Times article claim that Waspi women are tone deaf and should read the room

I don’t suppose there will be many of the current younger generations who will work from the age of 18 to 70 before getting their SP. Most YP I know didn’t begin work until they’re at least 22yo, so that’s 48yrs of paying in. My Dh worked from age 16-68, which is 52 years.

DH started work at 17, did a 5 year apprenticeship and worked until 67. Of course, he didn't pay NI contributions after 65 but that was 50 years of working.

My DC all went travelling before or after college/university.

I don’t suppose there will be many of the current younger generations who will work from the age of 18 to 70 before getting their SP. Most YP I know didn’t begin work until they’re at least 22yo, so that’s 48yrs of paying in. My Dh worked from age 16-68, which is 52 years.

I also know plenty now who are reaching their 30’s and taking a year or two out to go travelling before returning to restart their careers. One couple in their late 30’s took their three children on a year’s trip round the world. That was unthinkable 50 years ago, but these are people with well paid jobs but not fabulously wealthy. IDK how they paid their mortgage as well for that year!

I’m not envious of this generation, I wish them the best of luck and hope they enjoy their ‘time out’ but let’s not pretend they’ll all be working from leaving school to age 70. And I do think the university fees set up is a lousy one, that’s very unfair as should be addressed.

Although the value of occupational pensions is much touted, many people were not in them and many, women especially were banned from joining them because they worked part time or were not with a company long enough to get permananet pension right

If women worked in the Civil Service or Local Government, their pension contributions were returned to them upon marriage or as a 'baby bonus', so the could not claim those pensions at retirement even if they had worked for ten or more years.

Chardy

notgran

That article is spot on. I don't want my children being over burdened with tax, just to compensate 1950's women. The next generation won't be able to claim for a state pension at age 66 or under as those of us born before 1960 have done.

Interesting phrase 'overburdened with tax'

Across the 1970s when most 50s women would have paid some basic income tax, the list would frighten some current tax payers
1970–1973: 38.75% (inherited as the "standard rate" from the late 1960s)
1973–1974: 30% (introduced in the 1973 Finance Act)
1974–1975: 33%
1975–1979: 35% (raised to 35% in 1975 under Denis Healey)

Current income tax rate is 20%
1979: 30% (dropped at the end of the decade in Margaret Thatcher's first budget)

Thanks, Chardy, I was going to look it up because I knew historic income tax rates were far higher than present ones.

However, tax bands have remained static so more people are drawn into paying tax or find themselves paying higher rates.

Casdon

They will be working until they are seventy M0nica. I’m not saying that I agree that the article is correct, I do however share the fears of the younger generation that they will have a shorter, poorer retirement than our generation did, on average, obviously.

They will have to wait much longer for their state pension, if there is one then, BUT the vast majority of them will be workplace pensions and be able to forward plan accordingly.

Our elder son is 40, his overall plan is to be able to retire at 60, if his budgeted plan works out as his wishes, likewise his 38 year partner.

They are facing different challenges to those we faced at their ages, but nonetheless, like us, they will find their ways of dealing with this.

notgran

That article is spot on. I don't want my children being over burdened with tax, just to compensate 1950's women. The next generation won't be able to claim for a state pension at age 66 or under as those of us born before 1960 have done.

Interesting phrase 'overburdened with tax'

Across the 1970s when most 50s women would have paid some basic income tax, the list would frighten some current tax payers
1970–1973: 38.75% (inherited as the "standard rate" from the late 1960s)
1973–1974: 30% (introduced in the 1973 Finance Act)
1974–1975: 33%
1975–1979: 35% (raised to 35% in 1975 under Denis Healey)

Current income tax rate is 20%
1979: 30% (dropped at the end of the decade in Margaret Thatcher's first budget)

They will be working until they are seventy M0nica. I’m not saying that I agree that the article is correct, I do however share the fears of the younger generation that they will have a shorter, poorer retirement than our generation did, on average, obviously.

Norah I appreciate that life has been difficult for many, always has, always will be. but people keep posting such one-sided pictures of how other generations live, I do try to put the other side as well. When Boomers are described as a privileged gilded generation I remind people of all the bad things happening to us, that are usually assiduously not mentioned.

When someone tries to make out a generation is all a life of doom and disaster, I point out the advantages it had/has.

