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The Secret Economy No One Wants To Admit To, with Dr Eliza Filby · A Little Bit Richer

• 0:01
  Iona Bain: Hello and welcome to A Little Bit Richer with me, Iona Bain. Brought to
• 0:05
  Iona Bain: you by Legal & General. Now for many of us, we
• 0:07
  Iona Bain: grew up believing in a meritocracy where hard work brings
• 0:10
  Iona Bain: rewards. You grow up, get a job, put in the
• 0:13
  Iona Bain: hours and things will work out. But the reality is that
• 0:16
  Iona Bain: the opportunities are no longer shaped by what we learn
• 0:19
  Iona Bain: or earn, but by whether we have access to the
• 0:22
  Iona Bain: bank of mum and dad. We're living in an inheritocracy
• 0:26
  Iona Bain: where parental support is what matters most. Whether that's covering
• 0:29
  Iona Bain: the cost of university, gifting a house deposit, or helping
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  Iona Bain: with childcare. With trillions of pounds set to be passed
• 0:36
  Iona Bain: down the generations over the next two decades, a significant
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  Iona Bain: divide is emerging between those who can rely on family
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  Iona Bain: wealth and those who can't. Joining me today to unpack
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  Iona Bain: this, if you do or don't have the bank of
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  Iona Bain: mum and dad to lean on, is historian, author, and
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  Iona Bain: generational expert Dr. Eliza Filby. Eliza's writing has been published
• 0:56
  Iona Bain: in The Times, The Guardian, and The Financial Times, and
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  Iona Bain: she's recently published her latest book, Inheritocracy: It's Time to
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  Iona Bain: Talk About the Bank of Mum and Dad. So there
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  Iona Bain: is no one better to talk to today. Welcome, Eliza.
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: Great to be here.
• 1:11
  Iona Bain: So your work over many years has been highlighting the
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  Iona Bain: real financial challenges affecting millennials. Can you give us a whistle-
• 1:19
  Iona Bain: stop tour through those challenges?
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: Yeah. I mean I think I like to call the millennials like the in- betweeners, because we are
• 1:25
  Dr. Eliza Filby: literally straddling two centuries. And in many instances, in many
• 1:30
  Dr. Eliza Filby: respects, we grew up with that sort of late 20th
• 1:33
  Dr. Eliza Filby: century dream of, " Let's get as many of you to
• 1:35
  Dr. Eliza Filby: university. Let's kind of instill this meritocratic belief that education
• 1:41
  Dr. Eliza Filby: is the path to opportunity. By the way we're going
• 1:44
  Dr. Eliza Filby: to charge you for that degree." So this idea of
• 1:48
  Dr. Eliza Filby: education being the path to opportunity was very much a
• 1:51
  Dr. Eliza Filby: kind of combined with, " Okay, the value of that degree
• 1:54
  Dr. Eliza Filby: is actually going down because more of us are getting
• 1:57
  Dr. Eliza Filby: them, and the price of that degree is actually going
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: up." So that was the first dent in the dream.
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: And then the second part of the dream was get
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: a professional career and get that on that track to
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: financial stability, home ownership and financial wellbeing. And we know
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: the car crash that is the housing market, and frankly has been
• 2:19
  Dr. Eliza Filby: really since 2008. And so the story of our generation
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: is a level of frustration at the fact that things
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: haven't quite worked out in the way that we thought,
• 2:30
  Dr. Eliza Filby: or certainly we were told they would. Many of us
• 2:34
  Dr. Eliza Filby: entered the workforce in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis,
• 2:38
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and have seen multiple shocks since then, where wages basically
• 2:42
  Dr. Eliza Filby: have stagnated, right? And certain things have become cheap. Travel,
• 2:47
  Dr. Eliza Filby: technology, eating out, but the really big ticket items in
• 2:52
  Dr. Eliza Filby: life have become incredibly expensive. And we're not just talking
• 2:56
  Dr. Eliza Filby: about housing, we're talking about renting a house and buying
• 2:58
  Dr. Eliza Filby: a house of course. We're also talking about the cost
• 3:00
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of education, and also the cost of childcare. So the
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: access point into adulthood when you need to purchase a
• 3:09
  Dr. Eliza Filby: house or make the big decisions in your life, what's
• 3:12
  Dr. Eliza Filby: really happened to our generation is not that we've been
• 3:15
  Dr. Eliza Filby: able to do those things, it's that some of us
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: have if we've had access to the bank of mum
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: and dad, and those that haven't have really struggled. I
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: make the distinction between, yes, there of course is a
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: divide between those that went to university and those that
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: did not. And we've madly created an education system in
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: which we leave 50% behind, as it were. But also
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: there's another layer, which is really evident in the middle
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: class, between those that have the bank of mum and
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: dad and those that don't. And that's created a inheritocracy
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: where it increasingly is dependent on who your parents are and whether
• 3:50
  Dr. Eliza Filby: they can afford to support you.
• 3:52
  Iona Bain: Yeah. That's a very, very blunt analysis, but I think
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  Iona Bain: it's one that people watching and listening will really recognize.
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  Iona Bain: And you really hit nail on the head when you
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  Iona Bain: talked about expectations, because objectively we are living through an
• 4:04
  Iona Bain: era where we have pretty good living standards, but the
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  Iona Bain: problem is what people perhaps expected when they were younger.
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  Iona Bain: It's not really turned out that way for them, even
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  Iona Bain: when they've been well- educated, they've worked hard and they've
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  Iona Bain: got what most would consider to be a good job.
