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'm also paying tax on my NHS pension. I was responding to the people who want pensioners to pay NI. I don't think it's sensible for pensioners to pay NI as, as it was originally conceived ,they no longer need insurance for sickness absence from work, or unemployment and they are already drawing the state pension. However I'm wondering whether NI is now outdated, given that the benefit system has changed so much and things should be changed so everyone is just taxed by income.

Inheritance tax kicks in after
£325,000 for one person and £650,000 for a couple

It’s £1 million for a couple if a property is involved.

Another couple whose income tax bill cancels out one of our state pensions!

Yes, I did point out, upthread, what NI was designed for and that there would be no point in pensioners paying in for what they could no longer claim.

Perhaps the system should now be changed, but politicians will have to sort that out. And I doubt they will want to.

But you didn’t pay income tax on your NICs and the money that went towards your occupational pension was not subject to income tax at the time you put it away either. That’s how pensions work. The money is taken off your salary before tax is applied, then the net amount of your income is taxes. This in one is instead taxed when you retire and withdraw the money.

Every generation, future, past and present will have some people in their 60s still
working, some people in their 40s paying their mortgage off in full

"My mums generation were able to buy cheaper houses in the eighties". We didn't buy cheap, it's all relevant, my first house was 45k, 2 bed terrace in the 90's, but that was expensive then. People I brought it off paid 7k. Salaries are higher, property is higher, state pension won't be around in years to come.generation before me were better off in retirement, as I said it's all relevant.

I’m one of these entitled, moaning millennials that everyone keeps referring to.

We saved like crazy for a deposit in our late 20’s. We bought our house when I was 29 and got married a year later. Then babies arrived.

My parents are two of those wealthy, privileged, entirely selfish retirees everyone keeps going on about. They’re poor but culturally rich. They never had much money when we were growing up. They struggled financially and in other ways. They don’t go round cruising the world, negating their responsibilities on a social level or any of the other things that put younger people’s backs up. They now own their house and it’s bigger than mine. But boy they worked hard to get there.

It’s very dangerous to generalise in such aggressive terms

Thank you. Grandmothers and eggs spring to mind.

We are exactly as OP has described,we paid our mortgage off at 48.
Both retired at 61 ,we never had high paying jobs just average but all our pensions combined are equal to our last wages and we have £250k plus in savings.We holiday at least 6 times a year.
We worked hard all our lives,both came from council estates and never went to University,we are very fortunate .
Our two sons get treated often and know we worked hard to be in the position we are.

NI should be abolished & there should be just one tax that everyone pays.

I don’t think the post was having a pop at the older generation at all. It is simply stating facts and acknowledging that younger generations will have it harder in many ways. Not all of course. It is good to understand where we are in life so we don’t take things for granted presuming we will be able to access certain things that are simply harder to achieve right now.

Another problem is that pensions are far less generous these days. Many DB have closed & ts & cs have changed. My public sector pension isn’t bad but it was better if I could have got into a few yrs earlier, alas I was still in school.

I’ve just retired in my late 40s and my state pension won’t be for another 20 years. My standard of living is based on how much I’ve earned and have invested over the years and nothing to do with any state income. I’ve private health insurance too so I won’t be draining NHS services. Many of my peers are in the same position and it’s all down to personal earnings. I’d be happy for the state to keep my pension as it will make hardly any difference to my income.

ditch stamp duty and instead ramp up Council tax to make up the difference

That would go down well!

@Jem57 good for you. And it's nice that you can acknowledge that as well as hard work (which I don't doubt) you were also lucky.
A lot of other posters definitely seem to take issue with admitting this. I hope you have a long happy retirement 🙂

We have paid in to our state pension since the days we started work (16), many of us also have professional pensions because we planned ahead with our careers. Some of us even invested in private pensions when we had money.
We didn't buy new phones or have phone contracts, streaming TV channels or Internet services. Add half of those together and you'll find £100 / month to put in to a pension.
Our TVs were 2nd hand as were our washing machines. We serviced our own 2nd hand cars and some of us could only afford a small motorbike to get to work to support our family.
Meals out, takeaways, food delivered were all nonexistent.
We did our own DIY to improve our family homes. We might cook a meal with friends once a month and so that was our entertainment / treat as that was returned later in kind later the same month.
We didn't go abroad for holidays and often stayed with family / inlaws etc instead.
We grew as much of our fresh food as possible, we had an allotment for fruit and veg, we went looking for wild fruits etc like apples, pears, blackberries, sweet chestnuts etc.
The result is that, at 66, we can retire, we worked bloody hard and nobody gave us anything for free.
Our own kids moan about their rent and not being able to afford a deposit... it doesn't seem to stop them buying a £400 TV or a new phone every 2 years or having their fresh prepared food delivered.

So in the name of policy it's okay to throw older people under the bus? If they've bought a house in most cases they will have scrimped and saved to buy it. Until the 1990s women working part time weren't allowed to have a pension. There wasn't help with child care unless grandparents helped. They've paid their taxes.
it's not their fault you can't buy a house today.
Pensioners are todays scapegoats. It's disgusting.

We didn't buy new phones or have phone contracts, streaming TV channels or Internet services.

You can’t have something that didn’t exist!

The government is encouraging people to scapegoat each other - it takes the focus away from the mess this country is in, due to government incompetence.🙁

I agree

i have an elderly relative who has been retired for 40 years!!!! I don’t think this is uncommon either

The triple lock has to go. It makes no sense- it was an effectively uncosted Lib Dem policy in 2010 (well, they had costed it but at £50m rather than the many billions it actually costs 😭).

Sadly we live in a gerontocracy so I don’t see it happening soon.

Our own kids moan about their rent and not being able to afford a deposit... it doesn't seem to stop them buying a £400 TV or a new phone every 2 years or having their fresh prepared food delivered.

Just because your dc turned out like that you can’t extrapolate their example to others.

The internet and mobile phones have been around for 40 years. However, many people didn't utilise them at that point.