Who’s going to pay our pensions in 20-30years if the UK keeps its birth rate low and also restricts immigration?

I'm with you. I want to be able to go when it makes sense for rather than when modern medicine says my body can longer be kept breathing.

I actually can’t worry about pensions anymore. Every way you turn you’re screwed unless you have a pension pot of at least a million.

I started work at 16. Worked in low paid jobs until I went back to education at 24. Started better paid (talking like 35k not stupidly high) job at 27. I have been working in this job for almost 20 years now. My pay has hardly changed (40k now) so what was a decent paid job 20 years ago isn’t that great anymore (I do realise it’s not terrible). It’s a healthcare profession and quite physically demanding at times. I now have constant pain which started about 7 years ago. I pay for private physio once a month to try and keep it under control but I have been told the damage is done and it’s a case of only managing it now unless I change careers. But it will likely get worse. I KNOW I will not be able to do this job at 70. Not a chance. I’m worried I won’t be able to do it in 10 years if I’m honest.

Pensions were not really talked about when i started work at 16. So I didn’t have one when i finally started my better work at 27. Then I was self employed. So no employer benefits or company pension with employer contributions. I had to fund my own holiday/sick pay etc. I do regret not starting a pension then. Then in my 30s I did have a fairly decent amount of savings, infertility hit. We spent thousands on IVF that failed so all my savings were gone. My husband and I had already moved house to a bigger house (and bigger mortgage) from our 1 bed flat because who thinks you’ll never actually have a baby? My husband earns less than me so he’s not one of those high flyer types everyone is married to on here. I finally got an employed job at 40 and now have a proper pension. But it’s obviously never going to be a huge pension. My career also doesn’t have any progression. So I have no further extra earning potential unless I totally changed careers. And as I’m closing in on 50 that just isn’t going to help as there’s no time to progress.

With a state pension between us my husband and I will survive with our small private/workplace pensions to top up. Plus we’re more than happy to downsize and live off house money in the future. That was the plan. But then you take away the state pension and we’re screwed. Ok so we’ll sell the house. But reading on here everyone is desperate for a property price crash so if that happens we’ll have nothing from that either. So you’ll need to have your kids help you then. Oh you don’t have any? Well you’re just one of those selfish people who should have loads of money. You don’t deserve any help because you’re just taking from other people’s children who have sacrificed everything so their kids can wipe your bum.

I didn’t plan on having this life. Yeah I wish I’d chosen one of those office careers that pay 100k plus and you work from home every day. I made a mistake working with people and trying to help them and choosing a career that’s crippling me and isn’t well paid. I wish I could have seen in the future and seen that no matter how many thousands I threw at IVF etc nothing would work. I wish I hadn’t had hopes and bought a bigger house in preparation for the family I couldn’t have. Yes I wish I had started a pension at 18. But I was earning like 3.25 back then so it wasn’t really on my radar.

I guess everyone on here should be quite happy though because my parents both died in their 60s (they were those decent boomers who died without taking hardly any state pension. Mum 2 years, dad none) so if I follow that trend at least I won’t need to worry about pension either because I’ll be dead. None of your kids will need to wipe my bum.

The hashtag childfree people
are planning on having so much money saved from not having kids that they won’t need to rely on pensions. Or public services. Or healthcare. Or the education of younger generation. So that’s all fine then.

Im just pointing out what the research says about higher density housing, the statistics indicate that high density housing comes with bigger societal issues than other types of housing.

Im not sure terraces come within that category but not sure.

Don’t you realise that 100% of a £1m (or £500k if unmarried) plus 60% of everything over that is the same as getting absolutely nothing!

An even worse cruel joke is that my DC will have to sell everything to pay IHT, leaving nothing for them.

Thisticklishfatball do you realise this is incorrect? Are you trying to mislead or do you genuinely believe this?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdx5pw8pwg5o.amp

Can someone give a link to the claim that 1m immigrants are on benefits?

Sorry but this is very bad advice! There’s nothing wrong in using a DC pension plan where you get more tax advantages rather than just paying into an ISA. Pensions aren’t bad, it’s only the state pension that is likely to fail because it’s NOT funded in advance. The problem is that nearly half of working age adults aren’t paying in to a pension so wlll rely on the state pension or will have to keep working until they drop.

People see £30 k in their pension pot and think they’ve saved well but you need to save half a million for a decent pension or any chance of early retirement. Best to start young

Denmark moving pension age to 70 is a bit of
a red herring.

They are a rich country with schemes in place for physical workers, ill health etc plus many have private pensions. Crucially many work a shorter working week.

