Gas & Electric

Didn't the banks / building societies used to work on lending 3.5 x your salary / wage for a mortgage? Not sure what the equivalent is these days?

 

My first mortgage was 3 times salary and I think 2.5 times if a joint mortgage. Not long after there was a shift where higher multiples were offered if you were a "professional"... so I suspect scope for accelerated wage growth as qualification and experience accrued. When i moved to London in the mid 00's, the most I could borrow was 5x my salary.

You also had some banks offering self cert mortgages with minimal scrutiny. I think I had a mortgage advisor from Halifax essentially say I could just make a figure up if the figures didn't quite stretch.

I'd very much hope that the criteria has tightened somewhat given the credit crunch/recession in the late 00's and more recently the impact of the pandemic and lockdowns.

 

TBH that’s another of the reasons I baled JD , it makes you cynical, ( folk who on the face of it have a great life, but in reality are one big bill from major financial trouble ) even when you try not to be.
I certainly wasn’t meaning to class everybody the same, there are obviously many genuine cases, but unless certain kinds of people have changed their attitudes ( which I honestly doubt) there will be loads out there worrying about the slightest increase, who really shouldn’t have put themselves in that position.

 

I think more responsibility needs to lie with financial institutions, especially mortgage lenders etc. The figures they were willing to lend me last time in 2016 were ridiculously high. I'd like to think they'd learnt from 2008 but evidently not completely. These are people who are financially savvy and are paid to do this, not everyone is great at maths and working outgoings out etc.

 

I think the other thing to consider is the economic conditions someone has experienced through the point of getting a mortgage.

Apart from a few little blips here and there, house prices have carried on growing apace. The economy, despite blips has continued in nominal growth and we haven't encountered mass unemployment conditions like we saw in the 90s. Thats not to say there aren't problems, there clearly are. But if you got a mortgage post 2008 and that was your first purchase, you may well look at things pretty rosily and be in a better position than prior to it.

There must be millions of people who have never seen interest rates above 1%. They are likely to hold differing views to anyone who went through the ERM period.

 

Back in 87, the Barnsley Building Society would only lend 2.5 times my salary. My wife's salary was excluded from the calculation. The banks have a lot to answer for, in my opinion.

 

Strangely many of the current generation fail to recognise that consumer trends Wordlwide are a major cause of many enviromnmental issues that previous generations are often blamed for. As a single exaample, I recently read an article praising an innovative approach of using glass bottles for milk rather than Tetrapack and which are easily recyclable! In response I refer to the decades of milkmen with ELECTRIC vehicles who used to deliver milk and collect the empties.

Laugh? i nearly bought a round!

 

Locally, we seem to be having more people having milk deliveries to the door, and we did have a chat about it and reflect that there are certainly things from previous generations that have been lost or reduced that are a shame.

I think we can look across many generations and pick things which could have been done better and some things which could or should be reintroduced.

The more population growth we have, the more we consume, the more problems we are storing up. As developing nations catch up, the problem is exacerbated.

I'm sure the surge to electric everything will be another cause of damage that hasn't been factored in.

 

Understatement of the year! When I look at Governments Worldwide enforcing the rush to EVs completely disregarding the viable option of hybrids and to a lesser degree the Hydrogen fuel cell I think the World has gone mad. I can list several clear examples why 100% EV, or the complete removal of carbon based fuel sources is an unrealistic unattainable goal.

 

My initial thought was the metals that will need to be mined or repurposed and the impact on habitats. I'm sure some clever people have assessed if we have enough elements, such as lithium.

I felt completely downbeat about the outcomes of COP and we just don't stand a chance of keeping temperature rise below 2.5-3 degrees.

We absolutely need to take action, but frankly its too little too late and the elephant in the room is repeatedly ignored.

 

It wasn’t ‘the younger generation’ who stopped using the milkman and started driving to the supermarket to buy their milk in single use cartons. My parents did that and I’m nearly 60.

I often come across that stupid fb post and realise how stupid many people of my generation are for overseeing the destruction of the planet and then blaming young people who inhabit the world we created.

 

Was just about to post the same. Milkmen - and pop deliveries - stopped mainly in the 80s & 90s and the customers who stopped using it then would now be the 60+ generation.

As an addendum, we currently have 2-3 milk delivery services - 1/2 delivering at midnight, and 1 around 8am.

 

I vaguely remember milk being delivered early 90s but I’d have been very young when it stopped. My parents have just turned/early 60s.

 

I now have milk delivered in plastic 2 litre bottles by a man in a diesel pick up truck.
I can only apologise.

 

Silver top / gold top on cornflakes

lovely stuff

 

No need to apologise. Glass, ie milk bottles have a huge carbon footprint, even when re-cycled. I believe LDPE bottles (if re-cycled) are better in this aspect?

 

There are various factors in play. The 'turned 60' generation were among the first to experience the need for both partners having to work to attain a reasonable lifestyle. Prior to that, the immediate post war generation benefitted from the fact that many jobs still paid sufficient wages to enable the partners (usually the wife) to be the 'homemaker', raise a child buy rent a house and eradicating the need for child care, buy convenience foods (having time to cook clean and daily shop. Pupils were still taught domestic science (albeit in a somewhat sexist manner in most schools where only the girls attended those classes whilst boys did woodwork/metalwork etc).
Don't get me wrong there is no way we could or should go back to those days of what was, in effect, forced unpaid labour for one parent.
The end of that era of a single living wage led to simple 'knock on' effects - things like milk being on the doorstep all day with no one at home (not very good in summer when milk would go off or on freezing cold winter days where it would push the tops off with a pillar of ice) combined with the rise in large supermarkets selling one and two litre containers of milk and weekly 'big' shops, domestic fridge/freezers becoming essential goods rather than luxury items. That led to the demise of home deliveries from dairies like the Co-op .
Consumerism has without doubt become far more prevalent in recent generations though, since, for many, disposable income has increased. Putting aside the indisputable fact that renting and buying houses has become more expensive, many do not help themselves by seeing it as a hopeless target and instead, choose to spend money on the latest iPhone, holidays abroad, clubbing. For many though, even that temporary 'high' of the latest new purchase is unattainable.
Cheap finance also plays a major part in that hedonistic lifestyle attitude. Nevertheless, the 'I want it all now' mentality has become more ingrained in society. 'What you never had you never missed' applies here. The materialism Genie has escaped the bottle. I am not 'blaming' the later generation in the same way that they should not blame previous generations. Each generation improves in many aspects but also regresses in many.
In summary, Saving is difficult , nay impossible for many, but, there is a considerabòle proportion of younger people who could get on the housing ladder by making some sacrifices in their lifestyle for a limited period of their lifetime.

 

QUOTE: " Technically, LDPE can be recycled. Just because something can be recycled doesn't mean it will be recycled, though. Plastic bags, like grocery bags made from LDPE, have a tendency to tangle in recycling machinery"

 

It's absolutely fair enough for young people to blame previous generations. They're inheriting a ****** planet, a knackered housing market which makes it incredibly difficult to get on the property ladder, stagnant wages and education costs which means they start their adult lives with a big fat debt.

But, you know, iphones.

 

But you can't just blame everyone who's older. The only ones I blame are those who have taken advantage of things such as low property prices in order to give themselves a good lifestyle and then voted in selfish ways that prevent others from being able to do so. It's a lot of people but it's not an entire generation