What caught my eye this week.
Hey Millennials! Top tip time! One of the best ways to improve your chances of owning your own home is to make sure you’re born into a family where your parents do, too.
Take a look at this graph charting new data from the Resolution Foundation:
[1]
As reported in the FT [2] [Search result]:
Those with the richest parents are the most likely to own a house by the age of 30. Roughly a third of people in this category were homeowners themselves by the time their 20s were over.
They are followed not far after by those in the second two quartiles who both had about a 28 per cent chance of owning a house in their 30s.
Then, much further behind [are] those whose parents did not have any property wealth at all, who had just a 13 per cent chance of becoming a homeowner.
So there you have it – be lucky babe!
I mean it’s sweet that you’re skipping your avocado toast and all.
But as any old Barry Blimp [3] will tell you, he too once ate an avocado in 1977, but that didn’t stop him buying a terraced house in London in the early 1980s.1 [4]
Of course he didn’t have to pay for an iPhone or any similar nonsense.
But he would happily have gone without such frippery and stayed in counting his bedrooms for fun instead if he’d had to.
Because that’s just how tough we were back then.
From Monevator
How to stick to your savings goals – Monevator [5]
From the archive-ator: Thoughts on the new gold rush [From 2010] – Monevator [6]
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view you can click to read the piece without being a paid subscriber. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing if you read them a lot!2 [7]
Subsidence claims by households quadrupled during summer heatwave – ThisIsMoney [8]
Sharp deterioration in service sector growth leaves the economy flat-lining – ThisIsMoney [9]
UK house price growth slips to six-year low amid Brexit uncertainty – Guardian [10]
New property tool shows what your salary would buy around the world – ThisIsMoney [11]
[12]
No, it’s not just your lousy portfolio. Everything’s down 2018 – NDR/Cullen Roche via Twitter [13]
Products and services
Aviva to break the ‘loyalty penalty’ for home and car insurance [Search result] – FT [14]
Ratesetter will pay you £100 [and me a bonus] if you invest £1,000 for a year – Ratesetter [15]
Cost of Christmas dinner rises: Aldi and Lidl remain cheapest [Search result] – FT [16]
O2 to make goodwill gesture after millions hit with data outage – Guardian [17]
Comment and opinion
The double whammy – Young FI Guy [18]
Doing nothing about a market decline – Oblivious Investor [19]
The case for long-term investing optimism – Retirement Field Guide [20]
How a City fund manager quit work early and still paid for his children’s education – EFC [21]
Three reasons to hold long bonds as short rates rise – Pragmatic Capitalism [22]
When things stop working – Of Dollars and Data [23]
First impressions – Humble Dollar [24]
Patient capital: The key to long-term wealth creation – Financial Samurai [25]
There’s some evidence index fund growth is curbing performance chasing – Morningstar [26]
Markets are spooked by a flatter US yield curve. Is this a better guide? – Bloomberg [27]
The hedonic treadmill of smartphones – Millennial Revolution [28] [via Zude [29]]
Crypto Winter is here and its enthusiasts have only themselves to blame – Coindesk [30]
It’s easy to start a company nowadays, but harder to learn from critics – Chris Sacca [31]
Brexit
David Lammy’s brilliant anti-Brexit speech to the Commons [Video] – via YouTube [32]
This government: From “No deal is better than…” to “Six-month traffic jams” – BBC [33]
Norwegian politicians reject UK’s Norway-plus Brexit plan [I mean ‘plan’] – Guardian [34]
YouGov poll: Only two Parliamentary constituencies support May’s Deal [Scroll down for graphic] – New European [35]
Does the EU really need the UK more? [Video] – TLDR via YouTube [36]
Brexit: Facts vs fiction with Stephen Fry – via YouTube [37]
Leave’s ‘Verdict Of The People’ nonsense in a nutshell – Alex Andreou via Twitter [38]
Kindle book bargains
The Barcelona Way: How to Create a High-performance Culture by Damian Hughes – £1.09 on Kindle [39]
Introducing Body Language by Glenn D. Wilson – Free for Prime Members [40]
The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott – £2.99 on Kindle [41]
James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes by James Acaster – £0.99 on Kindle [42]
Off our beat
How to enjoy life – Raptitude [43]
Dicing with death – Evidence-based Investor [44]
US scooter startups Bird and Lime are growing faster than Uber – Future Engine [45]
“I feel inadequate around my girlfriend’s wealthy, high-achieving family” – Guardian [46]
Endangered swift parrots pushed into tragic love triangles by sugar gliders [A headline for our times] – ABC News [47]
It’s nothing like a broken leg: Done with the mental health conversation – Guardian [48]
And finally…
“On one estimate, the adult human brain stores about one billion bits – a couple of orders of magnitude less than a low-end smartphone.”
– Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies [49]
Like these links? Subscribe [50] to get them every Friday!
- For barely four times his salary, compared to over 10-times today. [↩ [55]]
- Note some articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”. [↩ [56]]