to ask if you're pissed off with the Baby Boomers?

[DamFineBeaver]

Because people who are currently young-ish adults (MN's main demographic?), and younger, will be paying for the lavish lifestyle they've enjoyed?
The money borrowed for their nice big pensions will be paid back by us and our children.

Does this mean they shouldn't spend so much time in Tenerife?

Abra1d I think inheritance tax should be scrapped if you can show that you have spent the inheritance on either university or other educational costs (not everyone needs a degree) or on property for young people; or if you put it in a trust for your own future healthcare needs.

OK, I have to admit I am in favour of increasing inheritance tax, and lowering, or keeping at the same level, income tax. The reason being is that I think its much fairer to tax people less on the income they work for than on the income by chance of birth they might or might not inherit. True, you have the argument that parents work to benefit their children, but then on the other hand, they will claim to be socialist or something so I find that illogical. I also think it would make houses more affordable, as its astonishing where the money comes from to fuel overpriced but desirable to 20 something properties in city centres (usually the parents). That's the real trickle down effect that most people experience.

Doing as you suggest and setting up trusts to benefit their children is what a few people already do so I can't see that changes things. Setting up trusts to provide for your own health needs I have no problem with, although it would probably attract claims of tax avoidance.

Surely the best thing your parents can leave you is not money, but a good education, a good upbringing and how to be independent?

knowhow of the boomers they would fight to keep final salary pensions and retiring at 60. There is a reason we got these, because we fought damn hard for them!

No, you got them because the demographics seemed to support the final salary system. It's actually been known for at least twenty years that final salary schemes are unaffordable owing, among other reasons, to the fact that people live much longer these days.

The only way people my age (51) could be given final salary pension at 60 would be if my children paid so much tax that they would never, ever, be able to pay into pensions themselves and would have even less hope of affording rent/mortgage payments.

I don't worry about pensions, as we are in the uk. Doubt that I will be living on the streets. No point in worrying about these things, and I feel extremely lucky to live in the UK.

You have plenty to live on if you can save a Third of your income!

Dh and I have approximately £5 in our isa :(
Dh works ft.
I did until we had dc.
I cannot earn what it would cost to put them in childcare.
Since my dad died I am also my mothers main carer.
I intend to go back to work one day, when the dc are older, but until then I am stuck.
And until then this - and previous govts - have made my role one to be mocked and derided.
All because I do not get paid for it.
On this very forum I have been called a prostitute because I am a sahm.
Was it IDS who said that sahps didn't contribute anything to society?
All very depressing.

blooming - for the amount of money you will have paid into it, you got a very very good deal, as did all people currently retired on defined benefit pensions. Those schemes have largely disappeared because we (the poor saps paying into defined contribution schemes) are still filling in the black holes created by the largesse you received (which wasn't ever properly funded, in the vast majority of cases).

What % is inheritance tax? It's kicks in at £250k, yes?

There was a time when women had the choice if they wanted to go out to work, simply because one wage was enough to pay the bills, the mortgage etc. Many of the "baby boomers" went out to work in those days to earn what they called "pin money", it wasn't usually needed but it was seen as the woman's own personal money to spend on what she wanted. So where at one time in order to get a mortgage it was assessed on one wage coming in (because the cost of living was assessed on one wage) it then became where the joint earnings of both the man and the woman were required. Women today don't have the luxury of deciding whether to stay at home or not as the baby boomers did, but that is the legacy that they passed down.

Tara...yes. Thats exactly what my late aunt did.
She worked ft but her money was "hers" and my uncle paid all the bills.
She did have a rather major shopping habit though :)

Well, would you believe it - just realised that I'm a Baby Boomer! Not comfortably-off though, far from it. No pension and don't earn enough to pay into one. No savings, no shares, no forthcoming inheritance from well-off elderly relatives. My car doubles in value when I put petrol in it. Won't get a state pension till I'm 68, and I haven't been on a foreign holiday for nearly 20 years.

We have friends of a similar age who were allowed to buy their council house for £11,000, who retired at 50 on a final salary pension, inherited a thatched cottage worth half a million, have no end of shares from when the government sold off BT and the like, have adult children who got their university education for free...

We're not all alike, us Baby Boomers!

£325k per person. Doubles to £650k for a married couple of the first one to die left everything to their spouse.

It's outrageous.

tarashill some women. Middle class women. Not working class women (mortgage? What mortgage?)

Really!??
Christ.

it wasn't usually needed but it was seen as the woman's own personal money to spend on what she wanted

How amazing that would be

I think it's housing that's the real difficulty. If you couldn't afford to buy you could rent a house - but rents are eye watering too. No social housing - although in scotland there is more docial housing, house prices are lower and people manage a reasonable standard of living - if they can find a decent job which isn't easy.

taxi This is, of course, true. There is a very stark divide between the haves and the have nots in the retired population. My mother in law died a couple of weeks ago - funeral tomorrow. She had Alzheimers and the cost of her care has swallowed up the value of her flat and more, much much more.

As a teacher a large chunk of my salary was taken as pension and NI ( National insurance) contributions.
I do get a pension, but while working our mortgage interest rose up to 16%.
We saved and paid off our house then downsized as retirement needed different priorities.
I am grateful for our comfortable retirement at present but I am terrified of that last stage. Have you read what happens in nursing homes which we may need to pay huge sums for?
My children all work for their comfortable lives so I hope they get to share in what we worked for.
Teachers pensions were not funded by what was paid in so we are owed the support we now have. Our contributiuons went into general government spending.
It is not by our choice that the housing market is so inflamed.

No I'm not pissed off with them.

The idea that babyboomers are pissing everyone else's money up the wall and taking lavish holidays is nonsense. Most of the babyboomers I know have pretty modest means and some still have mortgages. If they ever got on the housing ladder, in the first place.

No. HTH.

(Haven't we already done this thread a million times??)

FelineLou As a teacher a large chunk of my salary was taken as pension and NI ( National insurance) contributions.

That's just what happens to every reasonably paid worker now though. Its normal. Except that now, the younger generation will also have to pay off student debts while battling much higher house prices. In fact, I know one teacher who didn't even have a university degree (don't know how they got in in the first place but they did).

I know of a hell of a lot of very affluent late fifties - mid seventies, who gave up work years ago, have large houses, often a second home somewhere, have multiple foreign holidays and several newish cars, yet had very ordinary, if reasonably good jobs. They lead a lifestyle I would associate with the very wealthy, which is what their house values would correlate with, yet I'm guessing if they were earning the equivalent today, it would be 40k a year or so. A remarkably high proportion of the ones in their fifties don't seem to work at all.

The Babyboomers are a strange generation. I get from my parents a real sadness that they are ageing, it's like they never thought it would happen to them.
They really were the 'youth' generation, they thought they would change the world.
My generation is so much more cynical and pessimistic.

80's - unemployment, Brixton riots, no concept of everyday sexism or racism because that was just how people spoke. No gay rights as who would ever admit to being gay? Gen xer sir tim berners lee hadn't invented the internet yet so little access to information or people outside your community. High interest rates. Housing repossessions. Very little concept of sen or MH problems. I could go on. In the end it is all subjective.

However the idea that young people in the uk should be without hope because of when and where they were born is a little lacking in perspective.

Ubik...spot on.
My mil is struggling massively with this ATM.
Lots of her peers dying or very ill.
She isn't coping well with it al all :(

The BBs were the first generation to consider their retirement not a welcome rest from work, but a second chance of having fun.

They had disposable income and were still young enough and healthy enough to enjoy it.

"I get from my parents a real sadness that they are ageing"

Is the theory that previous generations were happy about getting old?