Hope is in short supply for young people when it comes to the cost of living crisis

I have never witnessed a sustained period of economic growth in my adult life. What does this mean? It means a substantial lack of savings (read: close to zero) and holding very little hope of retiring before I am 80. Oh, and I’ll probably never own a house.

Don’t weep for me, I’m still what passes for comfortable these days. But having come of age during the recession following the 2008 financial crash, I am now about to turn 30 and I am facing my second economic crisis – a cost of living crisis.

Back then, I had no idea what Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac was and the crisis didn’t mean anything to me. It was just something on the news – until my dad was around the house a lot more often, waking up late and working only a few hours a day. It meant something to me when he began looking for a second job.

We were lucky, in the end. My dad was a driving instructor before he retired, and he managed to cling on to his business. And as the recession eased, people wanted to spend their money on driving lessons again. Life seemed to go back to normal, but that feeling of uncertainty stuck with me.

It remained with me throughout university, when I subsisted almost solely on Iceland’s £2.50 bag of frozen sausages cut up in a value-brand pasta. The job market was sluggish, but I managed to pick up some hours in the University library and chipped away at my overdraft and loan – an important lesson in debt management for later life.

Then I began applying for as many jobs as I could, every single day. I was offered just one, as an archaeologist. I was paid something like £18,600. This was 2014, by the way, and this was essentially a graduate job. Not in the sense of a scheme, but in the sense that to get the job, one required a degree in archaeology. It wasn’t as simple as “getting a better job”, I’m afraid.

I was 21 and had no kids, no real commitments, no bills to pay, and still I struggled. I drank at Weatherspoon’s and rarely ate out. I never went on holiday and only occasionally would visit the cinema or theatre. I mostly just read books. Some of my other friends took other jobs that might allow them to flash the cash in London’s cocktail bars, while I was just about able to fork out £220 a month on a travel card and paying a little bit of upkeep to my parents to help with groceries and such like.

I'm now turning 30. It is supposed to be the age when you start thinking about kids and a house and marriage and all that. But still, my savings account remains a savings account in name only – and I’m too busy paying someone else’s mortgage via my rented flat to worry about getting my own. My adult growth is once again stunted. At 29 my parents already had two kids and a house in the suburbs of London. A different time and all that, I guess.

I don’t necessarily want all that yet, but even if I did there is almost no prospect of my owning a house on the horizon. Isn’t it strange that owning the place where you live has become such a pipe dream for many?

My partner and I share our flat with another friend, but with the recent rise in prices we are still beginning to feel the pinch. Again, don’t get out the violins. My point is not pity, my point is simply that young people will once again be knocked back, our growth delayed.

However, If my only worries are not being able to save, or having to eat out less – what does the current situation mean for those already struggling? Meanwhile, the government tells us “let them eat value brands”, or offers condescending advice like “work more” – why hadn’t I thought of that?

I’ve lived on value brands before and they can be a lifeline. But they should not be the rule. People are struggling to put food on their tables, and the lives of young people are frozen in place due to reasons out of their control. But it is well within the government’s hands to do something – as seen in Spain and France and Italy with windfall taxes and VAT cuts. There should be actual help, not empty platitudes which do nothing but highlight how out of touch the government is.