• 4:19
  Iona Bain: And that is perhaps the reason why there is that
• 4:21
  Iona Bain: tension between younger people and older people who look at
• 4:24
  Iona Bain: today's consumer landscape and say, " Well, come on, you guys
• 4:27
  Iona Bain: have got it good."
• 4:28
  Dr. Eliza Filby: I know. You've got the world's information in your pocket.
• 4:29
  Iona Bain: Absolutely.
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: I think you're absolutely right. There's this misunderstanding that material
• 4:34
  Dr. Eliza Filby: conditions have improved, undoubtedly, but it's that expectation and that
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: failed expectation where the frustration is, and it's particularly acute
• 4:45
  Dr. Eliza Filby: amongst people who have done very well in the education
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: track. And one of the reasons why I wrote the
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: book is that basically I got to 32, and I
• 4:55
  Dr. Eliza Filby: grew up in ostensibly a working- class household, certainly culturally.
• 5:00
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Although we did own our own home, and that was
• 5:02
  Dr. Eliza Filby: because my grandfather won it in a car game. But
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: we had this real pressure from my parents, " Get to
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: university." I was the first person in my family to
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: graduate. I really did believe that education was the great
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: opener of opportunity, and I believed it so much that
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: I did a BA, an MA, and then a PhD. And
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: I got to my early 30s and I was on a
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: quite an appalling wage, around 10 grand. I had a part-
• 5:28
  Dr. Eliza Filby: time cleaning job. And I was only able to basically
• 5:31
  Dr. Eliza Filby: survive because my parents had made some seriously savvy property
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: investments in the '80s. So my mum with her sister had
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: bought a five- bedroom house in Tooting for 28,000 pounds
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: in 1981. Worth a lot more now.
• 5:45
  Iona Bain: That's so painful just to hear that.
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: Exactly, but I mean we need to hear that. And
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: she'd also subsequently bought a house with her nextdoor neighbor.
• 5:54
  Dr. Eliza Filby: And so by the time I was in my early
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: 30s and expecting to be independent and making big decisions
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: and thinking about babies and all this and that, I
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: wasn't able to even though I'd succeeded in the education
• 6:06
  Dr. Eliza Filby: system. And I was only able to frankly survive, and
• 6:10
  Dr. Eliza Filby: had an embarrassing level of dependency on my parents, because
• 6:14
  Dr. Eliza Filby: they had basically become paper millionaires through property. And I
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: think what I just wanted to explain was how that
• 6:22
  Dr. Eliza Filby: came about. What happened to the baby boomer generation, and
• 6:25
  Dr. Eliza Filby: how they were basically under certain conditions able to accumulate
• 6:29
  Dr. Eliza Filby: property, able to accumulate good pensions, and now we have
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: that significant wealth in that generation. And what happened in
• 6:38
  Dr. Eliza Filby: our generation where things went a bit wrong. The education,
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: although still important, was generating declining rewards. And big cities
• 6:49
  Dr. Eliza Filby: became basically closed areas for people that didn't have parental
• 6:53
  Dr. Eliza Filby: support. And childcare becoming exceedingly expensive, and marriage increasingly dependent
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: on banks of mum and dad. And financial unions being
• 7:05
  Dr. Eliza Filby: less based on shared educational attainment; it used to be
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: that graduates marry graduates. My evidence in the book suggests
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: that people are increasingly uniting one bank of mum and
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: dad through marriage with another bank of mum and dad.
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: So I was beginning to see the inheritocracy playing out
• 7:23
  Dr. Eliza Filby: in education, childcare, marriage and dating, and obviously the workforce
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: and housing as well. And essentially the bank of mum
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: and dad we often say is to do with the
• 7:33
  Dr. Eliza Filby: house deposit. It's dependent on two things. Number one, the
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: time at which you get that kind of support means
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: you can invest in a property, it compounds over time.
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: The earlier you get that inheritance or gift, the more
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: independent you can become and the more basically financially set
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: you are.
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  Iona Bain: You paint quite a bleak picture there, especially of people
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  Iona Bain: getting together on the basis of whether someone's parents have
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  Iona Bain: got enough wealth to support them. And that almost takes
• 8:03
  Iona Bain: us back to the era of Jane Austen when you
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  Iona Bain: would consider your partner based on their financial stability. Would
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  Iona Bain: you say that that is playing more and more of a role
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  Iona Bain: in our relationships and our big life choices?
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: Yeah. I mean I don't want to put it too
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: crudely, and I'm a romantic, right? I do believe in
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: romance. I'm not saying that romance is dead.
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  Iona Bain: Perish the thought.
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: No, exactly. I'm saying that there is an economic rationalism
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: happening in the dating scene that's less to do with
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: algorithm and more to do with money. There is evidence
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: that inter- class marriaging is declining, and there's also evidence
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: that women are more likely to see their inheritance as
• 8:44
  Dr. Eliza Filby: their own and see their finances as their own, and
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: not a co- joining of finances through marriage. But there's
• 8:50
  Dr. Eliza Filby: also evidence of mums and dads, when their offspring are
• 8:55
  Dr. Eliza Filby: getting married, seeking to protect their wealth. Maybe through prenups,
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: certainly getting much more involved in that conversation. And there's
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: this whole theory in sociology about associative mating, this idea
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: that graduates mostly tend to marry graduates. And that was
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: very much the kind of emerging picture in the '90s.
