to be scared of the future? what will become of people like us?? pensions / housing related

[applejacket]

dh is 42, i am 34, we don't own our house, and never likely to (bad credit in past plus not high enough income for mortgage and barely any savings for deposit etc). we rent a council house atm

dh has worked FT consistently since 15 but he has only just started paying into his company pension as they have to now. but will probably be worth fuck all when he retires

i am a SAHM with 2 dcs, 4 and 7, and one on the way , i worked from 16 - 26 full time and last couple of years have done a bit of self employed cleaning work but hardly anything really and not doing it anymore now i am pg.

dh earns ok money but not enough to either get a mortgage, or save anything. we don't struggle day to day at all really, but dont really have anything to save. and recently i have been really worried about the future

i am intending to go back to work when the dcs are older but god knows who would employ me, i have no qualifications other than some average gcse's and a levels from nearly 20 years ago. and i can't afford to re train in anything either

what will happen to us when we are older?? when we are still renting and retired? will we be homeless? tbh its the fact we are renting that scares me the most, i would feel so much more secure if we owned our house.

i honestly sometimes feel that our only hope is a lottery win or something

Most people Midnite? So is that a realistic goal for minimm wage/low income workers?

so what are we looking at by the time we get to retirement age?

mass homelessness
mass unemployment
little or no welfare support
Social collapse?
Revolution?

I said "aiming" ARealPickle. Even low income workers would be foolish to think that they will be able to afford to live off the pension come retirement age, especially if you don't own your home. Even minimum/low income earners will have 9-12% of the salary they have earned in their lifetime in a superannuation fund, and they should consider their investment options for that money and then using those funds to top up their government pension when they retire.

"Lots of people will be in the same boat so govts will need to solve the problems of unaffordable housing, and jobs that don't pay a living wage."

This is from very early on in the thread but -- I wouldn't count on that. Not trying to be snarky as I agree with you in principle. It just looks to me like in fact govts. are taking on less and less responsibility for solving these problems. But I live in the US and we're jaded here.

Retirement is something people do who are preparing themselves to die.

Keep working as it keeps your mind active and your body mobile. Even if just 2/3 days per week.

The state pension for a married couple with full entitlement is going to be around £300 per week from 2016. It's not a bad joint income and if you have to work until you are 67/68 to get it then so be it!

We are very lucky in this country and sometimes it's easy to forget that.

Speak for yourself, maleview. Retirement is something I planned to do in order to live, when I'd have time for stuff there just wasn't a moment for while working.

It's a very odd idea that the only stimulating, worthwhile activity is that which makes a profit.

In fact for a large part of the population, work is in not even stimulating and worthwhile. It pays the bills.

I imagine more people will rent out spare rooms and rely on shared housing arrangements to make ends meet as well as working minimum part-time until they drop.

Interesting, though, midnite, because every worker has this stake in a pension. I guess people who have never worked, or not much, must be dealt with some other way. $ 800 a fortnight sounds better than the UK pension but I have no clue what a dollar buys you in Oz.

My sense is that a number of things will change. The system when it was set up assumed a very few years of life post retirement, because men died typically well before 70. I am thinking that working later will have to become the norm, otherwise people will only earn for a third of their adult lives, and the second third has to fund the last third, and it's just not possible for most of us to earn and save that much. It doesn't follow that we would stay in the same jobs, though.

I would also guess that the current trend for a lot of smaller homes will reverse and people will buy bigger homes between them and share across generations, which was pretty normal up till the 1960s.

I have a feeling the current baby boomer set up, with a long well funded retirement in your own independent house, will be seen as a weird thing people did in the 1990s, and we will revert to working most of our lives and sharing houses while we do it.

I think what I would do, if I could trust the landlord, would be to rent once I was older. I could pass on my equity to my children to help them buy while they are young and before the taxman takes IHT (fat chance of me being above the limit, mind you). I could move house if I needed something smaller, warmer, whatever. I could stop worrying about repairs. And when I die, my pension dies with me and so does the rent bill. But that would require significant changes to the way the rental market works.

I agree that multigenerational living will become the norm again Beastofburden and I think that is quite a healthy thing.

also more people will live in flats. more children will share a bedroom.

humans are very adaptive. that is our strength. we are just going through a time of change at the moment.

I'm not that convinced that there will be an increase in intergenerational living - I think that represents a bit if a wishful fantasy that things will return to some kind if good old days - we were poor but family was all etc. The reason I'm not convinced is that changes in the labour market over the last 40+ years have made this more and more impossible: the whole of the last few decades' drive in capitalism has been towards unregulated labour markets and movement of labour, rewarding those who move to where the jobs are and so on. The stoking up of asset prices has been an inextricable part of this - I don't think you can simultaneously allow houses to get more and more expensive on the assumption that young people and older people will keep working harder and longer and keep moving to where the jobs are, and then try to solve that with ideas about intergenerational living (which requires that young people be able to find work where their parents are, or parents who are unable to retire would move to find work near their children).

