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?

Men and women doing the same job do get the same pay surely. My sons work in a male dominated industry but women aren't prevented from applying for apprenticeship and getting on as well as any man.

If my younger son wanted to work in a nursery or become a midwife he could. Wish he would think of something to aim for to be honest!

It seems that baby boomers should have

1)voted for thatcher to get rid of the unions
2) having done so got rid of her quickly before she sold off council houses and created the greed is good culture
3) bought british - but not from any old failing industry propped up by tax payers
4) been more entrepreneurial (I suspect Richard Branson might be off the hook on that one, but who knows?)

I hope they feel properly ashamed.

Personally, I would add that while I think it was ok for them to worry about aids and nuclear war, the lyrics to "do they know its christmas" are rubbish and they should be held entirely responsible for pop stars attempting to save the world.

noone generalises in quite the same way about the attitudes of generation x, or of people in their 30s.

Give it 10 years...

I checked on the unemployment figures for the 80s. There was mass unemployment. Workers were just thrown on the scrapheap and even well qualified graduates (that seems to count more for some) couldn't find work. There was a scheme for school leavers......can't remember what it was called.

I'd agree that office work is now harder than it used to be in the 70s and 80s, but I'm somewhat nonplussed to learn that I work harder than my parents. My dad was a coal miner and, yes, he retired early when the mines started to shut down. By the time he retired, he'd been working full time for 45 years. I'd much rather do 60 or 70 hour weeks in an office, even with tight deadlines and checking emails at home, than 40 hours lying in water in a seam two feet high, hacking at a coal face.

Yes, my parents managed to buy a house, though being in Yorkshire, they didn't see the spectacular increases you see in London and the South East over the same period - their house sold a couple of years ago for twice the average salary, about the same multiple of earnings as it would have been when they bought it - but I don't think I'd swap my life for theirs.

I think a PP said that the difficulty is that we look back at the lives of people older than us, and see that they had a manageable life when they were younger, and are broadly OK now (some of them had an easy life and are more than OK now). We can't look back at our own lives in the same way; we feel insecure in the present, and fear the future, but we forget that those of the generation before felt the same insecurity and fear. The years of early middle age, when people have children at home, are I think the most difficult for this, but we don't know how things will turn out - we can't see the future, so don't know whether we'll be worse off or better off than the generation before. It's a bit of a pointless exercise resenting baby boomers, or Gen X's, or whoever the easiest target is for the moment; we can't know how our lives will compare with theirs until our lives are drawing to a close.

I left teacher training college in 1980 there were very few jobs . I was lucky enough to get one but many of my friends did not. The college I went to was one of many that closed down because of the lack of demand for teachers. The idea that we were all picking and choosing from a vast array of well paid jobs is pure fantasy.Unemployment in every sector was really high. It was a huge problem

Margaret your husband's pension was outrageously generous!

In today's money, for someone wishing to retire at 60 this year, in order to generate an annual pension income of 2 thirds of £50k (ie £33k) and have a lump sum as well, they would need to have saved just under £1million in their pension pot.

And that's for a level pension that never goes up with inflation and doesn't pay a widow's pension. In order to achieve those additional benefits the retiree would need to have saved at least another £500k.

It's a pretty tall order for someone whose final (presumably highest) salary is £50k to be able to save, whilst at the same time paying a mortgage and bringing up a family, £1.5million in 30 years. It could just about be possible, I suppose, if they happened to make some very lucky investment choices and lived very frugally all their working life. But in reality, it wouldn't happen, of course. The chances are that in the early days money would be tight and there would be none spare for savings, so the whole £1.5million would need to be saved within the final 15 years, which on that salary just wouldn't be anywhere near possible.

This is why FS public sector pensions are so unaffordable for the nation and why they are referred to by the rest of us (stuck with defined contribution schemes) as "gold plated."

I don't suppose for one moment that your DH's pension contributions amounted to anything close to the actual value of his pension. My guess is that he was probably contributing less than 10% of his salary.

I think you don't realise how very fortunate you are.

Radio 4 has a programme I heard an ad for this week about some of these issues. Pensions anyway. It starts with a clip that in 1900 the average person drew their pension for one year and then died. Then it moved to work 30 years, draw pension for 30 years.

However I think we forget that expect for public sector workers and large company workers, in the UK many people didn't have an employer provided pension at all. Also most people in the UK amazingly work for companies which employed fewer than 5 people. They do not tend to get pensions - other than the new auto enrolment one which is not fully rolled out - not to smaller companies yet. They were also outside stakeholder pensions too.

I am not sure why people are so keen to sit around doing nothing though. Heaps of my father's psychiatric patients had mental problems because they stopped work. Women at home have always turned to gin (1950s), pills and the like. Children of the super rich if given a life of no work tend to become addicts. It is not some wonderful nirvana to sit around all day not working. You might feel a bit cross to work at age 70 but it can make you happy. My father worked full time to 79. My children's other grandfather who is about to turn 90 still works one day a week. I hope to work until I die. I don't resent anyone given the chance to be depressed and idle by a rich spouse or pension. Let them do it.

