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.

Oh dear, I have bad news for you about ‘National Insurance’… it’s just tax.

‘National Insurance’… it’s just tax.

yep & it’s bizarre that people see it as this separate pot of money they have paid in for their own state pension!

Grandchild? Lover? What does it matter, no one’s life plan is to have a mortgage and to be responsible for a young adult at 76.

So sorry, I read this far too quickly and assumed the wrong thing! Thanks for correcting.

Yes, general expectations were lower previously but that is because the huge consumer economy that we have now had not been created. It was created by the generation we are referring to and they are just as consumeristic now as any other generation, more so in some sectors because they tend to be wealthier.

TBH, I think virtually all envy of the boomers comes down to the simple fact of house prices.

Many people spend so much money on barely affordable housing that they have little discretionary spending power, and they see older generations living mortgage free in far bigger and better houses than they could possibly afford even with the highest mortgage they could physically get.

If decent family housing were widely available and cheap (so seen as a basic right rather than a privilege), with younger people then having that money to spend on everything else, then this battle of the generations would likely disappear. Not sure how that could happen though without building all over the countryside (and too many in power have vested interests in keeping house prices high).

I am one of the earliest millennials but with some boomer type wealth (partly due to inheritance and partly due to our careers) and mortgage free. I am worried about how my DC will get a decent house. Honestly, I would be happy for my house price to plummet alongside all the others if it meant everyone could live more affordably (it is my home, not an investment).

Roundandroundandroundsound

Whst a load of tosh it’s well known that those in their 50s coming up for retirement like me care more about the environment and voted against Brexit. I had to practically frog march my young adults down to vote. It’s us who recycle and look at more sustainable options. It’s us who went on anti apartheid, Brexit and poll tax marches. Where are young people now? They don’t even bother voting. If they did we wouldn’t have this government. It’s also not us who buys disposable clothing ad nauseum on Shein or who thinks £1k iPhones, expensive ear buds and disposable vapes are a necessity. My son is at uni (which we have to fund) and the basic necessaries in the uni world seem to be a world away from what I experienced- en suites, parking spaces, huge quantities of clothes and “necessities”, laptops….

If younger generations want things better they are going to have to get off their backsides and vote, downsize their consumer expectations, fight for the environment, the EU, housing and start saving.

The state pension is increasing next April.

Yes, it is uprated every April along with disability benefits and other benefits.

F0xyL0xy555 it is interesting that a lot of young people are turning out for the marches in support of Palestine. Why haven't they bothered to mobilise previously for things like better working conditions, rent control etc.? My hope is that this will be the start of more of them becoming more politically active.

NI pays towards contributory benefits - such as sickness benefits, unemployment benefits, and some maternity payments.

Pensioners can't claim any of them - because they are getting a pension.

So, what would be the point of them paying? Many, including me, pay income tax etc because that covers many things.🙄

@IClaudine I doubt it. Those things aren't trendy and don't get tik tok time therefore they won't be interested ( even though it affects them directly!)

The majority of that generation left school at 14 and 15 and had worked for over 50 years by the time they retired.

Not quite. School leaving age hasn’t been 14 since 1944 and it rose to 16 in 1972. But you’re right about the length of working life.

Zebedee55 · Today 08:07

WeightWhat · Yesterday 19:12

That’s a non-sequitur. Why do we need to get rid of them all? Why not just ask them to pay NI like everyone else?
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NI pays towards contributory benefits - such as sickness benefits, unemployment benefits, and some maternity payments.

Pensioners can't claim any of them - because they are getting a pension.

So, what would be the point of them paying? Many, including me, pay income tax etc because that covers many things.🙄

Seriously. It's just a tax. It pays for everything else that tax does. Including social care, pensions and NHS which obviously old people tend to need more of than younger.

I honestly don't know why so many older people seem to think it has different uses. It doesn't. It needs to be scrapped and just added into normal taxation so that everyone who pays tax pays the same. Not just the workers.

