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.

Well said. It needed saying too 😊

The housing crisis is causing so much heartache in this country.
We should ask ourselves next time we see a planning application

Why are so many houses detached and semi detached
Why are there more ‘houses’ for cars than people
Why can’t we build tall and terrace properties - this would save on long term energy usage, reduce house prices, create room for more properties.

Why are UK houses the worst built in Europe and one of the most expensive
Why doesn’t the Govn have more control on density, environmental impact and costs.
Why aren’t we building more one and two bedroom properties for the ever increasing single, divorced and smaller family groups.
With family sizes reducing why are we building so many 4 bedroom houses.

The housing problem is not something we can blame on a particular generation. It is, however, something we can all dictate by seeking out and commenting on inappropriate developer planning applications and stressing those thoughts by contacting our MPs.

@fitzwilliamdarcy with respect to the older generations, millennials and poss the gen X's too aren't helping by not getting into politics. Voter apathy is real. I don't feel that any of the political party's care about me. Why would they prioritise a group of people that don't bother to vote and can't afford to donate?

Yes, I did read the comment. You said it was introduced because of pensioner poverty, with vote buying in brackets. I'm saying it was solely to buy votes.

Yes, inequality has increased for sure but that does not detract from the other facts stated above.
I posted this video already. It's really worth watching because there is a lot of ignorance on this topic and people shouting about their personal experience while ignoring the bigger picture.

Also it's funny that when people above 65 are poor it's because of circumstances outside of their control but when millennials are poor it's all our fault and due to lifestyle.

Willetts is hugely biased on this subject. His work - I’ve read his book which is much more detailed - doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Maybe pop over to the Property board and have a read, lots of fairly young people, DC often mentioned, all trying to outdo each other with kitchens, bifolds, granite and Quooker taps, lots of expensive houses too

This should be worrying everyone whatever age they are.
Without sufficient work and taxation, how are public services going to be provided and paid for? 🤔

I agree. I’ve voted in every single election since I turned 18 and the party I voted for has never even made significant gains, let alone got anywhere near getting in. I can’t blame younger people for being apathetic because of the electoral system and the fact that the only two parties who can get elected are kind of bloody shit. But it does mean that we’re not helping ourselves get our issues heard and considered important.

Sources of taxation other than income will need to be found.

I don't know what the solution is to AI taking all the jobs in the next 30 years. I do know I will be offering my DC a home without rent for as long as they need it, and I am also taking in my elderly mum in a couple of years. I am lucky that I can afford to do this; most people can't. The only reason I can do it is because DH and I worked overseas a couple of times, and DH worked away too. This was at great personal cost.

BIossomtoes · Today 11:32

fetchacloth · Today 11:30

This should be worrying everyone whatever age they are.
Without sufficient work and taxation, how are public services going to be provided and paid for? 🤔
Show quote history
Sources of taxation other than income will need to be found.

Like expecting everyone to pay NI maybe? Or a wealth tax? I'm pretty sure the older generation would vote against both of those

@RedRiverShore4 that's not my reality. I don't see that that board is anymore indicative of younger people than any of age bracket. Most people of my generation aren't on Mumsnet, and the ones that are generally aren't the ones sharing bathrooms with strangers, still living in their parents box room, living in vans or living in a sublet flat terrified the actual tenant will want it back. The ones who are despairing because they want to actually have children before early menopause starts but they can't afford to rent on maternity leave. The ones who have been served notice just when their little ones have settled into a new primary. The ones who can't work due to their children's disabilities and now go to food banks. They're not on the property board, it's not an accurate depiction of the cohort. Just as my original OP doesn't sum up all boomers.

It's also worth mentioning that we have one of the lowest state pensions in Europe.

I do agree that housing is a major issue, but it's as much an issue for many pensioners as it is for younger people. Perhaps we should be more welcoming and helpful to immigrants. Afterall, they tend to be younger and very willing to work.

We don't actually here's an extract from an article I just found:
Apples and pears
Comparing the UK system with those across Europe is like comparing apples and pears.

The UK state pension is a flat-rate pension that’s based on the number of years workers have made National Insurance (NI) contributions. No matter how much NI you’ve paid over the years, you’ll get the same amount, based on the number of years you’ve paid in.

