Boomers fed up with struggling Millennials

Climbing interest rates, soaring house prices and the cost of living crisis means many Aussies are on edge and tensions are rising between younger and older generations over differences in opinion on home ownership.Just this week, retired Baby Boomer Kerrie Boylett sparked fury with her comments about how she “struggled” to buy her first home in 1995.She suggested more young people would be able to buy a home if they just cut back on “luxuries” like having a new mobile phone and eating at restaurants.As can be imagined, these comments didn’t sit too well with Millennials, and the backlash was fierce.But there were many who rushed to the 69-year-old’s defence, telling their own stories of how much they had to sacrifice when buying their first home.One Melbourne woman claimed she and her partner saved enough money to pay for their first home by living on one wage and saving the other.“We only went to entertainment if it was free, only meat we could afford was mince, never drank bottled wine, drove an old bomb passed it’s use by date, all furniture was at least 20 years old, no cooling, heating was an open fire, no honeymoon, never went overseas but we had a fat deposit when we bought our home,” she said.“So yes it can be done on minimum wage. It just takes planning, patience and determination.”A woman from Sydney said she bought her first home for $34,000 plus $12,000 for the land, noting interest rates were 18 per cent and paid monthly.“As a student nurse I was on $24,000 per year before tax. Every 2nd pay went on the mortgage,” she said.“You read stories of Millennials buying half a dozen investment properties and mega million start up businesses. But why compare? Why be envious?”Australia's Cash Rate 2022Another commenter claimed it was common to see Millennials eating out at restaurants, playing with new smart phones, driving cars and going on holidays.“They should take a leaf out of our book and stop doing all that stuff,” they said.“We had to pay massive interest rates back in the day, and we never once had smart phones, computers and silly gadgets. “We never dreamt of taking a holiday or buying a fancy car. We made do with a bicycle and maybe 2 jobs if we had to!”And it isn’t just the older generation that share these views, with one Millennial even jumping in saying they “agree with the Boomers”.“Millennials and Zoomers: multiple holidays a year; eating out multiple times a week; iPhones; gaming consoles; clothes; tattoos; makeup; music festivals; Netflix,” he claimed, before branding many young people “entitled”.Many older Australians seem to have become so frustrated with the rhetoric that home ownership was much easier to obtain when they were young that they are even being stirred up by satirical news articles.This week Australian satire news site, The Shovel, shared a post on Twitter poking fun at Baby Boomers who bought their houses for a ridiculously cheap price yet still give outdated advice to younger people trying to get into the market.“But interest rates were 17 per cent in my day!” complains man who bought house for $67,000,” the title of the post states.The satire article goes on to state John Bradly, a fictional 63-year-old Melbourne man who bought his house in the 1980s, thinks young people concerned about interest rate rises “don’t know how good they have it”.Bradley is quoted as saying he had to save up “for weeks” for a house deposit and that he only had his salary to rely on which was “only about one-fifth of the value of the average home back then”.The article attracted dozens of comments from outraged Aussies who clearly missed the joke and were feeling personally attacked by the Twitter post.Even general manager of the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Phil Gould, got caught up in the confusion, prompting him to urge the satire news site to do more research before writing their articles.“Average full-time wage in 1990 was $566.80. Try to do just a little research,” he wrote, sharing a link to the satire article on Twitter.And he was far from the only one who took the post a little too seriously.One Twitter user claimed the man in the article could have only bought a “dump in rural Tassie” for under $70,000, before going on to explain how much they “sacrificed” to own their first home.“When my wife and I bought a 2 bed duplex in 90/91?, it cost us $108,000. Interest rates were 17 per cent. $108,000 was a LOT of $$ back then,” they wrote.“We sacrificed a LOT. We started modestly as well.”Twitter postAnother person claimed that, while they bought their first house in the late 1980s for just over $71,000, they didn’t get things like paid parental leave and subsidised child care.“And yes interest rates at 17-18 per cent scared us,” the commenter said.The debate around home ownership is only becoming more heated as the RBA continues to hike interest rates, raising them for the ninth consecutive time this week.They announced a 25 basis point increase to the baseline rate on Tuesday, bringing it up to 3.35 per cent.In all, the rate has jumped 325 basis points in just 279 days, rendering it the fastest and largest rate hiking cycle on record.

