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Oh my god! That young person owns a phone! That’s where all the wealth is being horded! What next… young families with a… gosh… flat screen tv! Never had avocados in my day…
Those on here crying about their 30-40 years NI contributions have absolutely no idea the pain of being in your early 30’s and never ever having lived in a time of economic growth. Most of you own your own houses. Really have no sympathy at all for you.
Massive generalisation.
I can't help but remember a film/ book...
Lil' Rish and mates can have bets on the outcome.
As for AI replacing people, so far it’s magical thinking IMO.
Hmmm, the chatbot on my banking app is AI, if you look carefully at a lot of the online articles of the newspapers you'll notice a subtle lines about assisted with an AI Tool(or some odd comment), I'd say they have a certain feel as they make some odd random comments about things that are unimportant/odd observations to the story.
I've noticed this on UK and Spanish sites.
Its happening in front of your eyes 🙂
At 60 i was physically and mentally done. There is no way i could have worked another decade or more.
Retrain you say? To what. Cant spend time on my feet.
People in my position will just end up on disability benefits.
Me too at 54. Worked until 2 years ago when body and mind have just said no more after struggling a good while. Knackered wrists and knees mean no 'easy' delivery/shelf stacking/check-out jobs. Combine that with fried head with stress over the years and brain fog and exhaustion from CFS.
I'd love to get back to work for the social side as much as the money, but with the body only getting worse it's not at all likely. Luckily my wife has a good and secure job and is very supportive and understanding.
Oh, and we don't own a house,neve mind a big or paid off one.
Those on here crying about their 30-40 years NI contributions have absolutely no idea the pain of being in your early 30’s and never ever having lived in a time of economic growth. Most of you own your own houses. Really have no sympathy at all for you.
Massive generalisation.
Yep, not all of us oldies are happy with the younger generation getting screwed over.
Those on here crying about their 30-40 years NI contributions have absolutely no idea the pain of being in your early 30’s and never ever having lived in a time of economic growth. Most of you own your own houses. Really have no sympathy at all for you.
I think it's a little ironic to complain about a group being unable to sympathise with you whilst simultaneously being unable to sympathise with them.
I guess I'm somewhere in-between those two groups. I think both sides have a point. Screw the baby boomers, though.
Yep, not all of us oldies are happy with the younger generation getting screwed over.
Particularly because many of us have kids. Mind there is some I may not have sympathy for.
There’s the dichotomy… we need more young people to balance out the older people… but the older people don’t want us to have more young people (be it more fresh faced immigrants or a tax and benefit system or the housing provision that supports larger family units) and they have all the political power because of their numbers and where they can afford to live MP constituency wise.
We don't need more young people. We need to get rid of the older people. It's not politically (or morally) acceptable but would fix all of our current problems. It'd free up housing, more than half the benefits bill, fix the NHS, and stop councils from going bankrupt.
We need to get rid of the older people.
I've been arguing for years that all old people should be killed at birth.
We don’t need more young people. We need to get rid of the older people.<br /><br />
I think thats the plan! Work them to death.
We don’t need more young people. We need to get rid of the older people. It’s not politically (or morally) acceptable but would fix all of our current problems. It’d free up housing, more than half the benefits bill, fix the NHS, and stop councils from going bankrupt.
In fairness, the current government is giving that a good go.
I think the original solution was to put you on a spinny anti gravitiy thing when you reached 30 so you floated up and got lasered.
masterdabber
Free Member
It’s really great being old on here and reading all this. I think I’ll go away and top myself and make a few of you happy.
If we all did that the forum would be empty! 😉
We should just make it fair. Anybody that likes their job and wants to carry on working can do so for as long as they wish. Those utter cockwombles who proudly state they’ve never had a day off sick are forced to work until they drop down dead at work, no complaining. Same for those who say they would keep on working if they won the lottery or would be bored if they retired. The remaining normal people get to retire and at least enjoy a small sliver of life at the end.
Not sure how useful these sort of news stories are.
My initial response is; “that’s a bit shit and if they are increasing the state retirement age, they better be bloody reducing tax to make up for the loss in benefit from paying NI for decades.”
That then mellows in to “Guess I need to up my SIPP pension contributions to make up the shortfall then”
Net result is next month I’ll likely pay even less tax than last month, further exacerbating the issue to HMRC.
That then mellows in to “Guess I need to up my SIPP pension contributions to make up the shortfall then”
You say that... But then I recall that when I started in the job market early retirement could be taken at age 50.
That rose to 55 and will be 57 next year.
So with 20 years to go before I can take a pension from my personal pension.... Do I see me getting there before it's raised again. Unlikely. So throwing more and more at a sipp seems like a fools folly.
So throwing more and more at a sipp seems like a fools folly.
