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.

It’s pretty widely understood that retirees have it better than the young families trying to balance childcare/no housing while they pay for retirees services.
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And there was I, for the last 20 years of my working life, the bit where I reached my highest salary (still modest) paying (gladly ) for services that I never had: free nursery hours, child tax credits, and also contributing to the needs of pensioners, anyone using the NHS, those on benefits (I have never had a day on benefits) .

We operate as a society. This divisiveness will not serve us well.

I'm 50. My mum didn't work most of her life after having us. My dad retired fully at 62 I think and was semi retired for a few years before that. When he retired their income was more than it had been when he was working! Something to do with the company pension he had (it was one of those gold-plated the likes of which will never be seen again type of pension). They did all the holidays and meals out and were probably in the bracket the OP is talking about.

I think if you had a fantastic pension scheme then, and had had a decent salary most of your working years, and had paid your mortgage off before you retired then yes, it's possible that your retirement could be VERY comfortable. In contrast I know pensioners slightly older than them who had more manual jobs and who never bought their own home so always had housing costs, including in retirement. The ones I know lived in social housing for some of their lives I think and certainly lots of state help in retirement. Both types had the benefit of NHS dentistry and other medical care throughout their lives.

The real worry for me for my children (late teens) is if they will be able to buy their own home before they retire and if they'll be able to afford to pay for private healthcare when the NHS has gone kaput. What has been interesting to watch change in my area is the type of buyers buying the little terraced houses which always housed working class families when I was growing up, with the main earner, usually the dad, in some kind of manual or other blue collar work and the mum only working part time doing things like retail or secretariarial work.. Now, they are housing families where both parents work fulltime, and they're working in professional jobs eg GPs, teachers etc.

It's the affordability of the house in the first place, and then the consideration of childcare costs if you want a family, whereas I didn't know ANYONE growing up who went to nursery for childcare reasons. Now, it is essential to enable people to work just to earn enough to cover their nursery payments! The other thing is that single people were able to afford to buy a little place when I was younger. They just can't now. Which means that we're back to the old days of people being stuck in miserable marriages for a while because they can't afford to move into separate housing.

There seem to be some people on this thread who are quite defensive about any suggestions that life may have been more affordable a generation back. I'm in a decent position myself having managed to buy a family home in the first place (got lucky by settling down with someone so not had to afford somewhere on my own), having gone through university with no student loan costs, mortgage paid off at 50 after an inheritance, early retirement a possibility etc etc. I don't take all that for granted. just don't think the same can be said of my children's generation and I feel sorry for them. Yeah so interest rates were high for a few years. But houses cost very little then, mortgage lenders weren't lending large multiples of people's salary like they have to now, and you didn'tneed a massive deposit in the first place to buy somewhere. So a few percent on a small amount is still only a small amount extra. A few percent increase NOW is disaster.

Loads of people are giving their stories of life as it was in the 1970’s 80’s and 90’s. Here is my story.

I started work, before my 16th birthday, earning £18 per week, taking home around £15 pw. Of that I paid £5pw rent, £5 pw savings and the rest for clothes, fun etc.

I got married at 23 when I was earning around £2000 per year. My wedding cost around £250. We purchased our first house 3 years later at a cost of £17,000 - between me and my husband we were earning just over £6000 per year.

A few years later, our finances were better and we upscaled to a new house, which cost £37,000. Me and my husband were earning around £13,000 between us.

A year later, the property market crashed, our house was worth less than 50% of what we paid, interest rates raised to over 15%, businesses were failing. My husband list his job, company went bankrupt so no redundancy payout. The company I worked for was failing and pay was sporadic, with a promise of when thing got better back pay would be paid.

House was negative equity, for the next 10 years. We couldn’t afford to leave and we couldn’t afford to stay. We chose to stay, as there wasn’t any social housing, so we thought better a roof we couldn’t afford rather tgat luving on the streets.

We wanted a family, but couldn’t justify bringing a child into that financial nightmare - unlike today, the state wouldn’t look after us.

Today, life is financially better, but my marriage didn’t survive the stress and I missed out on a family.

I have worked constantly, without claiming any benefits, since 1976. I am allowed to get the state pension in November 2026. I think I am entitled to getting a good benefit. Anyone who begrudges this is very sad.

With regards to the NHS - I have paid for private dentistry since 2001. I visit the doctors less than once a year and since 1980, have only had 2 hospital visits, so I do think I have paid in far more that I gave been paid out so far.

