Babyboomers: £220,000 in debt

I haven't paid off my mortgage and am never likely to

Yes, it can't possibly be all nonsense etc. if it's in the Guardian!

I live in the SE, London to be precise, but would not class myself as being "property rich".

JessM said in the south east. You cannot deny, Charley, that lots of people in the south east have properties that are worth more than those in the south west or the north east. That's all she was saying, not that everyone in London is property rich.

Well I have read the article as far as my limited powers of comprehension would permit, and it did not appear to me that it was boomer-bashing.
It seemed to be basically saying that it is all very complicated, and boomers are not a homogeneous group.
The most alarming statement was the revelation that there is a £1billion deficit in John Lewis's pension fund

That's why the staff at JL did not get such a large bonus as last year. They are making up the deficit over the next few years, Jane.

I would also like to point out that the majority of civil servants were not well paid and certainly not in the 'super-tax' bracket.

No they are certainly no are they rosequartz - only the high flyers.

I would love to live in a house worth 1 million pounds, I would not have problems paying for care costs if required, in the future.

I agree durhamjen that houses are a lot more expensive in the SE than in eg the north of England. We did earn marginally more because the "London Weighting" kicked in and was very helpful, especially paying for transport costs.

Yes I certainly did not think everyone in London property rich. But I do have relatives in London and I guess that my cousin's shabby 200 year old house in the east end is probably worth best part of a million, even with its 50 year old bathroom and kitchen. Done up, it certainly would be.

When we moved from the SE to Wales nearly 30 years ago we got a bigger house here for the same price, and London prices have gone up out of all proportion since then. I doubt we could buy our old house back for what we could sell this one for. We also had to pay the 15% mortgage interest rate when we moved from a cheaper area to London (how on earth did we do it?).
But if it is your home it is not making you 'rich' unless you want to sell and move somewhere cheaper. The property programmes on tv always talk about property as investments and something to make money on whereas most people want a home to live in.

I always laugh when I hear about 'gold plated Civil Service pensions' as well. At least it's a welcome bit on top of my State pension.

Is this another load of crap information from the Intergenerational Foundation (very dangerous anti-elderly group).

I had an awful struggle financially to buy this house in 1996 but I am pleased that I did. I was living in a 2 bedroom almost new doll's house and I could not stand it. I wanted a bit more space so this, although newish when I bought it is a 3 bedroom and obviously larger. I think that my downstairs loo and bathroom would sell the house, not that that is going to happen any time soon (I hope). It has almost quadrupled in value since I bought it, but my house is my home, not a selling machine.

When we bought our first house (1963) we compared the proportion of our income that it cost with the proportion of our in-laws' income that they had paid for their first house. It was the same. There was no magic golden age for buying a house. It was a big investment that took a brave plunge and most of your income.

You can only judge comparative wealth by how much money comes in and how much goes out - and what people choose to spend their money on.

If someone can afford to holiday abroad, eat out frequently, and buy a new car every couple of years, are they poor?

If they furnished their new house fifty years ago with cast-offs from family, ate shepherds pie and a lot of lentil soup, spent holidays in their inlaws' spare room, kept a rickety car for many many years - were they rich?

Yes it is not real money is it, unless people have additional properties that they don't live in.

Just to clarify the few mentions of public sector pensions, whatever term you use, they are better than in the private sector. Very few of us have pensions which rise with inflation. Most of us have had to pay in a higher proportion of our salary into our pension and get less back. Not a complaint, good for those who have been able to do it.

Elegran it would be interesting to look at the proportion of income needed to buy a house these days, especially here in the S.E.

Taking an average wage of about £25,000, it would cost 14 times gross income to buy a smallish 3 bedroomed semi.

And to compare rental costs then with rental costs now, and the proportion of income that took.

It would seem that in most places the average wage earner would need at least 6 times their earnings to buy a house. This is the problem, no lenders will lend this multiple. Understandable, it has to be paid back and that is what started to problem in the USA.

But how do people save enough to put down a large deposit, without family help?
It is all very well having 'help to buy' 'first time' buyer schemes, but the % left still has to be paid for.

I would not like to be starting out again now. x

Writing as an economist, I have never read so much economic bullshit nonsense in my life. The whole article is ridden with doubtful statistics, and ludicrous conclusions.

I noticed one of the organisations behind the article was something called the Intergenerational Foundation. This is the outfit that brought out the report on older people under occupying houses and came up the brilliant idea that to help free up houses for families older people should sell their big family homes and move to smaller ones, or in other words enter into competition with first time buyers for smaller properties.

I actually downloaded and read the full report on underoccupation and it was shot through with errors, poor research and unsupported conclusions. I see nothing in this news item to suggest that the report that forms the basis of it is any better.

The Guardian's raison d'etre is getting outraged about social injustices and it leaves no set of doubtful rubbish statistics unturned in its effort to find them no matter how trivial or erroneous. There is no outrage like that of an earnest left-wing journalist.

FlicketyB I'm glad it wasn't just me, but you put it so much better

janeainsworth and you highlighted one of the dodgy staistics. The billion pounds John Lewis put into its pension fund was more to do with the life expectancy of its younger contributing members than it does with its retired members. It also has to do with the value of its underlying assets, the market price of its stocks and shares and the interest it gets from the money invested in bonds. If stock market or interest on bonds fall, then the value of the fund falls and a gap opens up between what they need to fund their pension commitments and what their fund is worth and the gap has to be filled. If the stockmarket rises fast they are in the reverse position, the fund is worth more than its commitments.

As I said doubtful statistics and ludicrous conclusions

The Intergenerational Foundation is a very dangerous organisation which is causing dissent and resentment between the generations.

The person who suggested that older people under-occupying their homes should be forced encouraged to downsize to free up homes for younger people apparently had parents who were living in a very large 5 bedroomed house. Presumably it is the right thing for ' everyone else' to have to do this, but doesn't apply to them and theirs.

I do not think the report suggested how young people would be able to afford the much larger, more expensive houses. Or are they supposed to do a direct swap with the older homeowners?

There is a concerted campaign against 'baby boomers' at the moment which is very worrying. Those who are able to are probably helping their own families with childcare and financially, but there are many who are unable to do so. If they own their own home it may well be their only asset to pay for their own care if needed one day.

Perhaps he had designs on their house and they wouldn't play ball. Although he must be wealthy to be able to fund the foundation.

I am always wary of 'foundations' with one founding father. They are too often set up to prove a rich man's prejudices or further his preoccupations and the researchers job is to give him the results he wants to see.

What worried me about the housing report, and I assume the same strictures would apply to the new report on Baby Boomers, is not just that the researcher was incompetent and produced a report that was unmitigated twaddle but that those higher in the organisation, who must have read the report before it was published failed to notice this. I once worked for a big industrial research centre and a report like the housing report would have lost me my job and would never have been published - and I was working as a housing economist!

Time for a well-publicised fight-back. We could get hold of one of these inter-generational people for a web-chat, though I don't think they would come. We need to start a campaign and could produce our own better informed reports. How about it, HQ?

I am so sick of hearing what a great life civil servants have! I live in a deprived area with little employment outside tourism . That is why many civil service offices are based here. Over the last few years over 4,000 jobs have been lost devastating the local economy. Remaining staff work under increasing pressure to meet government targets. Holidays have been reduced for new entrants. Pension premiums have increased every year but not wages leading to a drop in income. Only yesterday we heard some of our HR services have been sold off to French company who said in their bid that they would outsource the work. Colleagues around the country will be made redundant and the work is going to India. Not all civil servants are Whitehall fat cats