Did the over-45s ruin life for the rest of us?

[goldenticket]

Interesting article - it's certainly been my and DH's experience in the workplace (withdrawal of perks, pensions, travel arrangements etc etc). Wondered what anyone else thought?

It could be argued that high property prices are the responsibility of those who offered them in the first place, not those who accepted them.

And in any case, if all this fabulous wealth is in the hands of an older generation, won't the youngsters get their paws on it sooner or later?

I'm one of the last of the baby boomers. I rent, have no pension, and no career, since In My Day I had no maternity protection, and we didn't have subsidised childcare/working tax credits etc. I still have both of my adult children living at home and I've subsidised their further education so they haven't run up debts, but the money I've invested in them can't also be invested in me.

I do agree with that but my parents never had any money spare to do that. It was as far out of their reach as a half million pound house is now for most people.

I think you are particularly disadvantaged in the housing market in the SE. The prices are astronomical.

I was actually just about to apologise for being such a stroppy cow on my earlier posts. I've had a really stressy day and am worrying that I might be pregnant (I'm sure I'm not but still fretting) although am probably just pre-menstrual. Anyway, it wasn't fair to leap down your OP like that!

I think the fact that most MP's are over 45 is very telling.
The boomers were in the right place at the right time, not their fault but I was nearly very rude to somebody (aged 50) selling a £100k overpriced house when she explained she couldn't take an offer because she had to think of her daughters future, but you'd happily flush my children's future down the toilet would you
She still hasn't sold it btw.

Certainly my parents who are in their 60s are working class background who now have all those things due to government policies of the time. They gained mainly through the selling off of the utilities, banks etc where they bought shares and sold them making huge amounts of money, Dad got a nice early retirement package, the have a valuable for the area home outright etc etc.

Let's just say many of the policies that were announced by Thatcher were to my parents huge advantage, sadly they were to the detriment of my Uncle (coal miner) and of course very detrimental to my and my dh as we've had our civil service pensions withdrawn despite having made additional contributions for 10 years based on the iformation given to us so dh now stuck in a low paid job, no decent pension anymore, and expected to work into his 70s.

Golden - the reason that it's not taxed as an investment is because it's classed as a home, not an investment - everyone has to live somewhere. No tax system in the world taxes a home.

belle..you have mail

I agree with this up to a point. As someone else said, I don't think it's fair to include the last 5 (-10?) years of the baby boomers. I'm 46 and we are not in the position my parents were at this age.

I won't be able to get a pension (if they still exist) until I'm 66. Although university was free very few people of my era went. I think from my school year of 360 we had 4 that went to uni to be doctors and another half dozen that went to polytechnic. I went to work at 16. My own kids didn't get to enter the full time workplace until they were 21.

My parents bought their house on one salary. Even with 2 decent salaries we can't aspire to a house the size theirs was and I have to work, while my mum got to stay at home.

I expect that most families are in the same boat as us

Was going to type loads about this, what with being 45 and struggling financially, but then decided not to bother.

Was talking to my grandad about this - he
is 90. He thinks his generation really had the best of it ( despite being torpedoed off the Azores in WW2) and so did the baby boomers. They own property, pension, my parents and their friends are on cruises, long haul flights in retirement yadda, yadda.

But my mother points out that my generation has expectations of material possessions - car, phone, computer, social life, washing machine even, that she vould never have afforded with a young family. And my sister is 28 and still at home because her lifestyle is better if she foesn't have to pay bills.

However I know very few people of my age who can afford to pay into a decent pension, most are renting or crammed ino one or two bed flats.

I'm really not convinced that anyone under 55 has a chance of having the lifestyle that my parents have unless they are self made millionaire types IYSWIm. Most of the people I know in their 40s are really no better off than me! Squilly I feel your pain!

Yep - me too! DH is 47 (and should, therefore, be loaded) and I'm 41. 3 kids, huge mortgage, the cost of running 2 cars (no public transport), utilities, pensions etc etc etc. We are officially Utterly Skint.

Oh great.I was 46 recently so I guess its ALL MY FAULT.

I am 35 and yet to pay into a pension. But hey I've got another 35 years of work ahead of me so plenty of time!

smallorange I hate to depress you further but dh was offered a mortage until he was 75 so they clearly think your generation will be working another 40 years yet..........

