Hands up please

anya I have to smile at your reference to cast off furniture.
Our first house was entirely furnished with furniture donated by relatives and friends' parents.
Then we moved to Hongkong where the furniture was standard issue supplied by MrA's employer.
We bought our first piece of furniture in 1985 when we had been married for 15 years.
It was a kitchen table from Ikea and 31 years later I'm sitting at it about to have my breakfast

A two-bedroomed bungalow here in our part of the West Midlands, on a busy road, has just sold for £500,000+ Jess and our house which we bought, again in the West Midlands, has increased in value by £100,000+ in eight years.

It's this ridiculous rise in house prices that is responsible for reports like this, while at the same time making it very hard for young people to get on the property ladder. And this is resulting is resentment as our age group is being seen as a 'never had it so good' generation.

There is a certain amount of truth in this as, when we tried to buy our first house they wouldn't take my income into account ('you might leave work and start a family' I was told) and this did help hold house prices down.

But against that, we never had they sense of entitlement to all kinds of extras today's young people see as essential. We did without expensive holidays, only ate out as a rare treat, were happy(ish) to accept relatives cast off furniture and generally made do.

Though we did have the opportunity of careers and good work pensions.

annifranc when people trot out homilies like "the only place where luck comes before hard work is in the dictionary" I wonder if they have stopped to think for a moment.
When Zac Goldsmith mayoral candidate for London happened to be born into the family of a hugely successful millionaire, was that anything to do with Zac's hard work? Lucky old Zac has a trust fund so he's never had to work particularly hard to stay rich. We still live in a country where the vast majority of the very rich have had a lucky start in life.
Lower down the wealth ladder, those that happen to inherit a family home from parents or grandparents who just happen to live in the South East will also have a bit of luck that they have not had to personally work for.
Property prices in other parts of he country are not buoyant. i know of a bungalow recently sold in the West Midlands. It was bought in 2007, it dipped in value 2009/10 and has slowly struggled back to near the original purchase price.
Many people in the now-retired generation have had the luck to live through a period of relative stability and growth since WW2 and their assets are, on paper, substantial because property values have increased far faster than average incomes. When my grandfather left the army after the war and returned to his humble clerk's job in the electricity board he was able to afford a mortgage on a 3 bedroomed house. This despite a non-working wife and a family.
The term "millionaire" was coined when a million was a serious amount of money. It's not any more - could be just a public sector worker with a house in the right place.

I've just been looking this up and found out the following:
"The ONS calculates households’ total wealth by adding up the value of the property, household goods such as jewellery, financial assets and pension pot."
So the million figure includes your private pension pot too (which I guess makes sense, but I never consider it as a lump sum as it's what we live on year to year).

Downsizing can be expensive though. Have you seen the prices of all these new retirement complexes springing up everywhere?

Yes indeed and forced house prices out of the range of people whose families have lived there for generations

aggie, that is why so many people choose to downsize or to move to a cheaper area to release capital. Some people who own mansions in the West country or Lincs have sold very ordinary homes in London and made ££££

Luckygirl that may be so in the particular case where a young couple cannot save up enough for the deposit on a mortgage.

But speaking generally, a young couple will have to save more for a deposit, and then pay more for a mortgage, because house prices have been inflated at least in part because of buy-to-let investors.
Even in areas where property prices are low, they will still be higher than if buy-to let investors weren't on the scene.

pompa - ukuleles?? Hahahaha!

Janea - I don't think that applies round there. Prices are pretty low and the tenants that he has could not even afford the deposit for one of those. Young couples are desperate to find somewhere to rent from a fair and decent landlord. The arrangement is a happy and amicable one. Honest decent landlord who charges a sensible rent and plays fair with them. They are very happy.

aggie I don't think anyone is saying your house value is part of your income, just part of your overall worth.

So you have paid off your Mortgage , have the OAP , but need to pay the gas bill ? will the gas company take a few bricks or slates in lieu . Now the house needs repairs , take a window to the DIY store to pay for bricks and slates ?............ The idea that your house is part of your income is despicable

You can all say what you like, but it won't change the fact that at 11%, there's over a million pensioner households worth more than £1 million. It's not just about benefiting from the property boom, it's also about the kind of pension schemes they were in e.g. Final Salary schemes - which also came with good lump sum payments.

It's not about begrudging anybody the money though, it's about recognising not all pensioners are in the same financial situation, so they shouldn't continue to exclude them from the brunt of the government's austerity measures.

If 11% of pensioner households are worth more than £1 million, at the other end of the scale a higher percentage of 12% are worth less than £40k.

So that means the majority - 77% - are somewhere in between.

Another fact you can't get away from is that in 2010, for the first time, the average pensioner household income became higher than the average working household income - and that's after housing costs are taken into account. So it's not just about the value of your property.

a smug house, whatever next?

Makes me gulp. The house just looks smug!

I bought my 4 bed roomed house for £45000 in 1978. It's in n Somerset and has lovely views over the Bristol Channel to Wales. No mortgage and I've a bit of an idea of what it's worth and it makes it gulp,

Around here, a not at all special family house can easily cost £1M (yes, it's quite mad) so if you had paid your mortgage off that would make you a paper 'millionaire'.
In practice you could still have a relatively low income so it doesn't mean much. And even if you were to downsize, you'd have to move to a much cheaper area to make it anything like worth while.
'Millionaire' doesn't mean anything like what it used to mean a few decades ago. At least not in London and much of the SE.