But when I was young I had most of the worries young people have now about affording to buy a house, or ever having a house as nice as my parents, jobs were no longer for life and huge redundancies became more of a worry as I got into my 40s and 50s because of the impossibility of getting another job.

Although the value of occupational pensions is much touted, many people were not in them and many, women especially were banned from joining them because they worked part time or were not with a company long enough to get permananet pension rights.

Pensioners as a whole, including those on state pensions are far better off than pensioners 30, 40 or 50 years ago.

Younger people look at us as we are now. They do not remember the unemplyment of the 1980s and 90s, they did not see the de-industrialisation of Britain.

When the current generation get old, comfortable in their houses they bought from their legacies and with the pensions they had paid for, I bet they to too will be attacked by the generation currently now in nappies for being the lucky generation , a generation born after COVID, and the chaos that caused the threat of world wide war that hangs over us all and the threatof AI

I was giving an interpretation of what I thought you meant? If you could explain what you did actually mean, I’d appreciate it.

Casdon
Can you explain what you mean please Mollygo, are you saying that some Gransnetters are flaunting their wealth/poverty, or have I misunderstood?

You’ve not only misunderstood, you’ve introduced words I never used to justify your misunderstanding.

The intergenerational warfare as you describe it, is not just a figment of the imagination of under qualified journalists though Graphite. Younger people will have to work longer, and do have less advantageous pension schemes, and mortgages and rents which form a higher percentage of their total income. The gap between the haves and have nots is ever widening.

M0nica

I am the silent generation(1928-1945). Born in 1943. We took out our first mortgage in 1969. Interest rates were then just over 7% and then went up and never got lower than that until the last few years of our successive mortgages around 2000.

Even if you were born in 1928, you were unlikely to have taken out a mortgage before 1950. Assuming you only ever had one mortgage. which would have been paid up in 1975-80, you would have had a mortgage on a variable rate and by 1975 interst rates were around 11%.

If like many of us they moved up the housing ladder and had mortgages until close to retirement, this would have taken them through all the high interest years.

I'm part to silent generation. First mortgage late 50s.

Not everyone moves up the ladder, some never move house, a choice.

Of course some people move house, not all by choice.

Everyone is different, life is cruel to some.

notgran

That article is spot on. I don't want my children being over burdened with tax, just to compensate 1950's women. The next generation won't be able to claim for a state pension at age 66 or under as those of us born before 1960 have done.

Why would your children be overburdened with tax?

The money to pay the estimated £10 billion compensation is already sitting in the National Insurance Fund, part of the £60 billion George Osborne bragged he’d saved by accelerating the pace of equalisation. Level 3 compensation would be no more than £1,000. We’d be getting back a fraction of what we had lost, around £40,000 for some women like me who had to wait another six years for a pension they had expected to receive at 60.

Jeremy Hunt already gave £10 billon of that away as an NIC reduction from 12% to 8%. He gave £10 billion of our lost pension away as sweetener to get working age people to vote Tory in the 2024 election.

If the Treasury has to shore up the NIF as it is predicted to have to do by 2040, it will come from creating new money not from taxation. If inflation rises as result of all pensioners having too much money to spend and government raised taxation as a result, we would all pay more, pensioners included.

Stop believing the inter-generational warfare that it suits some unqualified journalists to stoke.

Mollygo

^All this talk of wealthy pensioners is part of the divide and rule nonsense of our politicians.^

Chardy if you read GN posts it’s not just the politicians who follow the divide and rule mantra.

Can you explain what you mean please Mollygo, are you saying that some Gransnetters are flaunting their wealth/poverty, or have I misunderstood?

That article is spot on. I don't want my children being over burdened with tax, just to compensate 1950's women. The next generation won't be able to claim for a state pension at age 66 or under as those of us born before 1960 have done.

All this talk of wealthy pensioners is part of the divide and rule nonsense of our politicians.

Chardy if you read GN posts it’s not just the politicians who follow the divide and rule mantra.

I am the silent generation(1928-1945). Born in 1943. We took out our first mortgage in 1969. Interest rates were then just over 7% and then went up and never got lower than that until the last few years of our successive mortgages around 2000.

