Phil Hammond's Tax on Age

[northernladyuk]

Oddly on the continent it's around 20% property ownership (I'll try and find some stats but when I lived in Germany or Belgium this was the case), and there was no real angst about it. Thinking is that you can rent something far better , where you want, for along as you want with minimum hassle than it is to invest a large wad of your income into a property. It would be interesting to see what the generation currently making noises about home ownership really think.

Stats here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ownership_rate

Belgium 71%
UK 64%
Germany 52%

[original PM]

You forgot Gym membership.

Yup and netflix

and sky

[BlasterBates]

Maybe the real reason young people can't afford to buy a house is because they are instead spending all their money on foreign holidays and brand new cars whilst living at Mum & Dad's house?

Reducing National Insurance rates for people under a certain age will only help increase the monthly payments they can make on their cars?

Maybe not saddling younger people with intensive debt by encouraging them all to go to university will also help? Give them 3/4 years head start on the earning money ladder?

There is a fair amount of truth in this, the Daily Mail "bless their heart " have published a couple of stories of people on normal incomes paying off the mortgage and/or buying an average priced houses in their 20's.

In other words you can buy your house if you live on baked beans and give up the i-phone for a while if you really want to.

Interest rates are very low so yes houses are expensive but a lot less money is going own the drain in interest payments. The full cost of a house is not the original price it is the price plus interest. This is never factored in the "hyperbole" on house prices.

[bobspud]

A flight cost peanuts these days. Ask anyone who booked on Monarch who lost their £30-40 flights which was so low they couldn't claim on insurance.

But it's part of a wider situation / lifestyle. They are not just taking one holiday they are taking 2 maybe 3. then they are out every night as well.

I met a chap on holiday. He had just turned 70 and was a maintenance man in a factory, he had just brought his whole family 10 + to a hotel that was costing a fortune for just the four of us to stay in. He was rather well off but his attitude was when he was a kid there was nothing to spend money on. He saved everything he could and invested in everything going. He was off to one of the Caribbean islands afterwards to finish his brothers house and sort his own one out as he planned to leave England and go home to where his parents were from.

[SueEllen]

You forgot Gym membership.

I've belonged to three different gyms in the last two years.

The less than £20 a month gym was full of people under 35 who weren't students. This gym has few classes but is open 24 hours.

The £40 a month gym was mostly full of students and workers. This gym has a reasonable amount of classes and a pool but limited opening hours. (Most of the students and lots of the workers left as the equipment fell apart.)

The gym I go to now which if you are conned into paying full price is twice that is full of people over 35. Average age is around 50. This gym has loads of classes and a pool.

So yes they go to the gym but they frequent the cheaper ones that are open 24 hours.

[SueEllen]

Yup and netflix

and sky

Netflix is cheaper than going to the cinema.

And most people I know who are "young" have Sky cos their parents pay for it.

[Hobosapien]

Never really understood the attraction of paying to go to a gym unless into body building or access to specific equipment or classes not available in their own right elsewhere.

I prefer to go to that free (apart from parking) outdoor gym for running and cycling, mixing it up between flat-ish cycle/mixed use paths and hilly woodland trails.

Admittedly it's not so nice this time of year when it's dark in the morning/evening (at least WFH I can pop out over lunchtime for a hour or two) and cold/wet, but I see enough other people doing similar activities on my chosen routes that I know I'm not the only one thinking that way.

[Jog On]

The gym I go to now which if you are conned into paying full price is twice that is full of people over 35. Average age is around 50. This gym has loads of classes and a pool.

So yes they go to the gym but they frequent the cheaper ones that are open 24 hours.

How do you get out of paying full price? Is it the swanky gym with tennis/squash/badminton courts and a nice spa as well?

My local Davis Lloyd has lots of younger people in it - especially in the free weight area but classes and the rest of it are also teaming with them - and it's not cheap at all.

[Pip in a Poke]

Yes, I can remember going to Ventimiglia in the mid-80s. The return scheduled flight to Nice on Air France was £330. That was a lot of hours stood on a procuction line packing yoghurt.

So I got a Transalpino rail ticket from London Victoria to Ventimiglia via Newhaven - Dieppe for just over £100. That was the cheapest way to do it & it was only available to the under 25s. But, even that is expensive when you extrapolate out to today's prices.

Of course, I'm sure I could have gone DanAir - that was the way to do cheap(er) air travel in the days before el-cheapo airlines. Get a bucket seat on a charter flight.

But I've always gone scheduled. 'Cos I'm worth it...

[chopper]

When I was of student age, in the 90s, students went out in the evening to grotty pubs serving cheap lager, or to grotty nightclubs serving even cheaper alcopops - the kind of places where you needed to wipe your feet on the way out. Super cheap nights out. But 10 years later, students didn't do that anymore, they started going to trendy, expensive bars.

They drove battered cars, if they drove one at all. Not new Citroen Saxos bought on PCP which came with free insurance.

Today's young are fed a diet of reality TV and social media, depicting people enjoying fabulous lifestyles and one thing that unites all these 'reality' stars is that none of them are shown picking lettuce, fixing cars, fitting boilers or writing low level design documents. The life style you want, without having to earn it.

Earlier this year, I bought a 2 up 2 down mid-terrace for £50,000. Needed "a bit" of work, but that kind of house price is well within the reach of a couple earning £20k a year between them. But they don't want to live there. They want to live in expensive but valueless city centre flats and still have all the trimmings.

No. There should not be tax breaks for the snowflake generation.