UPDATE: Reviews section refreshed, redesigned, searchable: Go take a look
Two - if the older generation(s) were able to just show collectively a little more empathy. It's hard - we look around at our peers of a similar age and see what we have as 'normal'. They need to appreciate the life their grandchild will have won't be like theirs. If they could just acknowledge that slightly more and have a little more 'holistic' with their world view - how they perceived their lot in life, how they talk about younger generations and how they vote that would be marvellous.
Very much this.
Empathy for the 20 and 30 somethings who face huge housing costs compared to previous generations, massive student debt, a higher tax burden than previous generations, increased cost of living etc. They won't benefit from free grants, MIRAS and a more generous child benefit etc
You do not pay National insurance once you reach state retirement age
OK, but I don't suppose many people are in paid employment after state retirement age?
It's one of the reasons that I'm down to 4 days a week (on 80% salary) but planning to work until I'm 70, just need to work out if deferring my state pension is worth the 5% pa uplift or if I should draw it at 67 & invest more into a private pot. And yes I do consider myself one of the lucky ones and not just because I'm from the tale end of the baby boomer generation.
To add further - I'm thinking about what jobs I can do in a decade. I'm 53 and a CEO and on a generous salary for charitable sector. But can I keep up this pace of life, travel and stress when I'm mid 60's? I am not sure. Therefore I'm thinking about what I can do as a 'wind down' job....and this extra year is really focussing my thoughts.
All this talk of Boomers sitting in huge houses worth over half a million £ certainly doesn't apply to us if only
we'd be lucky to get £300000 for our 3 bed semi
Normally the answer to "what about me" is its a population statistic and not individual but lets take your case.
300k is actually rather a lot. I am going to guess you didnt pay anything close to that or if you did the increase in price on a previous house or houses covered most of it.
When we come down to it we have several overlapping issues.
Most of our shared assets were sold off on the cheap often to the benefit of the boomers. We are now facing the bills for those in terms of the under investment in critical infrastructure. Now in many case cases the boomers benefit was limited and they are also being hit with some of the consequences eg regarding water but its still unbalanced.
If we look at housing the price has skyrocketed and isnt helped by a subset of the above specifically council housing. We now have a higher welfare bill since we dont have adequate public reserves of housing and, in some cases, get to pay market rate for housing sold off below market rate. There is also more people living alone which ups the load plus given the shitty leaseholds resulting in an aversion to flats (fair play to the big builders who have tried to balance this out by expanding lease holds across the board vs it being flats/some parts of london and, for reasons I have never understood, some northern areas including Sheffield. Some might say this was just to gouge the buyers but I am sure it was altruistic).
Historically when we look at the previous vs current generation there is a mix of:
"about the same" which is most of the middle ages)
"worse off" we can see this with industrialisation/enclosures etc now obviously this doesnt apply to all groups but there is a reason for the luddites. Its at these times we see domestic unrest and violence. Sometimes those in charge win, there is a reason luddite is derogative, sometimes they dont and sometimes its a draw of sorts. The UK was generally good at the latter with just enough compromise from the authorities to defuse things.
"better off" This is a rather sporadic phenomena eg it was seen around the height of the black death (although on top of other social factors which is why it is only seen in some countries) and has been sustained for a while in recent generations.
The problem is we seem to be moving back to "worse off" with a bonus of "better off" having been the expectation.
We also have an aging population which combines badly with our pension system which has todays workers paying for the previous generations pension vs the latter having invested enough to cover it.
Combine all of those together and we are in a mess especially if we consider the fact life expectancy seems to have maxed out and is now dropping.
Is the hope people die before they can chill out a little? Save a few quid in pension payouts?
That's always been the case, surely ....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Finance_Balance_of_Smoking_in_the_Czech_Republic?wprov=sfla1
Not just the Czech Republic. Smokers die early saving a fortune in pension payments etc.
"In the absence of smoking, the government would spend an extra £9.8 billion annually in pension, healthcare and other benefit payments (less taxes forgone). Duty paid on tobacco products is £9.5 billion a year. In total, the gross financial benefit to the government from smoking therefore amounts to £19.3 billion. Subtracting the £4.6 billion of costs (above) produces an overall net benefit of £14.7 billion per annum."
https://iea.org.uk/publications/smoking-and-the-public-purse/
but while alive the ill health induced by smoking adds a fair amount to healthcare costs and lost productivity as well as individual suffering. Smoking is bad news all round.