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: And there is evidence from the Resolution Foundation that there
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: is less graduates marrying graduates and that being the key
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: determiner, and more wealthy people marrying wealthy people. And so
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: I don't want to overstate the sort of Jane Austen
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: like selection process that is guiding the contemporary marriage. We
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: did some polling in the book asking people, " How important
• 9:36
  Dr. Eliza Filby: do you think financial compatibility is in a relationship for
• 9:40
  Dr. Eliza Filby: determining the success of a relationship?" Now we know money
• 9:44
  Dr. Eliza Filby: is one of the chief reasons, if not the most
• 9:46
  Dr. Eliza Filby: important reasons for divorce and separation.
• 9:48
  Iona Bain: Very true.
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: But what's interesting is when you broke down the question
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: by age, Gen Z and millennials thought it was more
• 9:57
  Dr. Eliza Filby: important than boomers and Gen X. So you see this
• 10:00
  Dr. Eliza Filby: sort of gradual increasing understanding, the lower down the generational
• 10:05
  Dr. Eliza Filby: scale we go, that money and financial compatibility is important.
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: And I think that we've grown up in this idea
• 10:13
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of sort of romantic rom- coms, like just find my
• 10:16
  Dr. Eliza Filby: significant other. And it's interesting in the cost of living
• 10:18
  Dr. Eliza Filby: crisis in a financially precarious environment, actually financially independent women
• 10:27
  Dr. Eliza Filby: are being much more rational. It's not, " Let me marry
• 10:30
  Dr. Eliza Filby: a guy in finance." That's the kind of TikTok sensation.
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: It's financially not dependent women arguing this. Independent women going, "
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: This has to be a core part of the conversations
• 10:42
  Dr. Eliza Filby: I have with my significant other, and potentially even how
• 10:45
  Dr. Eliza Filby: I date."
• 10:46
  Iona Bain: And that seems to be a really massive shift compared
• 10:50
  Iona Bain: to previous generations. And it has its upsides in terms
• 10:53
  Iona Bain: of us having a generation of women who are more
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  Iona Bain: financially independent, who are making their own decisions, who are
• 11:00
  Iona Bain: actually in line for some of this inheritance, which they
• 11:02
  Iona Bain: wouldn't have been previously.
• 11:03
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 11:04
  Iona Bain: Can you just talk us through that shift?
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  Dr. Eliza Filby: Historically, there's always been inheritance, right? There's nothing new. What
• 11:09
  Dr. Eliza Filby: is new is the amount of money that's trickling down.
• 11:12
  Dr. Eliza Filby: There is an extraordinary amount of money in the boomer
• 11:14
  Dr. Eliza Filby: generation, and Gen X as well, trickling down to millennials
• 11:17
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and Gen Z. But really for the first time in
• 11:19
  Dr. Eliza Filby: history, it's going to daughters as much as sons. And
• 11:24
  Dr. Eliza Filby: so therefore you've got this twin impact there of the
• 11:28
  Dr. Eliza Filby: rising independence of women, and that's not a millennial story,
• 11:32
  Dr. Eliza Filby: that really starts with the boomers, and then with Gen
• 11:35
  Dr. Eliza Filby: X, and then increasingly with millennials and now Gen Z. But
• 11:38
  Dr. Eliza Filby: then the gender equality around inheritance. We are in a
• 11:43
  Dr. Eliza Filby: new era. So combined with rising female financial independence, that's
• 11:48
  Dr. Eliza Filby: made women's economic position ever more important, and actually key
• 11:53
  Dr. Eliza Filby: in this not just great wealth transfer, you could argue
• 11:56
  Dr. Eliza Filby: it's a great gender wealth transfer.
• 11:58
  Iona Bain: And is that partly because attitudes have changed? Or is
• 12:02
  Iona Bain: it more a reflection of the fact that we need
• 12:05
  Iona Bain: to be able to pass on that money to daughters
• 12:07
  Iona Bain: as well as sons? Or perhaps both?
• 12:09
  Dr. Eliza Filby: When you look at education, and now the workplace, women
• 12:12
  Dr. Eliza Filby: are doing better than men. Girls are now 28% more
• 12:15
  Dr. Eliza Filby: likely to go to university than boys. There's evidence to
• 12:18
  Dr. Eliza Filby: suggest that young women in their 20s are out earning
• 12:20
  Dr. Eliza Filby: men in their 20s. And that's an indication of women
• 12:24
  Dr. Eliza Filby: working really hard, but also obviously a level of equality
• 12:28
  Dr. Eliza Filby: for women in the professional workplace that has meant that
• 12:31
  Dr. Eliza Filby: people don't see investing in daughters as...
• 12:35
  Iona Bain: Risky.
• 12:35
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Risky, or money that eventually goes to a husband.
• 12:39
  Iona Bain: A lot of the trends that you've talked about, they
• 12:43
  Iona Bain: might feel quite uncomfortable for people. But do you think
• 12:47
  Iona Bain: that some of the stigma and taboo around this subject
• 12:52
  Iona Bain: is disappearing? Or do you think that people are still
• 12:54
  Iona Bain: a little bit reluctant to acknowledge that this is what's
• 12:57
  Iona Bain: going on?
