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.

I am from a large working class family in the north; I struggled to go to Polytechnic then there was a deep recession so no jobs.
When I was in work I bought a house but on marrying and having children we struggled to keep it - there were many repossessed homes.
We did not go abroad until we were in our mid 20s or buy new clothes or technology for many years.
After all that I’m now divorced with minimal pension and a mortgage in my 60s. You are wrong when you assume my generation are all in a fortunate position.
I know many women worse off than myself. The change in pension age came after we had made life choices affecting our work and careers.

I want to live in the utopia the op described. Where you retire at 60 on a massive state pension and spend the rest of your life going on holidays. Must be great.

There was a similar disparity between my parents and me when I was in my 30s. While DH and I were both working parents of toddlers, were paying 12%+ on our mortgage, and were watching friends' homes being repossessed leaving them with substantial debts - we looked at our parents who had bought their houses for much lower multiples of their wages and paid off their mortgages years ago, had afforded for one to be a SAHP for the whole of our upbringing, had jobs for life, and were looking forward to mum getting her pension at 60.

I also remind my DD that while I could buy a property when I was 25, I was basically renting it off the building society - with a 95% mortgage I had all the responsibility but didn't actually own much more than the paint. Friends had bought with 105% mortgages, betting on the value of the property rising fast enough for them to cover the difference. Then there was a housing crash.

Must be at least a week since the last one. Of course OP's uncles are representative of every retired person, aren't they?

I was so skint with young children. No subsidised childcare. I was paying to work.

My husband's grandad is 81. He retired when he was 55. He has been retired for almost as long as he worked for! He says he's quite bored and depressed. He is too old to work now though.

Tempting to start a new thread

To think the standard of living for young people needs to change

"I have just seen another 20 something couple with 2 kids move out of our estate to a much bigger house. I know they are benefitting from cheap childcare and get child benefit and they go on exotic foreign holidays and have TVa in every room

• Am k being unreasonable to suggest that this needs to change as I can't imagine ever being able to go abroad for my holiday or move from this run down estate and it's just not fair as I have worked for 45 years paying taxes into the system and they are just taking and living the high life "

The state pension is £10,600 per year (2023/24)

Not sure who these retired people are (ex CEOs and government ministers, I assume) whose pensions afford them multiple holidays and loads of restaurant meals every week?

No, if you were talking about 'social care policy and politics' your OP would've been about employment statistics, demographics, wages, taxation, national debt etc, not indulging in 'the politics of envy' as Labour used to put it, with stories about people who may or may not exist outside your imagination.

There have been, & will always be, people who are better off than you & people who are worse off than you. So what? Why do these threads never talk about pensioners who right now are living in poverty? Why do they always assume that everyone in previous generations inherited houses or hundreds of thousands of pounds (many of us didn't) & that younger generations won't inherit anything (some will, just as some did in the past)?

You seem lacking in basic, recent UK history. Why do these repetitive threads never mention the times of unemployment, rounds of redundancies, negative equity etc which today's pensioners struggled with during their working lives? No, there's this fictitious past in which EVERYONE had it SO easy & IT'S NOT FAIR. Well, boo-hoo & welcome to the club.

My parents are 75 and still have 15 years on their mortgage they bought 5 years ago with a pension mortgage from Yorkshire Bank. I am 55 and not on the housing ladder. So I think you are writing from a very blinkered view point.

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!

And they'll be paying tax on it.

You're what, in your forties? In a way I don't envy today's older people because I've seen the reality of dementia at first hand. Possibly at some point in the next 30-40 years it will be preventable or at least treatable. Being in your 60s or 70s now does mean the risk of that disease is looming over you at some point. Not all older people will succumb, of course, but younger people may dodge that particular bullet.

The retirement age was set at sixty five when male life expectancy was 62 so there were very few men of pension age. Women getting their pension at 60 is just a hangover from when women married men five years older and spinsters could stop work at the same age as those married woman.
Most of the current newly retired lived with their parents while they saved up to buy a house.

@Charlize43 I know quite a few who had quite ordinary jobs but some have done some equity release and some have over £1000 a month pensions in addition and some have had substantial inheritances- most have no mortgage or rent either

Probably the Tories who accused Labour of indulging in the politics of envy...

Please why do we have to rush to the bottom .Everyone should have a decent standard of living and a good pension provision.
Stop falling for the let's get the generations to turn on each other .
Yes it's rubbish for some younger people at present as it is for some older folks.Join together to make life better for everyone. Life expectancy is falling that shouldn't be happening

Amen OP.

I’m old ish and I cannot believe that young people aren’t rioting in the streets at the unfairness of it.

Allll the tax burden of the bloated and growing NHS plus the state pensions (and enhanced public sector pensions) is falling on working people. The same working people who can’t have families and homes because children and home ownership is now a luxury they can’t achieve.

The current OAPs did not ‘earn it’ - they just changed the rules so they were entitled to it. It’s today’s workers who are earning it.

That's interesting. I didn't know that. But if my mum had no money, would we get any say in which care home she ended up in? We chose her care and it is a tiny home with very few residents. I have heard of people very upset at the care their parents received and assumed that was because they didn't have any say if the state was paying.

Why do they always assume that everyone in previous generations inherited houses or hundreds of thousands of pounds (many of us didn't)

My inheritance from DM after exchange from Australian dollars to GBP was a princely £ 35k. Most of which went to the mortgage; which wasn't paid off until my 60s.

I literally don't know anyone in my immediate circle who's thinking of working beyond 60, so I guess it depends on who you ask.

Great post. There are lots of elderly people not eligible for benefits who struggle financially.

And they should have to sell their house for what they paid, so that others can afford them. And, we've had health care for 60 years, so now we should stop so the younger ones can have first go at it.

No, women were allowed to retire at 60 because it was accepted then that they would have caring responsibilities ( parents, grandchildren)

It’s nothing to do with age differences.

@OhmygodDont you wrote people were never meant to live for 30 plus years claiming their pensions - but what’s the alternative? People aren’t physically capable of most (any?) jobs into their 70s, so what will you do? Shoot them all at 75?

The current OAPs did not ‘earn it’ - they just changed the rules so they were entitled to it. It’s today’s workers who are earning it

Im that case I'd like all back that NI I paid since 1975 to establish a pension entitlement, thanks.