better or worse off

16-03-2010 08:15PM #1

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....

OutlawPete · 16-03-2010 08:18PM

What's the question?

Have it now.

We are better in some ways and worse in others.

biko · 16-03-2010 08:20PM

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.

OutlawPete · 16-03-2010 08:21PM

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

landsleaving · 16-03-2010 08:22PM

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?

mikom · 16-03-2010 08:23PM

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.

Cheap Thrills! · 16-03-2010 08:24PM

Infinitely worse off :mad:

OutlawPete · 16-03-2010 08:25PM

landsleaving wrote: »

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.

mikom · 16-03-2010 08:25PM

Cheap Thrills! wrote: »

Infinitely worse off :mad:

*Looks at sig*

itsallaboutheL · 16-03-2010 08:26PM

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.

plein de force · 16-03-2010 08:27PM

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

Dudess · 16-03-2010 08:27PM

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

16-03-2010 08:30PM

! 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....

Dudess · 16-03-2010 08:38PM

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

Pherekydes · 16-03-2010 08:43PM

I'm much better off than my parents.

They're dead.

Hank_Jones · 16-03-2010 08:43PM

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.

Dudess · 16-03-2010 08:44PM

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

JuliusCaesar · 16-03-2010 08:45PM

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.

Hank_Jones · 16-03-2010 08:46PM

Dudess wrote: »

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

Dunnes?

Posh fcuker.

Dudess · 16-03-2010 08:48PM

Peasant! :pac:

bonerm · 16-03-2010 08:49PM

Pherekydes wrote: »

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

Congratulations on your success.

bonerm · 16-03-2010 08:54PM

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.

Fear Uladh · 16-03-2010 09:03PM

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.

Oisintarrant · 16-03-2010 09:05PM

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.

Agricola · 16-03-2010 09:06PM

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.

JuliusCaesar · 16-03-2010 09:08PM

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.

mikom · 16-03-2010 09:13PM

Oisintarrant wrote: »

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.

Pherekydes · 16-03-2010 09:19PM

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.

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...

Fear Uladh · 16-03-2010 09:20PM

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

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.

JuliusCaesar · 16-03-2010 09:43PM

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

cleremy jarkson · 16-03-2010 09:48PM

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

better or worse off

Comments