I know we wang on about it, but life can be pretty tough for millennials. We know we've got it good in loads of ways; society is generally more liberal, we've got far greater access to travelling the world, and the constant development of technology brings us opportunity after opportunity.
But there are a few things we've got up against us. Namely: money. Jobs are competitive, we're getting paid less for them, and the prospect of buying a house? That's hilarious, tell me another one.
Because houses are fecking expensive. And while we might see newspaper headlines every few days about 'house prices slowing', unless a non-rat-infested, two-bed flat somewhere vaguely pleasant in London wants to drop in price by - ooh - half and then half again? Well, I've got more chance of morphing into Beyoncé overnight than I have of stepping foot on the property ladder any time soon.
And sadly, statistics from Shelter have only confirmed this to be true; for once in my life, I am not being melodramatic. Shelter worked out the salary they estimate first-time buyers need to be earning right about now if they want to buy a house by 2020, and you guessed it! It's a big'un.
According to organisation which helps the homeless, first time buyers will need to earn a salary £64,000 to afford a house within the next three years. Ouch.
It might be worth clarifying here that the average UK salary is currently £27,600 according to the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) - a casual £36,400 less than we all need.
The figure was projected last year, taking into consideration the size of mortgage a person would require based on the growing average cost of a house by 2020, and the money they'd need for a deposit (although their figure doesn't seem to account for 5% deposits, which many first-time buyers can access - so there you go, some light). And of course, house prices do vary greatly around the country - this is just based on UK-wide averages.
When the estimated salary was first released last year, Shelter's Chief Executive Campbell Robb said: "When house prices are increasing six times faster than the average wage, it's no wonder people on ordinary incomes are being locked out of a home of their own."
And the situation hasn't improved much since then. Cosmopolitan UK recentlyspoke to Anne Baxendale, Shelter's director of policy, communications and campaigns, who confirmed the prospect of becoming a home-owner is still "hugely unrealistic" for most of us.
It's for this reason we're known as 'Generation Rent', and will likely be stuck in the cycle of handing over a big chunk of our salaries to a landlord every month (aka, throwing it down a drain) ."When house prices are so out of step with wages, it's no surprise that people are finding it near impossible to make the leap from renting to buying," said Baxendale.
Miserably, a recent survey by Wayfair discovered that 25% of people across the UK believe they will never be able to afford their own home. Which is a far cry from the generation that came before us, where every man, woman and dog (more or less) was a home-owner.
This state of affairs means the only answer for a lot of people is buying somewhere together with somebody else. Earning £64,000 a year doesn't feel quite such an impossible feat when that's taking two salaries into account.
But there's a downside with that, too. There's already enough pressure on single women in their mid-to-late twenties to find a partner and settle down, never mind adding the interests of long-term financial security into the mix.
Shelter's Anne Baxendale is determined to be positive about the situation, though, and has called for practical changes to make the property market more accessible for all.
"It doesn't have to be like this," she told Cosmopolitan UK. "Rather than scraping around for second rate solutions, we need a whole new approach to housebuilding in order to deliver high quality homes that people on ordinary incomes can actually afford."
Well, we can only hope...
