Our generation ('80s+ babies and onwards)

[bigmike20vt]

I feel this, my pension plan is a couple feet of rope.

Also, I reckon they will raise the retirement age again some point soon....

I am 43.... i am not expecting my government pension to pay out till i am 70..... which is why i have a private pension (not that i am that confident that will last either).. That is of course unless it becomes means tested, then everyone who scrimped and scraped away for their future get shafted again.

 

[bigmike20vt]

a generation growing up without aspiration is bad for everyone, bad for productivity, bad for mental health, bad for crime etc etc.

I like to think that I as a parent have some say in that however. I am luckier than some, unluckier than others, but my son is 3, i was lucky enough that from the day he was born i could afford to put a bit away into an account each month for his university or what ever education he needs when older, I also fully intend to help him out and support him throughout his childhood to make sure he gets the best start i can possibly give him,( so that he can have as comfortable a life as possible once we kick him out! .)

that is surely the job of a parent, not just to keep them clean and safe?

 

[Hagar]

My first house, a terrace cost £13.7k in 1982, I was earning £3.5k.

Today that house sells at £96k (in Leigh Lancashire), I would need to be on about £25k to be at the same wage multiple.

And yes, the mortgage rate was 8% and above most of the time.

So it is doable on average single income if you pick a cheap area, but like me you would not have holidays for quite a while. I could not have afforded to buy in the South or in many areas even then.

 

[Puzzled]

I like to think that I as a parent have some say in that however. I am luckier than some, unluckier than others, but my son is 3, i was lucky enough that from the day he was born i could afford to put a bit away into an account each month for his university or what ever education he needs when older, I also fully intend to help him out and support him throughout his childhood to make sure he gets the best start i can possibly give him,( so that he can have as comfortable a life as possible once we kick him out! .)

that is surely the job of a parent, not just to keep them clean and safe?

Of course but to be in a position where you have enough income to pay for a house, the cost of raising a family plus all the standard living costs, saving for your own retirement (plus your partner) and to able to put a decent wedge aside for your son isn't a position many are in.

A scary percentage of the population have no spare income / savings at all.

 

[bigmike20vt]

Of course but to be in a position where you have enough income to pay for a house, the cost of raising a family plus all the standard living costs, saving for your own retirement (plus your partner) and to able to put a decent wedge aside for your son isn't a position many are in.

A scary percentage of the population have no spare income / savings at all.

oh sure of course..... but it isnt ALL about money a lot about what i am talking about does not cost anything, but you are totally right and as i said, i hold my hands up and say whilst i am no rocker fella equally I do not have to hide behind the sofa when the coal man comes to collect his money (something i do remember doing as a child with my mum). I genuinely do not know what the answer is tho. Some say just tax rich people more, and big business and pass on to poor folk... and sure that feels like the obvious answer, but i suspect a rich person or business may say something like

"I pay XYZ amount which is already a huge sum, tax me much more and i will move myself, my money and my big company employing 100s (1000s) of people abroad and you get nothing" ... something which we are already seeing with the likes of Honda and Nissan (moving for other reasons perhaps!) which is gonna properly mess up parts of the NE, other companies like Dyson also did this... they used to be fully made and assembled in the uk iirc but not any more..

then you get those people who are just crap with money and bring problems on themselves... those people need to be helped (forced?) to stand on their own 2 feet and giving them more money is not the answer.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

How old are you? Not meat to sound confrontational, I am just intrigued if it's and experience based opinion or pulling together some data provided by others and hearsay. I remind you, I had 3 million people who could not get a job when I was starting me career.

39

From 2002 to 2011 I struggled like hell to get a permanent job to the point I cracked and had a bit of a breakdown. Eventually I got lucky and never looked back. It was partly due to not being close enough to any major cities but it was crazy what went I through as I would class myself as a decent person, education up to degree level etc. I just thought there was no hope.

 

[Housey]

39

From 2002 to 2011 I struggled like hell to get a permanent job to the point I cracked and had a bit of a breakdown. Eventually I got lucky and never looked back. It was partly due to not being close enough to any major cities but it was crazy what went I through as I would class myself as a decent person, education up to degree level etc. I just thought there was no hope.

Thanks.

