‘We didn’t have expensive mobile phones”

[MidnightPatrol]

Why is this now used as a criticism of the young by the old, particularly in debates around affordability of housing etc.

No you didn’t have a mobile phone in 1974.

But that is because they didn’t exist. Not because you made a financial sacrifice.

Is the suggestion young people shouldn’t have mobile phones? This would be a little limiting in today’s environment.

In the 1970s were young people criticised for owning washing machines rather than hand scrubbing their clothes in a copper pail?

I still don't have an expensive phone (I'm 70) my smart phone cost £50 from Argos and my giffgaff goody bag costs £6 a month.

Public sector pensions are still hugely better than private sector ones and a massive cost to everyone else.

It's estimated that the average public sector job costs the treasury 55% of the salary, so a £35k public sector job is as good as being paid £50k in the private sector when the pension is taken into account.

Not always. My public sector pension was less than my DHs private one - despite equal length of service.

Work longer if you can't fund your own retirement.

As an example, the number of people who give up work when they have children and and still expect everyone else to fund their pension is scandalous.

If it was nearer to being self-funded people would make different decisions and save the rest of us a lot of money.

@AllyCart that is rubbish. Anyone I know in a decent job in the private sector retired early. With public sector now people will not get their private pension until 68 currently, and it may rise. Given life expectancy is early eighties, most people will be claiming their private pension for about 15 years.
The people I know with the best private pensions are all in the private sector.

This is just rubbish. Most mothers work once they have children.
Only the well off can fund their own retirement. Do you have any idea how much you have to save to generate even a basic private pension?
People would starve. Or it would be like some very poor countries I have visited where you see people running their own small businesses (no one will employ them) who are so frail they look like they should have carers coming in rather than trying to make enough money to eat.

Why do you think workhouses existed? Because a lot of people can never fund their own retirement, and a lot of others would live in absolute penury when elderly.

Well, I’m well into Boomer age, and I never bought a house, and I worked through the child rearing years.

I pay tax even now on my state and private pensions lol

No, there weren’t any of the “luxury goods” there are now - we lived with basics.

There was no alternative. As a young married, I remember women getting really excited when Bejam arrived and we could freeze things lol

But, as life has moved on, I’ve kept up. I’ve got a new smartphone, and iPad.

We buy what’s available and what we can afford.🤷‍♀️

It is fact.

Data from 2021 and it's got worse since then:

https://www.ft.com/content/9d9b03d0-55ff-4e2a-8ec7-2caab0a89381

The average cost of all UK public sector pensions for 2021 is 63 per cent of the salaries. Some of this is paid by employee contributions, averaging 8 per cent, leaving the balance — 55 per cent of salary — to be paid by taxpayers.

And best pensions are in private sector? You'd have to be on fucking glue to truly believe that! 😂😂😂😂😂

@ShyPoet

Only the well off can fund their own retirement. Do you have any idea how much you have to save to generate even a basic private pension?

Of course I know how much it costs, FFS. 🙄

Ooh just look at her sheets AND she's got a twin tub you know. Tsk.

@AllyCart You misquote me. I said best pensions are in private sector for professional people. The call centre workers, retail staff, and van drivers are not receiving good employer pensions.

Any old person who bangs on about ‘young people’ and smartphones is TBH likely to be a bit thick, and/or wilfully ignorant about how things have. changed, particularly as regards the vastly increased cost of housing now, whether rented or mortgaged.

I say that as an oldie myself.

Expectations do change. As a mother of young children in the 40s and 50s , my DM would have thought central heating and an automatic washing machine were great luxuries, yet by the late 1960s she had both, and by the 70s took them for granted.
In the 60s she’d have seen a dishwasher as a huge luxury, but by the 90s she took one of those for granted, too.

Pre WW2, her own mother would have looked on a ‘wireless’ (radio) of your own, and a telephone in the house, as great luxuries, and her mother, who had 10 children, would have thought the same of a pram. My GM told me she’d once asked her how on earth she’d managed without a pram.

‘I used my arms.’ And that GGM wasn’t even really poor by the standards of the day - my GGF was a master craftsman, and reasonably well paid for the era.

So I know quite a few people who work in the private sector on a non contributory pension.

When you're 87, do please come back to us and tell us how easy it is to inject ether into a sprocket to chat to your daughter, after entering an algebraic algorithm into your route splitter.

This is what it's like for my 86 year old mum re smart phones.

It is fact for current pensioners on public sector pensions today, but for anyone currently working in the public sector it is not a fact as public sector pensions were reformed in the early 2000s. So anyone currently working in the public sector or with 20yrs or less service, the public sector pension they are accruing is a fraction of their predecessor boomers’ pensions. The 30% pay cut by working in the public sector is no longer offset by a generous pension.

Traditionally pay was low in public sector but pensions were good. It used to attract people in spite of lower pay.

@CaptainMyCaptain if you know how to make a t shirt for less than the £3 they cost in the shops, let me know your secret!