Savings and Investments thread

valleynick66

I do think a valid comparison to observe on mortgage sums is the multiple you can / could ever borrow. 

From recollection it used to be something like a maximum of 2.5 x joint income (maybe 3 x sole?) 

Now of course you can borrow more and for longer to make it affordable and reflect property values. 

So whilst we can produce statistics to show the percentage of spend housing utilises its not the whole story. 

On balance though it’s always a struggle for any generation to get on the housing ladder and tough choices on where/ how to spend your income. 

Rob7Lee

valleynick66 said:

I do think a valid comparison to observe on mortgage sums is the multiple you can / could ever borrow. 

From recollection it used to be something like a maximum of 2.5 x joint income (maybe 3 x sole?) 

Now of course you can borrow more and for longer to make it affordable and reflect property values. 

So whilst we can produce statistics to show the percentage of spend housing utilises its not the whole story. 

On balance though it’s always a struggle for any generation to get on the housing ladder and tough choices on where/ how to spend your income. 

Completely agree. A large part of the differential on multipliers for mortgages comes down to interest rates. When it was the 2.5 or 3x interest rates were high single/low double digit. With a big enough deposit 6x now is not unheard of.

Each generation has had different difficulties, but I don’t recall a time it was ever easy. I find people are quick to look at someone age 50’s/60’s outcomes but aren’t interested in the choices or journey to get there.

No one generally cares for 4-5 years I worked 3 jobs sometimes up to 100 hours a week whilst living in the cheapest bedsit in East London (when east London was a sh1t hole). Or Bob and his wife were ships that passed in the night tag teaming whilst looking after children with zero luxuries, no holidays and likely like me no car. Or my parents generation who would get married, rent a room for 5 years whilst they tried to save the deposit and beg the building society for a mortgage (my dad likened it to doing the knowledge) and when finally doing so had to move 30 miles out to something they could afford.
Grand parents who bathed once a week in a tin bath in the garden!

Tough times are nothing new, different yes, and maybe today is harder than some other times, but anyone who thinks the 60-90’s were easy needs to give their head a wobble (I’d say probably mid to late 90’s were likely one of the easier). 

LargeAddick

Rob7Lee said:

valleynick66 said:

I do think a valid comparison to observe on mortgage sums is the multiple you can / could ever borrow. 

From recollection it used to be something like a maximum of 2.5 x joint income (maybe 3 x sole?) 

Now of course you can borrow more and for longer to make it affordable and reflect property values. 

So whilst we can produce statistics to show the percentage of spend housing utilises its not the whole story. 

On balance though it’s always a struggle for any generation to get on the housing ladder and tough choices on where/ how to spend your income. 

Completely agree. A large part of the differential on multipliers for mortgages comes down to interest rates. When it was the 2.5 or 3x interest rates were high single/low double digit. With a big enough deposit 6x now is not unheard of.

Each generation has had different difficulties, but I don’t recall a time it was ever easy. I find people are quick to look at someone age 50’s/60’s outcomes but aren’t interested in the choices or journey to get there.

No one generally cares for 4-5 years I worked 3 jobs sometimes up to 100 hours a week whilst living in the cheapest bedsit in East London (when east London was a sh1t hole). Or Bob and his wife were ships that passed in the night tag teaming whilst looking after children with zero luxuries, no holidays and likely like me no car. Or my parents generation who would get married, rent a room for 5 years whilst they tried to save the deposit and beg the building society for a mortgage (my dad likened it to doing the knowledge) and when finally doing so had to move 30 miles out to something they could afford.
Grand parents who bathed once a week in a tin bath in the garden!

Tough times are nothing new, different yes, and maybe today is harder than some other times, but anyone who thinks the 60-90’s were easy needs to give their head a wobble (I’d say probably mid to late 90’s were likely one of the easier). 

Quite right. They had this discussion on Radio 2 yesterday. In the past people went through rationing, then we suffered through power cuts, then interest rates in double digits etc etc. It's never been easy for most. The current generation think they are the most hard done. Boo boo.

Carter

I don't like comparing hardships, generational ones are especially spiky. All I can go on is my lived experience and what I see first hand people I know doing. 

