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.

So Labour didn’t close them all in the 60s/70s.

In fact one M Thatcher approved more comprehensive schools between 1970 and 1974 than any other sec of state for education.

Actually it's only £10.600 per year for those who reached retirement age after 6 April 2016. For the very many pensioners who reached retirement age before that, the full pension is only £8122 per year. There are no plans to bring these into line, so older pensioners will become progressively worse off than more recent ones as percentage increases come into effect.

NI isn't insurance it is a tax and the state pension isn't a pension it is a contributions based state benefit.

That is why the benefits bill is so big - most of it is the state pension paments and that is set to get a lot bigger as the 1945- 1965 generation retires. The issue there is the generations below - those born 1966 - 2000 are much much smaller - there are literally less of them. Bit of a problem as they are meant to be paying for those state pensions.

Some of these comments are truly beyond batshit.

'I didn't enjoy Paris much it rained the whole weekend we were there.'

'OMG! SO YOU'RE SAYING YOU HATE ALL FRENCH PEOPLE, WHAT'S YOUR ISSUE WITH FRANCE! SHOULD WE JUST NUKE IT OFF THE EARTH!'

Totally agree. I'm mid-thirties and feel very fortunate to be a millennial. My parents couldn't have imagined the opportunities and comforts (education, travel, growing up in the information age) that I have had. I certainly couldn't begrudge them things like lower house prices or better pension conditions.

Most of our generation have also had access to cheap housing. House prices were very low in my 20's so I took advantage of that and bought a cheap starter home that gave me a huge boost when prices started rising. Many of my friends did the same, you could get decent fixer uppers for around 65k in my city around 2011-2016. My work pension terms aren't anywhere near as good as my older colleagues, I know that so I've been taking measures to prepare myself for early retirement for years.

Attitude counts for a lot. Instead of begrudging other people for their circumstances its far more proactive to examine how you can make the most of your own.

My mum had me in the 80s. Interest rates were sky high on property back then much higher than they are now so no people didn't pay them off early. Many had to get interest only mortgages that failed to mature to pay off the balance so were buggered when that came to light. There were no benefits to help ppl stay home and not an abundance of childcare so most had to stay home meaning less money or manage on paying for care without any subsidies like we get now. There were no tax credits for parents, no help with childcare costs etc. There were the women who were failed in relation to the pensions. My dad had to work 18 hour days to make ends meet. My mum made all our clothes as she couldn't afford to buy new in most cases and had times when she had to choose between things like nappy liners and sanitary products and food. Times were incredibly tough.

These were not low income jobs either or in a high cost area (we were in the NW). My parents bloody struggled at times. Yes they are comfortable in their old age but they haven't always been and you are ignoring the hard times they went through because you only see what they have now.

Sorry @ifIwerenotanandroid which part did you not understand?

The rules being … triple lock pension… scope of the NHS…entitlement to social care and provision by local council…enshrined public sector gold plated pensions. Today’s young got zero say over all of that.

I know. No one has suffered quite as much as younger people are. I'm not sure what rules I changed - I just followed the rules of working, paying a full stamp, from the age of 16.🤔

But, tiny violins out for younger people, I suppose...🙄

You obviously haven't tried to get social care....😄😄😄 Mr private pensions aren't gold plated, and like everyone else, accessing the NHS is a nightmare.

They’ve already sold their homes & given the kids their inheritance & moved back in to council accommodation, now they moan they have to pay full rent

This is just nonsense. Made-up nonsense.

Rubbish.

Still making zero sense.

Totally agree.

When I started work, we had a graduate training course. One of the sessions was about pensions. We all said we couldn't afford to contribute and we were very clearly told that we couldn't afford not to. Thank you to the trainer. DH & I have been able to retire under 60 on this advice. We eat out twice a week - OK, one is at Wetherspoons with all the other oldies.

We went through the 89 housing crash and negative equity. We didn't get cheap childcare. But we weathered the storm, and learnt to cut our cloth to suit our means. Having had a few short term loans for justified reasons (a working kitchen), we have vowed never to get into debt again.

The state pension is a safety net - not something that is promising any kind of luxury.

Going back to my childhood, my parents were extremely thrifty. Nothing was wasted and everything was repurposed. We wore clothes multiple times before they were washed, and darning was thing. The eco-brigade is bringing this back.

