45% of working age people not saving toward a pension at all

The irony here is that if my pensioner DM gave up her job (she has a cleaning company), it would actually cause about 20 younger people to lose theirs.

You are woefully misinformed, have no understanding of how many pensioners have to chose between food and heating? You have a real shock coming your way. Single pensioners cannot live on £1000pm

Lots of people are really unwell and waiting for treatment or on inadequate treatment or they could and want to work but cannot get hired. Its really difficult for able bodied healthy people to find work and work that pays well enough to pay for life and to save for retirement. Disabled people and people with health issues are in tough spot and really not to blame for not being able to save into a private pension.

We could just cap personal wealth to £100,000,000 take the rest in tax and that would pretty much pay for everything, decent pensions, decent infrastructure and transport, universal living wage. I mean, how much more than a hundred million does an individual need to have an absolutley amazing lifestyle and have pretty much everything they could ever want for their entire family (apart from maybe the power to outright buy off governments and own media platforms) you can't earn £100,000,000 otherwise that would be the wage of paediatric brain surgeons and astrophysicists.

Billionaires should not exist in a country that is the fifth richest in the world but children need food banks to survive. Once our society is fed, housed and has a properly functioning NHS again then we can consider having billionaires.

The sad thing is the Gov would like us all to press that button at 75. Even earlier, as soon as we stopped paying tax. Including the people paying into pensions who could have put their pension contributions into the economy instead.
Maybe we should all press it at 60 really to create employement for the young coming out of uni and imagine the savings in healthcare.
Maybe anyone under 60 should press it when their first grandchild is born so we can free up our houses and get out of the housing crisis.

Where do we stop?

Do you know how much carers get? It is about £85pw, and it is deducted from any UC they already get.

Would you work in a 24/7 carer job for £85pw?

The 25% figure is the economic inactivity rate, not the unemployment rate. It includes students, carers, long‑term sick and early retirees - not just people who are out of work. The actual unemployment rate is much lower. So saying “25% aren’t employed” is technically true but very misleading.

The actual unemployment rate is a lot lower than it was in the 80's.

She saved the tax payer thousands of pounds . It costs 2k plus a week to keep someone in care , even more if they have one on one carers 24/7 . Why shouldn’t she stay at home to look after her disabled daughter until she couldn’t ?. The people you should begrudge are the ones who are physically and mentally able who can work but choose not to or lie about illness and disabilities and tax dodgers and Billionaire company owners who don’t look after their staff and pay them a pittance.

You haven't saved the state millions, she was your child and your responsibility. The state and, by default, tax payers are doing you a favour

I could have accepted the placement she was offered at age 16. I didn't.
I don't deny that I would have been grateful had I not been able to cope at that time, but my decision to keep her at home did save them the money they would have spent had I accepted the place.

This is key. Educate young people on personal finance - saving, compound interest etc. My teenage daughters are very much the exception amongst their friends. They have managed their own money since age 12 - small amount each month rather than giving money as needed. Saving a small amount here and there from their part time jobs. Talking about money at home is key and helping them understand why they need to save and not spend 100% of their money

My grandad said if he could press a button to end his life, he would have at 75 (he lived to 87).
I am not sure what work he could have done. He spent his waking hours in a chair in front his TV or at his dining table.

So you'd like to see eighty year olds working until they drop from exhaustion? While copng with serious health issues, walking with frames and squinting through failing eyesight and partial deafness among other things, you'd like to see them working? Doing what exactly out of interest?

Anyway, I figure I saved the taxpayer millions, yes millions of pounds so I won't feel too guilty when I claim my state pension

You haven't saved the state millions, she was your child and your responsibility. The state and, by default, tax payers are doing you a favour.

Yep, there seems to be far too many people on there assuming that anyone who had not made private pension contributions must be feckless, lazy etc.

On a similar thread, I mentioned my grandmother, who only worked as a teen, then was married and childrearing (which was normal in her time), then was a full time carer for my disabled grandfather. Another poster berated my gran... called her feckless, lazy, and scrounger etc. Because she had no private pension and was claiming Pension Credit.

She spent her whole life either child rearing, or being a carer. She had a handful of years to herself in reasonable good health for her age until vascular dementia took hold.

TBH, unless you have a family willing to fund you in older life, you need to plan and not expect the tax payer to fund you

I don't, as it happens, but as I said earlier, I've saved the taxpayer millions.
I will feel no guilt at claiming state pension.

But some people don't have a disposable income to contribute to a private pension/

And because you were bringing up children, your state pension payments were credited to you - the whole time you claimed FA , your stamp was paid - by the taxpayer

One of my children has significant learning and physical disabilities and I was able to look after her at home, myself until she was 35, by which time it all got a bit too much. Her disabilities were such that she could have gone into supported living when she was 16 but I felt I would be 'letting her down' somehow.
Anyway, I figure I saved the taxpayer millions, yes millions of pounds so I won't feel too guilty when I claim my state pension.

I realise you can't have known all that, but an example of why someone might not work for years, or be able to pay into a private pension.

Well if they are in poverty, they can do nothing, there has to be a safety net for genuine people?

I’m in Australia, we moved here a long time ago (25 years). The superannuation system in Australia is a godsend. Paid for by employers, yes we still get salary increases. I’m very grateful and don’t understand why the UK system doesn’t expect more of employers.

The thing which annoys me most about stories/scenarios like this is that the government will step in, of course it will, but it will probably do so by:

(a) increasing the state pension to support those that have done nothing to help themeselves, and

(b) making this means tested to keep the overall system affordable, cutting the state pension for those that have had the foresight and discipline to do what we were all told we should and put money into our own pensions too.

😤

More binary, over-simplified thinking...

Getting out of poverty may well be harder now in some respects, particularly around housing, and the cost of living. But living standards within poverty are also much higher than they were decades ago.

That is before we even get onto what growing up in poverty in London looked like in the 50, 60s, 70s and 80s, with sink schools, poorer housing, fewer opportunities and far less access to information and fewer routes out.

More than one thing can be true at the same time.

Thank goodness in Australia we have compulsory superannuation. Employers must pay a minimum of 12% on top of your take home pay into your superannuation account from day one. You can add more if you want. (I do) UK could benefit from this setup. Honestly I’m surprised that the uk isn’t already doing something like this.

Schrodinger's foreigner/job.

What frustrates me, and I am sure many others, is that when someone shares their own experience of working through hardship, instability or adversity, it often gets dismissed as simply “luck”, as though hard work, determination, discipline and sacrifice played little role at all. The reality is usually somewhere in the middle. Neither “I made it why can't others?” nor “people have almost no control over their outcomes ”fully reflects real life.

It’s definitely not somewhere in the middle! Climbing out of poverty now is so much harder

So lets get this straight. Its peoples own fault if they are on low wages but its ALSO their fault that migrants are doing the jobs they dont want to do!!!!!!!!!!!