It’s a kind of safety net that is supposed to make sure pensioners stay out of poverty, but not give them a massive income.

Contributions to the UK state pension are hard to measure as they’re based on National Insurance contributions. But NI is really just another type of tax and not all of it is used to pay the state pension.

Watch out for pension and inheritance tax raid in Autumn Statement
How to plan for a comfortable retirement
Since auto-enrolment - where employers are now required to auto-enrol employees into a workplace pension scheme - the idea is that we boost that pension provision by paying into a private workplace pension. It’s essentially up to us to make up the difference and try to invest and save for a comfortable retirement.

In contrast, many countries have a much broader state pension system where the amount you get is based on your contributions. In those countries, state pension contributions are much higher and there’s less reliance on private pensions.

@downdowndowndowndown Are you getting into politics? I, along with a lot of other people, joined the Labour party because it seemed like the party closest to how I felt about the things that bothered me most, housing primarily. We now have a prime minister in waiting who has committed to a massive house building programme which will address the housing crisis and I will be doing my small bit to make sure he gets into a position where he can make it happen.

"I don't feel like any of the parties represent me" is a cop out, some parties will do more than others and you know that. To make change happen you need to hold your nose and get stuck in - politics is driven by the people who show up and do the work.

I will also point out though that generalising is dangerous. While my parents and maybe yours were buying nice cheap houses in the 80s many other people the same age were getting laid off from their mining and manufacturing jobs and in many parts of the UK the local economy never recovered. Those people didn't buy a house, they didn't have a private pension, and now they are dirt poor and often physically knackered from decades of hard physical work. They often live in run down areas with poor public services and social problems and have a significantly lower life expectancy than the people the same age who managed to get themselves established in the 80s. I wouldn't want to have anything to do with any political party who throws these people out with the "boomer" bathwater.

@littlegrebe I agree generalisations aren't helpful. It was my grandparents who changed our 'luck' and moved away from generations of farm labourers and fisherman. They would of course say that they worked hard, and they did, but luck always plays a part too. They were healthy, they could move for work away from family because their family members weren't dependent on them. My gran didn't have to work because you could get a house one wage. They didn't have physical health or mental health issues.
People assume that luck means people didn't work hard also. Of course they did!
I would never go for a party that made huge generalisations about whole generations. However some of the benefits for pensioners not being means tested seem unfair when everything else is. Same with prescription charges.

But your wealthy relatives are not receiving state pensions yet so this entire thread is spurious. I'm sure you got the replies you wanted though.

Yeah, l was struck by this when ds and his friends bought houses. They all had to be perfect when they moved in. Fully furnished and decorated.

I bought my first house in the late 80’s. We had a sofa bed which we carried between living room and bed room every day.

This is so true. A friend of DC has just bought a starter home - fully fitted carpets throughout, landscaped garden, fencing, integrated dishwasher and fridge freezer. The older generation that are being criticised for “having it all” on this thread had basic houses and saved up for the “niceties” or did the work themselves, such as putting paving down or decorating. You can’t compare and say the older generation had it easy as houses were cheaper.

Where I live the elderly tend to live in the biggest houses and young families are squashed into small houses. The biggest complaint I hear is that there is a lack of suitable housing for the elderly to downsize into. Addressing this could really help to get things moving in the property market but the government is not interested.

@Iwantmyoldnameback they are. The ones who are above 65.
What I wanted from this thread was what happens when we (millennials) retire? Not many have actually answered that.

Stamp duty is preventing some older people downsizing property.
The government are well aware of this issue but like everything else, they're really not interested. 😕

Chris Wittey has just published something about quality and not quantity of life for older people.

He identifies the fact that all housing is aimed at families and nothing is being built for older people.

@downdowndowndowndown

I suppose millennials will need to work for longer and plan better with private pensions. Some will be helped with inheritance but many won’t and there will be increasing inequality. It’s a byproduct of having an ageing population and successive governments propping up the interests of their older voter base. I really feel for the younger generations.

What I see is older people shutting down the younger generation with insults about how they're lazy and have everything given to them on a plate, even though that's blatantly not true.

Priceless comment! Isn't it the 'younger generation' moaning about the older people who never had it so good. refusing to recognise the difficulties many older people experienced during the '60s and '70s?