I started in journalism in September 1987, on the business desk of a newspaper. A few weeks after my first by-line, share markets around the world crashed and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 23 per cent in a day. Two years later, I married a man with a large mortgage on a tiny apartment. Interest rates were a crippling 17 per cent and each month we opened our bank statement with shaking hands, willing the numbers to go down.
Timing is everything, and I was lucky enough to be born at the very end of the baby boom, which means that along with free tertiary education and decades of wage growth, I am word-perfect for every Cold Chisel song on Triple M. But living through high interest rates in 1989 scarred us all deeply. We didn’t eat out, go away on holidays or even think about starting a family. Like a sword of Damocles, the mortgage loomed over us, changing every aspect of our behaviour.Credit:Several of my friends sold up their properties and went back to live with their parents. Others took on a flatmate or a weekend job, hoping that extra $100 a week would stop the bank from foreclosing.
My dad told me that mum and his first 3 bedroom house in the late 50's cost 3 years of his wage.
Yes, but what scars me as a Boomer is that my hard-earned, hard-saved money in super, which I strove to build up to give me a comfortable retirement [nb not lavish!] was savaged by THREE falls in stockmarket in recent years. At my age, that healthy $$balance will NEVER recover.
Is that their excuse?
Keating: 'The recession we had to have' 🤷♂️
Well I'm a boomer and yes our interest rates were high, but the affordable cost of living sort of offset that. We could live pretty well. Groceries, fuel, utilities and our homes were affordable for even base rate workers. I genuinely feel for young families today.
I remember those days!!
Lot higher than that thanks to Paul Keating
And here's a story about the 21.4% interest rates from . Funny how, under Costello, the SMH has done a complete 180 deg turn. 2/2
Jeebus! Can any of the so called journalists at these trash rags ever do any research Interest rates under Fraser/Howard were at 21.4% in 1982. When Labor won govt. interest rates were going down. Just another Labor bashing story. 1/3
And the millennial and noughties are scarring now with record low interest rate as they can't afford the basic human right of owning a home due to debt fuel property market ah ha ha ha - just my opinion.
thats not an interest rate ,this is an interest rate , buckaroo dundee , and yet the boomers did very nicely
Rates jumping from 12% to 17% in first few months of owning first home. I recall going fixed rate at about 13% for 5 years, and then paying $2000 to revert to variable a couple of years later.
Yes, I heard about it a lot when I was trying to buy my first home. Of course, that interest rate applied to my parents (at the time) $30k mortgage. My first mortgage was over 10 times that, but hey, it was at 5% !!
People don’t benefit by “accident of birth”, they benefit from having hard working parents. How big was the mortgage on a small unit in 1987? This whole article is delusional fantasy.
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