To think it’s crazy that National Minimum wage is £27k

And actually you’re making the point that I am…that pensioner poverty will start to increase as future people retire (or can’t) because the existing generation have the ‘final salary golden pensions’ you mention in your post.

Currently they are wealthier than millenials, as more people retire those retiring will be less and less wealthy than those who have retired in the last 20 years.

And I think you need to review homeownership statistics too.

More tha ln a quarter of pensioners rely on state pension only and most personal pensions are pretty minimal. Poverty will be rising rapidly now that final salary gold standard pensions are a thing of the past for the vast majority. Be careful of assuming that all pensioners own their own homes too. You can’t judge a whole raft of generations based only in the people you know personally.

More tha ln a quarter of pensioners rely on state pension only and most personal pensions are pretty minimal. Poverty will be rising rapidly now that final salary gold standard pensions are a thing of the past for the vast majority. Be careful of assuming that all pensioners own their own homes too. You can’t judge a whole raft of generations based only in the people you know personally.

That doesnt add up?
How can your combined wage be 20k if your DH works full time???

More tha ln a quarter of pensioners rely on state pension only and most personal pensions are pretty minimal. Poverty will be rising rapidly now that final salary gold standard pensions are a thing of the past for the vast majority. Be careful of assuming that all pensioners own their own homes too. You can’t judge a whole raft of generations based only in the people you know personally.

So you don't get by on 30k at all! You are subsidised by your MIL and the taxpayer, probably to the tune of another £30K pre tax salary. Also, you don't have to pay for 5 people as the older two are working already so you are actually only supporting 3 full people on this amount.

I do wish people would stop posting totally misleading things as you did.

No pensioner I know has less than 3 holidays a year. I don’t know anyone wealthy, it’s just that pensioners have no housing costs, and guaranteed income from the state to top up their private pensions.

Some pensioners might be poor, but not most. They also have no mortgage or rent to pay which right now would be more than half of the minimum wage someone earns (if they’re buying a house now).

Well I'm not the only one who thinks your post is unclear.

What do you mean by 'And get around £20k a year between us as I'm part time atm dh full' if that's not your earnings?

UC on top of pay at NMW? Gifts from relatives?

Self employed? The lowest tax threshold so he doesn't need to pay tax... 🤔

He is a tradesman
He earns £12, 570

I’m only in working class circles but the majority of them are pensioners who travel more than this.

My colleagues who are not working class backgrounds cannot afford this at all even though they are in households with two working people

This has already been done to death on this thread and others.
The state pension is a safety net benefit. Most pensioners are drawing far more than they ever contributed. It is unfair to keep expecting more from the poorer, younger generations.

I dont know anybody who goes away 3 to 4 times per year. We must be in different circles.

try living on the state pension of £12.5k that Andy Burnham thinks is too high.

try living on the state pension of £12.5k that Andy Burnham thinks is too high.

try living on the state pension of £12.5k that Andy Burnham thinks is too high.

We live in £3200 a month for a family of 4. £1500 of that is rent (we live in the south), but we make savings everywhere. We have just one streaming service at any one time and swap it out when there’s a series on that we want to watch - Amazon always gets December so we can take advantage of prime shipping for Christmas.
We buy clothes on vinted and charity shops. We sell the kids old clothes on vinted to make back some of the money. If we want a new computer game, we sell an old one to CEX and use the credit to buy a new one second hand. Our car is 8 years old and all paid off. We don’t eat takeaways, we take packed lunches for days out, we look for vouchers/discounts for museums (we always use the free NT vouchers every summer). We meal plan and batch cook to save on food. I cut everyone’s hair (including my own), we buy toys and books second hand. We use the library a lot. Nobody is sad, nobody is missing out (in fact one of our biggest expenses is the kids theatre school and dance classes every month).
It’s definitely possible to live on less if you avoid lots of the expectations of modern life.

No the nineties was the peak time when things got better for a lot of people.
I lived some of my childhood in the UK in a bona fida slum. In the sixties and seventies kids were taken into care if their parents were homeless and many young single women who got pregnant had their kids taken away from them.

Anyone brought up in the nineties had an easier time. By then things had changed a lot and that is when people did become more well off.

Quite. My family were quite well off when I was growing up. By the time I left home to go to uni I'd only had 6 foreign holidays. That was more than a lot of my friends. Nowadays I don't know many families who don't go abroad at least once a year - many go away 3-4 times a year.

Is this a typo?

£27k I wish... I'm a TA and my annual salary is £19500

Bringing the NMW up is clearly necessary, because it is still not enough for a good standard of living

Should NMW be aiming for a "good' standard of living? I expect it to be a minimum standard of living, not good.

For a good standard of living, it's necessary to get some higher level skills and experience and, consequently, a wage that is higher than NMW. Isn't that how the world works? Some roles warrant NMW, a business would be foolhardy to pay more.