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.

Zebedee55 · Today 09:47

Very few people went to Uni then - families often needed youngsters out working.

This constantly gets bandied about as though it's a privilege for young people to go to university. It really isn't. It's a necessity now. You don't go, you don't have a hope of getting a decent career because everyone else does go. There's no walking in at 17 and working your way up any more (and yes that's what I did as a young gen X) so they HAVE to go to uni, and they have to pay for it too, so it's ANOTHER tax that the young have to pay

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · Today 09:48

Just querying how we are going to keep paying people to live for 30/40 years past retirement

Are you going to expect that the generation under you to do that when you retire?

I doubt it. Not with life expectancy falling and pension age rising. Doesn't seem likely does it. But actually I'm more worried about the generations to come after mine anyway. If we're fucked now then I have no idea what it will be like for my kids and grandkids generations. I can't actually bare to think about it .

Simply the funding assumptions for state pensions and NHS health care did not take in to account how large the current retiring generation would be in comparision with the two working generations below

But l remember doing history A level in 1981. And our teacher was telling us then that we were a demographic time bomb. So it’s not like there hasn’t been time to solve it.

I take they aren’t any stats then! 😆

Im an older millennial & have paid contributions since 17 in my p/t jobs as the threshold for contributions was pretty low. I’m certainly not unusual.

I don't think this thread is about social care. Most of our social care expenditure now goes on people aged 18-65 who need very intensive support to live safely. The budget for children's social care is even larger. Only a tiny proportion of older people receive social care to help meet the cost of home care or living in a care home.

I do think the thread is about politics. Other countries, like Germany or Japan, have set up long term care insurance systems to pay for social care. Here, politicians promise reform which never happens.

In the 1970s, older people made up the largest proportion of people living in poverty in the UK. That changed and what made a difference was an increase in occupational pensions and home ownership. Occupational pensions still mainly benefited men more than women, especially among people who did not have a profession but overall more older people (especially couples) became better off.

Now things are changing for the worse again. Only this morning Chris Whitty has warned about the increasing number of older people in poor health who will be living in poverty in coastal areas.

Instead of concentrating on the very select group of people living in comfortable retirement, why not try for greater equality? So many of these threads are about bringing down the so called baby boomers, not bringing up the standard of living for other groups in society.

But l remember doing history A level in 1981. And our teacher was telling us then that we were a demographic time bomb. So it’s not like there hasn’t been time to solve it.

Because plenty of people don’t want to even acknowledge it for whatever reason. Many posters seem to think the solution is for people in the UK to stop having dc because that’s why the population is growing. And there is no room for reasonable logic debate it just turns into nonsense.

Is it just me that thinks how lovely it sounds when people say we didn't have central heating just a fire in the front room...because now we can't afford to put the central heating on but we don't have a fire either!

Very few went to Uni - most worked from 15/16 years.

We've still got the NHS (poor as it is now) and it provides more than it used to.

Not everyone got a final salary pension.

Other than perhaps the impact of the IRA in certain places, in the 70's/80's, none of us have been directly affected by any sort of war.

Not all bought houses, not all kept them or paid them off.

What does "living well" mean? Pensioners are going without help they need, unless they can pay for it. Councils don't want to provide home care/or care home provision if they can help it.

Pensions vary, and many can't afford cruises or long haul holidays - unlike many younger people.

It's pointless to generalise.🙄

But l remember doing history A level in 1981. And our teacher was telling us then that we were a demographic time bomb. So it’s not like there hasn’t been time to solve it

In the days when I had an annual meeting with an IFA about my finances this came up every time. As he always said, the fact that there was a post WW2 birth boom resulting in millions more people a) needing care and education and they grow up b) needing pensions and care as they get older has been known about for decades. I mean, it's no secret that people get older and frailer and become more of a burden (sorry to use that word) on the state. But successive govts have reckoned that they're only in power for a finite time, let the next lot worry about it.

One way to solve it was to have migrants move here to work in health care...but then we had Brexit and lost loads of them!

Numerous governments of all colours have had over 70 years to work this one out. They managed to educate us all so they definitively knew thus was coming down the line. It’s political failure on a grand scale. But it’s a temporary problem. In 20 years time the youngest boomers will be almost 80 and the vast majority of us will be dead. Already the oldest of us are approaching their 80th birthdays. And of course 100,000 pensions have already been saved by covid.

This constantly gets bandied about as though it's a privilege for young people to go to university. It really isn't. It's a necessity now. You don't go, you don't have a hope of getting a decent career because everyone else does go. There's no walking in at 17 and working your way up any more (and yes that's what I did as a young gen X) so they HAVE to go to uni, and they have to pay for it too, so it's ANOTHER tax that the young have to pay

Yep no room for nuance. I didn’t require a specialist degree for my role, my boss didn’t require one at all. New employees must have a degree in certain subjects only. The work landscape has completely changed.

