Stop blaming Pensioners

Norah Your family were fortunate not to be among the labouring classes.

One of my mothers few memories of her father, he died during WW1, was of him ocming hom from work and sitting by the fire with his head in his hands almost asleep with sheer exhaustion. He was a London docker - and this is the effect the work had on him when still in his 30s. Had he lived and remained a docker, do you think he could have worked like that into his 70s and 80s? Assuming he lived that long and did not die of health problems before then.

My grandfather never quit working and lived into his 90s. We're all different.

Just because one could work, doesn't mean they'd have to, perhaps just not receive pension until 70-75. I believe I've read of posters retired a few years awaiting their pensions. How a person structures their spending matters.

I remember men of my grandfather’s generation working into old age and poor health, retiring at last, only to die within a very short time. Not much to look forward to after a lifetime’s work.

A few more years past 67? For many people that would be working till they drop though, particularly if they are doing manual labour.

Doodledog

Yes, but that would mean people working till they drop. There has to be a way for people to take some time off before they die, surely?

I remember going on a guided tour in SE Asia. Part of it was in a rickshaw, and the main guide said that we should not avoid choosing the older men who pulled them, as there was no pension, and if they didn't work they didn't eat.

Is that the sort of thing we should aim for? As I say, for some, working is enjoyable, and these days it needn't be physically onerous, but others really do need to rest. Apart from the humane aspects of making people do heavy lifting with arthritis or lumbago, there is the unavoidable fact that many people do get 'past it' in all areas of work. Even hi-tech work that only involves picking up a mouse or pen can be mentally challenging and stressful as we age.

No, not working until they drop. Yes, have some time off before they die.

If people merely worked a few more years, to accommodate the pension funding issues 'people live longer and there are ever more people'..

I actually don't care, I have no pension. It just seems to me that if both people in a couple choose to work and both have pensions, add in people are living longer - perhaps part of pension shortfall could be accommodated with increasing pension age.

Yes, but that would mean people working till they drop. There has to be a way for people to take some time off before they die, surely?

I remember going on a guided tour in SE Asia. Part of it was in a rickshaw, and the main guide said that we should not avoid choosing the older men who pulled them, as there was no pension, and if they didn't work they didn't eat.

Is that the sort of thing we should aim for? As I say, for some, working is enjoyable, and these days it needn't be physically onerous, but others really do need to rest. Apart from the humane aspects of making people do heavy lifting with arthritis or lumbago, there is the unavoidable fact that many people do get 'past it' in all areas of work. Even hi-tech work that only involves picking up a mouse or pen can be mentally challenging and stressful as we age.

Doodledog

Norah

loopyloo But yes the age balance of society is causing a drag on the economy hence the rise in the pension start.

I'd imagine my husband is not alone in always assuming business owners won't ever really retire. I never thought about people retiring - the men in my family don't/didn't. Dad never really retired, my brother moved home from NYC, but it wasn't long before he was back working. Maybe work needs to be more enjoyable?

I'm not sure what difference it would make if people didn't retire, unless they never drew a pension.

I wouldn't want to live in a society where people were expected to work until they dropped - a few years to relax and enjoy the fruits of your labours after a lifetime of work isn't much to ask, IMO. Many couples hardly see one another when both are working, and retirement is a chance to spend some time together.

Also, there is a huge difference between jobs. Some people get a lot of satisfaction and status from their work, but others do it because they have to, and get few rewards beyond a pay packet. I don't think one size fits all, really.

It could make a difference if people retired later. People live longer, the pension system might be able to adjust to more people, if those people paid contributions longer and began receiving pensions later.

True, Casdon. I'm definitely not tarring all MNers with the same brush. I'm one of them, for a start .

Doodledog

Oh, I agree (and I am a 'boomer' ). It's horrible to read, and I don't think it is remotely justified. Nor do I think that the moaners would really like to live in a society with the level of social control required to boot people out of their own houses at a pre-determined age. Presumably the same would apply after relationship breakdowns and when children leave for university and vacate their bedrooms?

It's not thought through at all.

Most posters on Mumsnet are lovely though, and the extremists get put in their place quite regularly - I feel sorry for them, because they must be so unhappy in their lives to want to lash out at everybody else. It’s not just older people who cop it either, it’s men, parents, siblings, teachers, doctors, other parents - you name it, and they are in there with a knife.

Oh, I agree (and I am a 'boomer' ). It's horrible to read, and I don't think it is remotely justified. Nor do I think that the moaners would really like to live in a society with the level of social control required to boot people out of their own houses at a pre-determined age. Presumably the same would apply after relationship breakdowns and when children leave for university and vacate their bedrooms?

It's not thought through at all.

Thanks Callistemon, I should have thought he’d be better off minding his own business. Where I live (in the house we bought and paid for) is absolutely none of his business at all. Stirring up generational hatred is a particularly unpleasant thing to do. I don’t read Mumsnet, but others on here do, and it appears from what they say, that some younger people are becoming extremely stirred up by this. The Guardian doesn’t help either, I’ve read articles in The Guardian that attempt to stir up inter generational discord too.

Doodledog

There are often threads on MN saying that 'boomers' are selfish for living in larger houses when families can't afford them. The hatred is obvious and not pleasant to read.

We're ok, then, not being boomers 🙂

It is resentment being stirred up by some groups and it isn't pleasant.

Norah

loopyloo But yes the age balance of society is causing a drag on the economy hence the rise in the pension start.

