Critics of so called baby boomers

[Pixxie7]

What is wrong with you people comments like waspi women are grabby and baby boomers have all the wealth because they bought their houses for a few thousands. I started work at the age of 16 with a salary of £7 a week, worked all my life. Did not have access to pension contributions until I was 52. Paid nearly 50 years of national insurance, which was for my pension which is not a benefit but a right, only to have nearly £50,000 stolen by the government. Imagine how you would feel if this happened to you.
Not saying you have it easy but you have far more opportunities than we ever had.

I’m Gen x but whatever I don’t like all this blame thrown around by different generations about each other. Governments, both Labour and Conservative have done this to all of us regardless of the generation we are in.

To add to the housing shortage debate there are more single person households than ever before. I can’t remember the stats but I think the rise in single person households from the 1970’s may be as high as 20%. This isn’t from a tabloid or internet speculation it was from a statistical report I read at work a few years ago.

The road I live in is a great example the nearest eight houses either side of mine. Half are single person households, three occupied by one woman and one by one man. Two of the women never married or lived with a partner, the others are divorced. I’m glad we live in a society where unhappy marriages can end and people don’t have to be partnered up but these are three and four bed family homes with quite big gardens. One of the women is 90 and a good friend, my own Mother lived till she was 91 and remained in her home, my Aunt lived in her six bed house till she was 93 and now her DS who is 70 lives alone in it. Stats were skewed by infant deaths pre 5 years old so some people did always live to a great age but so many of us live so much longer and take up housing. I am not advocating older people should leave their homes just pointing out a big change societally. People have to live under the policies that successive governments have implemented.

These are some of the reasons why there is a housing shortage. Generations fighting between themselves keeps society in its place. This thread is a perfect example.

And as for saying younger generations have it too easy now (actually said by a bb relative of mine as the reason he voted Leave) I wish they did. Shouldn't it be our goal to make life better for future generations? Not to grab everything for ourselves and leave future generations to pay for it?

When eeeeeeye were a young lass, we lived in an oooooole!

This again. I wish people would wake up and see that instead of all this in fighting over who has it worse we should be focusing our rage against the real people responsible for this mess, the 1% who use tax avoidance schemes and lobby governments into giving them the ability to exploit the rest of us.

I am a Baby Boomer and yes in some ways we are better off I suppose .However many of us have worked hard ,and survived on our husbands wages solely ,while bringing up children without any kind of Tax credits or help with Nursery fees .Homes were cheaper then, but we didnt have a huge salary and also Interest rates were very high (15% at one time!).My Son has a good job and has been to Uni ,very few people I knew had the chance to go .Travel is reasonably cheap in comparison and many young people can hop across to Europe quite reasonably .All generations have fors and againsts and no one has all the goodies!.My husband saved up £3,000 towards our deposit and he only earnt about £9,000!.We are not "rolling in it" at all, and still have some mortgage left to pay also some savings which will have to be used towards this .We have been abroad about a dozen times in the last 20 years ,My Son has been to New York twice, Im still waiting to go !Dont get me wrong Im pleased young people have opportunities like this ,but we were all busy saving up !

BTW Am a Remainer if anyone asks !

It’s true the government was not as clear as it could have been about signalling it’s pension changes and I do feel some sympathy for the WASPI women.

But. OP, my working assumption is you have a very large amount of equity and could downsize to a smaller house or flat and more than make up for that shortfall. I get that you like your house. But although I’m sure you worked hard, your generation did not work harder than anyone else.

"I wish people would wake up and see that instead of all this in fighting over who has it worse we should be focusing our rage against the real people responsible for this mess, the 1% who use tax avoidance schemes and lobby governments into giving them the ability to exploit the rest of us."

Spot on, Whenyoucantrunyoucrawl!

that generation dished it out for years but very clearly not take it.

Outside the mc bubble on MN:

Few WASPI women went to uni - it was about 6% when I went to Uni - many left school at 15/16
&
Some never earned enough to earn their own homes

There is a huge range in circumstances within WASPIs:
between the home-owners, often those who have or share a private pension
and those who rent & will be totally dependent on the State Pension

Some are very well off, but many of those who were born at the bottom of the heap never managed to get out from under

@Walkaround
I have no more sympathy for waspi women and baby boomers feeling sorry for themselves than I have sympathy for young people feeling sorry for themselves. Stop being competitively miserable. Nobody deliberately ripped anybody off
Yes, in a nutshell this is it!

My mum is a Schrodinger baby boomer. Constantly harking back to the good old days when everything was so much better while simultaneously moaning about how hard life was back then. Does my nut in.

Those WASPIs at the bottom of the heap are the least likely to have been aware of the delayed pension age,

the most likely to be in poor health after a life of poverty and manual work,

the most likely to have v little or no savings,

the least likely to have 16+ education and the ability to start a new white collar career

“that generation dished it out for years but very clearly not take it.”

I completely agree with this. My father is horrendous. Anyone with a struggle is just not trying hard enough. He’s horrified me and my sisters didn’t marry or have children until much later than he would expect (my unmarried sister- the Christmas pudding- “goes off after the 25th”)

Anyone who can’t get a job is a loser. Get one at McDonald’s become a manager of McDonald’s
Anyone who went to uni and can’t pay off their loan easily- loser
This is a man who has had the same job his whole life and never filled a job application or attended an interview. Moved house once in 40 years. Received a 6 figure inheritance (another advantage for some baby boomers due to care home fees being rare)

However many of us have worked hard ,and survived on our husbands wages solely ,while bringing up children without any kind of Tax credits

That's not true though is it. There was Family Income Supplement to top up low wages. I know because I used to get sent to the post office to collect it for my mum.

"that generation dished it out for years but very clearly not take it."