What I will say is the temptations and bitty purchases now seem to be viewed as necessary expense when I struggle to make an argument to defend that. There is always a choice. The daily/bi-daily spends on lunch, coffee, takeaway is a lot more convenient now. When I began working the option for breakfast, drinks or lunch on the job were the stuff of gastrointestinal hellscapes. Burger van, petrol station or god forbid the site cafe staffed by an old gypsy woman smoking as she cooked, handled money, cleaned (pppppffffttttt) and cooked exclusively with vegetable oil and lots of it. So bringing a pack up was not only cost effective it was the only way of steering clear of dysentary or just ingesting faecal matter during your lunch break 

Buying property is hard, it was hard 20 years ago and I heard all the tales of sacrifice and how I had it easy, that interest rates were criminally low, that my generation had credit cards etc. Ironically I'd have a lot of these conversations at work as I spent so much fucking time there trying to earn more to buy the cheapest kitchen I could from homebase to for myself iver about 2 months as I was living in a building site and never had enough time to do this stuff as a novice as I was working all the time.

Getting ahead in life financially is the ultimate struggle for the ultimate goal. Financial freedom, not just security, freedom to tell arsehole bosses to get knotted, to pursue painful purpose before you are too old to do anything other than watch daytime TV, moan about whatever the media feeds you, paint the occasional watercolour, you get the picture. 

Its a struggle and the I don't think its entirely unhealthy, I'm nothing if not resilient and stoic and the same can be said for a huge number of people dragging themselves out of bed each day, slogging to and from a job that eats their time and youth but keeps them in heated shelter and fed. 

Flask of shit instant coffee or tea, pack up, owning a older car, taking on extra work/side hustling, taking a look at the subscriptions nibbling away at your take home. The one I'd be wary of is compromising too much on holidays, we all need a break but even that now with social media can easily be done in a very affordable way by pet-sitting for people at home or abroad in different locations, house-swaps for example 

RaplhMilne

Just like to say people, thoroughly enjoying this discussion thanks to the contributors. I am savvy enough to understand what is being said. However, not clued up enough to initiate my own thoughts other than those already shared. I doubt many football forums have such a lively educational debate, on this subject matter. 

Would just throw in my own bit of life experience. In the late 70,s 1977 onwards I worked for the Woolwich Building society in General Gordon Square. Each branch had a weekly mortgage allocation, for the branch manager to dispense as he saw fit. So for example Dartford had £220,000. Which in those days would likely fund 10-15 loans. If Dartford after its allocation had say £3,000 surplus, this was returned to a Central fund. By the way, the surplus was not that they didn’t have customers waiting to borrow, just that the small £3,000 sum couldn’t fill a customer need. People were waiting weeks for their mortgage money to be available, and completion dates were virtually always set, on when your lender could give you the funds. 

Part of my job on a Monday was to add up all the small returns from every branch of the Woolwich, which could run into a couple hundred thousand. Then on a Tuesday, branch managers would ring me an basically beg for an additional allocation from the returned pot. To help a customer who was, going to lose their property or desperately needed early completion. I was a god like figure, distributing these funds like they were my own. I’m sure none of them knew they were talking to a junior boy in the office who was 20 years old.

Basically, I just did first come ,first served as my appropriation model. But, knowing I could say NO… made me all powerful.

blackpool72

My first purchase was a one bedroom flat in Croydon,  to say it was a culture shock coming from Chelsfield is an understatement. 
But it was all I could afford. 
When I did manage to buy a house in Chelsfield I was working at Cray Vall paper mills.
For the next 4 years I worked every bit of overtime I was offered. 
When I had my holidays instead of going holiday I spent my time labouring for various builder mates I had.
Things got a bit easier when I got married as we then had two wages coming in every month. 
But as soon as our two kids we're born my wife gave up work for 5 years. 
By then I was working in the Fire brigade. 
I can promise you that a fireman's wage cannot support 4 people plus pay a mortgage and all that goes with it.
I made plenty of sacrifices by giving up golf etc and instead went back to working with my builder mates at every opportunity. 
In total we went about 10 years without a foreign holiday and used to have a week on the coast somewhere. 
I know exactly how hard it is for today's generation to get on the property ladder as I have two grown up children of my own.
But people of my generation had to make plenty of sacrifices ourselves and I can assure you it wasn't as easy as some are suggesting.