• 12:58
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Yeah. I mean I called the book a deliberately provocative
• 13:01
  Dr. Eliza Filby: title Inheritocracy, but the subtitle is really important. It's time
• 13:05
  Dr. Eliza Filby: to talk about it, because I don't think we really
• 13:07
  Dr. Eliza Filby: have the... Legal & General actually, their reports on the bank
• 13:10
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of mum and dad were instrumental in bringing into the
• 13:13
  Dr. Eliza Filby: conversation this bank of mum and dad. And there was
• 13:16
  Dr. Eliza Filby: a lot of shame, there still is a lot of
• 13:18
  Dr. Eliza Filby: shame on that parental dependency. There's a lot of unsaid, whispered, "
• 13:24
  Dr. Eliza Filby: How did she afford that deposit?" All that kind of
• 13:27
  Dr. Eliza Filby: stuff. In friendship groups, there's a lot of silence in
• 13:30
  Dr. Eliza Filby: families talking about gifting, talking about dependency, certainly about inheritance.
• 13:37
  Dr. Eliza Filby: There's a level of economic infantilization that a lot of
• 13:41
  Dr. Eliza Filby: people feel when it comes to their parents. I think
• 13:45
  Dr. Eliza Filby: we need to talk about it, we need to be
• 13:46
  Dr. Eliza Filby: much more open. Both if you are in a privileged
• 13:49
  Dr. Eliza Filby: position of having the bank of mum and dad, but
• 13:50
  Dr. Eliza Filby: also if you're not. Actually creating a greater level of
• 13:54
  Dr. Eliza Filby: empathy amongst your friendship groups and saying, " Do you know
• 13:56
  Dr. Eliza Filby: what? I can't spend 2000 pounds on attending your hen
• 13:59
  Dr. Eliza Filby: party and wedding because I'm not in the position that
• 14:01
  Dr. Eliza Filby: you are." And I think talking about it in your
• 14:03
  Dr. Eliza Filby: peer groups, but also talking about it within your family
• 14:06
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and also talking about it in society. Because one of
• 14:09
  Dr. Eliza Filby: the things that I'm really passionate about is helping people
• 14:11
  Dr. Eliza Filby: understand the social and economic forces that actually govern their
• 14:14
  Dr. Eliza Filby: lives. I think basically what's happened since 2008 to 2025
• 14:18
  Dr. Eliza Filby: is that the state has shrunk, the market's become dysfunctional, and
• 14:22
  Dr. Eliza Filby: the parents have stepped up. Stepped up from a point
• 14:24
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of love, and I'm not someone that believes that inheritance
• 14:27
  Dr. Eliza Filby: should be taxed into oblivion. It's about creating and having
• 14:32
  Dr. Eliza Filby: a conversation where inheritance matters less, and an economy where
• 14:35
  Dr. Eliza Filby: inheritance matters less, because ultimately it's demotivating. And interestingly, and
• 14:39
  Dr. Eliza Filby: we did a big survey asking people, " Do you think
• 14:42
  Dr. Eliza Filby: we live in an inheritocracy?" Overwhelming majority said yes, particularly amongst
• 14:46
  Dr. Eliza Filby: young people. " Do you want to talk about it?" The
• 14:49
  Dr. Eliza Filby: category in society that does not want to talk about
• 14:51
  Dr. Eliza Filby: it the least, at all, is men that earn over
• 14:55
  Dr. Eliza Filby: 100,000 pounds.
• 14:56
  Iona Bain: Interesting.
• 14:57
  Dr. Eliza Filby: I'm assuming here they don't want to talk about it
• 14:59
  Dr. Eliza Filby: because they feed off of that kind of self- made
• 15:02
  Dr. Eliza Filby: myth and are somewhat embarrassed that there is a degree
• 15:06
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of parental dependency. So ironically, the higher up the income
• 15:10
  Dr. Eliza Filby: scale the less likely people are to talk about it,
• 15:14
  Dr. Eliza Filby: but more likely to be dependent on it.
• 15:16
  Iona Bain: And maybe sometimes they don't want to admit that to
• 15:18
  Iona Bain: themselves, because we all want to think that we've got
• 15:21
  Iona Bain: to where we are in life.
• 15:21
  Dr. Eliza Filby: And that was me.
• 15:23
  Iona Bain: Absolutely.
• 15:23
  Dr. Eliza Filby: That was me. I was so convinced that I was
• 15:25
  Dr. Eliza Filby: so intelligent and hardworking and working class. I mean just
• 15:32
  Dr. Eliza Filby: a joke the kind of story I used to tell
• 15:33
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of my life. And I tell that story in the
• 15:35
  Dr. Eliza Filby: book and I'm like, " It was all rubbish. Because actually,
• 15:39
  Dr. Eliza Filby: when you look into the nuance here, yes, I was
• 15:41
  Dr. Eliza Filby: the first person in my family to go to university.
• 15:43
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Yes, I came from somewhat dingy part of South London,
• 15:46
  Dr. Eliza Filby: certainly in the '80s. Less so now. And yes, I
• 15:50
  Dr. Eliza Filby: was someone who my father his final job was a
• 15:53
  Dr. Eliza Filby: cleaner." If you look at the metrics, I was someone
• 15:56
  Dr. Eliza Filby: who didn't have a lot of privilege. Actually, the most
• 16:00
  Dr. Eliza Filby: important part is that my parents had generated a property
• 16:03
  Dr. Eliza Filby: portfolio and it was affordable for them to do that,
• 16:05
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and by the time I was in my 30s was
• 16:07
  Dr. Eliza Filby: an awful lot of money.
