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Has Anyone Seen My Twenties?
Rachel Lane, Sat Dec 10th
Premature aging is spreading across the UK and is particularlyprevalent amongst recent graduates in the UK who, upon leavinguniversity, are plunged straight into fears about the propertyladder, pensions and paying off their student debts. These youngpeople graduate at the age of 21, do not pass go and headstraight to 35, worrying about their personal financeinvestments before finding their feet in life. These un-twentysomethings lifestyles can generally categorisedwithin two extremes, either not going out at all because theyhave no money or going out and partying every Friday andSaturday night, because they feel directionless. Groups such asthese may not seem particularly worrying, but many graduates arefinding that they are working themselves to the bone by takingon two jobs and working seven days a week just to meet theirbills. Some young graduates are known to even take on multiplejobs so they can bolster up their salary details for mortgageapplications. By doing so, they commit themselves to a loan thatcan only be repaid through exhaustion. These characteristics have been assigned to the emergence of thequarter-life crisis, but this epidemic of financial concerntends to be a problem for those who have been through highereducation, rather than those who took full time employmentstraight after leaving school. This represents a worrying trendgiven the government encouragement for increased school leaversto attend university.
UK graduates find it particularly tough as they are oftengroomed to believe that they can get good salaries and corporatejobs. Yet many young people leave university only to be hit bythe hard reality that the competition is immense and thatexpectations must be lowered. Some graduates, unable to findwork immediately after graduation, get themselves into furtherdebt by taking out career development loans and other forms ofcommercial borrowing to undertake a further qualification. Due to the volume of UK graduates on the market, the need tostand out has made life much more competitive. Contacts,professional qualifications, Masters degrees and relevant workexperience are now required to help secure a "graduate" career. Moneynet ( http://www.moneynet.co.uk ),a consumer website, released a recent report statingthat graduates need to check their credit histories when theyfinish their courses. Richard Brown, the CEO of moneynet warnedthat graduates could face a credit history nightmare at the endof university due to relocation, late payments and low credit.Moneynet has taken steps to provide publications which can helpstudents and their families higher education, but thesheer scale of the student market now dictates that financialproblems go beyond a lack of financial planning. According to Credit Action ( http://www.creditaction.org.uk/debtstats.htm ), a third of prospectivestudents underestimate the cost of university, with 25% offreshers expecting their parents to foot the bill. Both parentsand students apparently underestimate the true costs ofuniversity - parents by almost £4,000 and students by over£6,000. A quarter of parents state that they still have adultchildren living at home and over 14% of parents with adultchildren have remortgaged their homes or taken out loans to helptheir children out of the financial quagmire. Student debts anddifficulties getting onto the first rung of the housing ladderare given as the main reasons for offspring being unable toleave home. First-time buyers are being required to save harderand for longer to secure their first home, in spite of asupposedly cooling housing market. It also seems that parents who try to help out their offspringby giving cash to get them out of their financial struggles maybe doing more harm than good according to the NatWest. Thereport shows that those who accepted payouts from their parentswere 25% more likely to then go overdrawn in the future thanthose who didn't take this form of financial help. Overall athird of young people said their parents had never taught themhow to manage their money. If you're a parent and concerned thatyour children need help with managing their pocket-money,moneynet offers a family guide with a few suggestions.Itdoesn't offer a magical solution to student debt, but it mightprovide some help in financial management. Resources: http://www.creditaction.org.uk/home.htm http://www.moneynet.co.uk/student-finance-guide/index.shtmlhttp://www.moneynet.co.uk/family-finance-guide/index.shtml About the author:Rachel writes for the personal blog Cashzilla - a mightypersonalfinanosaurus who lives in Scotland with his girlfriendNessie - the Loch Ness Monster. Contact details: Rachel LaneE-mail: rachel@positiveinterest.com Web:http://www.cashzilla.co.uk
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