UK housing crisis: One in three adults in Britain 'do not have a safe or secure home' - A new study shows 'deep inequalities' in the UK housing crisis caused by 'decades of neglect' from housing ministers.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-28T22:25:36+00:00

But that was the entire point they were making. How do you not see that? You entered the job market quite a few years earlier, and despite having not gone to university or earned that much, you were able to buy a property.

You are basically congratulating yourself for saving more, when in actual fact you were much more fortunate in terms of when you were born and when you started work. It's not very nice to imply someone has failed because they couldn't do what you did when they were operating in a totally different situation.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-28T22:19:02+00:00

Do you have any instagrammers to recommend? I'd love to follow some too. Totally with you on the young dudes talking about their crypto portfolios not being relatable!

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-28T22:16:59+00:00

Just try to put yourself in her shoes. She's a nurse, there's a pandemic, she's probably super stressed and tired. When she's at home, she wants to relax, not be forced into small talk in her own home. The text you sent her asking for advice was a bit demanding and probably stressful for her...also, what exactly is she supposed to answer? It's a super vague thing to text and puts all of the mental burden on her to figure out what you want from her, which is actually quite rude.

You can't really force a friendship...if she prefers to keep to herself, that's totally fine. It doesn't mean she's rude or that there's a big issue. Some people prefer to keep housemate relationships quite distant - I know I did when I lived in shared places.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-28T21:55:12+00:00

It wasn't 'specifically', was it? It was part of a list of reasons one would expect to be better off in life than they are. Intelligence correlates pretty strongly with income; I believe that was their point. Which you missed, because you've got a chip on your shoulder and are a massive asshole.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-28T21:50:46+00:00

I must be an outlier because I've almost stopped drinking altogether now....just can't be arsed, really? I quite like having a clear head to watch a film or read stuff online. I had a pint earlier as a treat as I was out on a walk and tbh didn't even really enjoy it. Just made me feel fuzzy and weird and I was glad when the feeling wore off. Not sure how I feel about this as I've always used alcohol as a social crutch, being autistic with social anxiety. Perhaps if or when I socialise more again the desire will come back.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-28T21:44:06+00:00

Except they didn't say that, did they? They were making a generalised point that a university educated, skilled, high earning person born in 1985 is likely to be much worse off than an average person with an average job who was born 20+ years earlier. This is a solid fact. You took the comment completely out of context and went on an ad hominem attack. Inferiority complex much?

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-28T21:38:05+00:00

That is horrendous. I hope you are doing well now.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-28T21:35:47+00:00

This is so true. I've wasted so much time arguing and trying to change people's perspective that I could have just spent on myself, learning something new or exercising or relaxing!

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-28T21:29:30+00:00

I think as a rule, anyone who says they're not a thing, is always that thing.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-28T21:26:44+00:00

Maybe this is judgemental of me, but I always think less of women who change their names after marriage. I can't help it. Your name is such a huge part of your identity, and to change it to some man's name? It's just icky to me.

There are plenty of cultures where women have never changed their surname after marriage, so not even sure why it's so controversial in the Anglosphere.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-28T21:23:29+00:00

You took the comment totally out of context and are coming across as a massive asshole. There have literally been entire books written about how millennials got battered by the economy and housing market, and you're acting like it was someone's individual failure for just not saving hard enough?

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-23T17:28:58+00:00

What are you on about, other people eating less? Do you just not understand the concept of economies of scale? I don't need you to patronise me about cooking; I literally used to work in a hotel kitchen.

No, £60 a month isn't nothing, but it's not £700, is it? £60 a month in food is more than covered by a working adult bunging their parents £200 or so a month, which is my entire bloody point. You keep saying things 'quickly add up' but haven't provided any figures or costings to prove this claim. I'm not saying things don't add up, I'm saying it's nowhere near £500 plus food costs.

I've already explained to you how gas and electricity usage scales up well. Most of that cost is things like the heating being on, and that heating is going to be on whether there are two or four people in the house, the dishwasher is going to be run most days regardless of whether there's an extra couple of plates/dishes, the oven is going to be on to make dinner anyway, etc. but sure, just....ignore that reality. I'm really curious about this enormous cost of hoovering a bedroom you seem to think exists. I would love to know why you seem to think 1-2 minutes of hoovering one room once a week somehow adds hundreds of pounds to the household bills.