Even if you were born in 1928, you were unlikely to have taken out a mortgage before 1950. Assuming you only ever had one mortgage. which would have been paid up in 1975-80, you would have had a mortgage on a variable rate and by 1975 interst rates were around 11%.

If like many of us they moved up the housing ladder and had mortgages until close to retirement, this would have taken them through all the high interest years.

Chardy

Norah

Casdon

The wealthiest pensioners are those aged 65-74 though Doodledog. One of the main reasons is that although as you say there were lots of struggles for that age group (I am there too), pension schemes were then much more generous than they are today.

It would seem the oldest are weathiest, more years to diligently save. Silent generation, imo, was blessed in many ways. No high interest rates when purchasing homes, leading to high interest savings.

Mortgage interest rates were 17% in 1979, 15% in 1989 - which house owners born between 1945 and 1964 wouldn't have been affected by those?
In 2009, interest rates went below 1% and stayed there until 2022. Was that the years inflation was 11%? People with savings must've been hit by those
All this talk of wealthy pensioners is part of the divide and rule nonsense of our politicians. Many wealthy pensioners have gone without to pay their mortgage in an expensive part of UK because that's where their job was. Of course we've bigger pension pots than our children,we've stopped adding to it, whereas theirs isn't completed yet

I look at my family and worry about them. I had a workplace pension, some of them didn't. I look at pensioners in town who seem to be barely coping financially. We should all be concerned about vulnerable people

I said "silent generation" which ended as boomer group began.

Many pensioners would be in that group, interest on homes quite low, mortgages paid off, save as interest rates were higher.

Yes, our children haven't stopped adding to their pension pots.

Of course we worry about vulnerable people and climate change.

I don’t dispute what you say Chardy. I can though also understand why younger people see things the way they do. We all look through the lens of our own experience,

Norah

Casdon

The wealthiest pensioners are those aged 65-74 though Doodledog. One of the main reasons is that although as you say there were lots of struggles for that age group (I am there too), pension schemes were then much more generous than they are today.

It would seem the oldest are weathiest, more years to diligently save. Silent generation, imo, was blessed in many ways. No high interest rates when purchasing homes, leading to high interest savings.

Mortgage interest rates were 17% in 1979, 15% in 1989 - which house owners born between 1945 and 1964 wouldn't have been affected by those?
In 2009, interest rates went below 1% and stayed there until 2022. Was that the years inflation was 11%? People with savings must've been hit by those
All this talk of wealthy pensioners is part of the divide and rule nonsense of our politicians. Many wealthy pensioners have gone without to pay their mortgage in an expensive part of UK because that's where their job was. Of course we've bigger pension pots than our children,we've stopped adding to it, whereas theirs isn't completed yet

I look at my family and worry about them. I had a workplace pension, some of them didn't. I look at pensioners in town who seem to be barely coping financially. We should all be concerned about vulnerable people

I do appreciate that averages mean that there as many people below the average as there are above Doodledog, my point was really about the perception that older age groups are better off on average than recent retirees. Once retired, most people dip into their savings for major purchases, which means as they get older their capital diminishes I think. I don’t think that we can dispute that the average is just that, although our own experience may be very different.

Casdon

The wealthiest pensioners are those aged 65-74 though Doodledog. One of the main reasons is that although as you say there were lots of struggles for that age group (I am there too), pension schemes were then much more generous than they are today.

They were if you were allowed to join them. I was 37 before I could join an occupational pension scheme (because I was on rolling academic contracts, which meant I didn't count as a permanent employee) so missed out on what would have been a decent pension, despite paying higher rate tax and a lot of NI.

This is why generalisations are a bit pointless, which is the point I was making. It's the same with old state pensions - some on them have far higher amounts than those on the NSP and others get less, but everyone talks as though their experience is the only one (although of course it is, to them).

Mollygo

Basgetti

Looking at the prospects for our adult children, sorry, I agree with him.
The information was out there 🤷‍♀️

The prospects for our adult children will be heavily affected by the increasing number who can’t or don't work.

Agreed.

The sheer number of younger people not in work affects all.

Casdon

The wealthiest pensioners are those aged 65-74 though Doodledog. One of the main reasons is that although as you say there were lots of struggles for that age group (I am there too), pension schemes were then much more generous than they are today.

'Wealthiest' and 'pensioners' are words that will never fit together. Ever.