The whole idea of intergenerational living presumes that (a) the housing stock will support it (when in fact most of the housing built in the last 15 years has been very very small apartments and houses); and (b) the existence of a kind of localism where there are plenty of stable, well-paid and permanent jobs and services available for all generations in local economies. Whereas the movement of everything in neoliberal capitalism in this country has been towards the opposite. There doesn't look like any prospect of sustained public investment to create those job opportunities, so will "intergenerational living" (which sounds so nice in theory) really just mean young people can't get anything more than minimum wage service sector zero-hour contract jobs whilst living in their childhood bedrooms well into their forties (which doesn't sound so nice?)

What about people who own nice family houses in bits of the North or Wales where there aren't any jobs for their children? What happens to intergenerational living then? Do their children find jobs in London and move their parents into a 2-bed flat in Dalston for the price of the nice family home in Hull? Is everyone supposed to move to the SE to live in tower-blocks with their parents? It doesn't look like our current economy is really going to support intergenerational living in a positive way. What if younger generations wanted to move into Granny's house and be her carer rather than put her in a home? Our economy isn't set up to recognise carers or anyone who doesn't do paid work - we are busy trying to cut as much social support as possible and stuff as many people as possible into low-wage jobs in the job market, whether they have young children, elderly parents or whatever. That doesn't sound compatible with a positive notion of intergenerational living to me. That sounds like romanticising overcrowding, poor employment opportunities, limited choices, and the farming of large parts of the population into low-wage unskilled work with no prospect of affording decent housing. Not a recipe for a competitive global economy either (unless we want to compete with China for poor living conditions.)

Multi generational living works if you come from a nice family. Lots of women have been sexually abused by parents, have violent or emotionally abusive parents. Lots of people have parents who they could never leave alone with their own children.

Some parents have violent and abusive children too, and would not be safe living with them. You know before the old age pension many elderly poor people ended up in the workhouse. They did not live in the bosom of caring families.

There is also a massive difference between well off people building a "granny" flat on the side of their house, and a family with kids sharing a 3 bedroom small house with an elderly parent/s.

My biggest worry is the gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy.

Many, many more people will be disabled before they get to pensionable age and this will scupper the well laid plans of a lot of people hoping to work until they drop.

There's a report on retirement in the daily mail today. Copied this bit,

The “essential” annual cost of living for a retired person in Britain today is £7,623.
Adding the £3,197 cost of a 'happy retirement' takes the total to £10,820.

Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2522301/Seeing-grandchildren-makes-pensioners-lives-happier.html#ixzz2nFpmC2YS
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Yup granie. I like the idea of multi gen living if every one had space. We're already crowded in a three bed small terrace ( think third room doesnt fit a full sized bed). I'd like to take my mum in but we physically don't have space.

I think multi generation living is a lovely idea but not very practical for most families. Housing costs are so high that a lot of families are already living in cramped conditions and it will not be practical for an elderly parent to move in and sleep on the sofa.

It's a disgrace that we have got to this position. When I left school 25 years ago there was talk of a pension crisis but the government are only just addressing the issue by introducing auto- enrolment.

A lot of private pensions are crap. I have paid into a pension for 15 years + and it's almost worthless . I would have more money if I had put the money under my mattress.

We live in the South East and plan on selling our property and buying a retirement apartment in a cheaper part of the country and then use the equity to fund our retirement. Future generations can't get onto the housing ladder so won't have this option.

It's depressing.

My dear friend did the multi generational living bit - to look after her elderly ILs - but her DH died suddenly and she is now left with 2 very unpleasant elderly ILs to care for in her grief.

I would have had my beautiful Mum in mt home if she had survived cancer - but it wasn't to be....the idea of having my nightmare MIL -- no way.

Also in The Mail today - an article that one in seven 65 year olds will live to 100 yrs.....that might be very many long years of intergenerational living - and where you might be a disable/infirm 75 year old caring for a 100 year old....does nt sound like a solution to retirement bliss.

Train, I agree with your post on multi Gen living, it's also out of tune with the modern ideals of autonomy and independence afaik there is an increase in one person households.

Complex families with re marriages and children with previous partners could also make multi generational households difficult to manage.

Living with my adult children or my parents is my worst nightmare!

The shape of the population is shifting, more and more older people, fewer younger people as the birth rate drops below replacement level.

The state pension for a married couple with full entitlement is going to be around £300 per week from 2016. It's not a bad joint income and if you have to work until you are 67/68 to get it then so be it

not a bad income and I could be comfortable at that level, BUT presumably the retirement age will continue to rise, I'm happy to earn a living but if there's very little work available all I'll have to live on would be whatever meagre JSA there is.

Perhaps the govt is hoping to change public opinion on euthanasia? Rather than endure decades of poverty before we reach the golden age of retirement lots of us will choose to end our suffering with the little cup of pink liquid.

as far as I can see the options will be:

1. more people in the same sized properties
2. the same number of people in smaller properties
3. the same sized property but a flat instead of a house

choices will be defined by what you can afford.

choices will be defined by what you can afford.

Just like everything else in life :(

Does the state pension amount depend on how many years you have worked and paid NI through your working life?

You need 30 years NI contributions or credits to get the full state pension.