It's just another aspect of the welfare state that has got out of control. The NHS wasn't set up to treat every single person for every single tiy blemish, it was set up so poor people didn't die at hospital gates. Free education wasn't introduced so middle class families could go skiing, it was so working class children could learn the 3Rs. The old age pension was introduced so working class folk didn't become a financial burden on their families, so they didn't literally die at the coal face or in the fields age 70.
Most men died before or within a short few years of 65, manual labour is hard work.
That office workers get govt pension at 68 is laughable, on top of their workplace or private pension as well.
It isn't what it was initially set up for but the horse has bolted now.

Pensioners don't pay national insurance because it is covered by the younger generations for them. In turn, the younger generations will eventually become pensioners themselves, and future younger people will pay for them.

Which is fine with pyramid demographics but not when the shape changes.

An even worse cruel joke is that my DC will have to sell everything to pay IHT, leaving nothing for them.

Why would paying IHT leave nothing for them?

People always trot out that there are plenty of jobs which can be done in older age, but having worked in admin all my life I can tell them that there comes a time when the brain struggles to keep up with the constantly changing technology. After working for almost 50 years I was well and truly ready to retire at 65 (the retirement age here).

I also took voluntary redundancy at 59, and found it quite difficult to find work after that age.

I'm a genX and I honestly believe that I will be the last generation to see a state pension, pittance though it will be. My advice to my kids has been to plough their pension contributions into a stocks and shares ISA and review it every few years, because there'll be fuck all left when they're ready to retire :(

Agree with you but I don’t understand. IHT isn’t 100%

Too many people are unaware of this. Pensioners do pay taxes, often having to sell their assets if necessary and depend on younger generations who look down on them. Pensioners don't pay national insurance because it is covered by the younger generations for them. In turn, the younger generations will eventually become pensioners themselves, and future younger people will pay for them. Each new generation dislikes the previous ones. It's circle of life.

I saw people talking about IHT, and I honestly can't stand it. It feels so unfair—I'm already paying over half of my salary in taxes, and even after I die, there will still be more taxes to pay. Sure, I know my DC will technically be the ones paying it, but the asset is mine, it's under my name, so in a way, I'm still paying for it indirectly. It's such a cruel joke. An even worse cruel joke is that my DC will have to sell everything to pay IHT, leaving nothing for them.

@duvetsmuvet
success in life NOW depends

It’s nearly always depended on it. It’s only very recently that free education and house price rises have changed that. That’s just Practically one generation

Victorian terraces were never an issue. Criminals can live anywhere they aren’t just in terraces, they live in detached houses too. It’s not exclusive

people buy whatever is available. Less wasted land on detaching means more housing / acre means The available new houses are less £/m = more affordable. People struggle to buy a home so make them more affordable

I think in many ways, life is just a lot more hassle than it's worth. All these worries to carry, and what for, to end up dead anyway!

Who told you immigration is going to sort your pension?

Immigrants are net takers, on average not earning enough to even pay for their themselves and their larger than average families.

This Ponzi scheme will come crashing down in the not too distant future as immigration is just exacerbating the problem.

This. This is the threat to civilization which has, since earliest times, been based on the need to acquire specialist knowledge.

Suddenly knowledge is apparently replaceable by cut and paste (it isn’t of course, that’s my point).

Some of us have been asking about the economic implications for 20 odd years since computers began to bite, and the only answer has been empowering a few aggressive shits to grab housing resources and force the rest of us into a new serfdom. It’s a new version of Enclosure times but with no prospect of the invention of factory work around the corner - there’ll be some machine doing that too.

It’s likely that raiding the state pension more will push increasing numbers of older people onto disability welfare because of health problems and incapacity. It’s literally rearranging the deckchairs on the ship.

YANBU. Miriam Cates has been sounding the alarm about this for years.

I don’t have a problem with a falling population, and think globally our planet needs it, but there will be a hell of a painful few decades for the country to ride out trying to support the pensioners without enough workers to pay the NICs.

State pension age will have to rise and I expect we’ll see means testing.

Immigration has to come down.

Incidentally, migration (both within countries and across international borders) is correlated with a collapse in birthdate among the migrating population. Cities in particular act as a huge population sink, sucking working-age people in rather, than generating their own work forces. These people have fewer children than the average in their rural place of origin.

Migration policies that encourage temporary migration from high earning , tax paying immigrants (who leave before getting old) provide the tax revenue to support pensions and public services, without taking on the burden of paying forvthisecpeoplevuf they get elderly or infirm. This is what the Gulf states do.

Nobody should have to work till 70.
If we can finance wars, we can let people retire. It's a matter of priority........Look after your elderly or strut the world stage like Billy Big Baws