Sure, but paying less into a sipp means paying more tax today that, going by that article, I will see no benefit from. That’s lost money.
Paying more into pension now then worst case it compounds for an extra few years.
I think the pattern will be in general a shift to part time and lower stress working in later life. People will not retire all at once but will cut hours or reduce responsibilities after 55 or 60. clever employers will facilitate this with recognised pathways
Pensions all in all are a utter mess in the uk and a lot of wealth is hoarded by the relatively wealthy elderly. The housing market works as a mechanism to transfer wealth to the older and the already wealthy
We need a much better basic state pension even if that means taxing other pensions strongly or a better taxation elsewhere or tie it all in with universal basic income
joe, you will find that your post ^^^ means that those for whom you have '...no sympathy' will have no sympathy for you and will see your post as little more than a whinge.
Do let us know if you have any constructive comment to make.
Are you in your early 30s as you've used that as a reference point?
My three children are in their 30s; all have their own houses - 2 of them in UK, 1 in US; help was available from their parents but they all bought without that support.
It's not easy but is doable.
Paying more into pension now then worst case it compounds for an extra few years.
Well that depends on your family history doesn't it.
Assuming you have the choice of firing more into your sipp -suggests your probably not the intended victim of this policy mind.
My three children are in their 30s; all have their own houses – 2 of them in UK, 1 in US; help was available from their parents but they all bought without that support.
It’s not easy but is doable.
How doable it is depends massively on where you live. In Brighton, for example, you need to be on a 6-figure salary to buy the average terraced house. The average salary in Brighton is less than one third of that.
How doable it is depends massively on where you live.
There's a lot of parental advantage in play too, even if it's not in the form of help with a deposit.
Newsthump sums it up nicely
Planning your funeral now a more realistic priority than planning your retirement
Being able to afford to die is a whole other thread. Mrs F will be fly tipping my corpse if I go first!
My three children are in their 30s; all have their own houses – 2 of them in UK, 1 in US; help was available from their parents but they all bought without that support.
It’s not easy but is doable
I’m assuming you supported your kids in other ways and were generally a good parent? Encouraged them to do well at school? Provided a loving and stable environment? Again, not a luxury that everyone has. I take it back if you were a neglectful bastard with no concern for his kids futures 😃
I think the original solution was to put you on a spinny anti gravitiy thing when you reached 30 so you floated up and got lasered.
> checks palm of hand <
"I think the pattern will be in general a shift to part time and lower stress working in later life."
Worked for me. High stress full time (and more) work until 49. Low stress part time work since. Though it's all relative. One of my part time jobs included dealing hands on with cons so there was the odd stressful moment but few and far between.
I am in the lucky position that my part time job 22hrs a week is on an irregular shift pattern. Sometimes I work 6 days out of seven. Other times I'm off for 7 days in a row. So most hobby related stuff I can do without taking holidays.
I'm 4 years from state pension age and I'm not actuially sure I'll chuck the job at that point. I may just see if I can reduce hours a bit more by cutting out the nightshifts I do.
Why is this country so uniquely shit amongst similar nations in Europe
Assume this question was rhetorical.
The initial issue isn’t one of politics but mathematics - we have a declining number of people working a declining number of years having to be taxed an increasing amount to pay for a greater number of economically inactive people living for an increasing number of years which are usually increasingly expensive as their health and social care needs escalate. The political issue is that many of that cohort of ageing people are sitting on healthy amounts of assets thanks to the boom in house prices over the years which they expect to pass down the generations - that could help provide for the retirement aspirations of their offspring or we could tax it more heavily (after all they are accidentally better off) to help us all. It’s part of a Big Conversation which none of the political classes are willing to indulge in - not with an election looming at least.
Being able to afford to die is a whole other thread. Mrs F will be fly tipping my corpse if I go first!
Yeah.. Plan my funeral? WTF for I'll be dead.
I’m assuming you supported your kids in other ways and were generally a good parent? Encouraged them to do well at school? Provided a loving and stable environment? Again, not a luxury that everyone has. I take it back if you were a neglectful bastard with no concern for his kids futures 😃
None of which guarantee financial security. I probably could have scraped a reasonable pension, but I would have needed to have lived like a Buddhist monk (pretending my income would have remained unchanged had I done so.)
My three children are in their 30s; all have their own houses – 2 of them in UK, 1 in US; help was available from their parents but they all bought without that support.<br />It’s not easy but is doable.<br /><br />
University Grads? Did they pay for it all themselves? Lawyers? Doctors? Finance? Did you help them get settled when they first moved out and got their first jobs?
