Do the Millennials moan too much?

Media are twisting statistics in this "blame it on the Baby Boomers " game. See Age UK figures on pensioner poverty:

Pensioner poverty remains stubbornly persistent in the UK, affecting 1.6m people living on or below the poverty line and 900,000 people living in severe poverty.

There are around 11 million OAPs in UK. so over 15% are in poverty by Age UK's figures.

www.ageuk.org.uk/money-matters/claiming-benefits/claiming-benefits-older-people-campaign/

I'm living on basic state pension. Don't have a private pension. I was made redundant for the third time 7 months ago. We didn't have it easy when I got married (divorced now) as mortgage interest rate was 9% and rose to 14%. No credit cards then. Nowadays people buy what they want then moan they can't afford their essential bills. We never got things on credit, never had takeaways, apart from fish and chips occasionally. Had no carpets, hubby put lino down and we had rugs until we could afford carpet. Didn't have central heating either. Never had foreign holidays. Nowadays young people have got their priorities wrong (not all of them). Yes property is expensive, especially in the south east where I live, but it was relatively expensive compared to wages when I got married in 1971.

The following groups:-
The Resolution Foundation,
The Intergenerstional Commission,
The Cadbury Trust
and
The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission
are all left wing groups whose aim is to gain credence for their socialist interpretation of society and to put pressure on government to fund their various causes.

Since David Willetts book "The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future - And Why They Should Give it Back" was published in 2011 one route to influence, funding and power has been to sow envy and resentment between the generations and an effective way of doing this is to keep publishing figures that purport to show older people doing better than youngsters.

It is all nonsense of course and should be resisted as firmly as possible. The 'intergenerational envy' crowd are trying to get the idea of asset taxes (inheritance tax, stamp duty, punitive council tax rates etc.) accepted so that the capital wealth of the older generation falls into theirs and the government's coffers rather than cascading down the generations to descendants.

For instance, instead of paying £100 council tax a month the due amount is £1000. The 'generous' council says, 'You don't have to pay now. It will be collected on your decease.' Result: the capital equity is sucked out of your house and your heirs get nothing.

In reality grandparents are subsidising their children and grandchildren in money and time to the tune of £billions a year and have no interest in their beloved offspring being badly off. They love and help them.

Grandparents, we need to resist these poisonous messages. Most of us started off without very much and saw our financial situations improve over decades by working hard, living prudently and avoiding debt and excess. Our children and grandchildren will follow in our footsteps with our help and advice.

I saved onto my pension fund for 40 years and did without expensive holidays etc in order to do so. I don't want to sound like the burning
martyr as it was my choice, so I don't feel grateful for being fairly comfortsbly off. I help my children financially when I can which they appreciate. My main concern is never to be a financial burden to them.

Mine was a large suitcase tigger
Were they trying to tell me something?
If so, it worked!

But we worked hard for it, not saying that baby boomers don't but there is an expectation "ask and we will receive". Relatively, we still paid heavily for child care, whereas these days so many grand parents help out, my mother couldn't help out because she had to work. All today's mod cons, I hd to use the launderette and wash by hand until I could afford a washing machine, fridge, television. My 21st. birthday present from my mother was a vacuum cleaner.

We??

NameChange you don't give your approximate age - but you say you bought your house about 17/18 years ago - was that about the age Millennials are now - 35? (Sorry if I'm wrong) and bought it with a legacy as deposit.

I think many of us are hoping to leave a legacy for our DC (care costs permitting) so that they may be able to enjoy a few comforts in their later years.

I think Portland's first sentence sums it up and radicalnan's situation is similar to that of a lot of older people.
Not every retiree is living the high life and, if they are, it may be because of the sacrifices they made over the years to enable them to do so and luck in staying healthy.

It was always Jam Tomorrow (health permitting of course), butter if you were very lucky
I think many Millennials want the bread, butter AND jam now.

We

See www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38957903 : "The calculation made by the Resolution Foundation is for household income after housing costs. Before housing costs are taken into account, working-age households still have higher incomes than pensioner households."

There are so many generalisation involved in all this and so few real comaparisons of the advangages and disadvantages each generation has expereienced. Things are not so cut and dried about how life works now and worked then even if you don't take into account level of income. I am an old pensioner, 78, so not a baby boomer. I lived through the war and the post war deprivation but had the gift of freedowm of movement as a child - and could stay a child for longer. In those days, buying a house was not even an ambition for most We all expected to rent in the early part of our lives. We lacked modern technology and did not have so many possessions but relished smaller excitements, our trips to the cinema and other things like train trips to all parts of the country before the railway system was cut down. And now we share all the advantages of modern technology and medecine with the younger generations just as my generation and the baby boomers will have shared what good fortune we had with the our children and our grandchildren as they grew up - they, after all, lived through the good times with us.

Yes - but many of them also don't seem to take on 'the establishment' and 'vested interests', and accept the premise that blaming someone else is the only - and perhaps the easier option.

The complaints about low wages, and zero hours contracts cannot be blamed on the so-called 'baby boomer' generation - we had low wages, but we also fought against unscrupulous employers for better conditions and wages.

I doubt if many of us would accept the dubious statement that zero hours contracts and 'self-employment' as parcel couriers, and other jobs gives us more 'flexibility' in our lives. If a business is dependent on this approach, and does not take on full time employees, it is not a stable or sustainable business model.