Pre covid, I was paying over £60,000 in taxes and NI per year. During covid, I was one of the people who fell through the gaps and wasn’t entitled to any government help. I took a job, paying less than 50% of my pre-covid wage. It took me 2 years to get back to where I was.

But, life was EASY for us baby boomers

Life probably was more affordable a generation ago, but the quid pro quo, was also that most people's expectations were commensurately lower.

Yes, the boomer/ younger silent generation will be the most financially fortunate generation that ever lived. Obviously that doesn't mean that this applies to every single 75 year old, just a lot more than the previous generation and subsequent ones.

No, the post war generation has the highest life expectancy.
Life expectancy has now started to fall in the UK.

Oh god!!! Make it stop!!

That would certainly have been true when I bought my London rabbit hutch, which ultimately paid off my mortgage, 15 years later.

To clarify they aren’t free nursery hours -they are subsidised

Yeah so interest rates were high for a few years. But houses cost very little then, mortgage lenders weren't lending large multiples of people's salary like they have to now, and you didn'tneed a massive deposit in the first place to buy somewhere. So a few percent on a small amount is still only a small amount extra. A few percent increase NOW is disaster

It was still a struggle to pay the mortgage for most people though, so those few percent meant many people were repossessed or struggled badly. I think you are failing to factor in what salary levels were like back then.

My mortgage payments were £460 per month at one point (10% interest rates on a 46K mortgage), that was the interest only. I had an endowment mortgage, the payments for the endowment were about £50 a month. My salary before tax was £11k. It was very tight (ex-partner I bought with had left so I was paying everything alone).

This

Am just happy that my children who are 90s born and maybe similar in age to OP are not so resentful! They are intelligent enough to understand that their generation are not having it great but don’t blame us on a personal level.
They are also aware ,and are friends with people whose parents have really fucking struggled through the 80s90s ! Am finished with this toxic thread 🤷‍♀️

It sounds rather like you come from a fairly well off middle class family but resent your background. You should probably go on some protest marches or take a year out to go and find yourself or build an orphanage.

Not all of us had or have it easy, we’ve benefitted from some things but also definitely had fewer choices and opportunities than subsequent generations. I’m Gen X, married to a boomer. DH turns 60 next year and we still have far more on our mortgage than we are likely to be able to pay off, but it was our choice to go interest only so we could have a bit of a life and the occasional holiday, but we’ve both had stable jobs and good pensions. We’ve had have to cut our coat plenty and didn’t have half the lifestyle or choices that many younger generations now enjoy.

So if you buy a property and by the time you retire the value has increased what will you do with the extra value earned?

Good post @BrightLightTonight When DS started sneering about how easy we boomers had it, I asked if he'd have preferred to grow up in a house with no central heating, ice on the inside of the windows in winter, no home phone, no car so you had to walk to and from any after school club or party whatever the weather. Would he prefer no pocket money, and to be out earning from age 12 every night after school to pay for shoes and coats since parents didn't provide them? For Christmas and birthdays I would get a vinyl record from my parents, not huge presents.

By age 18 I had worked in 4 restaurants, on a market stall, for a printers, had baby sat after school every night for 2 hours until a working mum came home, and babysat long evenings too. My DC had only done the odd day here and there.

When DH and I got married, a friend made my dress, my mum made the cake, I did my own make up and ran down to the greengrocer to buy a bunch of my favourite flowers which I saw he'd had in a day before. We bought some nice food and wine, my mum cooked in advance and we paid two of her friends to serve it. Our hen and stag dos were nights in a pub in central London.

When I got my first flat, I couldn't even afford to repaint it, let alone remodel it in some insta perfect dream home mode. And I didn't make a penny of profit on it because prices had stagnated. I sold it for what I bought it for, a few years later, when I moved in with DH.

We just didn't have such huge expectations in those days. We are seen as the greedy generation but we tolerated hardship and saved rather than buy on credit. We weren't as materialistic as some younger generations think.