Something that has not been mentioned is the amount of 'free/unpaid work' that the pensioners (probably later born Baby Boomers) are doing, eg charity work, voluntary work, working as carers for their elderly parents/relatives, while in many cases still looking after their older children.
I do see many, many older baby boomers living in what would have been their family homes, rattling around and people thinking wow that could be used for a younger family, however many of these elderly are still living there because they feel safe, they have great neighbours, who are look after each other.
All we can do now is help out the youngsters financially where possible (which is something my husband and I have done).
The latest generation have it sussed. Chill out before you start getting a job. No rush to get into a job where you have to work until you are 70 and may never make it far enough to ever stop working.
I'm a millenial, not the latest generation - but this still has some point to it.
I'm of the age when 50% of us went to university. A masters degree and a september birthday means I didnt start full time employment until I was nearly 23. And that is without the popular "gap yaah" which quite a few of my friends did.
Education of some sort to 18 was pretty much compusory for all.
And yet retirement [state pension] age is only a few years higher than when it was introduced, a time where a lot of the early recipients would have started work at 14-15.
I just don't see with the introduction of AI after years of offshoring jobs, what jobs these pensioners are going to be doing or keep doing without impacting the jobs available for those leaving education. Is it better to pay the pension to the elders, as opposed to benefits to those leaving education and not finding jobs?
I'd actually love to see the retirement age reduced, to me this creates jobs, retirees can then spend money into the economy and do other work such as volunteering or aiding children with childcare for grandchildren.
I saw some comments about properties, I don't think for retiree's the correct properties are being built, all I see being built are houses, flats and retirement flats. I can't remember the last time I saw bungalows being built!
And my last tuppence, right to die needs to come into law for terminal illnesses and life limiting injuries. Why keep those who don't want to be alive, alive.
To add further - I'm thinking about what jobs I can do in a decade. I'm 53 and a CEO and on a generous salary for charitable sector. But can I keep up this pace of life, travel and stress when I'm mid 60's? I am not sure. Therefore I'm thinking about what I can do as a 'wind down' job....and this extra year is really focussing my thoughts.
Why not just retire early?
No pockets in a shroud and if you're a CEO on a generous salary, you are surely able to afford it.
You can always do some sort of volunteering if you are worried about having too much time on your hands.
I can't remember the last time I saw bungalows being built!
Saw some in Fife a couple of years ago, large(ish) estate of mainly bungalows right on the main coast road near St Monans. It was enough of a rarity to be notable in itself.
(Sorry. Slightly off topic, but worth mentioning as a comment to the statement. Carry on, everyone)
And yet retirement [state pension] age is only a few years higher than when it was introduced, a time where a lot of the early recipients would have started work at 14-15.
Compulsory school until the age of 16 came in from 1972, so you'd need to be 80 years old to have escaped before you were 16 anywhere in the UK.
It is a good point though - the number of legitimately full time working years has reduced from the era when the majority left education at 16 or 18 to the majority not finishing until 21.
Why not just retire early?
No pockets in a shroud and if you're a CEO on a generous salary, you are surely able to afford it.
You can always do some sort of volunteering if you are worried about having too much time on your hands.
"Generous salary for the charitable sector". Having worked most of my life for charities I do lag behind friends and family in private and public sector jobs. I also have OH who has been unable to work properly for nearly two decades and now retired under ill health. This means at 53 I have 7 years o mortgage ahead still... All of that tends to torpedo retirement plans.
But yes, at some point I may choose 'I can afford that / live on that little'.
Of course I can do more volunteering, but forgive me if my volunteering at present is pretty minimal...
Anybody born in 6 week summer holidays can leave before 16. I'd finished my GCSEs by the very start of June and didn't have to go back afterwards. I didn't turn 16 until August. My last exam was on a Thursday so I treated myself to Friday off and started work on Monday morning.And yet retirement [state pension] age is only a few years higher than when it was introduced, a time where a lot of the early recipients would have started work at 14-15.
Compulsory school until the age of 16 came in from 1972, so you'd need to be 80 years old to have escaped before you were 16 anywhere in the UK.
It is a good point though - the number of legitimately full time working years has reduced from the era when the majority left education at 16 or 18 to the majority not finishing until 21.
I'd actually love to see the retirement age reduced, to me this creates jobs, retirees can then spend money into the economy and do other work such as volunteering or aiding children with childcare for grandchildren.
Agreed - that should surely be the objective? use AI and wotnot to free up humans to have more fulfilling lives, not to keep slaving to fill Elon Musk's pockets.
