to feel pissed off with selfish 'baby boomer' generation

[hermionepotter]

this was in response to a newspaper article where people surveyed wanted interest rates to go up. I could be BU I know. But it won't be those paying massive mortgages and debts who'll be wanting rates to go up, will be older people wanting interest on their savings and sod everyone else. So am I BU?

Yanbu I wish mil would stop spending dh inheritance on very expensive cruises - tis very selfish

No government will be able to afford to pay us what we have paid in, primarily because it's being used to pay retired people's costs now.

I think you'll find that pensions are just one section of Govt spending - a much larger amount goes on benefits in general - including topping up the wages of those who work a full week at NMW - which I find obscene.

If you work full time and still need the Govt to top your wages up and foot some of your housing bill, things have gone very wrong indeed.

Blimey. Interest rates have got to go up. Not sustainable.

Ok am willing to stand corrected, although, I do think spending on pensions outweighs spending on benefits (read that somewhere recently?) and that even though interest rates used to be higher, housing was relatively affordable, no student loans etc.
But point taken not all babyboomers are wealthy so in that respect was BU and that the people sitting on massive housing equity are not necessarily those who want interest rates to go up, although tbh am surprised how many people on here want interest rates to go up
(am not secretly an mp )

It's not that I want them to go up - I'm a homeowner - but they just have to.

My experience is very much the same as WetAugusts post up thread. We bought our first house in 1987 only for interest rates to hit 15% soon after. A month after we married that year DH was made redundant and was unemployed for 4 years. We most certainly did not have it easy as the OP seems to suggest.

Having said that I despair of the current situation where people are dependent on Food banks in this country, where people are desperate enought to take zero hours contracts (I know they suit some) and NMW is nowhere near enough to live on.

I think, from what I've read recently, it's a given that interest rates will go up this year.

Here you go:
www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/iadb/repo.asp

I married in 1969 and we bought our first house in 1971. So you will see that the interest rates were in double digits for most of the 20 years after that - the years when we were having and bringing up our DC.

It was bloody hard at times, but we managed it - and frankly, I think that a comfortable (NOT rich, but enough to heat and eat) retirement is a fair deal for the years of scrimping and saving.

but that's the thing sueduko - your generation have made a fortune in equity on homes, many of the younger generation can't even afford to buy a home at all and are still subsidising pensions, even though chances are by the time they're pensionable age (70 plus) pensions will hardly exist if at all

I started work at 15, married in 1974 in those days of high rates of interest, DH has just received notification that he has paid 49 years of national insurance contributions. We did not go to university, both worked full time and studied in our own time.

When I first started work in a merchant bank, women were only put into the firm's pension scheme when they reached 28 and provided they were unmarried. Can you imagine that happening today? Lots of women also paid the married women's stamp which is worthless today towards their pensions.

hermione any 'fortune' we've made in equity will be needed to funded our care home fees :( and equity is very much dependent on where in the UK you live. Not everyone lives in a property boom bubble.

There are always green eyed people who think life is easier for others.

My first house, 40 years ago, was in very rough area that most first time buyers wouldn't want to live in.

I couldn't afford the bus fare to work so I cycled 20 miles everyday.
I could go on and on, but really you should stop looking at what others have.

Jealousy is not a pleasant trait.

I think part of the problem is seeing what some of our parents are doing

Most of my friends have parents who are retired on good pensions and own their own houses, go on nice holidays etc

They may have struggled when they were younger but have retirements that we will never have

And I know that's not all pensioners but that's the ones I know

And I don't begrudge them that at all, it's all swings and roundabouts.

But I do worry for my children, in the same way that my parents worried for me

it's not a jealousy issue tbh as I consider myself quite lucky and would just about be able to afford mortgage if rates rise (up to a point) and of course don't begrudge pensioners food, heating or even equity gains. It's just that I do think that generation were very fortunate in many ways as chunderella says and are a bit out of touch about what's happening to many younger people (mostly younger than me) who will never be able to afford a home, for instance and most likely never have a state pension either.

But like I said, I was BU about rate rises it seems the majority want them and I was unfair to blame baby boomers so sorry

I think in terms of our children there's much less potential for social mobility - those of us who have got houses won't have to worry so much (about their childrens' futures) as people who can't afford houses and it's very unfair and worrying. But in the immediate future I'm very worried about the impact of possible rate rises, on young families

I know people in their 30s who took out student loans & credit cards so they could go on exotic holidays in the University holidays.

Their parents paid for everything when they were at Uni so they wouldn't be burdened by debt but the 'kids' didn't care about debt.

I don't think I feel sorry for them.

YABU

The Baby Boomers were the grafters with less disposable income and more savings which enabled them to invest in home-owning - very sensible

I'm Generation Y and can quite happily accept that more of my generation are pissing their money up the wall.

We are led to believe that life is not complete without all the modern gadgets, sky, new sofas, eating out, visiting a coffee shop, buying a take away lunch, getting pissed - who are all those drunk people in every town centre most nights of the week?, massive tvs, the list is endless and most of us buy into it instead of scrimping and saving.

I know people who plead poverty but still buy a takeaway lunch and a newspaper every day.

I also know that there is real poverty in the UK and people cannot afford a decent basic diet and heating.

YABVVU. I am sick of the constant bleating about Baby Boomers on MN from people who quite clearly don't even know what the phrase means. I am a BB, having been born in 1963.

I do not want interest rates to go up because we will be f**ed. We had to relocate for work and it cost a fortune to move.

I agree with everything wetaugust said. I started FT work at 16 years old. Only 4 people in my cohort of 360 pupils went to University. I had DC1 at a time when women weren't expected to go back to work: only a few years before that you weren't allowed to work if you were a married woman. Childcare options didn't exist, never mind 15 hours free at 3.

There were no tax credits and no minimum wage. DH's employer couldn't afford to pay him so "gave" him a car instead which we had to pay for! He was made redundant 3 times but we got no help, and there was a period during which the mortgage rate went up every month. We couldn't afford coffee!

Every generation has things that are good and things that are bad, but unfailingly some people point to one aspect of a previous generation and whine It's Not Fair.

I hope rates go up

Historic average is about 7%. If you can only afford your house while rates are silly low you have over borrowed. It is about time people who have been cautious and saved are rewarded