Many years ago, in response to a reader of this publication complaining that she couldn't afford a house and have children, I wrote a huffy letter to the editor, the gist of which was that if you were careful and started off small, home ownership was completely doable. I knew this because my husband and I had done it at the age of 27, on one very mediocre income.

I have read many opinion pieces lately about housing affordability from different generations and viewpoints, the most recent being from Millennial Megan Shellie, who asked us, the parents of Millennials, to reflect on how good we had it their age, how good we have it now, and to ask ourselves "if it's fair". Really? How good we had it at their age? Millennials need to know that Generation X came out of university during a recession (the one we were told we "had to have"), and most of us were the first to do so with a HECS debt.

In the late 1990s, we bought a small flat, and years later upgraded to a small house. We didn't receive help, there was no first home owners grant and we didn't live with our parents until the age of 30. We just made sacrifices. Credit:Craig Abraham

One thing that would define us is that if we wanted to actually survive, we had to work in any job we could find. More often than not, said job was not in the field we had studied at university. I graduated as a teacher in the early 1990s but, like so many teachers at that time, could not find teaching work. I will never forget the humiliation I felt when I served my lecturer a few months after I graduated, while working at a large department store. I will never forget the look of pity on his face. He wished me good luck.

I only worked there a short time, and worked in many different places until I had my first child. My husband had slightly better luck, turning his generalist arts degree into something practical. We worked so hard during this period. We never went on holiday. No smashed avo on toast. We were so frugal. We didn't take time off to go travelling, we saved every dollar we could. In fact, I was 43 before I went on an overseas trip.

In the late 1990s, we bought a small flat, and years later upgraded to a small house. We didn't receive help, there was no first home owners grant and we didn't live with our parents until the age of 30. We just made sacrifices. I do worry about my own children, the widening gap between "rich" and "poor". For my part, I am already beginning to teach my teenagers to be financially literate. I am going to teach them, once they are working, how not spend more than they earn, how much they will need for a deposit on a one-bedroom flat and about the joys of equity. I will teach them that an overseas trip would go a long way towards a deposit, and they need to make choices. I will teach them about the property market. I will teach them about interest rates and how to find the best deals. I will show them that it is not a given that they will never own their own home.

This issue does need to be tackled by our politicians; housing affordability, stagnant wage growth and increasing property prices are a burgeoning problem. However, I will not stand for being told that we are a generation that doesn't care and has no idea how hard it is. I don't think it's very "fair" that a self-described "angsty Millennial" who has never lived through a recession would assume that because we own our own home, we've had it easy.

Dee Broughton is a Melbourne teacher and freelance writer.