To think that the older retired generation have it too cushy ...

[suebfg]

Nice holidays, large houses now worth £££, good pensions etc. (I know I am generalising her)e.

And the young/middle aged people can't rely on an inheritance as the elderly people may have to sell their homes to pay for care. Yet the elderly people did get an inheritance and are enjoying it on their holiday spending sprees.

I agree with scottish money what is wrong with children grown children doing their own thing off their own back and earning their own bloody money,

scottishmummy obv not scottish money not even sure what that was about

Home ownership,uni were until relatively recently not a majority pursuit
Since council house sales,and uni expansion they have dramatically expanded
Still doesn't make automatic.and inheritance,well that's privileged and can't be relied upon

If you want your kids to own home,be secure it will largely be own to them
Unless you're the bank of mum and dad,and they're expecting a gap year,or handout.there no entitlement to parents monies

My dad never had credit other than the mortgage and was very careful with the little money he earned. In 1984 he had at last paid off his mortgage and was over the moon. He died 3 months later of a coronary Heart Attack aged 75.
My sis's FIL also died at 75 from the same and my FIL died of prostrate cancer at the same age in 1989. They were all in WW2 and left little in the way of inheritances.

But I do think its a valid social comment. DH and I are professionals but are doing up our own home because we can't afford to pay tradesmen to do it. We have professional friends who live in pretty slummy areas of town because its the only way they could get on the housing ladder. its not exactly novel that people working in the professions should buy houses, but without help, most of them cannot afford to buy a house anywhere near the standard of their parents.

If the previous generation did benefit from free tertiary education, low house prices and council house sales, then its a poor show on their part if they didn't set themselves up for a comfortable retirement.

DH's parents are useless in a crisis because they've never had to struggle. My parents were feckless and didn't plan ahead. FIL retired at 53 and has spent half his life not working but still enjoys an enviable standard of living. DH's parents exhibit a similar type of irresponsibility, except they spend their substantial savings on foreign homes (2) and motorbikes and caravans. They are on their fourth motorhome in the past ten years, the others all sold at substantial losses because they didn't like something about the layout. They can't understand why DH and I dont have more things, and are convinced its my fault in some unspecified way, and question me closely about what I do exactly at work and whenever they find out im on annual leave.

The baby boomers lived and prospered in incredible times.

Good luck to them.

However, given how fortunate many of them were, I do think it behoves them to try to understand what life is like for the younger generation. Tghese young people are having it horribly tough.

I don't begrudge ppl good fortune.
I also feel very sad that many elderly ppl are living in poverty.
But it is harder for younger ppl I think in many ways, certainly in comparison with my parent's generation.

Many jobs require a BA or Bsc minimum now whereas piously they didn't. Yet there is almost no state funding for tertiary education. So debts are incurred by the stunts or their parents.

A large proportion of baby boomers were able to pay their mortgages off before they ached their 50s. That is extremely rare these days.
Early retirement would appear to be a thing of the past.

It's a shame.

So what if they holiday,buy caravans,profligate spenders,it's their money
You seem to be suggesting poor you,plodding along whilst they spend at will?
Are you honestly suggesting pil and your parents moderate their spending to support two adults?

FFS. stunts? = students.

UABU when you hear about the supposedly ridiculous price the olds bought their homes for you should realise it was all relative to earnings at the time. In my ownparents time mortgages were only available to "professional" people. KI fyou happened to work in a factory it didnt matter if you were skilled or not you were turned down.
Yes its very hard for the early 20s generation but think of the other opportunities they have had - the foreign holidays/gap years and the fun times at uni.

not all jobs require degrees not all children will do professional jobs,

oh and we are buying a big fuck off motor home when the kids leave

Some if you live in a privileged bubble.back in the day most folk didn't go uni,or inherit
Those 5% who did get to uni were generally middle class,and not representative
One male wage used to keep a family,that's not case anymore.times change.and exoectations need to change too

scottish I agree that times have changed dramatically.

The baby boomer times were an aberation.

I just wish they'd accept it too!

You've got quite an imagination there, scottishmummy. I cannot think of anything id find more abhorent than 'being supported' by two rich OAPs lording it over our lives. Where did I give the impression that DH and I did not have well paid jobs? I very much doubt we will inherit anything and im not all interested, because we have put in place what we bed to have a comfortable future ourselves.

We have however worked a damned sight harder for it than PIL. No cushy 9-5 jobs for us, Our wedding was in a registry office, our holidays abroad are often in youth hostels (unlike the skiing holidays PIL had) and we dont currently have a shower or kitchen. And we won't be retiring at 53 on a final salary pension scheme. But we are in a better situation than students going our fields now who face not only having no maintenance grants, but loans, tuition fees and unaffordable housing.

YABU if 'the elderly' or 'the retired' have good pensions and nice houses it is because they earned them - they worked, they paid into a pension and they paid a mortgage

Not every pensioner is rich - many live isolated lives in poverty

Inheritance is not a right - you don't earn someone elses money

YABU. The reason they are well off is that they never had access to easy credit and lived to their means. I remember my mum buying hand knitted jumpers from jumble sales , unpicking the wool and reknitting it for jumpers for us. She was always re-sewing clothes into something else. That kind of thing rarely happens today

gordy many baby boomer pensions were extremely generous. They have been scrapped now for the upcoming generations.

As I say, good luck to 'em. But they didn't deserve them. Any more than you, I or our DC don't deserve somehting similar.

Ditto houses. Prices reasonable. Mortgages doable. That's just luck!

Yabu. My parents now have a very cushy life but they earned it.

they did not have the opportunity to go to uni but got a trade. My mum gave up work after their first child as that was the done thing in those days even though she would have loved to have had a career.

my dad worked 6 days a week and some nights to make ends meet whilst mum was left at home to look after 3 children. This included Christmas day for no extra pay.

they scrimped and saved every penny, never living on credit - if they didn't have the money they didn't get it, including holidays. The only loan they had was a mortgage in which they somehow survived huge interest rates that would put most of us under.

i don't expect to get their house as an inheritance but it will piss me off that the government might get it given how much they worked for it and how they were the generation that was sold the lie that by paying into national insurance will protect you.

ok, i get that the younger generation do have it tough but too many seem to think the world owes them something without them sacrificing their lifestyle.

they paid into a pension scheme - they got good returns - i fail to see why they don't deserve the money they where promised

Interesting article

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/01/jobless-europe-young-qualified

What utter utter crap the OP is. Take a walk around any ex-mining town in the Welsh valleys and then tell me the oaps you see there are having it large at the expense of the young.

I can't ever remember being so angry at the blinkered stupidity.......

Abs,you complained your pil/parents holiday,buy caravans whilst your repair own home?
Do you think they should moderate their spending,help you out?if so why
They free to spend own money as they wish.they're under no compulsion to be thrifty

Your parents and grandparents who if in their eighties were growing up during the war, even if 10 years younger still lived through rationing and the really poor conditions we don't experience ourselves.
They worked hard and paid their tax and deserve to live their old life in luxury.

I think this generation expect too much and aren't prepared to start of at the bottom like we did.
In many places in the North you can buy 2 bedroom terraces from 35k upwards that need renovating. But people expect to move into 3 bed semis all done up. We had to get our hands dirty, learn how to plumb, mend and fix to own our own home, as our parents did before us.
We didn't have credit, except for a mortgage, no car, holidays etc. You had these when your dc were a bit older and you were more on your feet.
We had hand me downs for the first 10 years of our marriage. This is how we mamaged to own 2 houses outright and afford a few luxuries. It has taken us 25 years to get here.