In the UK the problem isn't that people earn less, it's that everything, particularly housing, costs so much.

There was an article in The Sunday Times a couple of months ago (I've searched for it but can't find it) where the 30-something writer said that, even working as a journalist with a solicitor husband, she couldn't afford anything like the lifestyle her parents had at the same age.

Her father had been a deputy headmaster*, her mother a nurse*, and on their salaries in the 1960s and 70s they could afford a large house in a good area of London with a big garden, they had holidays abroad every summer and were able put away some savings for their retirement.

The writer and her husband were living in a small flat in London and couldn't envisage the day when they'd be able to afford to buy a house, let alone start a family. Yet they were earning far, far more than their parents were at the same age. They even worked out what their earnings were at 1972 rates and they were earning almost three times what their parents had earned, yet still they couldn't afford a house.

I am very, very lucky that I bought my first property some years ago and, although I have what I think is a huge mortgage (because I had to buy out my ex-husband, which ate into the equity that had accrued over the years), I still have a safety net of equity against a drop in property values. I can't envisage an early retirement, thanks to my pension fund having been pretty much wiped out in the Equitable Life fiasco.


*These professions are now considered 'key worker' jobs, so people in public service jobs (teaching, nursing, police, fire service, etc.) are entitled to government assistance to help them buy their first homes. This is called Shared Equity, where they only own a percentage of the property and rent the rest. As they can afford it, they can buy more tranches of equity until, eventually, they will hopefully be able to afford to own the whole property.