I don't understand how anyone is meant to get by anymore. Times haven't always been easy, but at least in the days gone by there was some amount of hope that once you pass your poor early life years, you'll start progressing into wealth and money and stability.

My Grandmother once told me that she and my Grandfather saved up for almost 2 years, didn't go out to eat, and then they bought their 5 bedroom house. All I have to do is be smart with my money and save up, and I could surely do the same. 2 whole years without eating out or going on holidays, where have I heard that before? Oh, that's right, that's how I live already.

But even if I didn't want such a luxurious house and went for something modest, even £200,000 won't go far in most of the UK. On a typical income outside of London you might be barely scratching much beyond £30,000 per year, which would barely get you a £100,000 loan, so you'd need to have £100,000 as your deposit to be allowed to take that on - how the fuck is anyone supposed to do that?

Saving up 3x your income just to borrow about 3x your income, which with interest, you'll likely pay double over the mortgage period, making buying a house require 9x your income even with 50% down is mad, just for a cube of bricks to live inside, but even worse when you work out how you'll get that money to begin with.

If everything in life is squeezing every penny it can out, where are you meant to find the money to set aside to save up to put towards a deposit on a giant loan on your moderate and tight income already?

When you're able to set aside 50% of your income, in 1 year of work you're 6 months of income ahead, able to invest it, keep it safe, and save it for your future. If you're only able to set aside 5%, in 1 year of working, you've gained a bit over 2 weeks. You're a year older, more tired, and now have 2 weeks' worth of runway at best. On such tight margins, every minor expense is such a huge portion of your free money. You might make £15 an hour, but spending £15 isn't 1 hour of your time gone, it's 3 days of working to make that minor excess that you then spent. That small cost is 3 days of your life.

Back to saving for a house. If the houses have gone up so much, then the rest has too. As have the bills such as gas, electricity, water, insurance, food, cars, fuel, taxes - where is the freedom left after it all? It's one thing that house prices may be many times more than your annual income to afford now than they were 30 years ago, but another to realise that of your free income, they're so far out of your affordability that it might as well be 25 times harder to buy a house now. 10 years of work later, you might be 6 months of income ahead, assuming nothing goes wrong, yet your dilly-dallying and patience have only meant the costs have gone up more. Sucks to be you.

Oh, but you don't know how hard we used to have it! TVs used to be so expensive we had to rent them for 8 months of the year; that was all we could afford! And it was only 16 inches across, and colour was a luxury, and oh the channels stopped at midnight, and there were only four of them! You tell the kids today, and they won't believe you. Thank GOD these days I can buy an 85" 4k TV for £1000 on Amazon to fit in my... oh that's right, I don't have a place to put it.

This goes for almost everything now. We're surrounded by so many pointless luxuries that we're told not to complain about the fact that our lives have been economically locked out from us. Those of us lucky enough to inherit a house will lose half that money in taxes, fees, forced sales to split it amongst siblings, and end up at 60 years old with as much money as our parents had at 25, ready to take their first step on the housing ladder. And don't think that a dying generation holding half the wealth means prices will drop, or it'll pass to us. Oh no. Investment companies are sitting idly by, cash-rich and waiting to pounce on your grandmother's house the moment she croaks. That 5-bedroom house could be a 5 flat HMO, making twice as much in rent as it would have done before. Two times the income? Wow! That kind of income potential means the house is now worth double what it was when they bought it, so they can get a mortgage out on that, pull out the original investment, still have a huge steak, and use that revenue generating asset to continue piling up wealth for an increasingly richer demographic who compound until they own all that there is to own. And eventually they will look down from their towers, and they will weep, for there will be no more middle class to conquer.

I will cry a tear of joy the day I see the nuclear bombs fall, for I have no stake left in this world other than to see it crumble, knowing we'll all die in the same filth, owning nothing, and we'll finally be free.