Want a home? Work hard and save for it!
HOW refreshing it was to read Liz Hodgkinson’s viewpoint on baby boomers (Mail). In the Sixties and Seventies, if you were not university material, you left school at 15 and got a full-time job. However, for the past 20 years, parents have instilled in their offspring a sense of entitlement, believing even the most unacademic has the right to study at third level. The university debt they and their parents incur has resulted in many still living in the family home in their 30s. By the time I was 20, I’d had five years of full-time work experience, while supporting myself in a bedsit. Bills and travel expenses had to be budgeted before any thought of a social life. Foreign holidays were something other people had. I wasn’t given a car, but went out and got a second job pulling pints in a pub so I could save up for an old banger. How many of today’s 30-year-olds will reach their 60s owning their own home outright and with some money in the bank? Very few, I believe — but they must blame themselves, not the hard-working baby boomers.
SUE WHITFORD, Coedpoeth, Clwyd. LIKE Liz Hodgkinson, I own buy-to-let properties after saving all my adult life. I get furious when I hear baby boomers being tarnished as selfish. I can afford my modest lifestyle because I’ve always worked and saved. My mantra is: ‘I used to walk two bus stops to save a shilling’, which is something today’s young people don’t seem to understand or even consider.
SARAH SPEDDING, Broadclyst, Devon. A LOT of millennials think they are hard done by. Baby boomers get the blame because, according to them, we had it easy. In 1990, our mortgage interest rate was 15 per cent, with only one salary coming in. For years, we had a tough time, but we tightened our belts, held off having another baby and came through it. We didn’t have the bank of Mum and Dad to turn to. Now in our 60s, we have a comfortable lifestyle, achieved by living within our means. Instead of moaning about how hard they have it, millennials need to consider why they can’t get on the property ladder. Forget a diamond solitaire engagement ring, lavish wedding, having children they can’t afford, takeaways, meals out, new clothes every month, the latest iPhone and holidays abroad every year. The problem is that they want it all and they want it now.
LINDA ADAMS, Ongar, Essex.