Wonder how we would have coped...........?

[ankietyjoe]

Joe, you can live within your means but the issue is often because of where you live. In my city house prices are still reasonable. The issue with things like utilities and insurance span the divides across the UK but wages keep a good pace here as opposed to a place like London where you could buy a garage with what I could buy a house for in my city.

Like you say there are different challenges. Poverty was easily worse the further back you go but we have challenges to getting on in life and media.

I'm not sure I agree with you here because property prices are only reasonable relative to the South. They have still risen way beyond wages and inflation.

The average house price across the UK is around £230-240k right (or a 1 bed flat in Slough....really...). If a young family in a relatively affordable area wanted to buy a modest house, they'd need £25k in the bank, and have an income of way beyond £60k for this to be doable. This is just not feasible for the majority, and it's people striving to achieve this that is (in my opinion) laying down decades of stress. Even if they did manage to save the money and secure a mortgage, they will be committing to a minimum £1000 per month payment for most of the rest of their lives, and that's now interest rates are rock bottom. I worked in the property market in the late 80s and saw what happened when interest rates shot up. It was not pretty, and it will happen again one day.

These days it's becoming 'life by subscription' and people are becoming used to over extending and committing to massive financial outlay just to exist. In some respects it's even worse in the US because of the health care costs, but that's somewhat balanced by other outgoings being cheaper.

Should people not have the opportunity to take time out when they need to? I can't help but look at the social care that Scandinavian countries enjoy and wonder why we can't do the same. It doesn't breed apathy or laziness, people just have more time to figure out what they want/need to do.