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

I only know ‘average’ pensioners not any rich ones but they don’t have the expense of bringing up children & often have nearly as much income as families.

Having read this thread I find it interesting that many on MN think that pensioners are living the life of Riley on just 50% of the minimum wage

And we all benefit from huge inheritances. When in reality only 20% of people in the uk inherit anything at all.

It isn't possible because it obviously isn't true.

The poster has either made it up entirely or has missed out other key details such as their large income from benefits, being heavily subsidised by family, being able to buy a home outright from an inheritance, etc. It simply isn't possible.

That’s the problem with civil service. I myself worked in the civil service for a period (whilst my kids were smaller) but I took a pay cut. Good for people with kids as flexible working but not great with pay.

Because pensioners have much, much lower expenses than younger people and the state pension was only ever expected to give the bare essentials.

The great majority own their home outright so have no mortgage.
They can live in smaller homes as most don't need to accommodate a family.
They have less people living at home so bills are generally reduced.
Their food bill will be far smaller than for the average family.
They don't have all the many expenses of raising a family.

Only a small percentage rent privately and some of these will receive housing benefit anyway.

Apart from this, pensioners have already lived through their working life and many have been in a position to save up for their retirement. As a generation, pensioners are far wealthier than all other generations nowadays.

It's hardly breaking news that the state pension alone will not finance a comfortable retirement.

He’s either spinning you are yarn or he’s grossly and illegally underpaid

You get housing benefit, winter fuel allowance, you don’t pay National Insurance any more, prescription fees, eye tests, dental. You get cheap transport, discounted entry in to loads of places. You are more likely to have built up enough stuff to furnish a household. You can go on holiday in low season. It’s not the high life but there are more benefits than for a single person with no kids trying to build a life.

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.

Same 😂

What’s crazy to me is in 1980 a factory wage unskilled for shift was £12,000

and now 46 years later people accept the media’s label of cost of living crisis, rather than suppressed salary structure

£24,438 for a 37hrs week

its suppressed wages and people accept being ripped of by large companies making millions of £ worth profit.

You wouldn't benefits isn't anywhere near minimum wage unless you have very high housing costs and multiple disabled children which isn't something anyone would wish for

Average age at inheritance is 47 peak is 55-65
average amount unt is £65k
tjats over the last 10 years and is at 22% of the population

in the next 20 years that will change to 55% of the population will receive an inheritance and £5.5 trillion will be inherited in the next 30 years

If the
£5.5 trillion in projected inherited wealth were divided equally across the entire UK population, it would amount to approximately £79,000 per person

£3.84 is from property

Taking the £12,000 of an unskilled factory worker on shifts further, In 1980, strong trade union agreements routinely secured premium night rates of time-and-a-third (+33.3%) or time-and-a-half (+50%). In today's market, standard night shift allowances have compressed significantly, frequently hovering closer to +15% to +25%.

If an unskilled factory worker's salary of
£12,000 in 1980 had strictly kept up with inflation over the last 46 years, that wage would be £66,794.40

Comparison to Modern Night Shift Workers:
An unskilled factory worker working night shifts today typically earns a base rate near the UK National Minimum Wage plus a modest shift allowance. This brings average modern night-shift earnings to roughly £28,000 to £34,000 per year—meaning a worker today performing the exact same role has roughly half the purchasing power of that 1980 position.

in comparison unions have become weak with low membership but in teaching that trend hasn’t occured.

In 1980, the average salary for a school teacher in the UK was £7,350. If teacher wages had strictly kept pace with inflation over the last 46 years, that average wage would be £40,911.57 today.

However, unlike factory wages, modern teachers have actually beaten inflation. The average school teacher salary in the UK has risen to over £52,800

To add further context to the teachers salaries versus the unskilled factory worker with night shift

In 1980, entering the teaching profession was relatively low-paid in real terms (the equivalent of less than £20,000 today). Massive structural adjustments to the [DfE Teacher Pay Scales] have raised the modern minimum starting salary to £34,068 (and up to £41,728 in Inner London) to attract new graduates.

While a night-shift factory has seen de-unionisation, teachers have held on to their union which has helped them stay at a better pace with inflation.

Poor @intrepidpandabet you wish you hadn't bothered now 😟

The problem is the housing costs. If they were reasonable, this salary would be manageable. (Though I do still think that people have a funny idea of what essentials are and need ‘x,y,z’).

@CatamaranViperThe debt is the issue here, not the salary. No judgement as I’ve been in debt myself and know how hard it is. Head to moneysavingexpert and see if his website can help you - it did me.

If your spending power keeps decreasing, of course debt will become an issue

In the year ending December 2025, 813,000 people immigrated to the UK. This figure represents a decrease of 20% from the previous year.

I feel I live in a parallel universe as everyone is cheering as the number of immigrants has gone down but 813,000 people to be housed and cared for is nuts imv. I don't see house prices coming down ever if this continues. In fact they must surely go higher.
Then there's the high energy prices to pay for green energy - again this won't stop until we are covered in enough wind farms to power our homes - that's not coming down either.

My student loan in 2000 was about £3-3.5k. It paid my rent, food and everything else for the year.

Minimum wage is crazy as a lot of companies haven't caught up, so you have people on jobs they could walk into aan pick up in 2 minutes on a similar wage as jobs that need a degree and take 6-12 months to master. Property/ rent prices also bonkers, massive disparity between those renting a room in a house for £800 a month and those who live in a 4 bed house with low or fully paid mortgage as they got on property ladder 25 years ago. It's a broken system.

This is giving Yorkshiremen sketch. Unless you have no rent/mortgage, barely eat and don’t use electricity - how on earth does a family survive anywhere on 20k??

We earn 120k between us and things can be tight. We don’t get any handouts so everything we need is paid from our pockets. It’s hard not to feel bitter when we see SIL’s DC getting FSM, free breakfast clubs (hasn’t been rolled out at our school), free dentistry and so forth. We get nada.

@IzzyGone depends on what the debt has gone on. If it’s essentials, food, petrol, I understand.

Very much this. Wages have been surprised in order to turn millionaires into billionaires.

This exactly,