Everyone else to blame as usual.

[Leicesterbaggie]

You have to be realistic in life and I don’t think a lot of 20’s to 40 odd year olds are 123.

We’ve talked about the situation my generation faced in the 80’s with interest rates at 18%+ which is where mine was.

Our lives were incredibly basic.

No foreign holidays, no new cars on the drive and I for example went three years without buying any new clothing.

I’ll wager that almost everyone complaining at the moment has a very expensive mobile phone and other electrical devices, large TV’s etc, etc.

The number of people who now lease expensive cars is huge, a lot of people are paying £500 to £1000+ per month to rent a BMW, Audi, Jag or Porsche……a car they will never own that isn’t an asset.

I either bury a car outright or don’t have a new one and make the old one last longer but in tough times, I do what I did a decade ago and sold my dream car and had a ten year old run around for a few months until cash flow improved.

Today people want everything now, they don’t seem to possess the patience to save and to wait.

The one thing I will say about the mortgage market is that although I wouldn’t call it miss selling over the past 14 years, I’m not sure as to how stark the pre sign up warnings are for borrowers?

Maybe there should be a standard warning letter that every lender has to ensure that the borrower reads in their presence that shows what each extra .25% does to repayments and very clear warnings that you need to factor in 5% as the median base rate and anything lower is a bonus but also show what a 10% base rate will mean for them.

But I go back to my earlier point, I think that the vast majority who are facing these issues will still be complaining for months and years to come whilst still looming out on their fairly new top branded lease car whilst perusing the iPhone 14s as they plan their two week holiday in Aruba or wherever.

At some point every 10 to 15 years life becomes miserable for a period, it was ever thus…..people need to be educated more to this fact and they need to learn to say “no” to themselves.

There’s a big difference between “want” and “need”……..too many people of all age groups are in the “want” camp these days.

I read this post to my wife and she recommended that you forward it to some media outlet. It sums up our ‘have today and pay tomorrow’ society. Whether they would publish or report on it is another matter.

[regis80]

Suppose you are 18-21 years old, you don’t got to university because it’s not worth the debt that you’ll end up paying. You find work at an office/shop that pays the minimum wage (or even £15 an hour). You are still living with parents and work, meet a girl that you want to continue a further relationship with and want further privacy. You just about save some money in this current climate, mom and dad don’t have any savings to pass on.

You decide to move out to live with your partner.

A - do you rent a place to live in?, pay a landlord - (knowing this is money going to waste)

B - try to get a mortgage to buy a house (bearing in mind cost or housing let alone living)

C - continue to live with parents because you can’t afford the above.

Based on the limited info above, what do you do?