Im going to say the unpopular thing. People now have higher expectations and dont appreciate that you dont get everything you want in life.

We bought a 220k house on a joint pretax income of 44k. We lived in a houseshare with some bloody difficult people to save up. We went without a car, we didn't have a wedding.

We bought a 3 bed house in a nice area almost an hour from the city and commuted for 5 years before having kids and changing one if our jobs to suit childcare. We waited to have a baby. We overpaid on the mortgage as much as we could afford to, which was not a lot at the start, and for the first 5 years had little by way of holidays.

As soon as we remortgaged after 5 years, we used the spare money to overpay. We had extra money because we had climbed the ladder. One of us has a degree we dont use, the other started at the bottom of a retail chain. We used the salary bumps to pay off more on the mortgage every month and started doing the house up piecemeal. We haven't even been close to living in poverty, we have just chosen to progress and put the money into the house.

Pre kids we picked up overtime to pay more into the house.

If i told you now that we both earn a combined salary of 60k pre tax and have a mortgage of 60k because we overpay by £1000 a month and are on track to be mortgage free by 40 & 45 you'd tell us we are the exception. And we are.

But we worked hard to do that. We didnt get help to pay the deposit, we haven't had inheritance. We lived in a shithole for years before buying and we didnt buy the aspirational 4 bed house, we bought smaller and knew that we could fit in 2 kids and have less stuff. We dont have a nice finance car, we have an old run around. We didnt buy in our preferred, convenient area, we compromised.

I'm not saying there arent politics and that it isnt hard for the 20-somwthings of today. But I think some people have more privilege than they think and choose to stay static because they wont compromise temporarily on lifestyle to achieve the future financial security. They'd rather flap about the older generation (who will always be catered to as they are a large portion of the voting population)

There will always be political and social problems but sadly it will take generations to fix. I feel incredibly sorry for people raised rurally who are priced out of their home towns by expensive housing and a lack of good jobs. But that is where things are unfortunately. We were priced out so we moved.

OP, many generations lived without healthcare, sanitation, basic human rights. We are where we are. What are you doing to improve your life chances? Living at home? Buying less? Staying in more? Got a LISA? Picked up some overtime?

Try having to clean/redraw the damn thing daily, the mess and grime they created, and the chimney sweep day😳

Then, you froze in every other room.

I doubt it. Not with life expectancy falling and pension age rising. Doesn't seem likely does it. But actually I'm more worried about the generations to come after mine anyway. If we're fucked now then I have no idea what it will be like for my kids and grandkids generations. I can't actually bare to think about it

Let's leave aside the hypotheticals and the hand wringing and talk about your personal expectations. When you get to pension age are you going to expect something from the state to support you in old age?

don’t agree, there are plenty of people who have good jobs, pay into pensions and own a houses. Tend not to live in London

But it’s a temporary problem.

Im not sure why that makes it less of an issue

When you get to pension age are you going to expect something from the state to support you in old age?

No & I don’t expect the NHS to exist in its current form. I certainly won’t be getting free prescriptions at 60.

Try having to clean/redraw the damn thing daily, the mess and grime they created, and the chimney sweep day😳

My mother used to do this and get my brothers ready for school before she was even dressed. No wonder she was grumpy in the mornings.

People do have much higher expectations nowadays, you only need to read the Property and DIY board to see this, it is the norm to expect have a £1k+ Quooker tap in your new kitchen.

Yes, it was a nightmare lol. I cheered when gas fires came in.👍. Holding a newspaper over the front to try and get possibly damp coal to take light was an overrated pastime.🙄

RedRiverShore4 · Today 10:06

People do have much higher expectations nowadays, you only need to read the Property and DIY board to see this, it is the norm to expect have a £1k+ Quooker tap in your new kitchen.

Wtf is that? Are you seriously saying that young people expect to have £1,000 taps? I've heard it all now 😂

Because there’s so much handwringing about what happens to future generations when they get old. It’s highly likely that things will be better for them because there will be far fewer of them. The economy is a series of blips - this generation getting to pension age is one of them.

It’s also a huge distraction from political failure. The cost of pensions is nothing compared with the cost of servicing government debt.

Lucky you have a crystal ball 🤔

State pension is taxable, if you get a state pension. Anyone living well in retirement now is doing so because they didnt waste money and saved into their own pension. Anyone wanting to live well in retirement in future will need to do the same.