Who is going to pay for your state pension/ care in old age?

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Apparently birth rates are falling, and this is putting future pensions (and I would imagine general tax income) in jeopardy as the population will proportionally age.

What's the solution? Should we just write off our paid for "right" to a state pension and state support for care in older age?

Does this change your view on public investment in supporting people to have children if you otherwise thought this was a personal choice and you should support/ pay for your own children?

AIBU to think that NI contributions for "pension" is essentially government mandated mis-selling and state pension will go out the window in the next few decades?

Well perhaps not everyone should go to uni by default.

Think it stemmed from the fact that men retired at 65 and, in general, women were usually younger than their husbands. Women being able to retire at 60 meant the couple could usually retire fairly close together in years.

It's not about it being default or not. The point is, if you want to attend university then you are looking at leaving with an average of £50k debt. As recently as the 1990s the government would pay you a grant and would cover all fees. My parents left university having saved money from their grant. My kids will probably accrue even more debt than what is expected now. The same kids will retire at 70 plus and be responsible for paying off the bulk of public debt that was accrued before they were even born.

Yet we hear people complain about working a few years extra to receive their triple locked pension. Sorry my heart doesn't bleed for them

How was that told to the nation?

That’s not quite true. You mean everyone “in England”.

I left school in 1986 and couldn’t afford uni.

So we have a glut of graduates (not all of them in useful subjects) who chose to take on a huge debt and not enough jobs. Now that was predictable,

I think it’s just a known fact to those who are 40 & under will never hit state pension age, by the time we get there it’ll be 80.

In ENGLAND.

I’m mid 50s and I’m not even sure the state pension will exist in 12 years time! Dh is a bit older so will probably get his. He wants to retire in early 60s currently (he owns his own business so can still keep it on and hire a manager).
We have considerable assets and can downsize so I don’t estimate it to be a big issue. Lord knows what DC will get (early 20s now).

Also if all us child-free people DID have children then we’d be in a worse position right NOW with more pressure on schools, hospitals, housing etc!!

There’s so many people not working and not paying tax who will get their pension

Everyone pays tax.

Welsh students come out with an average of £35k of debt and Scottish students £15k. Nobody comes out having saved money anymore.

£30k isn’t much more than the minimum wage now. It used to be a good salary but due to the rise in minimum wage and inflation it isn’t anymore.

My parents went to university in the 1980s and were poor. They could afford to go due to government grants.

Arguably it was predictable that you should have put what you could afford into a pension scheme even if it wouldn't produce a liveable pension. Not everyone makes perfect decisions

Good for them. I couldn’t and didn’t, for all I had the ability.

I couldn’t afford to. And if you honestly believe that a few quid a year is going to mount up to anything then you’re wrong.

I wasn’t made aware of private lessons until the whole SERPS thing - at which point I was told it was worthless.

Saying ‘not everyone makes perfect decisions’ is impressively patronising though - fair play 😀

I spent the first 50 years of my life navigating autism and ADHD (when it wasn’t recognised) so perhaps I didn’t make ‘perfect decisions’. But I’m not a stupid person.

I'm 58 so assume my kids generation ( 18 to 32) will pay mine.
They will have an issue though as none of them are having kids

As two people self-employed since our mid-30s, we made the decision to start our SIPP then, pretty much as soon as they were invented, otherwise we would not have one. Best decision we made, ever.

Second best decision was to enrol our DC at two years old. While they still have another 42 years to work, the miracle of compound interest will (hopefully) mean there is something to smooth the transition to a post-state-pension world, especially now that auto-enrolment has happened and employer contributions are mandatory.

I think 15k is a reach tbh

For 2024/25 it was almost £18k. £15k is an underestimate

Some of the nurses I worked with said the same thing. We wondered would we get a former employee discount.

It’s buttons compared to England. Students in Scotland benefit from 4 years free tuition.

www.google.co.uk/search?client=safari&hs=73xU&sca_esv=2da44a833aa204c9&hl=en-gb&sxsrf=ANbL-n7RQoBXWJrZtwC8iYyDRUP5IlQ9Mg%3A1775135934969&q=student+debt+uk&oq=student+debt+&aqs=heirloom-srp.0.0l5

I literally stated the £50k figure upthread and posters, including you I believe, piled on saying that wasn't representative of the whole of the UK. I post the other figures and get told I'm overegging them (I wasn't) or that actually the £50k figure shouldn't be forgotten.

Ok. I think the thing is that you’re stating facts about your own country which aren’t facts about the whole UK. Maybe just say “in England”?