Not sure what op dished out for years! Out to work full-time at 16, for £7 a week, not allowed to join private pension scheme for x yrs, doesn't seem to have been involved in btl. Yes she was able to buy a house, and that is indeed so much more fortunate than young people these days.

Yes we bought a mortgage for less than now but how difficult is it to understand that was a huge sum on our salaries? My first mortgage in the 1989s was £45000 and my salary-full time-was c £10000.

And I did not buy in London as I couldn't afford it.

I have no more sympathy for waspi women and baby boomers feeling sorry for themselves than I have sympathy for young people feeling sorry for themselves. Stop being competitively miserable. Nobody deliberately ripped anybody off

Actually the WASPI women were ripped off by the UK government quietly adjusting the pension age again after loudly adjusting it. WASPIs are a very specific and identifiable group. It is unhelpful to lump the concerns of groups together: '"Young people" that's a undifferentiated blob. Same for baby boomers.

That's not true though is it. There was Family Income Supplement to top up low wages. I know because I used to get sent to the post office to collect it for my mum.

Yep. Thos is true. There was also help if you owned your house. You could still get the equivalent of housing benefit.

As a single parent on a low wage now you cant get Housing benefit if you have a mortgaged property. They will loan it, instead. Understandable. But these are the things my mum forgets. She got enough in hee divorce to get a mortgage, could work 3 hours a day, term time and disnt pay her own mortgage for years.

Well were well off, but she for far more help that I did when I was a single parent 2 years ago.

Irish folk story.

Baby in the cradle sees his da giving the granda his cloak and comments on his father's generosity (because babies can talk in folk tales).

Father: Sure the auld feller will need the cloak as has to leave now forever as we can't afford to feed him any more.
Baby: Well cut the cloak in half, da.
Father: Why would I do that son?
Baby: So I can give you the other half when I throw you out into the cold.

How we treat others will be how we are treated. Do unto others as you would be done by and so on. If the millennials want to see their seniors treated shabbily it will be a pattern for how they are treated themselves.

And do not forget, millennials, these nasty entitled old people are your parents and grandparents who love you and want what is best for you and who will look after your children for free, give and lend you house deposits and leave you inheritances. The free childcare alone is estimated as being worth £17 billion annually. The bank of mum and dad will give or loan £6.5 billion annually towards house deposits.

There are some who will say that not everyone will get this sort of help from the older generations and I agree from experience. My grandparents and parents gave me nothing at all and every penny I have I earned myself. I am only in a decent financial place now because I am frugal, paid down debts and saved. I paid a mortgage at a rate of 14% when I moved a hundred miles north to a job which would allow me to buy a cheaper house. When I started work I was told to expect a pension at 60, which rapidly changed to 63, then 65 and is now 66, still three years off. I will not pretend that the £50,000 I was first promised wouldn't have made a crucial difference to my life.

I think those who are trying to drive the generations apart, those like the Resolution Foundation, are attempting to divide and rule by drumming up jealousy and resentment. We should resist this as hard as we can.

It seems a little harsh that parents who do everything they can for their children then find that those children hold little but ingratitude, resentment and bitterness towards them. Do they think that, with this example before them, their own children will treat them with respect and understanding?

Tellmetruth4
The electorate have to vote in a right wing government to sort out the financial mess a left wing government leave each time they take office!

The difficulty with age cohort terms like baby boomer is that they conceal the variations between them that arise from other factors. A boy born in 1950 who went to a grammar school and then to university has had different experiences to a girl who left school at 16 and worked in a factory.

As others have pointed out, only a tiny minority of people benefited from free university education and grants. However, we should also remember that the beneficiaries were mostly men. While the numbers of students in higher education rose during the 1960s and 70s, it was only in the 1990s that the number of women overtook the number of men.

There is no doubt that most wealth in the UK is concentrated in the older generations. The baby boomers who have done best have gone to university, had a good occupational pension and bought property at a young age. They were very fortunate. However, not all older people are wealthy in the same way that not all younger people spend their money on smashed avocados. Younger people - especially those who do not have relatives who can help them - will be unlikely to accumulate the same level of assets.

However, the more we pitch different generations against each other, the less likely we are to achieve the political changes needed to make things fairer for everyone.

This is one of the most ridiculous OPs I had seen on here. Surely this is a wind up?

To the PP who said nursery fees were much cheaper in the past, that is certainly not true. In the 1990s I was paying the equivalent of over £12,000 pa per child adjusted for inflation (according to the Bank of England calculator), with absolutely no tax breaks or free hours ever.

These are figures living in the north, in London and the south it would have been more.

I appreciate saving for a deposit is a challenge nowadays - though low or no deposit schemes are reemerging - but it would be illuminating for younger posters to calculate what their mortgage payments would be at the sort of rates we had to cope with. Try ten percent, or fifteen.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/mortgage-rate-calculator/

The fact is, every generation looks back and thinks the previous generation had it easier. My parents bought a nice four bedroom detached for £4,600 in the 1960s. My generation's houses cost many times that amount. However, they were born during the war and went through all the years of post war austerity, and I wouldn't swap with them.

In turn it was important to our generation to get the house itself and stretch ourselves to do it. We'd sit on orange boxes for furniture if we had to, and many did. I remember my sister had only one piece of secondhand carpet in her house for years. She used to move it from room to room from time to time, for a change! 😊

It's very easy looking back to see the advantages each generation have without seeing the challenges they faced. The amenities, consumer choices and opportunities today have never been available to previous generations.

As for the Waspi ladies, I am not one of them, but the situation and recent judgment are a national disgrace and we should be showing some female solidarity with them. The government would never have dreamed of treating men with the same injustice. We are too nice for our own good.