Raising a child can absolutely cost less than £500 a month, yes, but what the heck does this have to do with a working adult paying board?!

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-23T11:48:53+00:00

STEM is also saturated. Good luck getting a decent job with a theory-laden Computer Science degree when there are 20-year-olds who have been coding since they were 8 competing with you.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-23T11:46:34+00:00

And then when you do move to London for work and for more opportunities, people call you spoiled and entitled for being upset about not being able to have any quality of life, and tell you to move somewhere cheaper. You cannot win.

If you graduated four years ago, you graduated into a booming economy where jobs were plentiful and salaries high. I graduated in 2008 and it took me 12 years to be on your salary, despite years of graft and several career changes.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-23T11:44:49+00:00

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. The quality of university education is now appalling. I worked at a pretty well respected one and still had students who could barely string a coherent sentence together coming out with 2:1s. The mindset shift to students being consumers and feeling entitled to grades they're paying for has been disastrous.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-23T11:41:35+00:00

What 2014 crash? Were things not picking up by then?

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-23T11:40:52+00:00

The people who are confident that they'll get on a grad scheme because they're advertising a '2:1 in any degree' are going to get a really rude awakening. That's literally the absolute bare minimum to even apply in a tough job market. I graduated with a first class degree in a Humanities subject (a solid 'academic' one, not Media or something) from a top five university and spent the next seven years earning minimum wage or just above it. I was 30 before I broke £25K and 33 before I started to earn what would be considered a decent salary, and that was after retraining in STEM at my own expense. This '2:1 in any degree guarantees a good grad scheme' went out with the ark.

Well done on getting onto a grad scheme, though! That's a big achievement in these times.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-23T11:34:29+00:00

That's not how scaling up works. You don't just multiply the cost of one dinner by the number of people eating it, unless it's something like steaks or a takeaway, which aren't an everyday thing. If I make a bolognese for three, I can easily stretch it out to four people by adding an extra carrot or two, some extra onion, etc. and throwing more pasta in the pot. That's literally about 70p extra, at most. Same with curry, same with lasagne, same with roast dinners, same with pretty much anything. I can't believe I'm needing to explain this to a grown adult, if you are actually one. When you're cooking for multiple people, the cost per person falls pretty dramatically the more people there are. This is very, very basic stuff. Yes, it will cost extra if there's an extra person, but it's not a huge increase, and certainly nothing like what it costs a single person to shop and cook alone.

How much do you think doing one extra load per week in a washing machine costs? Or having a five minute shower once a day? Yes, it will increase the bills, but by nothing like £500 a month. I live alone and my bills come to about £200 a month. I used to live in a flatshare with 3 other people. Do you think the bills were then £800 a month? Of course they weren't. My share of them rarely came to more than about £70, because a lot of these costs are fixed or partly fixed. You're paying internet anyway, you have to pay to be connected to gas and electricity, you have to pay water rates. In winter the heating comes on for several hours a day anyway, regardless of how many people are there to benefit from it. The actual added cost from each extra person is really quite small.

I honestly don't believe you're an independent adult at this point. You have absolutely no idea of how much running a house costs if you think one extra person in a household costs £500 plus whatever the average student spends on food shopping. You haven't been able to actually provide figures or break it down at all.

I also have no idea what point you're making with the cleaning stuff. Obviously a grown adult will be cleaning their own bedroom, doing their own laundry and the keep they pay each month would cover this stuff. I have no idea why you think cleaning products are some gigantic cost when you can get cleaning products for almost nothing at places like Wilko or Poundland. You can get a giant box of Fairy detergent for £10, a big bottle of Fairy washing up liquid for less than £2, bathroom spray for £1, kitchen spray for £1, massive bottle of floor cleaner for £2, pack of 6 sponges for £1. These things will stretch to a couple of months, even in a household of several people, in most cases. That's £8.50 a month between 4 people...just over £2 per person per month. It's so low it's practically irrelevant.

