Living through 17% interest rates scarred Boomers deeply

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.

MargotSaville is a simpleton - she says, 'there’s no reason why middle-class children should prosper by accident of birth. And the level of government support for independent schools is a national disgrace.' Parents everywhere work hard to give their children a better life.

For the mortgage on their cheap as shit house while wages also raced away? Poor dears

My parent's first house bought in 1984 was $69,000, which was 4.5 times the average yearly wage. That same house is now worth around $1.5 Million, which is over 16 years the average yearly wage. Stop whining about how hard it used to be.

Oh please! It scarred you deeply, did it? How many years pay was that first house you paid off? How many years pay is it worth now? Anyone buying a house in 1987 had it easy compared to today's kids.

Please stop.

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