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?

The 1970s were awful for most people. Imagine inflation at 60% and the like. Anyway we are where we are. Most women with children are not prepared to do what I did - no maternity leaves, full time work until they die etc. We all make choices and can only deal with the environment in which we are in now, whenever that now is.

I do not support the new £20k at 4% savings thing for pensioners as only the wealthy pensioners tend to have savings anyway and it hardly encourages the young to save.

I can live with a state retirement age of 67 for me and rising and am happy to work until I die. I don't agree anyone my age has been handed things on a plate. Only 15% of my age went to university at all and women were routinely paid less than men in some of my life. Not great easy past time. Life a veil of tears for many of all ages across a good few decades of most lives in most periods.

It's just wrong to suggest that bbs were voting and forming opinion when Thatcher came to power. Some of them were still too young to vote in 1979. The people in the majority then and who voted her in, were the middle aged and older, those who were born from about 1900 onwards. In those days a lot of bbs were very left wing (and some still are)
I think you need to do some maths /history / look up what baby boomers means!!

Most boomers will have been voting by '79 but the notion that we all voted for Thatcher is as comical as the post that claims we persuaded the government to raise our own pension ages.

Flo and Tart I completely agree that margaret's figures do not stack up.

She said her husband only earned an average wage (!) ie £50k and that he retired after 30years, and that she gets half his pension woe is her at £1300 a month. That means her husband's full pension was £31k pa. If he only worked 30 years at 1/80th of salary at £50k which is not average, especially not then then his pension would have been less than £19k. To have a pension that high he must have been earning £83k pa. And he would have had a lump sum of three years pension- £93k!! So all of the "woe is me I only earn a bit more than the minimum wage and had to spend a couple of hundred pounds on repairs so I have to watch the pennies" is just absolutely hilarious. I would love to know how many hundreds of thousands of pounds you have squirrelled away, Margaret, that you think you could possibly be hard done by when your income is three times that of a normal pensioner.

Baby boomers born from 1946-1964 (although I think there is debate about whether these dates apply to uk population)

Baby boomers aged 15-33 in 79. I don't think its unreasonable to suggest that the majority of conservative voters in 1979 were over 33.

The idea that they all shared the same opinions is as ridiculous as the idea that 15-33 year olds are a homogenous mass today. (although the younger cohort were probably responsible for excessive sales of oversized slogan t-shirts and raybans in the 80's)

In fact, Margaret. I would go so far as to say that your ignorance and entitled attitude is exemplary of the precise reason we have so many of these threads in the first place, so if you feel that there is a lot of hatred out there, it is because your attitude is exactly the one that people are annoyed by.

Bedraggled thanks for confirming that Margaret's figures are wonky. I'm not a pensions expert (apart from looking at my own forecast and feeling a bit glum) but it seemed to me that her husband's full pension must have been almost the same as his salary. Now I know some posters think we were lucky (and yes, in some respects, we were) but we weren't that jammy!

Merrymouse Yup you've got me there. I do plead guilty to wearing overslze T shirts and I still have the raybans.

Ime long experience of life - anyone who goes through life blaming others for their woes won't reap great happiness.

You are dealt the hand you are dealt and make the best of it.

No explaining or justifying will convince those who need someone to blame that they are being unreasonable. They will learn over time like I did.

How are you all expects on my pension? Its 2/3rds of the final sallery. I'm just saying for me only getting half of this its a pretty simmilar amount to min wage. I know I do OK, but its hardly the life of Riley. Council tax, water, gas electricity and car eat up almost 1/3 of this pension.

National Insurance pays for pensions. As the name suggests, you pay into it to get something back at the end. Getting a pension is not borrowing.

Also there are at least 1.6 millions pensioners in the UK living below the poverty line.

Tough Margaret says her husband worked in local government. Civil service pensions were completely different.

Yes, they might have bought a £300k house for £47k, but its all relative isn't it? What the problem is, is that wages haven't kept up with house prices

At 15% mortgage interest rates, don't forget. And a lot of the wankers bankers who caused the global financial crisis were hardly baby boomers, more like bumptious 3o year olds. Probably DHs of some of the more obnoxious anti- baby boomer MNers.

This really is a silly non-debate.

Agree Kvetch, wholeheartedly!

How are you all expects on my pension? Its 2/3rds of the final sallery.
And yet you've said he worked in local government. I really can't see how - not unless he paid some absolutely stonking extra contributions.

And yy to it being a live issue. People have SAID on here that the younger generation need to get more involved in issues that affect them; well posting here about these issues is a good start, and they shouldn't be sneered at for being 'wasteful young people' because not only is that rather hypocritical (meeting one sweeping statement with another), but it's ageist. It works both ways.

This country is no longer privileged enough to not build on 'green belt' land. Housing people is important; ie the children and grandchildren of the BB generation. My parents are very much 'not in my back yard' towards new development, but they brought me into the world thinking I would live where, exactly? Because they are in too decent health (thank goodness) to have died and passed me their house.

Wow there is someone else here that understands final sallery pensions!

I agree its a total non issue, its nothing to do with boomers the financial mess and the increase in house prices. All boomers want is to take the pensions they paid for without being made to feel guilty. This money should be seen as a savings account with n s and I.

What now this is turning into wanting to destroy the green belt? Now this is a silly lost cause. Near me they wanted to do this despite being plently of brownfield sites. Do you think me and my peers stood back and let them distroy green belt land? No not on my watch!

Until they develop the massive brownfield sites I won't let them. Your being conned as the only reason yhru want to do it on the green belt is because its cheaper.