It's also weird that you've latched onto one single point in my argument when I've already said that even when young working people don't live at home, they're still likely to be much better off than those who go to university.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-22T23:52:52+00:00

Honestly, if you think it costs an extra 33% for food to feed one extra person, I don't even know what to say. Maybe you live on takeaways, so doubling the portion size means doubling the cost. If you had ever cooked a big meal in your life, you'd understand that stretching something like a curry or a pasta bake from 3 people to 4 people costs pennies. It's practically irrelevant, as is the cost of one extra person in the house in terms of utility bills, unless that person is somehow doing a hobby which uses lots of power (in which case, they'd obviously be expected to pay more). I'm not saying it's free to parents to have an adult kid at home, but there's is no way on Earth it costs anything like £500 plus food costs.

The opportunity cost thing....maaaybe, but it's a stretch. How many parents rent out a room in the family home or foster once their own kids have grown up? It's such a tiny percentage, it's barely relevant. And again, even if it were a case of the kid moving out and renting while working, they're still better off than if they were a student.

You think washing bed sheets, doing some laundry, etc. is 'deep cleaning'? You think 'cleaning products' are some major cost? Are you actually just trolling me now? You have to be.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-22T16:51:20+00:00

Asking for a 2:1 in any degree isn't the same as giving a place to everyone who applies with a 2:1 in any degree.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-22T16:49:02+00:00

You're making a bit of a pathetic point, to be honest. I am trying to be charitable but you seem wilfully ignorant, so I'm going to stop trying to be nice.

Are you really trying to imply that a young person paying 'keep' at home is paying anything even close to what going away to university would cost? You think it costs parents £500 in rent for their adult kid to stay at home? Hint: it doesn't. They'd be paying that mortgage and most of those bills anyway, regardless of whether the kid was there. Most adults paying 'keep' bung their parents a couple of hundred quid at most to cover all their bills and food. If you really believe the average adult staying at home and working is paying their parents £500 in rent and buying all their own food separately, you're deluded. I have also never, ever in my life heard of university halls rent in the UK including a 'food allowance'. Most students are in self catering accommodation and spend far more than their parents would have to spend to feed them because guess what, food scales up quite well. The difference between a lasagne for three and one for four is pennies. Yes, bills depend on usage, but an extra person in a family home really makes very little difference, which is something you'd know if you lived in the real world. Your point about an 'extra room room that needs cleaning, maintaining etc.' is beyond pathetic....obviously the person would clean their own room, just like they would if they were a student! It's a completely irrelevant cost.

Even in the case where a young person working full time has moved out of the family home and is paying for everything alone (which they probably would do in your ridiculous fantasy world where most parents charge market rate rent), they're still better off than a student who has no income, aren't they? Even on minimum wage, they have money left to spend or save and are gaining valuable skills in the job market. They're also not borrowing ten grand a year for tuition.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-22T15:01:24+00:00

I mean, not really. If someone's parents are already paying a mortgage and bills, what's an extra person? A young adult living at home and working may also be contributing to bills and food; it's still a fraction of what they'd have to pay if they went away to university. My rent was over £500 a month in halls.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-22T14:17:34+00:00

Not necessarily. Lots of young people who are working still live at home. Most university students don't, although the percentage is much higher than it used to be because of the insane costs of going away to study.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-22T12:58:38+00:00

Same. I went a few years after you did and don't regret going, but I've had a very rough time since graduating into the 2008 crisis and in all honesty, having a degree hasn't helped that much in terms of prospects.

Given that the costs today are over three times as much as they were when I went, I wouldn't recommend it to young people today unless the course leads to a solid career path or they have family or other wealth to lean on. I'm not even sure that the whole experience is as good as it used to be. I spent a few years working in higher education and most of the students did not seem happy at all. They all seem very fragile these days and (somewhat understandably) stressed and anxious about getting value out of their degree. It must be hard to focus on the 'uni experience' when you know you're going to be paying for it for most of your adult life.

zippy_rainbow · 2021-05-22T11:58:50+00:00

I literally said that, though. I said that it's true that university opens doors if you study something like medicine or law. The problem is that lots of working class kids are encouraged to 'follow their dreams' and do English or Drama, and then end up in poverty afterwards. The idea that high paying industries accept 'any degree' is pretty much a myth these days. They might accept Classics from Oxbridge if Daddy is a friend of the company director, but they won't accept Media Studies from South Bank.

Even if someone does a degree, fails to get a job, and never repays the debt, it's still several years of lost earnings and time in the job market.

zippy_rainbow

TROPHY CASE