It was late at night and I was hoping to get the last train home. But when I tried to get cash out of the ATM, my account was empty. I told a man who worked at the station and he went off to find a fiver, and simply handed it over to me. I hadn’t expected it at all: such a kind gesture. I’ve no idea how I’d have got home.
It wasn’t so much the handing over of the money, as of what it said. So many young people today struggle with money, and the older baby-boomer generation have no sympathy for us. They think we spend all our money on avocados, whereas the truth is that it’s all stacked against my generation. How will we ever be able to afford a home?
But from time to time there’s a chink of kindness from someone from the generation above us who have had it so much easier than us, and this was that.
Then again, I do think not being able to take out a mortgage is giving my generation a different outlook. It’s making us feel freer. We can’t afford to buy, so we might as well travel the world. I’m leaving for Argentina soon – on a one-way ticket.
Beth Ryan, 23, is a TEFL teacher who lives in east London
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