Ask anyone at the moment about what 2019 will bring and they won’t be able to tell you, courtesy of the ever-changing picture regarding the UK’s exit from the European Union. These are changing times in anybody’s language. Stick or twist? Save or spend? I guess these are questions that we’ve asked of ourselves for decades, but priorities appear to be changing across the generations.

The generally accepted model of my age group

In my younger days, it was save first, for a deposit on a house, spend next as you enjoyed your 20s and 30s, dread the big four-O and begin the gentle descent into retirement (in my case a very gentle one!) by lumping money into pension schemes in the way that you should have been doing for more years than you care to remember. If there was anything left, it went to the kids if they were lucky. It wasn’t the only way of doing it, but it was the generally accepted model of my age group.

As I’ve watched the next generation grow up, that model has changed a lot. Firstly, there is no saving for your first house. The house you want is probably unaffordable, if it hasn’t already been snapped up by a buy-to-let investor. And the price of it doesn’t fit against your multiple of salary to enable you to get a sensibly-priced mortgage.

Disposable income is lower as a percentage of income

Disposable income amongst most young adults is lower as a percentage of income than it was years ago, with rents, cars, mobile phones, etc. eating into your funds for spending on holidays or ‘luxury items’. And the standard of living is now based on a two-person income, such that if you live alone, you have no chance of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.

Four-O has moved on a decade as everyone is living longer and the government is making us save for our pensions from the moment we start work. That’s a good thing, of course, and hopefully as this generation reaches its last ten working years, it won’t have to be setting aside quite as much as the previous one did at that age.

And none of that is anything to do in the slightest with Brexit. What happens next?!