• 16:08
  Iona Bain: And what about those people who don't have that kind
• 16:11
  Iona Bain: of good luck? What are they doing now to try
• 16:15
  Iona Bain: to get on the property ladder, given that that does
• 16:17
  Iona Bain: seem to be quite a big driver still of people's long-
• 16:20
  Iona Bain: term wealth?
• 16:20
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Yeah. And it's a really important point, and something that I
• 16:23
  Dr. Eliza Filby: wanted to do in the book was tell my story,
• 16:25
  Dr. Eliza Filby: but not only tell my story because my story was
• 16:28
  Dr. Eliza Filby: one privileged white girl in South London. So we sort
• 16:33
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of unpick a lot of stories in the book of
• 16:35
  Dr. Eliza Filby: people who have subverted the inheritocracy, I call them the
• 16:37
  Dr. Eliza Filby: meritocratic millennials. And there are a lot of people who
• 16:41
  Dr. Eliza Filby: are, in many instances, without the bank of mum and
• 16:45
  Dr. Eliza Filby: dad doing very well. So what's the commonality there? Number
• 16:48
  Dr. Eliza Filby: one, they don't live in London, and quite often not in
• 16:51
  Dr. Eliza Filby: a big city. Number two, they did STEM subjects, not
• 16:56
  Dr. Eliza Filby: arts and humanities subjects like me. That may change with
• 16:59
  Dr. Eliza Filby: AI, but certainly the reward on those degrees is higher
• 17:03
  Dr. Eliza Filby: than the reward on arts and humanities degrees. Number three,
• 17:06
  Dr. Eliza Filby: they're often supporting their parents. We assume, and we're talking
• 17:10
  Dr. Eliza Filby: about money trickling down the family tree. For these meritocratic
• 17:14
  Dr. Eliza Filby: millennials, they are supporting their parents. And actually that creates
• 17:18
  Dr. Eliza Filby: a level of interdependency that they benefit from, as well
• 17:23
  Dr. Eliza Filby: as sacrifice for. Number four, and I think this is
• 17:27
  Dr. Eliza Filby: really important, is that most of them are in dual
• 17:30
  Dr. Eliza Filby: income households. So 70% of millennials are in dual income households, and
• 17:36
  Dr. Eliza Filby: that becomes complex when you have children obviously. But if
• 17:40
  Dr. Eliza Filby: you have the wider family network, and that's the fifth
• 17:42
  Dr. Eliza Filby: commonality, you then can basically have help when it comes
• 17:47
  Dr. Eliza Filby: to childcare and potentially you help when it comes to
• 17:50
  Dr. Eliza Filby: elder care. So it's a much more, I would say,
• 17:53
  Dr. Eliza Filby: intergenerational economic support system, rather than just the bank of
• 17:57
  Dr. Eliza Filby: mum and dad gifting down money.
• 17:59
  Iona Bain: And it's not just about the bank of mum and
• 18:01
  Iona Bain: dad lending to children for their house deposit as well.
• 18:05
  Iona Bain: How else do families now support their kids in this environment?
• 18:09
  Dr. Eliza Filby: There's a full breadth of support coming from mum and
• 18:13
  Dr. Eliza Filby: dad, and sometimes actually grandma and grandpa.
• 18:16
  Iona Bain: It's true.
• 18:16
  Dr. Eliza Filby: And that can be help with education in its various
• 18:19
  Dr. Eliza Filby: forms, university, but also tutoring, extracurricular stuff. Then help with
• 18:24
  Dr. Eliza Filby: rent, help through the mortgage rate crisis, help with the
• 18:27
  Dr. Eliza Filby: cost of living, also childcare. There's several examples of the
• 18:32
  Dr. Eliza Filby: book where lots of people returned back to the family
• 18:34
  Dr. Eliza Filby: home to save for their own deposit. Parents didn't charge
• 18:38
  Dr. Eliza Filby: them rent, and lots of parents wanting to do that
• 18:41
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and accommodating in that way for their children because they
• 18:44
  Dr. Eliza Filby: realized they couldn't give them that cash injection that perhaps
• 18:48
  Dr. Eliza Filby: others were able to. So I think it's important to
• 18:50
  Dr. Eliza Filby: see the real breadth of ways that people are dependent
• 18:55
  Dr. Eliza Filby: on their parents.
• 18:56
  Iona Bain: Yeah. We're becoming a bit more like Italy, where it's
• 18:59
  Iona Bain: always been fairly normal to kind of have intergenerational living,
• 19:03
  Iona Bain: certainly more normal than in the UK. And we are
• 19:06
  Iona Bain: seeing the financial industry start to respond a little bit
• 19:10
  Iona Bain: to these challenges and trends by coming up with products
• 19:14
  Iona Bain: that could start to help those who don't have the
• 19:16
  Iona Bain: bank of mum and dad. I mean I'm starting to see interest- free
• 19:19
  Iona Bain: mortgages come back, whether that's a good thing or not
• 19:21
  Iona Bain: is up for debate. Also, 100% mortgages.
• 19:25
  Dr. Eliza Filby: And for those that have been paying rent regularly, there's a product on the market-
• 19:29
  Iona Bain: Yes, that's right. So you can get a five- year fixed rate
• 19:31
  Iona Bain: deal with a 100% deposit, so long as you can prove
• 19:34
  Iona Bain: that you've paid your rent on time for the past few years.
