Generational wealth differences

[KeenGreen]

My first AIBU so let’s see what I’m in for!

First to make clear none of the problems now are the fault of previous generations. It is not a blame game!!

So AIBU to be frustrated with the rhetoric that todays generations of young families have it no harder than previous generations in terms of wealth and they just need to be more frugal to have the same standard of living??

I am sick of hearing the idea that older generations. So called boomers (for the record I don’t like this term) didn’t have it easier than younger generations.

I am 38 I have worked since I was 16, lived independently since 17. Put myself through university all the way through to PhD. My husband is 39 works in a school as support staff (LSA) and takes up circa £1200 a month. He has a degree.
I work in a university and earn just under £50K before tax so our household income is probably about £65K not the lowest by any stretch but enough for us to struggle to balance costs. We claim child benefit but otherwise no extra help.
Husband only works term time of course, but that means he’s around for our child during holidays.

We have one DC age 5, and can’t afford any more.
Our closest family lives over 2 hours away, so we have no family support with childcare or help if there is a sick day or anything.

We have a mortgaged small semi detached 1930s house with 3 bedrooms, It needs a lot of work but we haven’t been able to do much because of time and money. Current mortgage fix ends in 2026 and I expect our mortgage repayments to go up by about 50% extra £300 a month.

We pay off student loans and my pension contributions are also high.
I took only 6 months maternity leave because I couldn’t afford to go to half pay for long and not into no pay at all.

My husband had virtually nothing in his workplace pension because of low earnings.
Mine is keep being devalued because of sector changes and it’s definitely not the best pension in education. (Teachers pensions are better).
I can’t even imagine what it will be like to try and live off my workplace pension alone and I would have to go all the way up to retirement age which I can’t imagine myself doing in a stressful job.

Retirement age for us is currently 68, that means we have 30 more years.
But with the way things are going I have no hope that there will be a state pension at all for us, or the age will be pushed even higher, so will probably be dead! Despite the fact I will have been paying in with tax national insurance for 50 plus years by that point.

I just feel frustrated about this idea that I hear people say that our generation just needs to work harder, or get better paid jobs etc because it’s not that easy. We both work hard in the education sector. Enjoy our jobs for the most part and find them fulfilling albeit stressful at times!

Like I said not about blaming previous generations for the picture we are in, but I don’t like the rhetoric of ‘well interest rates went up to 15% in my day’ etc when house prices were so much lower in proportion to wages and the cost of living right now and inflation over the last 10 years shows wages haven’t increased in line with this.

ps I know we are not the most hard done by! But still feel the pinch and we certain don’t live an extravagant lifestyle!

I'm 67. I own outright a small terraced house in the north of England - a neighbour has their similar house up for sale at £220, 000. When I married, my parents (dad a builder) gave me and the now ex-and-late husband one-third off the price of our first detached house - so it cost us the same as a terraced house would have cost at the time. That was in 1977. Through divorce, house-moves, extra borrowing etc I never extended the length of the mortgage, and it was paid off when I was in my fifties. I am not rich, I would class myself as poor, and so would everyone else who knows me. Holidays etc are not affordable, for example. I'm a WASPI woman, deprived of six years' pension. I'm further deprived as I can't prove I was in the country between 1983 and 1995, despite being paid child benefit at a UK address, studying at UK universities and working in various jobs including teaching.

My dd and son-i-l married young, made sensible decisions and at 42 have excellent jobs and a house worth well over a million. They have a pleasant but not luxurious lifestyle - no fancy holidays and only one (large) car, bought outright ten years ago. They help me financially. I am not in a position to help them. They are neurodivergent, as am I, just to make life more challenging for us all.

A former colleague worked and planned while she studied. When she married, she and her husband were ready with a good deposit to buy their first home. This was maybe twelve to fifteen years ago. They didn't expect anyone else to provide for them. Admirable people.

Sometimes, fate intervenes even when people try to make a good start. Ill-health, lack of employment opportunities, needing to devote most of your time to caring for elders or for children with additional needs, will all set you back in the race to acquire wealth. And some people don't want to enter that race, they'd rather live simply because it makes them happy.

What I can never get my head around with boomers is the selfishness
like they will see their kids and grandkids struggle yet still go on ten holidays a year and not help in anyway

I don't see the life you are describing at all, in my own experience or that of my age-mates. What I do see is a lot of ageism, prejudice, spite and bitterness against their elders from some younger people who expect everything handed to them for little or no effort.

65% of housing in the UK is owned by under 64s. Did you mean 80% of homes owned outright (no mortgage) are owned by pensioners @OpenOliveCat? That kind of makes sense, as those are the people who have worked the longest and paid off their mortgages…

Most people do not work from 16 now. That is blatently incorrect. Few start before 18, and many not before 22.

I'm 61 but started working weekends at 13. I achieved NI contributory years for my last two years at school -16-18. So far I've paid 43 years NI. Still working full time.

And remember, workplace pensions were not compulsory before 2018 so many of today's pensioners worked for years without saving anything to back up their state pensions.

The only real difference between the OP and both your children is your children married partners who earned twice what they do - and OP’s husband earns a quarter of what she does.

I'm a WASPI woman, deprived of six years' pension.

This is hilarious...you are not deprived

God I wish we’d moved north earlier!

Now maybe , but I know plenty of 40 something people who did

Yes I am. For most of my life I was due to receive the state pension at 60. Then, it was moved to 66. That's six years extra for WASPI women to wait for their pension. Extra. Not what we were promised.

