobs were able to do this ..a fitter in a factory...low ranking civil servant...hairdresser....

    What's this ordinary jobs business.
    We can't all be unemployed journalists/models/architects/sex and the city extras.
    A job is a job.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,723 ✭✭✭Cheap Thrills!


    Infinitely worse off :mad:


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 17,689 ✭✭✭✭OutlawPete


    The real question for me is, if I have kids, do I want to feed them?

    Well, if you don't feed them, you'll up feeling the wraith of an After Hours thread one day .. that'll learn ya.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 16,391 ✭✭✭✭mikom


    Infinitely worse off :mad:

    *Looks at sig*


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 11,333 ✭✭✭✭itsallaboutheL


    mariaalice wrote: »

    if you looked at you parents they may have got married in there twenties and brought a house and had a family and even people in ordinary jobs were able to do this ..a fitter in a factory...low ranking civil servant...hairdresser....

    the 3 jobs listed would have had an average wage of 50k plus 5 years ago.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,148 ✭✭✭plein de force


    i think i'll be better off due to better education and college opportunities plus i'll be living somewhere with better job and career prospects

    my parents could be really successful,more so than they are, if college had've been a possibility for them because they're both very intelligent


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 37,214 ✭✭✭✭Dudess


    Well property cost a lot less when our parents were young, in fairness.


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    ! didn't mean that the careers i mentioned were ordinary...but that the pay was ordinary and that it was enough for people to establish a life for them selves....


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 37,214 ✭✭✭✭Dudess


    Actually, the cost of living in general was a lot lower.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,202 ✭✭✭✭Pherekydes


    I'm much better off than my parents.
    They're dead.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,783 ✭✭✭Hank_Jones


    I honestly think I will be eating everything out of Aldi for the next ten years.

    The prospects for a young person at the minute are quite low.

    I'll be emigrating in a few years anyway. Fcuking sick of this country.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 37,214 ✭✭✭✭Dudess


    I was in Aldi today - it was practically empty, whereas Dunnes was busy. Good times are here again!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,885 ✭✭✭JuliusCaesar


    lonad wrote: »
    Everything will find it's level again . The salaries will dictate the costs as we move out of recession. Reality is the next step at least a generation will suffer but lessons will be learned.

    Never live for the bank , better off in a tent than giving your income to those bastards

    Hmmm.......20 -30 years ago there wasn't such an income disparity as there is now. 20-30 years ago a company director earned perhaps double the average wage of a worker in his company - the disparity went stratopheric during the Tiger - up to 30 times as much.

    This is interesting, as to incomes.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,783 ✭✭✭Hank_Jones


    Dudess wrote: »
    I was in Aldi today - it was practically empty, whereas Dunnes was busy. Good times are here again!

    Dunnes?

    Posh fcuker. :D


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 37,214 ✭✭✭✭Dudess


    Peasant! :pac:


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,595 ✭✭✭bonerm


    Pherekydes wrote: »
    I'm much better off than my parents.
    They're dead.

    Congratulations on your success.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,595 ✭✭✭bonerm


    Well the standard term for a mortgage during my parents time was 20 years whereas many people today seems to be stretching to 25 30 and even 35 year mortgages.

    My parents got to retired at 65 whereas I'm looking at 68 (or prob older by the time that comes around).

    My parents generation weren't lied to by the media that that they'd all be millionaires and moviestars when they grew up, whereas mine was.

    Yep, things are definetly worse now. Still, you just get on with it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 810 ✭✭✭Fear Uladh


    I don't think I will ever get a mortgage until my 40s, people seem to think the be all and end all is to own your own house. Tell that to the thousands of people who will be in negative equity for the next 10 years. I would rather travel the world before I am tied down.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 96 ✭✭Oisintarrant


    what pisses me off is if you think... your parents worked to get where they are, and theyre parents before them etc.. that improvement really should be made on each generation, (unrelated to global economic changes), that we should be ever so slightly better off than our parents were since they raised us to there standard, evolutionary step ups in a way.
    Otherwise were just devolving!
    I can never fathom how my parents managed at from 19 to have 3 kids by the age of 24, and live in relative comfort. Im 27 and I can assure you if I had 3 kids, Id be ruined mentally and financially!

    I dont need any fingers to count on one hand how many friends I have with a home to their name(mortgage or not), kids, or a wife/husband. And Id consider myself to know a good few people!

    Good thread OP.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,547 ✭✭✭Agricola


    Better off i would say. I have friends and relatives most of whom have degrees who are in relatively low paid employment now because of the recession and they still have plenty of disposable income. Most drive their own cars too.
    My mother always told me how hard it was to scrape together the money to buy an old banger back in the 70's. Not many people under 30 have any idea of what saving to buy a car would be about. It was either a cheque from Daddy or a quick and easy loan.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,885 ✭✭✭JuliusCaesar


    chillaxe, there is one reason why people in Ireland are obsessed with mortgages (Ireland has the highest level of house-owning in the world) is that there aren't the protections for tenants in Ireland that there are in Europe. In fact there's more regulation of commercial rent than there is of private residential rent in Ireland.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 16,391 ✭✭✭✭mikom


    I can never fathom how my parents managed at from 19 to have 3 kids by the age of 24, and live in relative comfort. Im 27 and I can assure you if I had 3 kids, Id be ruined mentally and financially!