Early help in any form has the same compounding effect as any other early investment. Those that don’t/can’t get that help fall farther and farther behind. <br /><br />
My friends and I all graduated at the same time, all with similar qualifications, but many had accommodation paid for, stipends given and loans/fees paid off. For those that didn’t you had to service that debt. <br /><br />
Location also matters. Graduates in the same company earn the same salary in the north west as in the south west, but housing is almost 3x the price.
A person with uni debt will be £800/m worse off in the SW than in the NW. That’s a lot of pension AND house deposit money to save that another person with different circumstances doesn’t have, so let’s avoid sweeping generalisations based on anecdotal evidence, shall we?
5lab - yes, location is a factor; find a lower cost area and...move, subject of course to being able to find suitable employment.
Staying renting in the same area if house prices are already unaffordable seems, to me, to be pointless - and, yes, I know that's simplistic but an online forum calls for brevity.
Aidy - can you elaborate?
Yay! My private pension pot might have enough in it by the time I'm 71 to buy a coffee and a cake at Costa.
I try not to let it sicken me too much seeing relatives retire in their 50's. I'd do the same if I could.
Was chatting to one of the dads at my son's football training, and he mentioned that he's now only got 10 years until retirement, he's not much older than me. 😢
People will not retire all at once but will cut hours or reduce responsibilities after 55 or 60
Yeah, non manual but sometimes stressful job here, worked full time till 59, now on 4 days a week & plan to work till 70 coz I've not got a great pension - actually works out about same time worked as if I stayed full time & retired at 67..
Daffy - one grad and he's in the US.
One served his time as a plumber who then focussed on commercial, high end resi and bms; building on that, his employer moved him onto mechanical services project management on a new studio development for Netflix.
Daughter is a beautician.
Work ethic is a much undervalued attribute; for clarity, I'm not implying that it's lacking in you.
Aidy – can you elaborate?
I mean, it's a big topic.
But the short of it is that parents affect how successful their children will be. Even if it's not directly financial, even a stable home is a luxury that a very significant number of people will not have. Some educational opportunities are just not available to others.
I'm glad that your children are doing well, but I don't think it's the case that other people's children could do equally well by just pulling their socks up and working a bit harder.
Aidy - I didn't refer to 'pulling up their socks' as it's a pointless and meaningless expression.
As for working harder/work ethic - different people have different interpretations of 'working hard'.
How about (always) striving to do their best.
It's clear we don't agree; I'm ok with that.
No-one ever said life was fair - it isn't.
A '...very significant number' of people don't have a stable home is an interesting statement which depends on how you define 'significant number'.
Some? Yes.
Too many? One is too many.
40% of the children in this town live in poverty.60% in my adjoining council ward!Try thinking about that Frank. I think you will find many examples of this across the country.
I'm very well aware that poverty is a significant societal problem - and have seen the impact close-up through voluntary work - but thanks for your suggestion that I should '...think about it'.
That voluntary work is intended to provide help and support to those in need - homeless, specifically - so I know I'm 'doing my bit' and have been for c20years.
Would you, monkey, describe your area - generally - as deprived?
Where in the country are you?
There are multiple examples of wards within a council area being described as deprived with residents in poverty and other wards in the same council area clearly and visibly demonstrating conspicuous wealth.
What do you think causes the poverty and deprivation?
What do you think should be done to alleviate the problem?
What are you doing to help alleviate the problem? That could be as simple - and easy - as lobbying your local/county council and MP through emails and supporting local initiatives. You could consider becoming actively involved.
Anyone and everyone can comment about the problem.
Words are cheap.
What matters is action.
As someone that lives in the NW, spoiler alert, housing is still not cheap. And theres plenty of areas such as brighton that are unobtainable for working folk. Transport is far worse as the towns and cities have bery poor connections. 2 trains an hour on the lines between manchester and liverpool. Generally speaking there is much less wealth accumulated by people in these areas, and i might be wrong but surely the property bubble concentrated a lot of wealth in the South East.
But aside from housing which is a separate shitshow- surely the elephant in the room is that the tax system is goosed. The wealthiest corporations in history pay no tax in the uk (many contribute to harm and target kids too), and we allow it. No appetite to close loopholes so the poorest pay proprtionally by far the highest burden. And by poor folk I include the squeezed middle. Let's be fair, we started down this path when we decided to transition to a services economy and practically invented the tax haven to attract buisness. It is a frustration thag we have to 'attract foreign investment' for infrastructure, because all of the capital ge erated here is locked away in shell companies offshore.
its good to see this debate on here. Thats lacking in general in the UK. Ive no idea why we also tollerate extremely wealthy media moguls shaping public oppinion to suit themselfs, with no scrutiny. This is intrinsically linked to politics being dominated by extremely wealthy folk who have one eye on their own investments.
I'd be more inclined to play a fair game for longer.