• 19:36
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:36
  Iona Bain: Now to some older folks that might seem a little
• 19:39
  Iona Bain: alarming, but for younger people that could be one of the
• 19:42
  Iona Bain: only ways that they get on the property ladder without
• 19:44
  Iona Bain: that parental support.
• 19:45
  Dr. Eliza Filby: And also I think mortgages are calculated on wages, and
• 19:50
  Dr. Eliza Filby: people have multiple streams of revenue now. So actually mortgages
• 19:54
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and products in respect to housing need to really adapt
• 19:57
  Dr. Eliza Filby: to how people's financial situations are changing as well.
• 20:01
  Iona Bain: Yes, because if house prices are still way out of
• 20:04
  Iona Bain: kilter with average wages, how on earth are people going
• 20:07
  Iona Bain: to bridge that gap?
• 20:08
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Exactly.
• 20:09
  Iona Bain: And are you seeing any signs that changes to the
• 20:12
  Iona Bain: housing market in recent years, such as stamp duty going
• 20:15
  Iona Bain: up in lots of parts of the UK, that that's
• 20:17
  Iona Bain: having an impact on people's decision to buy property?
• 20:21
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Absolutely. I think it's crippling if you are wanting to
• 20:25
  Dr. Eliza Filby: move up the ladder, as it were. I think we
• 20:28
  Dr. Eliza Filby: need more fluidity and more movement in the housing market,
• 20:31
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and stamp duty is the obvious way of perhaps injecting
• 20:35
  Dr. Eliza Filby: some of that.
• 20:35
  Iona Bain: I completely agree. It just feels that the whole process
• 20:38
  Iona Bain: of buying a property now has got far more complicated
• 20:42
  Iona Bain: on so many different fronts.
• 20:43
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Yeah. And actually it speaks to a broad point, is
• 20:45
  Dr. Eliza Filby: that we talk about the bank of mum and dad
• 20:48
  Dr. Eliza Filby: like there's naturally a mum and dad. And of course
• 20:51
  Dr. Eliza Filby: in many instances there's a blended family, and that brings
• 20:54
  Dr. Eliza Filby: a new layer of complexity. And we shouldn't make assumptions
• 20:58
  Dr. Eliza Filby: that people have a naturally sort of emotionally straightforward relationship
• 21:01
  Dr. Eliza Filby: with their parents. Many don't, and I lay out some
• 21:04
  Dr. Eliza Filby: examples in the book where there was a lot of
• 21:07
  Dr. Eliza Filby: fraught issues around either accepting money or talking about money
• 21:12
  Dr. Eliza Filby: or approaching your parents around the issues of financial help.
• 21:16
  Dr. Eliza Filby: And so I think it's really important to recognize that
• 21:20
  Dr. Eliza Filby: families are complicated, and when you add money into that
• 21:23
  Dr. Eliza Filby: equation it's not straightforward. And yes, a lot of parents
• 21:28
  Dr. Eliza Filby: are gifting from the position of love. A lot of
• 21:31
  Dr. Eliza Filby: parents are helping in other ways from the position of
• 21:33
  Dr. Eliza Filby: love, but it can be highly fraught, highly complex, the
• 21:38
  Dr. Eliza Filby: very opposite of straightforward.
• 21:40
  Iona Bain: And then also perhaps people feel that if my parents
• 21:44
  Iona Bain: give me money, maybe they're expecting something back from me
• 21:46
  Iona Bain: later on in life when they're older and they're not
• 21:49
  Iona Bain: in a position to look after themselves perhaps.
• 21:51
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Yeah. Someone said to me, " I think we're becoming more Asian
• 21:54
  Dr. Eliza Filby: as a society." And that speaks to that high idea of intergenerational
• 21:57
  Dr. Eliza Filby: contract that the parents look after the children, and eventually
• 22:00
  Dr. Eliza Filby: the children parent the parents as the parents age. And
• 22:03
  Dr. Eliza Filby: certainly that's what has happened in my family, but you
• 22:06
  Dr. Eliza Filby: do eventually parent your parents. That comes with a level
• 22:09
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of complexity if we are all living longer with illnesses
• 22:13
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and people require a lot more care in their older
• 22:16
  Dr. Eliza Filby: years. More women are working, and I'm afraid to say elder
• 22:19
  Dr. Eliza Filby: care still relies and falls on women.
• 22:22
  Iona Bain: Absolutely.
• 22:22
  Dr. Eliza Filby: A lot of women in their 50s and 60s leaving
• 22:25
  Dr. Eliza Filby: the workforce, elder care is becoming a really, really key
• 22:28
  Dr. Eliza Filby: issue for them. And also financially, how do we parent
• 22:33
  Dr. Eliza Filby: our parents when we're potentially not in the financial position
• 22:35
  Dr. Eliza Filby: that we would like to be at that age in
• 22:36
  Dr. Eliza Filby: our lives?
• 22:37
  Iona Bain: If we can't parent ourselves?
• 22:38
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Exactly. Well, quite. So I think elder care and looking after
• 22:42
  Dr. Eliza Filby: our parents is something you do, not out of obligation
• 22:45
  Dr. Eliza Filby: because they gave you a deposit, but out of love.