I was born in the 60s grew up in the 70s, lived through the 3 day week, Callaghan's winter of discontent,I attended a sink school leaving with few qualifications, definitely no university for 'a girl like me' in the late 70s.
I worked a minimum wage job through the Thatcher years, and was glad of it, until I had my children under New Labour in the 90s. I had to stay at home because I couldn't afford a nursery place to work and had no family locally, This was okay until my husband and I divorced and I had to pay him 50% of our home to keep a roof over our heads, while he got away from the CSA and never paid a penny for or saw the children since. I also lost any rights to his pension, but I did get a mortgage which I will be paying until I am 65.
I went back out to work again minimum wage and then went to university in my late 40s (2010 with the Coalition Government in power paying increased fees for the privilege via SFE). I graduated and returned to the workforce under the Tory shit show we still have.
Far from living the high life you mention I'm going to be working until I am 67 and I lose sleep about living in poverty after retirement just as I have done for most of my life. Not all Boomers/Gen Xers have it easy

We cannot give the extra to our children in vast sums before if we need care it will be taken away from them.

@TotalOverhaul this was me. I was working from age 13, half my wage taken by my parents.
People bang on about how people could manage on only one wage but they didn't realise was how hard it was. My dad was a low paid manual worker, my mum went out in the evenings as a cleaner. No central heating, no home phone, no takeaways, fish and chips once a month was our one luxury.
So yes, my parents were able to buy a house on my Dad's wage but there were none of the material possessions that are an expectation nowadays

To be fair what this thread shows is that people can't be pigeon holed by generation.
Everyone's circumstances are different, hence the number of posts on this thread.
Some people have had, or will have, an inheritance, many won't. Some others are likely to get debilitating illnesses well before retirement, well that changes things for those people, often without warning. Some may even win the lottery, who knows .
What I do realise is that each generation has it's challenges and we just have to get on with it. Life isn't fair. It never was.

How is that any different to the situation that my parents are in. They’re 75 and if they need care they will sell their home to finance it. Their parents lived in local authority housing so there was no inheritance for them.

Your message starts with "I'm a Millennium" and ends with "the generation before me were more fortunate" so you've lost me there.

As a generation before you I didn't travel until I was on my honeymoon aged 27, I didn't get the opportunity for university, I didn't have a gap year, I worked full time all my life from 17, and studied alongside work, bought up children (without family help/close by) and I fought male prejudice in the work place.

We bought old houses (needed mine and husbands joint income to buy?) and improved them ourselves to get on and up the propery ladder, and started out with second hand furniture.

My Millennium relatives attended university with low fees, went on amazing gaps years, travelled abroad, had 2 year working holidays, rent as want independence but work part time and low paid as they don't want the stress. Now in their early 30's moaning that it's not fair they can't have what the previous generation has.

I hope to retire soon. Will enjoy my hard earned retirement. Yes we have a nice home and have started to travel more, and our kids have had more holidays than I have. We have paid them through university and now plan to enjoy our time.

Oh and the uncles are probably thinking what I am. Support kids and spend it all by aged 80 other wise it all goes on care home fees.

Excluding ill health, opportunities are there.

When you buy a house on a mortgage that is not what it costs you - you pay far more than that over the decades with the interest on top - and mortgage rates were higher in the 70/80/90s than they have been recently with the unprecedented low 1-2% rates.

Today, on a £100k mortgage over 25 years at 6% so monthly repayments of ~£650 the house will actually cost you £195k - double the purchase price.

That's what my house is. Not our first home had to save up a lot for this. Yes, I'd love a detached house etc. doesn't mean I'll ever be able to afford it. Do you honestly think all families now are living in big detached houses? My parents first home was a detached 4 bedroom house. But I still realise that wasn't the reality for everyone.
Honestly, people going on about ageism but it works both ways.

It’s not as simple as this, my first mortgage was £110,000 at a rate of around 7% which worked out about £850 a month, in london when I earned around £30k. It took me 2 years to make it vaguely habitable and save for basic furniture like a bed/settee. I was 34 by then. I haven’t walked away with a huge profit as had to sell eventually. I got a ‘free degree’ but had to work doubly hard in my industry because I have a strong WC accent. Without a degree I wouldn’t have progressed at all because times were different, not much diversity and inclusion (I actually went on to work in this arena). Lots of people have landed on their feet, I have no problem with this if they have some self awareness. And that does seem to come down to political awareness. I feel for young people on many levels but it’s a bit of a myth that everyone in the 90’s bought for peanuts, most of us had to scrimp and save for many years as culturally it wasn’t the norm for parents to step in and support.

Same! Plus they have been given vastly more opportunities in life than I ever had, and all I ever aspired to was increasing their chances. And we are still supporting them to some degree, and they will always have a home here even when they are driving me round the bend.

It is certainly toxic, I couldn't agree more.