I thought we'd reached the limit of callous comments on this site until I read that comment from @WeightWhat about withdrawing NHS care from the over 70s

Which, of course, will apply to that poster as well; unless by the time she retires it's been lowered to anyone on a state pension. What a bummer for WeightWhat that'd be.

@Zebedee55 I rather think there are good reasons why pensioners cannot claim maternity pay or unemployment benefits!

The issue is not about individual boomers or millennials but the wider social and financial implications of the largest generational bulge in history (1945 - 1965 babies) moving in to retirement and ill health.

The asumptions about how pensions and healthcare are to be paid for, set out in 1948, cannot hold as this happens. Those arcbirects of the welfare state and NHS in 1948 assumed that there would always be enough working age tax payers to fund this. Three big things happened that they didn't account for - the birth rate dropped off a cliff in the late sixties to late nineties, people started living a lot longer post retirement and huge advances in medicine meant that costs to the NHS to deliver these treatments free at the point of use escalated rapidly.

We need to rethink how we will fund things in the next 20 years or so, or it is going to get ugly.

Seriously. It's just a tax. It pays for everything else that tax does. Including social care, pensions and NHS which obviously old people tend to need more of than younger.

I honestly don't know why so many older people seem to think it has different uses. It doesn't. It needs to be scrapped and just added into normal taxation so that everyone who pays tax pays the same. Not just the workers.

It’s a tax which is and always has been linked to work, hence the employers’ contributions and the minimum number of years contributions required to qualify for a state pension. A radical reform of the tax and benefits system would be needed to change that. Such a substantial change to the social contract would have to be part of a party’s manifesto and I guarantee no party that proposed it would ever be elected.

It needs to though. Because at the moment you get disgraceful stuff like the (thankfully reversed) increase in NI to pay for social care - asking the low income working population to pay more tax so retired middle class people keeping more of their housing wealth!

No, I retired at 56 and took on a toddler with parent troubles. It was to be have been a short term arrangement but she stayed.

FFS, if anyone knows WeightWhat IRL, don't let them watch Logan's Run...

Don't forget, OP, of what people 50+ had to put up with. Our generation has not had it easy and it's pretty ignorant to suggest otherwise.

1970s - energy crisis, no power/heating at school, weeks of public sector strikes, very expensive food relative to income, poor food standards, constant threat of nuclear war (seriously, we grew up with this threat always in the air), no expectation of foreign holidays (or any holidays) I could go on.

Add to this frivolous things such as no mobile phones, no internet, no Amazon deliveries or Starbucks, three TV channels and a culture where, quite frankly, children were not considered the way they are nowadays. The1980s brought eye watering interest rates (15%) that make today's rises seem small by comparison.

Most of us worked very, very hard, and whilst we did not put up with the horrors and hardship that the 'war generation' had to put up with, most of us have not had it as easy as some people on here want to believe. This faux resentment from a minority of the millennial generation is really become tiresome.

For what it's worth I'd rather live now than 40 years ago when I would have needed my husband's permission to open a bank account or get a mortgage!

At least higher earning women can be in control of their own finances these days.

I don't see the issue with pensions starting at 67. And I don't understand why you get free prescriptions from 60 (in England). Turning 60 doesn't make you hard up.

I agree policy needs to change and be rebalanced to stop shafting youngsters.

But before the triple lock for pensions, a lot of older people were living in poverty. I'd rather live in a society that looks after its elderly but we could have more of a balance.

All these lists of things you didn't buy. They didn't exist. Well done. I assume now that they do exist, all these righteous older people choose not to partake in these awful frivolous things?

‘In good help’ 😂😂

You didn’t need your husband’s permission for anything financial 40 years ago @enchantedsquirrelwood, 60 years ago maybe.

For what it's worth I'd rather live now than 40 years ago when I would have needed my husband's permission to open a bank account or get a mortgage!

40 years ago was 1983. I didn't need my husband's permission for any of those things. I opened a bank account at uni in 1972 without anyone's permission and got a mortgage on my own in the late 80s (admittedly was working in a bank). I did have to tell the Inland Revenue to stop writing to DH about the money I earned and paid tax on, though.