I'm an early baby boomer (1946) and can still remember having a ration book, 46 in the class when I started school, wellies in winter, sandshoes in summer. Starting work at 15 - family needed the money - working in a bank but no promotion, no bonus, no pension because I was a girl. 4 nights a week at night school, to get qualifications I should have done at school. Married saved like mad to afford giving up work to have 2 x DDs. No maternity leave or pay, no flexible working, no help with child care, pin-money wages for part time jobs. Housed in a council hell hole, bought a semi-derilict house and moved in immediately with toddler and babe in arms as could not also afford rent, no car, walked everwhere with pram and pram seat.

Eventually, got back on employment ladder but all savings directed at DD's college, Uni, house deposits. No works pension (nor self employed DH) so started a personal pension each. On retirement our income just a few £££s over level for claiming benefits but mortgage paid off so we manage fine. My parents did buy their council house so on their death my sister and I got £10,000 each. This being the sum total of any money we ever got from parents - they simply could not afford to help us out.

BTW I have been re-cycling, re-using, composting and 'growing my own' all my life - through necessity.

'Mmm OK, I do think there's something in it though:

property rich - tick
final salary pensions - tick
early retirement on full pensions - tick
retiring at 60 or 65 - tick
non-contributary pensions - tick

Of course it's not the whole of the generation but can you name anyone under 45 who has any of the above?'

Yes, I know several who have 3 of the above.

hides thread

2shoes??

Blimey, I'm feeling left of Lenin after this thread. OK, am out of step obviously, but I do wonder whether a revolution of sorts is coming when our children realise just how badly they have been shafted all ways round.

As a child of baby boomers (1946/48) and having many friends who are children of baby boomers who are now in their 30s, I have to say that, although that generation were very lucky with the property market in general, they are paying a hefty price for it now in ensuring that their children, who have been less fortunate, reap some of the benefits of that. The vast majority of my friends who have their own homes have only managed to do so by accepting help from their parents.

I know that, for my parents in particular, who were both from working class families and who went through the grammar school system and were the first in their families to go to university, they felt that the most important thing they could do was to make life comfortable for their children and, through no fault of their own, this has not been the case and the pursuit of this is still costing them.

I would never blame them for reaping the benefits of living through the economic times they have. I think it is a far greater question than that. It is an economic system that is to blame, not a generation of people just making the best of their lives.

That's all very well if you have parents who are in a position to help you out, but what about everyone else?

The baby boomers (those who were young in the 60s) pulled up the ladder after them. They had free university education - not only free but complete with grants! Then when that generation became government ministers, they turned round and told the younger generation 'tough shit, we expect you to get into debt'.

They had a housing market where reasonable stable tenancies were available AND if you wanted to buy, prices bore some relationship to average earnings. They had occupational pensions and early retirement in their 50s... and often a job for life. The difference in the quality of life for a lot of people born in '45 compared to someone born in, say, '75, is striking.

"My parents (and all of us probably) have paid for their pensions. They paid for it every year in National Insurance. It's not their fault (or anyone but politicians) that the money was spent the minute it started coming in and there is none left now"

They weren't paying for their pensions, they were paying for the pensions of the set of pensioners that lived at that time.

There pensions will be paid for by us, and our pensions by our children.

That's how NI works and how it has always worked, it's never been a pot of savings that people paid into.

However the system went more than a bit wrong.

People started living longer, so the cost of the system went up. And then people started having less children, so the money going into the system went down.

Rather than having a nice population pyramid where the old are supported by there being more young people under them we have what looks like an age apple. There are currently few old people, few young people and a big bulge of middle aged people, the baby boomers. When that big bulge hits pension age, and it has already begun, there will be trouble.

So the baby boomers benefited by having few old people to support when they were paying NI and by having us support them. When it's our turn to claim the system will probably have collapsed, we'll have "paid in" but get nothing.

It's not their fault and it wasn't deliberate but the baby boomers do have it good, or comparatively good to how the next generation is going to have it.

I don't deny that they do and neither am I saying it is fair. I do slightly resent the implication that they have deliberately, as one big entity, chosen to leave the next generation to pick up the tab. I don't think we can blame them - particularly as the decrease in population, which has lead to some of our economic woes as discussed above, was partly a result of some of the great legacies that generation have given us - feminism, the pill...etc.