More down to your personal circumstances that a definitive id suggest. Imagine 3 million people of all skills unable to find a job all trying to find work and many actually ‘getting on their bike’ to take a quote.. That was much harder I assure you. No minimum wage either and far less office work. I was lucky, I went into computers at the right time so always found work and did pick the phone up to call the MD’s of small companies. Different times but as I said it’s different today, different issues but as a lifestyle you REALLY haven’t had it so good. Just expensive to keep up and work/non work is far harder to separate these days, no question of that. I still had an old MD send a guy to my house to see if I could do some work when i was on holiday!! No mobile back then and phone off the hook

Glad you’re sorted too!!

 

[Doobedoo]

We don't get to retire, the pensions are screwed as well

I'm hoping within my lifetime we have realised that the current economic model is broken and we can't just keep churning out rubbish to sell to people who then get bored of it and it ends up in landfill.

At the minute everything just seems to be heading in the wrong direction with the main wealth growth going to the already wealthy. Already been mentioned in this thread but it's the middle class that is feeling the squeeze all around the world from this shift in wealth (don't get me wrong I know the working class is suffering) and once your middle class feels disillusioned things can get "unstable".

How do you divide a nation so the lower and middle class fight with each other and the rich stay rich?

You create categories like race, religion, national background, ethnicity, social status, income, jobs, education, and sexuality, and separate people into groups according to the labels. And Brexit

This is also known as the American economic class system.

Watch comedian and activist George Carlin accurately (and hilariously) expose the system, and how ‘they’ keep us fighting with each other so ‘they can keep going to the bank’.

He breaks it down like this: The upper class keeps all of the money and pays none of the taxes. The middle class does all of the work and pays all of the taxes. And the poor are there to scare the **** out of the middle class.

Jokes aside, there’s nothing funny about how accurate Carlin’s depiction actually is.

https://www.propeller.la/engage/287...economic-class-system-is-dangerously-accurate

 

[regulus]

life starts hard, gets easier..

Yep.

The more frugal I live, the less I care about 'things' (at this stage, beyond non existent) or baubles and trinkets, the easier life seem to get.

 

[200sols]

My first house, a terrace cost £13.7k in 1982, I was earning £3.5k.

Today that house sells at £96k (in Leigh Lancashire), I would need to be on about £25k to be at the same wage multiple.

And yes, the mortgage rate was 8% and above most of the time.

So it is doable on average single income if you pick a cheap area, but like me you would not have holidays for quite a while. I could not have afforded to buy in the South or in many areas even then.

£3.5k salary in 1982 was well below average though. Today’s equivalent would be around £13k. So much harder today to afford the same house.

 

[ricid]

Yep.

The more frugal I live, the less I care about 'things' (at this stage, beyond non existent) or baubles and trinkets, the easier life seem to get.

In that case would you mind popping that 1080 GTX in the post to me? Your life gets easier, I get a sweet upgrade.

 

[Nasher]

39

From 2002 to 2011 I struggled like hell to get a permanent job to the point I cracked and had a bit of a breakdown. Eventually I got lucky and never looked back. It was partly due to not being close enough to any major cities but it was crazy what went I through as I would class myself as a decent person, education up to degree level etc. I just thought there was no hope.

I learned it's more about who you know than what qualifications you have. That's how the 1% stay in top jobs even though many of them are thick as ****.

Though some industries that doesn't apply, because you need to be able to demonstrate you actually know what your doing. In IT many employers won't even look at qualifications, only experience.

 

[malachi]

I learned it's more about who you know than what qualifications you have. That's how the 1% stay in top jobs even though many of them are thick as ****.

That's very true, its been shown now at my current job as we got told a few weeks back our jobs are at risk. After a meeting on Monday, its obvious who will be keeping their jobs and moving onto the new team because they know the right people.

 

[Ayahuasca]

Many positions now are also a race to the bottom, how much responsibility can we put on someone who earns an entry level salary before they break and we rehire or simply shift the workload onto someone else. Pay rises promised 12 months down the line that don’t come to fruition or being told the extra responsibility isn’t worthy of additional income.

Everything certainly wasn’t rosy for the previous generation but you could turn up down the mine or a factory, do a poor job and still come out with pay rises year on year and have your property paid off in no time, with an excellent pension on top.

The figure I have to pay into my pension to get anywhere close to the one my Dad has (bearing in mind he retired at 55 as well) is mind boggling. Many young people these days don’t even look at theirs and are paying in the bare minimum, so when they retire at 67 they might get a few grand a year on top of state... if that even exists then.

 

[malachi]

The figure I have to pay into my pension to get anywhere close to the one my Dad has (bearing in mind he retired at 55 as well) is mind boggling. Many young people these days don’t even look at theirs and are paying in the bare minimum, so when they retire at 67 they might get a few grand a year on top of state... if that even exists then.

