It's that horrible time of year again. The one when we get a whole pile of end-of-year bills all at the same time, totalling an amount that will cripple the average household, mine included.
And to top it all off, we have new bills, such as the infamous and much despised new property tax. It hardly makes owning a home worth it when you can't afford to maintain it, and I think we are going to see a big shift in attitudes towards certain things that were always considered the 'right-thing-to–do-as-a-grown-up'.
By this, I mean the old ways of getting an education in order to secure a decent job, and owning your own home as a natural next step in life. Even getting married may soon become obsolete.
With so many highly educated young people struggling to find work, and ultimately ending up in jobs that are not reflective of their skills and education, it seems as though the way forward is no longer to have a degree but to simply leave school and start working from the bottom up - or take on an apprenticeship for experience on the job. I know of many people who – whilst others were spending 3-6 years in education – quietly worked their way up the ladder and found themselves in a far more favourable position at the end of it then their peers who left university with a slew of papers. And with technology being what it is nowadays, it isn't hard to fabricate a degree. I am in no way advocating this, but I have to admit that having a degree didn't help me much in my chosen career as a writer (but I did enjoy university life immensely!).
In the same vein, renting seems to be the way forward when it comes to property; you may not own your property, but even many of those who own, do not truly 'own' (the bank does!), and if you are renting, then there is no headache of fixing and maintaining the property or having to fork out when things go wrong. There are also no property related bills and taxes to pay outside of your utility bills… they all go to the landlord. On top of that, you can rent the property of your dreams, for example, with a swimming pool, whilst those who own theirs can only dream of affording to put in a pool. Then if you get fed up, simply rent somewhere else!
As for marriage, in many European countries it isn't financially worth it to walk down the aisle – not before (with the astronomical costs of a wedding), or after (when you lose the tax breaks and benefits of cohabiters).
For Cypriots at least, the Cypriot wedding tradition of gifting money still often allows the couple to buy their first property, or at least put a hefty deposit down, and Cypriots still value education to the point that they will work two jobs to send their kids to university abroad. But with this current crisis, and my generation being the first to be worse off than the last, I do fear for my children and can't imagine what kind of rented, borrowed or heavily loaned life they will have to lead if ours is getting this bad, this quickly…
First appeared in The Cyprus Weekly 17/10/14
