To think most of us will work to death?

[Fifi0000]

I was thinking retirement age is rising again. I'm now 30 my grandparents are late 80s and retired before I was born. They aren't wealthy , They have only started really slowing down health wise. I was thinking about this and very few of us will get a 30 year retirement. If the retirement age rises to 68 I'm dreading what it will be when I reach that age and my daughter. I do have an ok pension pot but I think the expectation will be very short retirements in poor health basically work until you drop.

My ILs are both retired with final salary pensions and have been mortgage free for a long time. They’ve been retired since they turned 60. There are a lot better off than their son and I who both work full time with downgraded pension provision for the future and have a mortgage that won’t end until we are 65.

You must live in a well off area! I’m a boomer, I know a wide variety of pensioners, some early retired, with good public sector, final salary pensions. Some worked in low paid jobs, live in social housing, on Pension Credit, with no savings. Others, like us, somewhere in between, whose pension plans may not have worked out as hoped. I had a few years at home, no family nearby, childcare almost non-existent, but DH and I worked different hours to be able to share childcare and so afford to buy a house and give our children the best chance we could.

Health issues cut DH’s earnings down, redundancy interfered with mine, but we survived. No cruises though! Fortunately our children and their partners have been pretty successful in their careers, and with two working adults are far better off than we ever were. They chose to establish themselves before having our grandchildren who now benefit from a more affluent lifestyle than we had. Swings and roundabouts.

It was so much easier for so many boomers.

I have worked harder than my parents, but property was/is extortionate for me, whereas for them it was much much easier.
Many people of 70+ bought a modest place in their 20s, saw the value increase ten or 20 or more fold, sold, downsized/moved to a cheaper area, and are living very well on the proceeds.

I only want to be around to help my kids, especially if they have children. I feel like I won't have a good quality of life finance-wise in my later years, no matter how hard I work or save now. It's a constant hard slog. It was absolutely not like this for my parents.

There will be a period for many people in between work and death called disability/ incapacity.

They will shunt anyone without means into big buildings where you're fed and allowed a meagre allowance for basic necessities until you die

Yes, absolutely.

Many people now to retire while still in decent health, and spend their remaining years going on cruises or playing golf. But with life expectancy at about 82 for women - if you started work at say 18 and wanted to stop work at 60, that would be 42 years of earning against 40 years of not earning. It doesn't add up.

Yes, free prescriptions for all here in Scotland.

People are also kidding themselves if they think their early retirement doesn't cost the taxpayer. Those saving burnt through traveling and relaxing could have funded their care once elderly. It's essentially deprivation of assets imo.As it will likely have to do for those of us more than a decade away from retirement.

God, what a depressing view. At what age do you deem people too old to be able to enjoy as they see fit their own savings and assets? What is the age at which the state steps in and ringcircles your savings and investments for care (which you probably won’t need)?

Or maybe there isn’t an age. Perhaps the ethical thing for me as a forty-something is to stop any travel and relaxation spending so I can build up funds for my eventual care. What a thought.

Apart from all that, the quote is a very sweeping statement. It isn’t true that all early retiree are ‘burning through’ everything they have on fun and leaving nothing for their later years.

Those saving burnt through traveling and relaxing could have funded their care once elderly. It's essentially deprivation of assets imo.As it will likely have to do for those of us more than a decade away from retirement.

• *Most people don't end up needing care. Should retirees spend their time huddled over a single bar electric fire, eating cat food, in case they might end up in the small percentage that need to go into a care home?

Currently, there are around 430,000 people living in the UK's care homes - that’s around 0.62% of the UK population and 3.9% of people aged 65 and over! It is also possible to extract more detail from this data; for example, around 85 per cent of care home residents are living in residential settings – and according to data from the Alzheimer’s Society, around 70 per cent of all care home residents have dementia or serious memory problems

Source:

lottie.org/care-guides/the-number-of-uk-care-home-residents/

I can not afford to retire early.
If only those with no private pension got a state pension I would withdraw all my private pension and stop working and live off that.
I don't give a fuck about deprivation of assets. I am not well off, I am not being fucked over.

@IClaudine The 30% without dementia will have a lot within that group who are young people and adults. It is not just elderly people who need full time care.

And you have to have dementia or need loads of care to get the state to pay for your care home.

Yes, very true. But some people on this and other similar threads don't want to deal in facts, unfortunately.

I have seen too many people die in their forties and fifties to live for a scenario that may never happen when you are elderly.

Inheritance will play a large part in when people can retire going forward.

All these people with parents in expensive properties will be fine. Its families like mine that will not.

I am pretty sure I’ll die before I can retire, if only because my job is so stressful and I’m so knackered that I’ll be astonished if I make it to 50.

Work needs to change. Imagine everyone just doing 9-5, with a lunch hour. And a system which helps people move into something more manageable at say, 55. Perhaps by training grants. Work is good for us. Overwork and stress and lack of choice and control is not.

There is zero help to get older people into work.

@Corcomroe @EarringsandLipstick

Genuine question for both, would you elaborate on what fills your soul about work, specifically?

Is this in preference to having family time?

I obviously do not know your family dynamics, so is that a factor?

Pure curiosity really, perhaps my work life has not engaged quite as it could have 🤔

Yes that's correct. No prescription charges once you reach 60. Not means tested.

As more and more people have to work longer than they would have chosen to, productivity will reduce due to the mental and physical effects of ageing and people putting in less effort out of resentment/exhaustion.

It will have a huge knock on effect on community/voluntary activities/ childcare too as there won't be as many 'young' and fit retired people available.

@Ringmaster27 You've misunderstood what that means. It's just telling you how many years you have left in which to make the necessary NI contributions to qualify for the full state pension. You need 35 full years of NI contributions to qualify for the full state pension. So, if you already have 7 full years of contributions, you only need another 28 full years of contributions. You need to attain those 28 years before you reach state pension age, which is in 40 years' time. Does that make sense?

A thirty year retirement? Very few people ever did get one of those, unless they were very wealthy or it was forced on them by ill-health.

I will be one of those lucky people who can retire or cut down on hours due to health and lifestyle reasons because of lifetime gifts from parents / expected inheritance. My partner also earns a lot more than me. I appreciate it's not the reality for most people though.

Anyone who thinks that, on average, the boomers haven't done extraordinarily well out of sheer luck, and outnumbering everyone else, could watch this video from the Royal Institution - 'Have the Boomers pinched their children's futures?'

TLDW: yes, they have.