To think the standard of living for retired people had to change

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I'm a millennial. I will retire in my seventies. Many in my age group will be still paying their mortgage off well into their sixties. Many will never be able to buy. This is not a moan about that.

My mums generation were able to buy cheaper houses in the eighties. Some have also inherited well (houses which their parents owned and didn't have to sell to pay for care, which had risen in price to above a million). They had better pension plans. Some were able to go to university for free and their degrees actually meant something in the workplace: They often paid off their mortgages in their forties. I see a lot of my parents relatives have retired early and have very enviable lives.

Two uncles have retired in their early sixties. They are both in good help. They spend their days on many holidays, eating out multiple times per week, going to garden centres, renovating their beautiful houses, helping children financially and with childcare. They will have presumably worked out their finances and could afford to continue to live like this for the rest of their lives! Possibly thirty more years!

I think they are possibly going to be unique in their quality of life. We will never have that and I don't see my children's generation having things any earlier.

In essence the generation before me were mostly fortunate, unless personal situations changed their financial situation or they lost their homes during the nineties interest rises. Retirements and pensions were never designed to support people for three decades and that things had to change hence raising the retirement age and making people pay more towards their care.

Yes, if she ever got her mitts on the Health portfolio I am sure she would have a long list of candidates for an early bump-off.

You said they were in their early 60s. No one gets a state pension until 66 or 67 now.
I am 65 and no pension yet.
My DC are 25 and 27 and both better off than I was at that age, own their own homes working in public sector jobs. Just not in London.

The assumption that because some members of your family are doing well, everyone of their generation are rolling in it, is a bit much. It makes as much sense as saying that everyone in the 19th century led lives like in Downton Abbey

It’s not much of a standard of living on state pension really. Not sure how it can go much lower.

One single generation - the war babies - had a golden adulthood, the advent of the NHS from a powerful Labour government, the economic boom in house prices from the Thatcher era, and solid pension schemes. My dad retired at 55 and lived as you describe until he was 86, expecting everything to be provided free of charge for him - dentistry, eyewear, complex hospital appointments. But even his wealth will now be used up = every penny of it - in good residential care for my mum who has dementia but is physically fit as a fiddle and likely to live well into her nineties. So I am deeply relieved that they amassed so much wealth because I couldn't cope with her for years, and I would hate for her to go into state care.

But that is one generation only, from all generations ever, before and since. They grew up during the war which must have been horrific, and then they lucked out. I don't begrudge them that.

DH & I are from the next generation who will have to work until we are nearly seventy oor beyond. None of my friends are planning retirement at 60. Some of my friends in their seventies still depend very much on work to keep going. Our homes are falling in value and every penny from them will also go in end of life care. From what I can tell though, my generation are dying younger. I don't expect free medical care will keep me artifically alive from 70-90. Both my parents would have died naturally in their 70s but NHS revived them. I don't think it will have the resources to continue to do this, only to then be faced with a huge population of dementia sufferers.

It’s a bubble that again won’t be able to continue. Yes there are always rich and poor pensioners but it’s not wrong to say that people were never meant to live for 30 plus years claiming their pensions. Yes the years have slowly gone up but just that quite slowly.

It’s not agist to point out it’s not viable to maintain as it is. It’s also not agist to be jealous or any other feeling about how easy some pensioners may have it compared to how it’s going to be in the future for a hell of a lot more.

Tbf, I think that women have it better now than they did then. Back then they didn't get equal pay so it was hard to live independently

I'm a millennial and I bought my own house. No inheritance and no man needed. I think that would have been much more difficult back then

I agree that things were better for men in those days

It is what it is. Back in the day, there were very little benefits available for single mums with kids. Women had to stay in bad marriages because of it. No child care facilities, meaning women couldn’t work or pursue careers. (This is my parents btw, not me). Life wasn’t some utopia in our parents lifetimes. What I’m trying to say is that it’s swings and roundabouts. Some retired people have benefited from house prices and mortgage rates being low (although in the 80s and 90s, mortgage interest rates were 10% upwards). We could go round in circles all day saying whose had the better gig over the years. People are living a lot longer, and that will increase as the years go by, so working til 70 isn’t really going to be a big deal, as mortality ages are greater.

😂

Well if enough young people can find a party to shaft old people and be arsed to vote them in this might change.

For now it’s just inter generational hatred and hot air.

@TotalOverhaul there is no such thing as state care for the elderly. Almost all care homes are privately run and the fees are paid by the local authority, the resident a combination of the two.
The care is no different whatever the funding the staff do not know who pays for what only the accounts department. A few homes do not have local authority funded residents as they are too expensive.

You can also blame the Grammar Schools. Either blame Margaret Thatcher for scrapping so many or blame them for existing anyway and they were unfair.
Whichever way you argue many of the Boomers on more generous pensions benefitted because they had a better education and better jobs.
Many lawyers and accountants did not go to University then. But Comps give such bad education that a degree became necessary.

People bang on about houses being cheaper in the 80s, they forget that earnings were lower and interest rates were higher.

My understanding is that there is a bigger gap between the richest and poorest members of a particular generation than between the average members of different generations. Some pensioners may be constantly holidaying, others are choosing between food and heating.

Who are all these folk that OP speaks of, million pound houses, eating out all the while, holidays several times a year, I don't know any and I am mid 60s

What I object to on these threads is the passive attitude of the OPs. As though life and society and government and the world and people etc etc etc have pre-determined their life outcomes for them. If you want shit to change, change it. Nobody is going to do it for you. Nobody did it for any previous generation, either. Your generations is far from the worst off that's ever existed.

It's difficult to take seriously any points worthy of merit (there are a couple in the OP) when the complainer so easily dons the status of victimhood. Sort out your own house (rented, mortgaged, inherited, whatever) then go on to make the changes you want to see. All the oldies will be dead by then, anyway.

Exactly

And it's driven largely by who is lucky enough to get inheritance

Wish our house was a million, it's a very average £300K, like many other people I know.

It was easier in the past to buy your own home and rents were much more controlled

But no where near the extent that sone seem to believe - and most people buying homes didnt have the lifestyles that people have or expect today . And they only got their current lifestyle after years of grafting - they likely stated off in a mould infested pit like everyone else

Sort out the housing market by rebuilding council housing stock and the rest will likely fall into place

Good luck with that!

I'm not sure how they expect you to work into your Seventies when only 4 out of 10 employers will hire someone over Fifty. Maybe they should start by addressing ageism in the workplace, first.

I was made redundant during the Covid Pandemic and since then I've really struggled in finding a proper job after having been reduced to taking on a series of zero hours contracts. I'm 57.

I think that generation was also a lot more careful with their money. They didn’t have easy access to things/information etc via the internet, they didn’t have as many cars- everything about their daily life was more physical. You wouldn’t have seen many of them wasting money on nails, cosmetic treatments and tattoos before they could afford the big purchases.

YABVU in assuming “poor me” when you haven’t lived their life.

When young people say that they will be working into their seventies I think they under-estimate the effect of ill health and old age. It is hard to work a full time job with commuting and stress in your 60s, let alone in the 70s. A part-time job is more realistic. The workforce doesn’t want older workers by and large.

Plus they did not have gym memberships or iPhones either.

Overall it's definitely harder for people now than it was in the 80s but I'm not sure why that equates to working into your 70s.
I'm a millenial and am planning on retiring before 60.

How dare they live off the money they saved for their retirement?! They should be handing that money to the OP, she deserves it for existing!