Saoirse, in answer to your question, 'how will we survive', it really is quite simple.

We will be spending your inheritance.

Why?

Because you Gen-Y's (generalising) are to busy spending every penny you earn to even consider settling down and buying a house for yourself.

You see, unlike Gen-Y, we worked four, five, even six days a week, often holding second jobs, all so we could provide for our families.

RDO's, sickies and flexi time were not herd of.

So, instead of asking us how we will fair, you had better ask yourself that question, as once we are gone, along with 'your inheritance' you can no longer hold on to the 'apron strings' as you will be left to defend for yourselves.

Good luck!

Glad you threw the word 'generalising' in there, rehctub. I and most of the Y-Genners with whom I spend my time work extremely hard to achieve those same goals our parents worked for. Interestingly, I and most of my friends are those same uni graduates who have been demonised by individual and others on this forum for sitting around lazily, thinking the world owes us a living because we're so smart. I suspect that there are bludgers in every generation. The difference with Gen-Y, I believe (and as I said in my last post) is that many of us have a warped view of what we NEED and what we WANT in life. Life for much of Gen-Y is so unaffordable because we are so attached to 'things' and 'conveniences' that we struggle to take a step back and remember what it's all about.

I've been down that path - I remember sitting down with my mother to work out a budget when I got my first post-uni job. I added in so many expenses and had a great big sook when I saw how little I had left over. It took a while for the words 'discretionary spending' to enter my vocabulary. Nowadays, I can see that most of my small-ticket spending is discretionary and that I can achieve my goals by cutting that spending. Who needs to go and hang out with drunk Australians in Bali when we have plenty of drunk Australians right here in ... well ... Australia? I don't know. I think it is a matter of maturity, not a matter of generation. The wall street yuppies breeding mass consumption in the 1980s weren't part of my generation, but they gave us some pretty exciting, if ill-informed ideas.

That is a broad generalisation as you acknowledge. Gen Y is certainly a different culture in some respects, but unlike my generation many Gen Y are sadly all too intent on thinking about buying a house, paying off their HECS debts and working out how to raise children without the option of one partner staying home.

From my memory many in my baby boomer generation did not think about such things until we married and decided to have children. We travelled, got involved in politics, or sport and started work without the same pressures as exist now. Mortgage repayments were not such a big bite out of your income.

It is just a reality that Gen Y will have to deal with a different world than the one us older folk experienced. Ditto for our parents generation, establishing themselves after the war.

I heard an interesting quote the other day in relation to housing affordabillity.

Gen-Y wants to start off where the baby boomers finnished, not back where they started.

Pretty much sums it up hey.

Afraid it doesn’t Rehctub, just goes to show your prejudices. And I'm sorry this series of comments deteriorated into GenX-Y versus Boomers when in fact i had hoped to illustrate that it was the system that divides us not inter-generational differences.

And i'm sorry i left it so long between comments, but i'm afraid i was out working my 70hour a week job and commuting 3+ hours a day because the only place i could afford to buy a house was at least 1 hour out of the city (usually longer on workdays when the trains run late). Though i suppose i have to give you the fact that I have been on one overseas holiday, after i finished uni (worked my way through uni BTW (no Austudy for me), and, if it makes you feel any better, it was a working holiday too).

So whilst I do get upset about inter-generational stereotyping, my original point was - the way the system is set up we don’t actually get a choice about what we consider is valuable to our society, the capitalist system doesn’t allow it. We just have to put up with it because that's just the way it works - no use asking questions, you'll just be told that you're selfish and want everything now when everyone else had to work hard for it.

Meanwhile our children are suffering because their parents aren't around to actually parent them, Mum doesn’t get home from work till at least 6:30pm (by the time she picks them up from after school care), Dad's only around on Sundays because he has to work 6 days a week and the kids are in bed by the time he gets home on work nights.

It’s not a choice – it’s a necessity if one wants to own a home. I know that it wasn’t easy for previous generations, but it would take a lot to convince me that it was the norm then as it is now

Don't get me wrong - i do it - but i'm not happy about it and i really don’t see any reason why anyone should be. Of course the ones who came before and have already worked their way further up are reluctant to let go of any of their hard earned capital or benefits. Spend my inheritance, I don’t care, I’m not expecting one anyhow. But what I am worried about the world I am leaving for my children and I am going to fight to make sure that they actually have a sustainable economy to inherit.

I’m one of the ones on the battlefield at the moment, and the battlefield just isn’t the same as it was 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago. My parents raised 5 children on a primary school teacher’s salary. Just tell me how it’s possible to do this today because I must be doing something wrong...

And it’s not that I take too many overseas holidays or buy too many iGadgets – oh hang on, I do have that prepaid mobile... And I’ve got a microwave – they weren’t around to waste money on in previous generations... Crikey, do I have to declare that electric toothbrush too? I do have a DVD player (but seeing as I don’t own a VCR we can call it even can’t we?). And what if I have a flat screen TV (which I don’t), but wouldn’t your parents have looked down on you for buying a colour TV (or buying a TV at all!).

I’m not intentionally trying to be facetious, but I honestly believe that the world is a very different place than it was just 10-20 years ago and there is no use denying it. I don’t blame previous generations. Instead, I blame the capitalist system and unless we stand up to be counted, it’s only going to get worse and the big boys at the top are only going to get richer at the expense of our children and the things that we as a society we should value above money.