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February 11, 2023 at 12:16AM
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Climbing interest rates, soaring house prices and the cost of living crisis means many Aussies are on edge and tensions are rising between younger and older generations over differences in opinion on home ownership.Just this week, retired Baby Boomer Kerrie Boylett sparked fury with her comments about how she “struggled” to buy her first home in 1995.She suggested more young people would be able to buy a home if they just cut back on “luxuries” like having a new mobile phone and eating at restaurants.As can be imagined, these comments didn’t sit too well with Millennials, and the backlash was fierce.But there were many who rushed to the 69-year-old’s defence, telling their own stories of how much they had to sacrifice when buying their first home.One Melbourne woman claimed she and her partner saved enough money to pay for their first home by living on one wage and saving the other.“We only went to entertainment if it was free, only meat we could afford was mince, never drank bottled wine, drove an old bomb passed it’s use by date, all furniture was at least 20 years old, no cooling, heating was an open fire, no honeymoon, never went overseas but we had a fat deposit when we bought our home,” she said.“So yes it can be done on minimum wage. It just takes planning, patience and determination.”A woman from Sydney said she bought her first home for $34,000 plus $12,000 for the land, noting interest rates were 18 per cent and paid monthly.“As a student nurse I was on $24,000 per year before tax. Every 2nd pay went on the mortgage,” she said.“You read stories of Millennials buying half a dozen investment properties and mega million start up businesses. But why compare? Why be envious?”Australia's Cash Rate 2022Another commenter claimed it was common to see Millennials eating out at restaurants, playing with new smart phones, driving cars and going on holidays.“They should take a leaf out of our book and stop doing all that stuff,” they said.“We had to pay massive interest rates back in the day, and we never once had smart phones, computers and silly gadgets. “We never dreamt of taking a holiday or buying a fancy car. We made do with a bicycle and maybe 2 jobs if we had to!”And it isn’t just the older generation that share these views, with one Millennial even jumping in saying they “agree with the Boomers”.“Millennials and Zoomers: multiple holidays a year; eating out multiple times a week; iPhones; gaming consoles; clothes; tattoos; makeup; music festivals; Netflix,” he claimed, before branding many young people “entitled”.Many older Australians seem to have become so frustrated with the rhetoric that home ownership was much easier to obtain when they were young that they are even being stirred up by satirical news articles.This week Australian satire news site, The Shovel, shared a post on Twitter poking fun at Baby Boomers who bought their houses for a ridiculously cheap price yet still give outdated advice to younger people trying to get into the market.“But interest rates were 17 per cent in my day!” complains man who bought house for $67,000,” the title of the post states.The satire article goes on to state John Bradly, a fictional 63-year-old Melbourne man who bought his house in the 1980s, thinks young people concerned about interest rate rises “don’t know how good they have it”.Bradley is quoted as saying he had to save up “for weeks” for a house deposit and that he only had his salary to rely on which was “only about one-fifth of the value of the average home back then”.The article attracted dozens of comments from outraged Aussies who clearly missed the joke and were feeling personally attacked by the Twitter post.Even general manager of the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Phil Gould, got caught up in the confusion, prompting him to urge the satire news site to do more research before writing their articles.“Average full-time wage in 1990 was $566.80. Try to do just a little research,” he wrote, sharing a link to the satire article on Twitter.And he was far from the only one who took the post a little too seriously.One Twitter user claimed the man in the article could have only bought a “dump in rural Tassie” for under $70,000, before going on to explain how much they “sacrificed” to own their first home.“When my wife and I bought a 2 bed duplex in 90/91?, it cost us $108,000. Interest rates were 17 per cent. $108,000 was a LOT of $$ back then,” they wrote.“We sacrificed a LOT. We started modestly as well.”Twitter postAnother person claimed that, while they bought their first house in the late 1980s for just over $71,000, they didn’t get things like paid parental leave and subsidised child care.“And yes interest rates at 17-18 per cent scared us,” the commenter said.The debate around home ownership is only becoming more heated as the RBA continues to hike interest rates, raising them for the ninth consecutive time this week.They announced a 25 basis point increase to the baseline rate on Tuesday, bringing it up to 3.35 per cent.In all, the rate has jumped 325 basis points in just 279 days, rendering it the fastest and largest rate hiking cycle on record.