You're just rude.

Indeed. It's about personal decision making. My DC have made good decisions.

Yes, I thought I'd retire at 60 until this changed in the 90s. 30 years ago. I don't feel robbed or deprived at all. It's the other side of equality and has given me the opportunity to earn a good salary for six more years, to continue to progress my career into my late 50s, early 60s and put even more into to my occupational pension.

I retrained age 43/4. The change gave me the headroom to make a go of a second career. And I like work.

My partner and I earned lots more before we had children. I was a senior leader in a school, earning more than your daughter. Once I had children I could not continue to work those sort of hours and even pick up and drop my children at childcare! Let alone be present for them. So unless you are telling me they manage that and have children, it’s not the same as OP’s situation. They have a child and your ability to earn money does change when you have to balance it with childcare.

This isn’t ’widely known’. There are lucrative career options in the public sector if you are ambitious and money-minded (some trust directors are on high six figures); I’m a teacher (UPS3) earning 50k (60k if you factor in pension and holidays). That is by no means a low wage. I’ve only just returned full time after a long stint part time, but my two year plan is 65k and I plan to potentially jump to six figures before I retire to maximise my pension. Granted, it’s a slower path than it could be if I were private sector, but I by no means had some sort of calling into education; I’m just very good at my job, and I find it irritating when it’s suggested we all chose these professions because we’re somehow called into them!!

OP, your husband needs to rethink his career path or you need to earn more, otherwise yes, your pensions will be eroded or non existent. TA work is notoriously badly-paid anf kept low by the hours being part-time, and he could earn more in an easier, full time minimum wage role really. If he chose a role with progression opportunities, you’d all be far better off.

For some reason Gen Z often blame Boomers for their financial woes. Why don't Gen Z live like most Boomers did when younger: no cars, no phones, no subscriptions, no eating out, no foreign holidays etc etc. Give up all that and they'll soon be much better off financially.

I don’t disagree with this. But your initial post said that BOTH the OP and her husband need to work harder.

There’s nothing to suggest that the OP doesn’t work as hard as both your children - and she’s paid a comparative salary. She’s worse off as she married a lower earner whereas your children both married much higher earners.

I agree your children both appear to have made very good choices around who they have married.

How would no car or phone work in the real world?

And you are deluded

And you do realise that "Boomers" likewise paid for the pensions of the previous generation? That that is how it was always was ever since the state pension was first set up? (You may thank Lloyd George for that). That this generation is not being uniquely singled out in this matter?

Where you might rightly carp is re successive governments who have known for decades that this demographic issue was coming, but failed to make plans for the issue, but this is not the "Boomers'" fault. You might as well harangue their parents for "selfishly" having so many children after the war.

No, she's not deluded. It happened.

However, in op’s situation the husband has been working part time in a low paid job for 10 years, so long before their 5 year old came along and family-friendly working hours became a priority. He chose a no/low prospects job when it wasn’t necessary.

most of my life I was due to receive the state pension at 60. Then, it was moved to 66. That's six years extra for WASPI women to wait for their pension. Extra. Not what we were promised

Well us millennials have been promised sweet FA. I'm 99% sure the state pension will be means tested by the time we get there and only the very poorest will get anything (and probably not till their late 70s). Come and join us in our shitty boat, I can play you a tune on my tiny violin.

It depends on the country. In Australia a 14 y.o. can work 12 hours per week. The majority work less but by 16 they are doing those hours.

Teens here want to be independent very quickly and earn their own money, even if they live at home with full parental support to go to Uni later on.

Good grief can you imagine!
Omg nooooo they would have to ... make a sandwich to take to work.
It wouldn't be branded and also they would have to eat a whole apple , not buy it ready chopped up !
It's too cruel, you can't be serious 😅

The thing is for a lot of people in their 70’s right now, the huge leap in the quality of life and the money they have been fortunate to accrue (through property mainly and in my parents case a final salary pension) is just crazy.
My parents now mid 70’s grew up as kids in east London. Neither had a bathroom and a tin bath was taken off the wall each Sunday and filled for the whole family to bathe in one at a time in the kitchen. Can you imagine that now? Parents in insta with their shiny homes and bathrooms? Just worlds away.
My parents shared houses with cousins / aunts, no one in the family owned a car, no one had a landline or a TV. If you wanted to arrange something with a friend, you went to their house and asked or left a message. This was around 60-65 years ago.
When buying their first house together, everything was second hand from the paper. And I mean everything down to beds, kettle and even the carpet.

Now, they own a £600k house in a lovely area with 3 bathrooms, 2 cars, 4 foreign holidays a year and a mega expensive cruise.

It’s just a crazy change of circumstances.

Neither parent would say they had it hard though. They have very fond memories of childhood and simpler times.

In 1999 I was earning 27k in London. I looked at buying a 1 bed flat in South London ( now a trendy area). It was 90k.
The Bank of England inflation calculator shows these figures as the equivalent of over 50k and over 168k.
My job was a sort of second rung of the ladder one. One up from entry level. You wouldn’t earn that now in the same job. And the flat would be what? 400k?
I mean, the numbers don’t lie. Individual anecdotes are one thing, but how can anyone argue that it wasn’t harder to get on, have a family and buy a house 25/30 even 40 years ago?
The North is not that different. The house I live in up North sold for 48k in 1998. Now worth 250k

You cycle to work or get the bus. Take work within walking distance, whatever is available. Make necessary phone calls from home or work. Like we used to do.

Like some people still do. It isn't difficult.