    Would you though.
    You might rise to the occasion.
    I'm sure in your parents time there were just as many with 3 kids who believed they were ruined mentally and financially.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,202 ✭✭✭✭Pherekydes


    bonerm wrote: »
    Congratulations on your success.

    Thanks.

    But seriously, I'm way better off than my parents were at the same age. They emigrated to Canada before I was born. (unfortunately, they came back too.) They had no car, no TV, no fridge, no foreign holidays. My father won our first TV in a quiz show that was on, ahem, TV. :D It was B&W. Many years we had sour milk and oily butter from lack of a fridge. They never went on foreign holidays until the childer had all flown the nest. And we didn't hang around long: all four of us left in our teens. Compare that with today's 30-something infants living at home. The highlight of our week was chips on a Friday night.

    Waffle, waffle, mutter, mutter, never had it so good, blah, blah...


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 810 ✭✭✭Fear Uladh


    chillaxe, there is one reason why people in Ireland are obsessed with mortgages (Ireland has the highest level of house-owning in the world) is that there aren't the protections for tenants in Ireland that there are in Europe. In fact there's more regulation of commercial rent than there is of private residential rent in Ireland.

    In terms of having the decision to rent or mortgage, if I lost my job tomorrow I would want to have the choice of being able to travel elsewhere for work(Canada, australia etc) were as if I was 40 with a few kids I would probably go for the Mortgage.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,885 ✭✭✭JuliusCaesar


    Whereas if rent protection existed you'd still have the choice at any age, and not have to worry about negative equity or a mortgage till you're 75


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 542 ✭✭✭cleremy jarkson


    We are better off materially but mentally I'd say we're worse off.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 810 ✭✭✭Fear Uladh


    Whereas if rent protection existed you'd still have the choice at any age, and not have to worry about negative equity or a mortgage till you're 75

    Rent would be covered by the state if worse comes to worse, even though I would probably not apply for it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 622 ✭✭✭Pete4779


    mariaalice wrote: »
    if you are young, don't have any kids do you think you will be able to afford the same life style as you parents....got thinking about this when i read an article about parents still helping ( financially ) children that aren in there mid to late twenties......caused by the fact that it's getting harder and more competitive to establish a well paying career..

    if you looked at you parents they may have got married in there twenties and brought a house and had a family and even people in ordinary jobs were able to do this ..a fitter in a factory...low ranking civil servant...hairdresser....

    There is a fantastic video lecture from the US comparing disposable income since the 1960s. I can't find it!

    But, the percentage of actual income spent on debt servicing has skyrocketed (mortgages included). There has been a drop in clothing, and food to replace this.

    Furthermore, you now need two incomes to maintain what would have been middle class income in the 1970s. The ultimate end is a dual society with a large amount of state dependent welfare recipients (like much of Ireland in 18-24 months time) and a small amount of people "up above" in charge. Sucking money from middle classes is the objective of all business, and the banks have been working overtime over the past 30 years to do this.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,399 ✭✭✭Bonito


    Well I dunno about all of you but my dad never lets me live down the "I'm tired".

    "I wouldn't like to see you after a day in the fields pickin' spuds when it's that cold your hands are nearly fallin' off ya"

    So, according to him, we're better off now. At least he had work at my age :rolleyes:

    I applied for a job in cavan pickin' mushrooms last summer but didn't get it. I'll most likely do the same this year.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 976 ✭✭✭Arnold Layne


    Bonito wrote: »

    I applied for a job in cavan pickin' mushrooms last summer but didn't get it. I'll most likely do the same this year.

    So you're going to sit on your hole and do nothing? :rolleyes:


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,399 ✭✭✭Bonito


    So you're going to sit on your hole and do nothing? :rolleyes:
    It's work isn't it? I have probably applied for more jobs in the last month than you've had hot dinners in the last year!


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,619 ✭✭✭fontanalis


    I wonder how much more debt there is in Ireland now compared to the 80's!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 976 ✭✭✭Arnold Layne


    Bonito wrote: »
    It's work isn't it? I have probably applied for more jobs in the last month than you've had hot dinners in the last year!

    Considering your from Cavan, I've had more hot dinners in the past week than you have had in the past year. :)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,399 ✭✭✭Bonito


    Considering your from Cavan, I've had more hot dinners in the past week than you have had in the past year. :)
    I'm not from Cavan :rolleyes:

    Yet another typical begrudger. I have no time for people like you.


  • Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 35,731 Mod ✭✭✭✭pickarooney


    Considerably worse off in most of the main areas. It was eminently achievable to buy a nice house and raise a large family on a modest salary 30-40 years ago. It's pretty much impossible these days.

    But they didn't have internet, so... we win.


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Pete4779 wrote: »
    There is a fantastic video lecture from the US comparing disposable income since the 1960s. I can't find it!

    Are you talking about the Legendary Elizabeth Warren by any chance?

    http://www.thepropertypin.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=20863&hilit=elizabeth+warren




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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,738 ✭✭✭mawk


    good lecture. I didnt mean to watch the whole thing though


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