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

Exactly. Tax relief helps those who already have money to save, but it does little for low or middle earners who can’t afford to put much in, even with incentives. . My son is 30. Astronomical rent, repaying student loan, bills and food cost taking up far more of salary proportionally than say when I was 30. His workplace pension is the basic 8% of salary. Most workplace pensions are not enough to cover for later life.

He's lucky. We've helped him set up a private pension and are paying into it until we are both retired in the next 5 years to give him a head start. We'll give him money for a house deposit out of our tax free pension allowance. Great for him but what about those who dont have parents who were fortunate to not have to pay uni fees, could afford to buy property which has gone up ridiculous money since the 80s, had decent work pensions and could afford to add to them. He doesnt want our money to buy property, have a decent pension, have a reasonable quality of life, he wants his own, like his parents had.

There'll be no state pension or it will be severely restricted I suspect by the time he is 65. Yet, there’s no shortage of cash when it comes to paying £130+ billion in dividends to shareholders from former public services, writing off £billions in corporate tax avoidance, funding multi-billion pound contracts for private consultant companies like G4, Serco, Capita

But most people could afford to save something.

I suppose they could but if they are renting, have given up the idea of children and just want to live life for now I am not sure I can judge. Plus saving something won't make
much difference will it?

@Squarestones and that's before you factor in wage stagnation and housing costs.

I do not think most people oppose immigration per se. Most people recognise the need for immigrants with the skill sets we need, who will respect UK laws espouse British values and become net contributors either in economic terms (highly skilled, highly paid and highly taxed) or social terms skilled in their field (eg Health and Social Care) earning a wage and doing a job that needs to be done.

What nobody wants is large scale immigration by people with no/low skills, who are incapable of doing jobs we need and who will always be net recipients of the state. Where such individuals enter the country illegally, commit serious crimes and do not respect our values, opposition increases

It is not difficult to separate these groups of immigrants.

They retired at 60 and 65, had smallish but enough fins salary pensions and didn’t need to give me much for uni or housing.
So to attempt to give our kids something close to the start we had we are looking at £200k NET per child (I got around £30k all in)
To have a retirement at anywhere near the same time and standard as our parents looking at pension pot of £800k-£1m

To me this is a crucial point as well - and @duvetsmuvet also made similar.

I've been saving into a private pension since my first job aged 22 (admittedly small amounts for much of that time as was relatively low earning then part time). DH earns more and has also saved since his first job. We have a reasonable pot at the moment with at least 25 years til retirement. We will try to increase savings levels as mortgage, uni fees etc allow.

BUT I still don't think we'll have the level of income in retirement as our parents did, because they had defined benefit, final salary schemes. In order to achieve the same level of comfort we would need to save a whole lot more. I didn't really realise this until recently and felt that because o began saving young, as my parents did, I would have a similar level of income/comfort. But of course looking at my forecasts, I won't.

So yes we need to do more to educate and support people to save in a private pension, and we need to explain how pensions work cos our generation has a much worse deal than our parents.

True - but then they shouldn’t be complaining if they do make it to state pension age and don’t have what they consider enough money!

Assisted dying. We will be killed by the state, and this will be good and virtuous

Many people live for today, they won't forgo nice things ( extras) to save for something which may or may not happen. many people don't even live to see their state pension. I have had five friends die over the past couple of years, only one made it to state pension age and even then only a year or so of getting state pension.

The future looks bleak for everyone. Personally, I would prefer to be given a state pension pot and have the right to choose when I exhaust both this and my life. I have no desire to be kept alive through modern medicine whilst suffering the indignity of incontinence and needing help to dress and shower.

I don't really think about it because the idea of someone else paying it out in future just feels so foreign to me. I am trying to work and earn while I can now. No guarantees beyond that.

I also pay into a private pension which my employer matches by 7%. I was long advised not to depend on the state pension by relatives.

I’m not yet 50 but I very much doubt there will be a state pension when I get there. I think we are all going to have to make sufficient private provision. And the fact is, not having dc makes that much easier.

But most people could afford to save something. Anyone who has any level of discretionary spending i.e. buying anything beyond the bare essentials needed to live (and I fully appreciate that not everyone does) COULD save into a pension - they just may not prioritise that over stuff they want now.

We need to restrict illegal immigration. That's it.

People like to pretend that the problem can be solved in large part by bashing 'scroungers' but really, the state pension makes up such a large portion of the welfare budget that it would barely touch the sides.

True, they need to scrap the triple
lock.

I’m mid forties and I grew up under the illusion stare pension was all you needed. My parents didn’t have private / work pensions . So I didn’t start a pension till early thirties. Then I worked part time so my contribution was low. About 5 years ago I realised dh (who is 8 years younger than me) had paid steadily into a pension since mid Twenties and paid in more than my monthly salary. I now pay over half my wage into my pension and I’m continuing to increase it. I am worried it will be gone by the time we get there.

Also pension schemes are often pretty rubbish now compared to current pensioners.

@girljulian in the 60s we have 5 workers to 1 worker, it's 3:1 now & not far off 2:1. That's the issue. A smaller population is good but not an older one.

We desperately need a different economic framework but the validity of that change is dependent on the global markets....

And that is exactly your answer.
You either provide your own pension or you end up on sickness benefits. No private pension fund, no early retirement.

The country can't afford the level of benefits it provides.

Exactly it “solves” one problem and creates another

it will be interesting to see what happens to healthcare & whether they will prioritise by age.

You're all forgetting one thing - Immigrants also age.

But we need workers, we already have more over 65 yr olds than under 15 yr olds.

It's certainly true that the relatively large boomer generation has brought the problem to the fore, but if the birth rate continues to stay below replacement it's not going to go away just because the boomers eventually die off. If anything the ratio of the working age population to retirees is going to continue to decline for many decades. People like to pretend that the problem can be solved in large part by bashing 'scroungers' but really, the state pension makes up such a large portion of the welfare budget that it would barely touch the sides. The problem needs to be solved by some combination of a rise in the state pension age, an inching up of auto-enrolment contributions, at some point ending the triple lock and/or the WFA, tax rises, and the state becoming a lot more nannyish regarding people's health. The trouble is, when much of the demos' political, demographic and economic thinking is about as sophisticated as that of Kevin and Perry it's impossible to sell that to the electorate, so it'll be kicked down the road again and again.

It will clearly be the case that out of work benefits will be less and that fewer people will be assessed to be in need of them.

Quite a large % of the economically inactive are between 50 and pension age and it's due to ill health.

Ticking timebomb unless someone makes some difficult decision soon

The ageing population is already impacting the economy.