Thank goodness I'm not a millionaire - we are likely to eventually inherit MIL' s small 2-uo 2-down house in Rochdale, worth about 100K and about £20K worth of savings - I inherited £10K from my mum, which I used to pay off OH's credit card and buy him a new computer - the rest I've invested in a P2P Loan company which is a much better return than any other form of investment. Apart from that, I have about £1200 in savings. But I have a miniscule wok pension and my OAP, OH has ESA and DLA and they've currently stopped my DLA, which was a godsend, allowing me a little independence, whereas I can barely afford to leave the house pending my tribunal appeal for PIP. i grew up with the "if you can't afford, you don't buy" attitude. I occasionally use my credit card but only when I know I can pay it off within a month or two, but have always been a saver rather than a spender and like to feel that I can afford my needs without struggling. Where I live I would be surprised if anyone I knew had more than a third of a million!

I'm pretty sure one of my friends is a millionaire. When they married in the seventies they bought a run down house on a big plot of land. They worked hard to do it up, and then turned the land into a beautiful garden. Now the area is one of the most sought of in the country. Houses regularly sell there for over a million. My friend lives a modest life because all her wealth is in her house and she doesn't want to sell it.

Have to agree with you lily flower. I have noticed with concern that recently parts of the press appear to be encouraging resentment and driving a wedge between different generations . As you rightly say, if everything we older generation do were not done with love and for free we could greatly increase our incomes. As well as caring for my mother until she died 3 years ago, we regularly care for 2 grandchildren which probably saves thousands in nursery fees each year, and when out and about we see many other grandparents doing similar. Much voluntary work is done by older people. We were frugal ,going without so much ,in order to pay our way, which the younger generation seem generally Incapable of, times change of course but we must not forget that it was hard for us with no help at all from our parents and interest rates of up to 17 per cent on our mortgages.

Wealth and income are different and I suspect that house prices have inflated the wealth figures. It is all part of the 'intergenerational divide' narrative which is being used to draw a wedge between the old and the young and should be resisted as firmly as possible.

One consequence of calling asset rich/income poor people 'rich' is to be enable government to find mechanisms like mansion and asset taxes to slowly withdraw the equity from the assets themselves. For example, when the LibDems were proposing a mansion tax they were offering the completely false sweetener that the tax would only be taken, if income were insufficient to pay it, when the houseowner died - at which point the heirs would find all of the equity already hoovered out of the property when their relatives passed away.

In actual fact, most pensioners are poor and the average figures of pension income are vastly inflated by including the incomes of those at the very top of the band. Not many people know that the average 'gold plated public sector pension' is actually £5000, not the huge sums that many imagine.

These figures and the narrative of 'pampered pensioners' itself are very dangerous; they cause division and resentment and should be roundly resisted whenever they arise. They can be countered by citing the immense amount third agers are putting into the economy by helping their children and grandchildren both financially and with time and family support which would otherwise have to be picked up by the state.

I have a small pension and I support many people with my time and efforts. If I billed this work it would be worth thousands a year. I'd better appreciate a thank you from a grateful country than an attempt to label me 'rich' and steal what little I have.

Certainly round here it is, janea. I live in a street now full of rented properties occupied by young couples and families who would once have owned them and had their first step on the housing ladder. When one of the few remaining elderly residents dies or goes into a home, we just wait to see which of the buy-to-letters adds their house to the portfolio.

We have been married 47 years and have always saved hard and lived frugally. we both worked full time and put off having our children for 9 years, which made me an old first time mother at 28!. We live in a poor area but in the south east, our 3bed property has increased in value and we have been trying to downsize , but with the moving/legal/tax costs and high prices its virtually impossible to find something suitable which will give us some equity. We, like many others, are property rich/ cash poor. With only our govt pension coming in a further mortgage is out of the question. Its all on paper and our children will benefit when the time comes. In the meantime we do the best we can and enjoy retirement, still being careful. On the other hand I do have a multi millionaire friend (husband did well) who live a very extravagent lifestyle yet when we visited a NT property recently refused to pay the extra £1 entry fee, and when it was explained that they can claim tax rebate from the government, to my astonishment my friend said she was not a tax payer. Well there you go!! While the rest of us pay tax, she doesnt?. What do they say about tax havens, sunny places : shady people?

Luckygirl My SIL has a couple of buy-to-let properties and they are his pension fund. It is also a help to the young couples who rent them who could not afford a mortgage.
How does that work, if you don't mind my asking?
The 'helping young people' bit, I mean.
Isn't the rise in house prices at least partly due to the number of people investing in buy-to-let, making houses unaffordable for young first time buyers?

The only place that luck comes before work is in the dictionary.

I have friends, now retired, who have had good employment and salaries with modest pensions. they bought their house more than 30 years ago in West London which is now very fashionable. It was run down and they have over the years done it up and it's fabulous.

Along the years they have bought small houses to do up and rent out in order to boost their income. This way they have helped their children, educated them privately, had a good life with lots of travel and are very careful with their money in order to do that. I take my hat off to them and begrudge them nothing. It has all come from their own hard work.

The family home is now worth millions because of the astronomic rise in house prices in that area. But why on earth should they sell and downsize from what is the beloved family home. they can afford to run it, but I am not sure they could if the Masion Tax came in which for people like this I regard as grossly unfair. Of course it is too big for them now but they regularly have their grandchildren and her father to stay, so why shouldn't they reap the benefits of years of hard work and careful money management.

I SO dislike this current mood of envy.