To think we are heading into a pensions disaster

[She11y]

I asked ChatGPT what the median pension savings were for someone in their mid 40s and I got the below reply:

Ages 35 to 44: The median pension pot is approximately £30,600.
• Ages 45 to 54: The median pension pot increases to about £81,200.

This website has a similarly sobering statistic - average pension pot for 50-59 is £96k.

https://www.nutsaboutmoney.com/pensions/average-pension-pot-uk

These are averages and the number will be brought down by some people who have zero pension savings but it's still a very low amount.

How are people going to survive retirement. There aren't many jobs for people the wrong side of 50z

What do you mean? Please explain

Oh come on.

I cycled 4 miles each way to uni, lectures/seminars/lab work all day, every day, played for the uni hockey team - 3 evening training sessions per week plus 1 weekend match (usually a 2/3 hr drive away), lived in and paid for my own flat with my boyfriend at the time, worked Fri/Sat/Sun night in a bistro to earn £150 per week plus tips.
Zero need for handouts from 'mummy and daddy'.

I was 19. Most 19 year olds have LOADS of energy.

There is no reason why students can't work. None.

You do realise that Government employees have to contribute A LOT towards their pension! DH was a serving soldier for 17 years and now a police officer for 18 years. He’s had to contribute an absolute fortune over the years to his pension without having a choice and by goodness we’ve struggled. The money gets taken before he gets paid and we’ve had years when our kids were little with no heating in the winter. People grizzle about heating or eating these days but it’s only on the last 2 years, now our DC are out of their teens that we’ve been able to have the heating on! Many a year we’ve sat in coats and blankets.

DH will get a good pension because he’s contributed most of it for the past 35yrs! We are both in our 50s so we won’t get much if a state pension because older people who have never worked reap the benefits!

just out of interest, where do you get the 0 council tax from? I am retired and pay full council tax and my income is my state pension and a very small NHS pension. I live alone in a Band A house in a horrible area and now pay £135 a month and that is with with the 25% discount. Who are these pensioners who do not have to pay any council tax?

Some people on means tested benefits get council tax reductions up to 100%.

https://lottie.org/fees-funding/do-pensioners-pay-council-tax/

Every council has its own rules but if you receive the Guarantee Credit portion of Pension Credit you can be eligible for up to 100% discount. They won't tell you about it though! You have to enquire.

DH will get a good pension because he’s contributed most of it for the past 35yrs!

No offence but he hasn't. The employer is often putting in contributions worth 25 or 30% of salary on DB schemes. What percentage of salary was your DH contributing 20 years ago? Probably under 10 or as little as 5%.

Did you do a stem degree at a top university?

Teachers contribute 7-10% while employers are adding over 28%!

And when was this?

I’ve got three at Uni and only one of mine has found a job cleaning toilets at Thorpe Park.
If you haven’t experienced it. If you don’t know many kids at Uni. You really don’t know.

Although basic maths isn’t that tricky when most Unis have thousands and thousands of kids all descending on them and looking for pt work locally.

Exactly. And even if a degree was just 35 hours a week then that's equivalent to a full time job.

Definitely the case when I was at uni
9-5 course Monday- Friday. Some terms I had an unpredictable one day a week off, but never regularly on the same day.

I also did placements, some of these required me to move for 6-12 week periods to different towns. The ones that didn't was still the equivalent of working well over a full time job any

I was also in the position (which is a luxury) of having the option of a shorter term time rent or a full year rent. A full year rent added thousands on my yearly costs and I discovered that i couldn't earn enough in that period to justify it. Term time meant it was impossible to get a job

There really isn't many jobs up for recruiting people that dissappear over the summer, have random routines and are unavailable 9-5 on different days each semester. They tend to go to college students who stick around, and are far more available. There's a small number of jobs that suit that and in university towns its fiercely competitive. Most jobs won't look twice at you because it's expensive to start someone on a zero hour contract if you aren't sure how much they can do. I wouldn't employ someone in that situation

I briefly worked in a bar but couldn't sustain 1 am finishes with being up working in a hospital at 8 in a challenging role that was new to me, it would have been fired anyway because of the summer thing

Tbh @Suzuki76 its irrelevant.
There are some jobs for some students. There just aren’t thousands of jobs for thousands of students.

That's that wrong choice when they can get student loans. That's the financial equivalent of putting on your child's mask on a plane before yours.

I know people who think they will be fine on state pension yet when you dig you realize then don't even know how much state pension pays.

Yes. One of my (non-STEM) kids did a language degree where there would have been time to do paid work. They spent so much time applying for every retail and hospitality job in their city. At one point, I even looked at their CV to check that it wasn’t full of nonsense, but their applications were fine.

They showed me the stats of some of them. For example, a job in superdry had 700 people applying for one job. Everybody says that there are loads of jobs in restaurants and shops available. In cities with a high number of students, there really isn’t.

People don’t realise uni fees are not traditional debt. It does not affect the ability to get a mortgage or credit ratings. If you don’t earn enough you don’t pay back. It’s madness that people spend so much in what’s essentially a temporary tax.

Exactly

Do you not understand that the high street is shuttering at a rate of knots, the minimum wage has gone up yet again so a local 16 year old is cheaper on a till (and more available) than a 20 year old student, people aren't eating out like they were 20 years ago and lots of part time jobs are now taken up by parents earning a second household income (like me?)

I worked at uni, in a big box retail store. 4pm to 8pm. Guess what? It's not even there any more.

You clearly didn’t have mountains of academic work to do in your own time. That can make a huge difference.

Public sector workers are not getting great pensions because of their contributions. It’s the employer (ie taxpayer) contribution that is paying for them.

Your child’s uni fees? Why would you pay that instead of into a pension?

It is relevant if this was a time when paying rent for a flat and tuition fees was affordable off a student grant/loan and £150 top up a week.

Older people, if you had 1 child (vasectomy so this is guaranteed) and already live in a small 400k 2 bed flat near good london state schools, would you upgrade to a 700k to 750k 2 bed flat (no difference in size) in a nicer area (excellent state primary), stay put or move to a 500k 2 bed flat nearby (essentially lateral move but more space)..

I would 100% prioritize private school fees over housing and as we bought our flat young, we would be mortgage free in our 40s (I am 32 and expecting) as long as our mortgage doesn't substantially increase. And if private school fees are unaffordable for us down the line, we would send our child to state school, I just don't want to eliminate the option at this stage. Particularly before secondary age, I would have at least 7 years to save even if child went to state primary esp with a low mortgage (mortgage 1282). Same applies for university.

Dh wants to do both- 750k flat and private school but I doubt we could save much of a pension with that. We wouldn't have any inheritance as our parents favour our younger siblings. I suppose we could downsize the flat to live in a cheaper area (not in terms of size as it would be small) but at the same time, there is an article in the Ft that very few people make money from downsizing so it seems a risky strategy.

I’m afraid I also agree that something needs to give re public sector pensions - they’re just untenable really. I have relatives receiving what I would consider extremely good incomes in their 40s from armed forces pensions (none of whom have ever served anywhere remotely dangerous) and a friend was telling me the other day how much she found she was due from her six years with the nhs (she was both flabbergasted and very happy!)…. Obviously a very unpopular opinion and I do understand why…

People with kids at Uni know exactly how the loans work.
The issue is not getting the loan. The issue is rents are so high they are not enough to live on.
Hence parents have to help because there aren’t enough jobs around for those students that have the time to do them in the first place.

Parents make a lot of sacrifices for their kids.