@downdowndowndowndown

Oh bore off! We had free education but only about 8% of people went to university. I worked bloody hard to get in from my comprehensive, and when I was there lived really frugally and studied hard. It's simply impossible to want half the population to go to university for free

Are you also envious of the 12 week maternity leave? Zero paternity leave? Very little work flexibility- no right to request flexible working? Zero free hours of childcare (which incidentally was just as expensive as now, proportionately)? How about interest rates way higher than they are now, shooting up to double figures and even hitting 15% for a while? Are you jealous of the fact that misogyny and sexist attitudes were far more normalised and accepted in society? What about attitudes towards minority groups, the disabled, ethic minorities, LGBT?

Grow up. You can't cherry pick the 'nice bits' and air brush out the nastier bits for any generation. No generation has it all. There are upsides and downsides in each generation. I'm well aware some aspects of life were easier for me than for my children or grandchildren but there are many aspects of their lives which are far better.

Ah another Boomer bashing thread. Great.

I had three months unpaid Mat Leave before leaving my child in nursery and going back to work full time. Not everyone was a SAHM and there was no help for childcare and no handy retired parents to help out. My dad had to work well into his 70s for example and my mum had only paid reduced married women's contribution so she got a half state pension all her life. They couldn't afford to give up work.

No inheritance here as parents lived in a council house. ILs died in their 60s (FIL six months into retirement) because they were heavy smokers.

Our first house was unfurnished for nearly a year because we couldn't afford furniture or carpets. We bought offcuts of carpet and laid them ourselves. We bought our bed second hand from a classified ad and tied it to the top of our ancient car to bring it home. We got a book from the library on plumbing and plumbed in our own washing machines because we couldn't afford to pay anyone. No TV for the first ten years we were married (80-90) because we couldn't afford it and actually didn't care about it.

You look at us now and think we had it easy. We really didn't but we've worked full time for some 40 years and have now accrued some assets. As will you if you save and pay into pensions and are lucky enough to stay well.

We had our hardships just as you did and it's galling to be judged on where we are now, not against our 30 year old selves.

And it's not a race to the bottom. Would you be happier if we were all living in poverty, hand to mouth? Being a burden on the state in terms of Pension Credit Housing Benefit etc rather than being independent? Working into our 70s so you can feel happy? If you want things to get better, vote for parties that will support you and offer policies that will help you. It's typical 'divide and rule' - whilst you're blaming us, you're not demanding higher standards and change.

Don't let facts get in the way, for Gods sake lol

Yes, we lived hand to mouth for years. New cars, foreign holidays, and gadgets were unheard of.🙂

What you miss out of this is that this is the generation who paid into their pension and then found out that the directors of the company used their money as their own private piggy bank
or to prop up an ailing company or the company was sold and the pension fund raided. So paying into a pension wasn’t guaranteed that you would see that money again

You also forget that not everyone was on an average wage and there was no minimum wage. Going into the 80s there was millions unemployed so companies paid you so little because if you didn’t want to work for that there were people who did. My hourly rate working for one of the big 4 banks worked out at 46p per hour. I earned £80 per month and my rent for a fiat share in a northern town was £60 per month. I had £4.04 per week bus fare to get to work and it was a given you worked other jobs just to buy food and electric

My mum- now in her 70s- has had a much harder time than me. So did my dad. They worked very hard and lived very frugally. Barely travelled, didn't buy expensive clothes or makeup, had very few luxuries. Made do. I don't begrudge them a damn thing.

But I didn’t vote for any of that - no-one asked me.

That's inhumane! Why is it less for the pre 2016?

They are hugely atypical.

Ah another Boomer bashing thread. Great

You'd miss it if it wasn't there

This is an excellent point about the social contract but it assumes that the proportion of paying it and taking out remains the same for every generation.

That has not been the case and today’s oldies take out much more than they ever had to put in. That’s why there such a scandal around gold-plated pensions. There was never the money to pay what was agreed.

The proportion of what you paid to support those older people vs what working people are paying today.

The tax burden is way higher on today’s workers. Plus so many people retire in their 50s but live until 80s. Essentially using services/roads/resources but not contributing to growth or generating anything except spending money. And they could do that if they were still working.