Yes jilly - it would be interesting to know what proportion of current pensioners actually have entitlement to a final salary pension.

I had to leave school in 1973. I would have loved to have done A levels but mother wouldn't hear of it. Caused lots of rows took and many years for me to forgive her. I think I could have persuaded DDad but they were very short of money. I was the eldest unfortunately so work it was.

I did some banking exams later. It made me very determined to give my own DC the chance to go to university. So far two have, two have completed apprenticeships and two have yet to decide.

jackieharris - sorry a little late, but here's a link to free childcare . it says 570 free hours a year

www.gov.uk/free-early-education

The free4 childcare is not too useful to full time working parents in London though where it will cost you about £10k a year per child either for a nursery place or similar if you have a daily nanny and several children. Yes it might help a bit and we got some tiny amount off the twins' school fees when they were 4 under the scheme Blair brought in but it does not provide the 8am to 6pm most working parents need.

Depending on when a child's birthday is the 'free childcare' can be for as little as 15 months, term time only at awkward times of the day. My DD's was 12.45-3.45, totally unsuitable for working parents. Trying to get wraparound care is more expensive than just paying for the full day!

This policy isn't helping working women at all.

My baby boomer parents had free full time childcare from a relative who retired at 60 on a decent pension.

My mum only had a 6 month maternity leave break in employment in her whole working life. I've had years out of he workplace (unwillingly) because I couldn't afford the childcare. Therefore she had years more of contributing to a pension scheme than I'll have.

When I retire at 70, if I can afford to, I'll probably be too old to help my dd with childcare so she'll probably be stuck in the same trap as me.

Unless your daughter picked a high paid career which is why one of the best hings we can do for daughters is direct them away from being an actress or doing art and towards careers like actuary, surgeon, banker, lawyer.

so jilly what do you think BB's did with their children when we worked FT? I had to pay for a nanny, and the nursery education that you are getting for free nowadays.

And yes, it would have been great to have had grandparents looking after them for free like Jackie's relatives, but we weren't all able to live locally to them - some people's jobs like ours meant we had to move away.

i agree that housing is a nightmare and that companies have become meaner, but for some things you are now better off. Things will always be worse/better for different periods of time and the individuals involved

The majority of boomers haven't reached retirement age yet; the oldest will be 69 this year. Of course there are early retirements plus the raising of the pension age for women to factor in. Still I think it's safe to say that many, if not most are still working and are familiar with all the stress and insecurity that this entails.

So all these retired people who have the temerity to visit garden centres and take holidays (and particularly the ones who 'never worked'): is it not possible - probable even - that many of them are not boomers but the previous generation, who maybe didn't fight in the war but who lived through evacuation and bombings and blackouts and rationing and all the post war struggles? In which case, would you say they've had it easy too?

I am not sure which generation jilly is from - haven't checked all her posts. However, looking at her recent posts I think she has just tried to make balanced arguments on both 'sides'.

As others have said, you only get 'free' child care for a few hours a week - nowhere near enough to cover working hours.

It is more of a childcare subsidy and I think think the point of it is more to level the playing field before children start school than to provide childcare.

Given that subsidised hours have been in place for a few years, anybody who is now 50 but had children later in life will have benefited from them.

Sensible point about people in garden centres Floisme.

This thread has been funny in parts, but it is also really sad to see so much generalisation and bigotry towards both young and old.

Who are the bboomers exactly. Is it the generation who were born immediately post war so were conceived in 1945? I was born in 1944 and conceived when my dad was on embarkation leave. Dad served in Egypt and in Italy and stayed on as a firefighter until 1947. He finally came home when I was 3 years old. Apparently I woke up one morning to find him in bed with Mum. I immediately woke her shouting,"Mammy what's that in the bed?". He brought me a yellow leather camel from Egypt. It finally disintegrated when I was 45 and I was very sad to throw him out.
I guess I am not a bboomer so have no right to mind the criticism of those a year or more younger.

"though can't you use it to reduce the cost of full time nursery or childminder care if you use that?"

Yes, you can and it is a significant enough amount that you notice it when your child is old enough to qualify - but most nurseries say that it doesn't actually cover costs. It is only usually 'free' if provided by a state school.

I always thought I was too young to be a boomer but MN seems to suggest I am one just. I certainly will work for at least another 20 years.

Those of us who work in London when children are young childcare for 3 under 5 years is about £30k a year. The Government's aid is just about nothing and I never had any of it anyway. There is a new plan that you will get up to £6k for 3 children (£2k a child) if you pay £25k+ or whatever for your childcare - even that supposed wonderful new change is not a huge contribution for full time working parents.

If people are saying I am a BB and BB didn't work that's just not true. Just about all women I know my age worked and at most had 3 months off when the babies came and went back full time.

And us younger boomers are often just getting to the end of bringing up our children as our elderly parents start to need more help and support. So much for the years of idle retirement on full pension.