My friend and her husband run a business. Have 3 Kids, nice house and car. So, you can say they are doing well. My friend is 35 and her husband is 40, their accountant told them don’t bother with a pension. As by the time we come to retiring age which still over 30 years away, they would have moved the goal posts that many times they are better off saving it or spending it now.

I still pay into my pension but only what I need to. We are still living alongside the parents and grandparents who are living off a nice pension because of the golden age. So, by default they would say to us how important the pension is. But they are not living in today’s working world, the goal posts have been moved once and they will keep on doing so. For that reason I’m not investing so much into my pension like the previous generation, did as you never know when the government will screw you over with the pension because they will.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

My friend and her husband run a business. Have 3 Kids, nice house and car. So, you can say they are doing well. My friend is 35 and her husband is 40, their accountant told them don’t bother with a pension. As by the time we come to retiring age which still over 30 years away, they would have moved the goal posts that many times they are better off saving it or spending it now.

I still pay into my pension but only what I need to. We are still living alongside the parents and grandparents who are living off a nice pension because of the golden age. So, by default they would say to us how important the pension is. But they are not living in today’s working world, the goal posts have been moved once and they will keep on doing so. For that reason I’m not investing so much into my pension like the previous generation, did as you never know when the government will screw you over with the pension because they will.

Surely you pick the age you want to retire at and put the appropriate amount into your pension to achieve that. You may have struggle a few years until state pension kicks in however.

 

[Martini1991]

My first house, a terrace cost £13.7k in 1982, I was earning £3.5k.

Today that house sells at £96k (in Leigh Lancashire), I would need to be on about £25k to be at the same wage multiple.

And yes, the mortgage rate was 8% and above most of the time.

So it is doable on average single income if you pick a cheap area, but like me you would not have holidays for quite a while. I could not have afforded to buy in the South or in many areas even then.

You're missing a vital piece of information IMO.
Does the job you were doing when you bought your first house (Assuming exact same hours) pay 25K today?

 

[Hagar]

You're missing a vital piece of information IMO.
Does the job you were doing when you bought your first house (Assuming exact same hours) pay 25K today?

I don't know exactly, I was a 29 year old design draughtsman producing calculations and engineering drawings in pencil and ink. Nowadays it would be using some sort of CAD in an engineering environment. Probably not far off 25k

 

[silversurfer]

And it wasn't easier to make money in the 90s to now

Early 90's was tough, its maybe the recession that was forgotten but it was tough work for anyone starting out at least. People moan about house prices now right but back then 10% interest or more is what you would pay for your variable mortgage, so if its not one thing its the other

Value of a pound coin from 1990 to now is like it became 40 pence piece in comparative value. So if you ever compare prices thats part of why but generally people are hella rich now and are bit too ungrateful about it.
UK was going through a trans-formative period around that time, old industry being less worthwhile and then new growth of more modern industry.
[Dont ever moan if you are into tech, everything is dirt cheap now. IBM laptop back then was 5k which is 10k in 2019 pounds]

That growth then has come to fruition now basically, obviously its far from plain sailing but most people dont truly recognise hard times now and the word austerity being over used is a big joke. Government budgets run a deficit now, if its forced into a hard spot and has to run a surplus thats when its going to be felt by many due to the overgrowth of public spending and influence.

The current worries about brexit is not a one off, we left ERM involuntarily in 1990 which is predecessor to the EURO. Hence the high rates, some upset and disruption from that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europ...und_sterling's_forced_withdrawal_from_the_ERM

 

[memyselfandi]

No joke! After passing a number of Microsoft exams I paid for myself which cost about 8K over the past 3 years, along with the 16 years experience I have working in IT. I had been applying for jobs since September last year, over 150 jobs! I also paid £300 for my CV to be professionally done before I started applying.

I used all resources out there when applying for jobs and finally last week I was given an offer which I accepted after so many rejections and very few interviews. Funny thing is, I found the role thanks to a fellow member here on the OCUK forums and I got in touch. If it wasn't for them, I still be applying for job, probably hitting 170 by now.

It was easier to find a job in the early 2000's.

I have to disagree with both of you. I left uni I '97, did some job hunting in 2002 and then again at the beginning of the year. All in the IT industry.

For me the recent stint for by far the easiest. First CV sent out to signed contract in <6 weeks. Yes I had a few interviews I was rejected from in that time but I'd expect that as part of job hunting.