I don't think for retiree's the correct properties are being built, all I see being built are houses, flats and retirement flats. I can't remember the last time I saw bungalows being built!
A friend who's a physio opined that old people benefit from stairs - doing exercise walking up them and also training their balance. Of course that becomes impossible beyond a certain point.
Bungalow foot/feet/legs is a real thing.
can't remember the last time I saw bungalows being built!
Relatively expensive to build and take up too much land.
Most flats have lifts installed.
There's something to be said for old codgers to be living within a community where they have more social contact and better infrastrutture in place for them.
Loneliness is a big problem amongst the old. Many can't/don't go out and living in the suburbs isolates them unless they have private vehicle (that they can't/shouldn't be driving).
The whole thing just irritates me with 4 years to go currently. My parents paid their parents pensions, mum and dad were war children , and I am guess I am paying theirs. It won't go down well here but I reckon that we should be able to opt out from day one. Same with health and education. Goal posts always moving. Doubt Burnham will improve matters.
Id go further - those who do jobs that benefit us all like NHS, emergency services, military, 3rd sector and state education get a credit boost for say the first 10 years to encourage more people to do it for part of their orking life before disappearing into higher paid wealth gathering professions. Or to encourage those short of credits towards the end of their career to go work for a charity or teach to qualify for a state pension.
Eh, the pension provision for those roles already far exceeds most private sector roles. If the defined benefit pension is not already attracting people I don’t think an enhanced state pension is going to.
The suggestion wasn’t an enhanced state pension, just making it easier to qualify for it. There are definitely roles that need filling that also don’t fit well with having to work for too many years in them to qualify for the state pension, especially very physical roles in the NHS.
It's weird because my perception of this is:
"Oh shit the current generation of pensioners is costing us too much money and is unsustainable.... So let's **** things up by taking EVEN more from the next generation". Never any thought of reducing the cushy benefits that the current ones get, just reducing what people after then will get again.
Obviously that's not quite true as the people this will impact are currently 48 years old and upwards so not exactly the younger generation, but neither are they the gilded generation.
Cushy benefits like Winter Fuel Allowance? That cut went well......
There's something to be said for old codgers to be living within a community where they have more social contact and better infrastrutture in place for them.
I helped my father move onto a 82no. flats, semi sheltered/supported place with huge social scene. It's properly transformed life. From sitting bored and grumpy about his old housing association to being out every day either in the complex (cafe, pool, gym, lounge, garden they can actually maintain themselves etc) or some of the trips - today is a packed lunch down the canal with some neighbours...
Eh, the pension provision for those roles already far exceeds most private sector roles.
Reading pension chat here makes my upcoming pensions after 30years of teaching (10 in promoted post) look rubbish.
About half of "comfortable" annual amount (which to be fair seems very high). My lump sum has been almost quartered, so using this to top up is reduced.
I did take into account pay, pension and holidays when I looked at teaching at the turn of the century and it was something I was happy with. The lack of pay rises for near enough a decade has had an effect and then the pension raid and change in structuring has massively reduced my pension now compared to what it was. If I was looking at teaching now and forecasting forward I'm not sure I'd go into it. Today's teachers (in Scotland) will be looking at an additional 10 years on their career and that will mean a lot more dieing in service.
Actuarial assesments are telling in this. If I go 7years later then my monthly payment is much higher and my lump sum would be quadrupled but I'd possibly not be in physical position to enjoy it.
Many people didn’t pay NI on their pension contributions. Even those who did haven’t paid NI on their pension growth
The rules on salary sacrifice NI avoidance are already due to change in 2029, so the number of people not paying will (IIRC) roughly halve and be limited to lower sacrifice levels. On your second point, I don’t really see the logic of charging NI on savings growth.
Reading pension chat here makes my upcoming pensions after 30years of teaching (10 in promoted post) look rubbish.
Knowing a teacher who has just retired at 60 makes my pension as it will be after 42yrs in a private company look rubbish as does comparing mine with cousin who retired at 55 from the railways on a greater pension than my current salary, but then again I can still acknowledge that I'm one of the lucky ones - you're probably just comparing yours to some of the very lucky/astute ones on here.
That's as maybe but my point is public sector pensions are being cut, certainly in teaching and the police (just received another cut to lump sum). The schemes we joined back in the day no longer exist and the pay outs on the the older schemes are now much reduced. Those retired recently are in a much better place than I am (and I acknowledge I'm not too badly off) but those to follow, well my advice would be think longer and harder as the benefits are definitely not what they were.