• 22:47
  Dr. Eliza Filby: It can be complex of course, but it's also something
• 22:51
  Dr. Eliza Filby: that does involve a financial discussion. And there's a lot
• 22:55
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of parents wanting right now to help their kids in
• 22:57
  Dr. Eliza Filby: their 30s, they're thinking far more about helping their kids
• 23:00
  Dr. Eliza Filby: buy a house than thinking about how they can deal
• 23:03
  Dr. Eliza Filby: with their own and fund their own social care. And that is a
• 23:06
  Dr. Eliza Filby: conversation we don't want to have in politics, we don't
• 23:09
  Dr. Eliza Filby: want to have in families, and even we probably don't
• 23:11
  Dr. Eliza Filby: want to have with ourselves.
• 23:13
  Iona Bain: Definitely something that needs to change. And are you also
• 23:16
  Iona Bain: seeing evidence of people looking for support from friends or
• 23:20
  Iona Bain: siblings or other family members?
• 23:24
  Dr. Eliza Filby: I did find a lot of tension from people that
• 23:26
  Dr. Eliza Filby: had lived in buy- to- lets where their friend was
• 23:30
  Dr. Eliza Filby: effectively their landlord.
• 23:32
  Iona Bain: Yes.
• 23:33
  Dr. Eliza Filby: And that tension of, " My rent is paying basically into
• 23:37
  Dr. Eliza Filby: their inheritance pot."
• 23:38
  Iona Bain: Yes, I can imagine that dynamic can get really awkward.
• 23:40
  Dr. Eliza Filby: That's messy. And a lot of conversation about the financial
• 23:44
  Dr. Eliza Filby: inequality within friendship groups, and how there's a sort of
• 23:48
  Dr. Eliza Filby: leveler at university. So to a certain degree everyone's broke in
• 23:53
  Dr. Eliza Filby: their 20s, and then you get these kind of super
• 23:55
  Dr. Eliza Filby: shooters who then kind of catapult into adulthood. And that's
• 23:59
  Dr. Eliza Filby: because of the bank of mum and dad. And I
• 24:02
  Dr. Eliza Filby: think the other thing to say, and this is really
• 24:04
  Dr. Eliza Filby: evident in Gen Z, less so I think in millennials, is a financial
• 24:09
  Dr. Eliza Filby: savviness. I think Gen Z have looked at millennials going, "
• 24:14
  Dr. Eliza Filby: You work really hard, you made your job your life, and
• 24:15
  Dr. Eliza Filby: you still can't afford a house at the age of 40." And they've
• 24:20
  Dr. Eliza Filby: grown up with a very different attitude towards money, and
• 24:22
  Dr. Eliza Filby: a very different obviously social media landscape that enables them
• 24:26
  Dr. Eliza Filby: to self- educate to a certain degree, particularly around investment. So what's
• 24:32
  Dr. Eliza Filby: interesting since 2018, the super surge of Gen Z is investing.
• 24:37
  Iona Bain: Yeah.
• 24:37
  Dr. Eliza Filby: I didn't do that in my 20s. You probably did, you're
• 24:39
  Dr. Eliza Filby: very wise.
• 24:40
  Iona Bain: No, I was a bit of a latecomer too. And I
• 24:42
  Iona Bain: think it was because of this perception that I had
• 24:45
  Iona Bain: to have everything else in my life kind of sorted
• 24:47
  Iona Bain: out before I could progress and mature to that stage.
• 24:49
  Iona Bain: But yeah, I'm seeing the same with younger people where
• 24:52
  Iona Bain: they're thinking, " I can't really afford to play safe with
• 24:54
  Iona Bain: my finances, but if I invest I can maybe play
• 24:57
  Iona Bain: to win. And perhaps even get together enough money to
• 25:00
  Iona Bain: get a deposit for a property," which is a real
• 25:02
  Iona Bain: shift in attitude.
• 25:02
  Dr. Eliza Filby: And I think the reason for that is, yes, the economic turbulence
• 25:07
  Dr. Eliza Filby: they experienced post- COVID, cost of living crisis. A sort
• 25:11
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of acceptance in a way that millennials didn't have that
• 25:13
  Dr. Eliza Filby: they're going to have to potentially live at home longer.
• 25:16
  Iona Bain: Yeah.
• 25:17
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Yeah. Hotel of mum and dad, which affects working class
• 25:20
  Dr. Eliza Filby: families as much as middle class families. That is a
• 25:23
  Dr. Eliza Filby: definite trend, and I think devoid of some of the
• 25:26
  Dr. Eliza Filby: shame that it had in the 2010s with millennials. I think also
• 25:31
  Dr. Eliza Filby: they don't believe in wages alone, and they're right not
• 25:34
  Dr. Eliza Filby: to. And this is the key point, is that wages
• 25:37
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and our jobs don't buy us what it bought our
• 25:40
  Dr. Eliza Filby: parents, depending on obviously what your parents did. But let's
• 25:44
  Dr. Eliza Filby: just remember that baby boomers, not all of course, had
• 25:48
  Dr. Eliza Filby: access to decent pensions, increasing professional wages, and affordable homes.
• 25:53
  Dr. Eliza Filby: And Gen Z know they don't have access to any
• 25:55
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of those things. And so they have access to auto
• 25:58
  Dr. Eliza Filby: enrollment, which is actually a really interesting sort of backstop.
• 26:01
  Dr. Eliza Filby: But this generation is thinking in terms of multiple streams
• 26:05
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of revenue, in terms of investment. In terms of I
• 26:08
  Dr. Eliza Filby: think, and this is the key point, is as housing
• 26:11
  Dr. Eliza Filby: has become increasingly a long- term saving goal, and potentially
• 26:18
  Dr. Eliza Filby: a long- term maybe 35 year mortgage, long- term investment,
• 26:23
  Dr. Eliza Filby: people are thinking of housing not as a ladder but
• 26:27
  Dr. Eliza Filby: as one destination. So you look at millennials because they're
• 26:31
  Dr. Eliza Filby: buying well into their 30s, they're not getting a flat,
• 26:35
  Dr. Eliza Filby: they're getting a family home.