We also lived through a time that was less obsessed with 'the property ladder' as the means of our salvation. The only challenge with renting nowadays seems to be the lack of proper control over rents and landlords, and property speculators.

But I guess I'm likely to be wrong - it is a complex picture we have in our society today - is it fit for the 21st century I wonder.

That was very profound Radicalnan. Thank you for sharing a bit of personal reality and hopefully stirring some compassion here.

Maths teacher here. If this is a median average it will NOT be skewed by rich pensioners. Median average arranges all the data in order and then finds the middle.

I'm not a pensioner but I know I am bloody lucky. I bought my place in the late 1990s with a £15,000 deposit from a legacy. I borrowed 3 times my income. On the same sort of salary with respect to inflation now to buy my current house I would need 8 times my income. I pity the millennials stuck in shoddy rented accommodation and at the beck and call of often unpleasant and careless landlords.

Whenever something happens, whether it is housing, NHS or whatever, I tell DH "It's going to be our fault". Everything seems to be the post-War babyboomers fault, from bed blocking to not downsizing, from being too rich as pensioners to not helping their DCs enough...
Look out!

My £20 certainly gets spent by subsiding the NHS by £200 a month providing my son, who is type one diabetic, with a device that makes his life better but is not sanctioned by NICE

I thought the report was disingenuous looking at incomes rather than outgoings, pensioners who own a home have gone without for years probably to do so and continue to face upkeep costs. We are so hung up on the UK about home ownership !!! Houses are money pits most of the time.

Due to infirmity I have had to adapt my homes at my own expense every time I have moved, friends in social housing have not faced that expense or other up keep costs or building insurances.

Pensioners have to pay for help (well quite often they do) my arthritis means I have to pay for toe nails to be cut, bits of help around the house, some stuff has to go to laundry as can't manage big things. What does well off mean?

I find I am increasingly housebound because the built environment has changed, fewer public toilets, kerb heights,too short intervals to cross at traffic lights etc. I have to get groceries delivered mostly because I am too poorly to shop, the costs of getting old add up.

Money is not the only wealth there is. I have capital in the house but the only way to realise that is to sell up, it isn't comparing like for like because our needs can be very different.

I do think Millennials moan a bit, you only have to read the threads on here to see how their expectations exceed their realities, I am not sure we were encouraged to do that. I had a childhood devoid of all the luxuries they have now, certainly no further education, I just had to work and study later at my own expense, women had far fewer opportunities and earned half a man's wage, having a child out of wedlock meant social shame and facing forced adoptions. many young people,women in particular wound up on mental homes for years on end for minor transgressions, what the millennials have is FREEDOM..........and they waste it on FB.

What should concern us is the inequalities across all the age ranges. It seems absurd, for example, that all pensioners, however affluent, get winter fuel allowance, when many poor families with children cannot afford to heat their homes.

Part of the problem is that the Millenials are seeing how the Baby Boomers are living now. They cannot see how tough it was for us to actually get here.

I know that when we first married we literally had nothing, saved and worked hard to buy a house (house prices being compared to wages at the time was just as tough, if not more so, than now). Continuing to work hard for 40+ years to pay for the house. No foreign holidays (which Millenials appear to see as an entitlement), indeed no holidays at all for many years. Sky high interest rates to contend with.

As stated, they see us at the end of that road and think we have it all. We have worked for what we have and they should have to do the same, not see things as an entitlement.

The damage first started being done to pensions when MT in 1980 broke the link between earnings and pensions. GO then used the triple lock in 2010 to address the dreadful impact MT had had on pensions. Labour used tax credits to increase the pension but of course these are means tested. Basically both parties over the years have made a real pig's ear of establishing a decent pension system

I think that averages don't tell you much at all as there will be rich and poor in each category - and I would point out that in none of the reports I have read is anyone "moaning" - this is a fabrication for this thread - the report merely pointed out that for the first time ever the average had swung from working families always being better off.

However I do feel sorry for younger people today trying to get a start in life with:
- a lot of poorly paid and insecure zero hour contract working and a lack of well paid skilled work as jobs have been mechanised or moved abroad.
- poor access to Uni for poorer students compared to the free education and student grants for my generation.
- poor occupational pensions and the prospect of working until 70+ for the younger generation when many with generous occupational schemes retired on full pensions in their 50s in the 1980s/1990s
- the huge cost of housing putting owning a home outside the realms of possibility for young families - I bought by first home (a 3 bed terrace) in the early 1980s and it cost £28,000 - today it costs £500,000
- the lack of affordable housing and sell off of council housing leading to young people forced into insecure and often short term rentals and the costs involved in having to move every year or 2 and the insecurity of not having a family home

For the last few years for the first time ever, pensions have been reasonable, thanks to the triple lock the Conservatives put on it.
Working people don't have a 'plight' they are simply working....as we all did.
All our DC earn far more than we have, and their mortgage rates have been low for years.
Sadly I think we will lose the triple lock the next time around.

Right, thanks.

The report does not take into account the value of the homes people live in

I'm not judging this - just stating a fact

Ara - I'm talking about my close friends who are very wealthy - I know for an absolute certainty that they did not work for it and were just fortunate in either who they married or who their grandparents were.