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

DH and I live off around £50k gross between us and we have a very comfortable lifestyle (we have two children in primary school). It's a perfectly reasonable household income in inexpensive areas (I realise it wouldn't go far in London or much of the south). In my area the problem is lifestyle creep. People's expectations are crazy compared to when we were children. When I was at school most families didn't have one foreign holiday a year, but now a lot of the families I know expect to be able to go away 3-4 times a year. Families often shared one old car - now most people I know have a luxury car per adult, often on PCP. Meals out used to be a rare treat - whereas now a lot of my colleagues feel entitled to coffees, lunches, takeaways and meals out every week.

That is simply not true. The proportion of working age people without children who are in poverty is the same as the proportion of pensioners in poverty.
Of course overall wealth will be higher amongst pensioners as many have paid off their mortgages. And if you include pension pots that give say an annual pension of £5k a year, they appear wealthy, when their annual income is £17k.

The idiots are the people who don't get the joke!

Exactly. This in addition to all the things I said above.
It's dishonest to pretend that the average pensioners has the same outgoings as the average family with children or the average younger, working adult.
It's even worse than the poster on the first page pretending that she has a household income of 20k with children and lives a very comfortable life.

Some pensioners are poor for various reasons but they are, overall, much better off than the generations that followed them and certainly have much lower outgoings.

Agree @HardFuckingBird

Admittedly, the costs of energy and food have risen sharply in recent years and many people struggle with that, but I completely agree that expectations are often too high. We have become very spoilt over the past 30 years or so. When I was growing up, it was one second-hand car for the whole family, one holiday a year (and often UK holidays at that), hand-me-downs instead of new clothes. Going to a restaurant or even a cafe was a rare treat. The first time we had a takeaway I was 15 years old and I remember how exciting it was, how lucky I felt. We weren’t a poor family, my parents earnt fairly well, but we appreciated what we had. I don’t remember ever coveting what wealthier families had.

My main gripe with the level of minimum wage is about other salaries in comparison!

I work in the NHS, am a band 4. MW has risen so much that band 1 has disappeared and band 2 now only has 1 pay point else it would be the same at band 3 (and is actually the same as the bottom of band 3, it's just that 3 can increase). It won't be long before band 2 gets removed too due to being below MW.

So my main issue is that every time MW increases, the differential between it and the other bands reduces, to the point where it's barely worth doing the job with more responsibility as you get less and less reward for taking it on! How long til it catches me up on band 4?

It's my biggest irritation with agenda for change scales and no doubt affects other public sector salaries too. We should all get an equivalent uplift when MW goes up, PLUS whatever raise we were going to get else what's the point in different bands??

My partner and I live on £21k a year, I still work full time and we have no mortgage. I saved the rest of my salary for retirement.
We have one car and a foreign holiday a year, eat out sometimes. I know housing costs are insane. But outside those some people do just spend a lot of money on day to day living that is not necessary.

I don’t know whether it’s AI bollocks or the most entitled generation ever retiring, but it’s a statement of fact that the baby boomers are the richest generation ever and are far richer than anyone who came after. Gen X following are a split generation, the earliest born in the late 60s/ early 70s lived the same life as the boomers and those of us just a little older than millennials got the same life as they did. The key was whether you bought a house before or in the very first stages of that quadrupling in the first few years of the millennium - I was in my mid 20s then and from a shit background so had no chance. A lot depended on family support and inheritances, and now everything does. Minimum wage was driven up to enable London to have ‘key workers’, and now for the rest of the country it isn’t worth working hard at all.

https://fortune.com/2024/10/03/boomers-wealthiest-generation-millennials-biggest-losers/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/25/boomers-33-times-wealthy-gen-z-gettin-richer/

I work 35 hours per week, £26K before tax. My husband works 37.5 hours and earns £29K before tax. so £55K total income before tax, student loan (don’t get me started on the masters loan threshold…), and pension. So after tax a total of approx £3600

our mortgage is £1,100, which is quite high for our area (midlands). We have two children and another on the way. Our children each have sports and music tuition. Im not especially frugal with groceries - I do make nearly everything from scratch, but I buy lots of organic and local produce. We also pay £500 a month for a bank loan which purchased our two cars, which is a massive luxury and not a sensible financial choice. I’d hardly say we are struggling - far from it!! We have a holiday a year and I’m sensible with things like clothes, which are nearly always second hand. DH and I have very active social lives, but we just choose to do things that are free or cost very little. Our calendars are usually jam packed so we’re not suffering for it.

I agree that people seem to expect that they should be able to spend loads of money on holidays, clothes, and going out in a way that would have seemed absurd to previous generations. We live very well and happily on our salaries, and always have money to put away at the end of each month.

That’s definitely going to be the way for people in my generation. But my experience has been that pensioners now have really healthy private pensions (unless only one working or previously self employed) and own their own homes. I appreciate that this isn’t the case for all, but for my generation and the one that comes after it, it doesn’t look good for us comparative to pensioners now.

Yes all my friends who are pensioners - apart from one who got divorced in later life - have very nice lifestyles: long haul holidays, lots of mini breaks, nice cars, gym membership etc. They also still live in their massive four/five bedroom houses.

They are much better off than my son and DIL who both work full time in professional jobs but for charities; they live in a tiny flat and we’re in the SE.

Something doesn’t add up here. £55k and an £1100 mortgage + £500 bank loan so £1600 gone.

Almost three children so childcare costs and maternity to factor in.

Bills must be at least £600/month so that’s £2200.

Food shop must be at least £400/month so £2600.

That leaves you with £500/month each for petrol, anything your children need, socialising. How on earth are you able to save?

Because you also have state pensions and no housing costs. Plus that 500 is skewed dramatically by those who don’t have a ‘regular pension’ and who instead have their funds in a SIPP and draw down as required. There can be 100s of thousands in there not being counted because it’s not taken as monthly income and it brings the average down.

A pensioner household has just 500 less per month than a working household. The working household has to pay to live in the home, mortgages are horrendously high now and not getting any easier to pay. The working household has childcare costs, they have costs of getting to work, second cars are needed. Any activities that are done are paid for 4 people but a pensioner household has to only pay for 1/2.

This will continue to be harder and harder for future generations. And they won’t have great pensions to fall back on.

No he doesn’t, he takes that as a salary out of his limited company which he’s a director of. Plus dividends, plus whatever personal spending he puts through the business….

People are not stupid.

Did those pensioners live in a tiny flat when they were in their 20s? (I did).

They did but the PP was talking about pensioners being poor compared to people in work and I was responding to that as it’s not my experience. Also the difference in cost between their flat and the pensioners houses is about £1 million. How will they ever bridge that gap???

A million? What type of house?

He is a tradesman
He earns £12, 570

That's high. My council tax is just under £1500. £739 for electric/ gas, water is £264 phone is £120.

So total £2623

A four/five bedroom house which is what most of the pensioners I know live in.