• 26:36
  Iona Bain: Yeah, they're skipping that first rung and going straight to a house.
• 26:38
  Dr. Eliza Filby: They're skipping that first rung, because actually millennials are wanting family homes
• 26:43
  Dr. Eliza Filby: that will set them up for 10, 20, 30 years. And so
• 26:47
  Dr. Eliza Filby: they've adapted accordingly. And then when you look at Gen
• 26:50
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Z, the attitudes towards housing is less, " This is going
• 26:54
  Dr. Eliza Filby: to be a savvy investment." More, " Is it even obtainable?"
• 26:59
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Now they're in a certain life stage where they're thinking
• 27:01
  Dr. Eliza Filby: differently. And let me tell you, obviously when you have
• 27:04
  Dr. Eliza Filby: kids like suddenly having a fixed abode where you're not
• 27:07
  Dr. Eliza Filby: subject to-
• 27:08
  Iona Bain: The whims of the landlord.
• 27:09
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Yeah, exactly. Becomes super important. And let's also remember that
• 27:14
  Dr. Eliza Filby: buying a house is inaccessible for a large proportion of
• 27:18
  Dr. Eliza Filby: the population, but I am seeing Gen Z as thinking
• 27:22
  Dr. Eliza Filby: very differently when it comes to buying a house.
• 27:26
  Iona Bain: That is giving me some hope. Because where I think
• 27:28
  Iona Bain: what you do and what I do where we meet
• 27:31
  Iona Bain: is that you talk about these wider issues in the
• 27:34
  Iona Bain: hope that people don't feel bad about what's going on
• 27:36
  Iona Bain: out there maybe outside of their control. And where actually
• 27:40
  Iona Bain: I come in is trying to help people understand what
• 27:42
  Iona Bain: is in their control, even if it might be not
• 27:46
  Iona Bain: what they would've conventionally done in the past, and how
• 27:48
  Iona Bain: we need to evolve and adapt sometimes to meet these
• 27:50
  Iona Bain: challenges. So I'd be really interested to know, Eliza, what
• 27:54
  Iona Bain: are your kind of three tips? If you can distill
• 27:57
  Iona Bain: it all down into three tips for folks who maybe
• 28:00
  Iona Bain: don't have access to the bank of mum and dad,
• 28:02
  Iona Bain: and they're wondering, " How can I build up some of
• 28:05
  Iona Bain: this security and resilience for myself?"
• 28:08
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Number one is don't blame yourself. I think it's not
• 28:12
  Dr. Eliza Filby: you, it's the system. And hopefully my book goes some
• 28:14
  Dr. Eliza Filby: way to helping people understand the broader economic forces out
• 28:18
  Dr. Eliza Filby: of their control. So don't internalize that sense of guilt
• 28:21
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and failure. Number two is financially educate yourself. And I
• 28:26
  Dr. Eliza Filby: think that people like you and just there's so many people out there
• 28:30
  Dr. Eliza Filby: on social media, but also your parents and your wider
• 28:33
  Dr. Eliza Filby: peer group is just start talking about money, start finding
• 28:36
  Dr. Eliza Filby: out about money. Start that educational journey of self- knowledge.
• 28:41
  Dr. Eliza Filby: It is nothing but empowering, right? And I say that
• 28:44
  Dr. Eliza Filby: as someone who had a lot of shame around money,
• 28:48
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and a lot of complex issues around money. Education is
• 28:51
  Dr. Eliza Filby: empowerment. And then the final thing is take the first
• 28:55
  Dr. Eliza Filby: step. And I'm sure you would advocate for this, it's
• 28:58
  Dr. Eliza Filby: like it's all about time, ironically, rather than money and
• 29:02
  Dr. Eliza Filby: rather than sums. And it's the wonder of compound interest,
• 29:06
  Dr. Eliza Filby: and actually taking small steps now means that your 50, 60, 70- year-
• 29:11
  Dr. Eliza Filby: old self will thank you. But it's also just actually
• 29:14
  Dr. Eliza Filby: building that confidence in small steps. And I think that's
• 29:18
  Dr. Eliza Filby: really it. Rather than me advocating for a certain ISA,
• 29:20
  Dr. Eliza Filby: I think those three things are get rid of the
• 29:23
  Dr. Eliza Filby: blame, get empowered by knowledge, and take the first step.
• 29:26
  Iona Bain: They are fantastic tips, Eliza. Thank you so much.
• 29:29
  Dr. Eliza Filby: Thank you.
• 29:29
  Iona Bain: It's just been great to get an understanding of how
• 29:34
  Iona Bain: these dynamics have shifted and what we can do about
• 29:36
  Iona Bain: them. If this episode has sparked a conversation that you
• 29:39
  Iona Bain: want to have with friends or family, I'd love it
• 29:42
  Iona Bain: if you could share the podcast and help others get
• 29:44
  Iona Bain: a little bit richer too. This podcast is brought to
• 29:47
  Iona Bain: you by LNG. You can keep up with the show
• 29:49
  Iona Bain: on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram at Legal & General. Until next time, see
• 29:54
  Iona Bain: you soon.