To think we are heading into a pensions disaster

Thing is the kids will be propping us up regardless. Whatever money we save only has a value related to the cost of the things we want to buy at the time we want to buy them. If our problem with more older people and lower birth rates continues, which I hope it will for the sake of the planet, we will see more inflation and our pension savings devalued. It's still dependent on the number of people working to make the stuff/provide the services etc... If there are less people working our pension savings will be worth less. Money isn't a fixed thing.

We all the need to learn to accept simpler lifestyles, to take personal responsibility for our health and to consider working in some capacity when we are old.

Oh yes
I get what you were focussing on now. The £150 a week!
Good point!

Politicians have known about the looming pensions disaster for at least thirty years. I guess they've brought in workplace pensions now but it's too little too late. For starters, they aren't a good deal. If everyone including middle/low earners were to contribute as much as they needed to get a decent annuity, it would take too much cash out of circulation now. And of course it doesn't help much for the people who are going to be retiring during the next twenty/thirty years, a lot of whom lost their first works pension back in the 90s/early 2000s during the buyout/acquisition madness of that time, or who couldn't get into a works pension for big chunks of their working lives because of qualifying restrictions. Even with the workplace pensions now, they don't have enough time to make up the ground especially given that the returns are low on these.

Really there needs to be a massive rethink around what to do about future elder poverty. Endlessly raising the retirement age isn't the answer because healthy life expectancy plateaued a while back and has actually dropped since. So it's pointless saying "well you'll just have to work" when clearly people cannot, or at least not in the traditional sense. Older people do have a lot of skills and experience though, especially life skills. Perhaps some kind of set-up where they could provide semi structured support to full time employees in return for subsidised access to energy/food or something? I honestly don't know, but there is a lot of knowledge there.

I think you're clearly fairly clueless given how many posters have patiently explained the current situation to you.....

Agree

People with kids at Uni know exactly how the loans work.
The issue is not getting the loan. The issue is rents are so high they are not enough to live on.
Hence parents have to help because there aren’t enough jobs around for those students that have the time to do them in the first place.

Parents make a lot of sacrifices for their kids.

I’m afraid I also agree that something needs to give re public sector pensions - they’re just untenable really. I have relatives receiving what I would consider extremely good incomes in their 40s from armed forces pensions (none of whom have ever served anywhere remotely dangerous) and a friend was telling me the other day how much she found she was due from her six years with the nhs (she was both flabbergasted and very happy!)…. Obviously a very unpopular opinion and I do understand why…

Older people, if you had 1 child (vasectomy so this is guaranteed) and already live in a small 400k 2 bed flat near good london state schools, would you upgrade to a 700k to 750k 2 bed flat (no difference in size) in a nicer area (excellent state primary), stay put or move to a 500k 2 bed flat nearby (essentially lateral move but more space)..

I would 100% prioritize private school fees over housing and as we bought our flat young, we would be mortgage free in our 40s (I am 32 and expecting) as long as our mortgage doesn't substantially increase. And if private school fees are unaffordable for us down the line, we would send our child to state school, I just don't want to eliminate the option at this stage. Particularly before secondary age, I would have at least 7 years to save even if child went to state primary esp with a low mortgage (mortgage 1282). Same applies for university.

Dh wants to do both- 750k flat and private school but I doubt we could save much of a pension with that. We wouldn't have any inheritance as our parents favour our younger siblings. I suppose we could downsize the flat to live in a cheaper area (not in terms of size as it would be small) but at the same time, there is an article in the Ft that very few people make money from downsizing so it seems a risky strategy.

It is relevant if this was a time when paying rent for a flat and tuition fees was affordable off a student grant/loan and £150 top up a week.

Your child’s uni fees? Why would you pay that instead of into a pension?

Public sector workers are not getting great pensions because of their contributions. It’s the employer (ie taxpayer) contribution that is paying for them.

You clearly didn’t have mountains of academic work to do in your own time. That can make a huge difference.

Do you not understand that the high street is shuttering at a rate of knots, the minimum wage has gone up yet again so a local 16 year old is cheaper on a till (and more available) than a 20 year old student, people aren't eating out like they were 20 years ago and lots of part time jobs are now taken up by parents earning a second household income (like me?)

I worked at uni, in a big box retail store. 4pm to 8pm. Guess what? It's not even there any more.

Exactly

People don’t realise uni fees are not traditional debt. It does not affect the ability to get a mortgage or credit ratings. If you don’t earn enough you don’t pay back. It’s madness that people spend so much in what’s essentially a temporary tax.

Yes. One of my (non-STEM) kids did a language degree where there would have been time to do paid work. They spent so much time applying for every retail and hospitality job in their city. At one point, I even looked at their CV to check that it wasn’t full of nonsense, but their applications were fine.

They showed me the stats of some of them. For example, a job in superdry had 700 people applying for one job. Everybody says that there are loads of jobs in restaurants and shops available. In cities with a high number of students, there really isn’t.

That's that wrong choice when they can get student loans. That's the financial equivalent of putting on your child's mask on a plane before yours.

I know people who think they will be fine on state pension yet when you dig you realize then don't even know how much state pension pays.

Tbh @Suzuki76 its irrelevant.
There are some jobs for some students. There just aren’t thousands of jobs for thousands of students.

Definitely the case when I was at uni
9-5 course Monday- Friday. Some terms I had an unpredictable one day a week off, but never regularly on the same day.

I also did placements, some of these required me to move for 6-12 week periods to different towns. The ones that didn't was still the equivalent of working well over a full time job any

I was also in the position (which is a luxury) of having the option of a shorter term time rent or a full year rent. A full year rent added thousands on my yearly costs and I discovered that i couldn't earn enough in that period to justify it. Term time meant it was impossible to get a job

There really isn't many jobs up for recruiting people that dissappear over the summer, have random routines and are unavailable 9-5 on different days each semester. They tend to go to college students who stick around, and are far more available. There's a small number of jobs that suit that and in university towns its fiercely competitive. Most jobs won't look twice at you because it's expensive to start someone on a zero hour contract if you aren't sure how much they can do. I wouldn't employ someone in that situation

I briefly worked in a bar but couldn't sustain 1 am finishes with being up working in a hospital at 8 in a challenging role that was new to me, it would have been fired anyway because of the summer thing

Exactly. And even if a degree was just 35 hours a week then that's equivalent to a full time job.

I’ve got three at Uni and only one of mine has found a job cleaning toilets at Thorpe Park.
If you haven’t experienced it. If you don’t know many kids at Uni. You really don’t know.

Although basic maths isn’t that tricky when most Unis have thousands and thousands of kids all descending on them and looking for pt work locally.

And when was this?

Teachers contribute 7-10% while employers are adding over 28%!

Did you do a stem degree at a top university?

DH will get a good pension because he’s contributed most of it for the past 35yrs!

No offence but he hasn't. The employer is often putting in contributions worth 25 or 30% of salary on DB schemes. What percentage of salary was your DH contributing 20 years ago? Probably under 10 or as little as 5%.