I'd imagine my husband is not alone in always assuming business owners won't ever really retire. I never thought about people retiring - the men in my family don't/didn't. Dad never really retired, my brother moved home from NYC, but it wasn't long before he was back working. Maybe work needs to be more enjoyable?

I'm not sure what difference it would make if people didn't retire, unless they never drew a pension.

I wouldn't want to live in a society where people were expected to work until they dropped - a few years to relax and enjoy the fruits of your labours after a lifetime of work isn't much to ask, IMO. Many couples hardly see one another when both are working, and retirement is a chance to spend some time together.

Also, there is a huge difference between jobs. Some people get a lot of satisfaction and status from their work, but others do it because they have to, and get few rewards beyond a pay packet. I don't think one size fits all, really.

There are often threads on MN saying that 'boomers' are selfish for living in larger houses when families can't afford them. The hatred is obvious and not pleasant to read.

maddyone

Who exactly is suggesting that we older people in paid for properties should move out of them? I’m a bit puzzled by that.

It was Angus Hanton of the Intergenerational Foundation.

If he finds me a desirable bungalow with a sensible layout in a good location I might consider it. 🙂

Who exactly is suggesting that we older people in paid for properties should move out of them? I’m a bit puzzled by that.

loopyloo But yes the age balance of society is causing a drag on the economy hence the rise in the pension start.

I'd imagine my husband is not alone in always assuming business owners won't ever really retire. I never thought about people retiring - the men in my family don't/didn't. Dad never really retired, my brother moved home from NYC, but it wasn't long before he was back working. Maybe work needs to be more enjoyable?

Some of the advantages we had have now gone.
Working for a bank my DH had a reduced rate mortgage and a company car. My DM who helped us with school fees had a tax reduction.
Councils provided meals on wheels.
You could get an appointment with the doctor the same day.
We had free school milk.
Local authorities did mortgages.
But other things are so much better.
But yes the age balance of society is causing a drag on the economy hence the rise in the pension start.
We do need to think seriously about making the latter years as productive and pleasant as possible.
Must look up Esther Rantzen....

The whole point of buying a home rather than renting one is that when you get older and stop earning you don't have to pay rent. It is security in older age.

That is why younger people take out mortgages too. To expect older people to spend decades paying for a house then hand it over at the end is unreasonable - why would we do that? And is tat what younger people expect they will do in their turn? We have a four bedroom house, and only two of us live here, but we have two adult children who visit and need somewhere to sleep. We hope to have grandchildren too one day, and I imagine they will come with their parents when they visit. How would that work if we had a studio flat?

We don't always use all the bedrooms (see the decluttering thread ) but we definitely utilise all the downstairs space. We have two reception rooms and tend to spend the day in different spaces doing different things, meeting for lunch and both popping in and out of the kitchen. I would hate to have to share daytime space with Mr Dog's music, radio, TV, or have to keep quiet as he is working or reading etc. He would feel the same, and I don't want him interrupting me if I'm busy either.

To get the downstairs space we need a reasonably sized house. Very few 2 bed houses would give us the space we need - it's just the way houses are designed. In the UK it is bedrooms that are used to describe houses - elsewhere it is square metreage, or the number of rooms in general. For some reason in the UK we describe a typical house as a 3 bed semi, when elsewhere in the world it would be marketed as a 7 roomed house with X sq metres. The only type of house that isn't described in terms of number of bedrooms is a 'two up and two down'. Even bungalows where rooms can be used flexibly to suit the needs of the owners are described in terms of the number of bedrooms.

As M0nica says, it's not as though there are unlimited numbers of small properties anyway.

Some years ago when the Intergenerational Foundation brought out its first report on older people living in houses with a lot of unused bedrooms we had a Q&A session on GN with the author, and I asked him for his definition of a bedroom. He said a bedroom was any room someone called a bedroom

And there was his error because many of us use 'bedrooms' for all kinds of other uses. So someone in a three bedroomed family house whose children were grown-up and gone might well use one room as a home gym, craft room, study, yet would still describe the room as a 'bedroom'

As I said up thread, my single daughter wants to buy a 3 storey house described as having 5 bedrooms, but she intends to turn the 2 'bedrooms' on the same floor as the living room into living rooms, so for her it will be come a 3 living roomed, 3 bedroomed house. But were she to sell it the estate agent would again describe it as having 5 bedrooms.

I would add looking round the range of houses being built in our area - and there are thousands of them, we are a high growth area, by far the majority of them are family homes from 3 bed terraces, to vast quantities of 4/5bed detached. It is not family homes we are lacking. It is smaller 1 and 2 bedroomed properties and pushing older people out of big properties to compete with first time buyers for starter properties, is only going to ake that problem worse.

the trouble with young people is they expect to begin where their parents finish

This comment brings to mind a youngish couple I know. Married for about 10 years, two young children. They moved into a brand new detached, four bedroom property with a couple of bathrooms on a very nice development when they married.

To me, this would have been their ‘forever home’, at least until the children had left home.

But no, another prestigious small development has now been built, nor far from where they lived. So they have now bought there, and moved into a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom property.

This was just before the hike in interest rates, so I hope the extra bedrooms are worth it.

In 1967 we were spending a weekend visiting my ma in law to be. She was chatting about some tension in a neighbours family rooted in what she called envy. Her words were ‘the trouble with young people is they expect to begin where their parents finish’. Simplistic maybe but I suspect she’d be saying the same thing now. We were newly engaged and never did work out if she included us in her generalisation.

It come into it because people compare what they see as like with like. So if their parents were in professional jobs and had bought a house by the age of 35, and they have similar qualifications but are struggling to get promoted and house prices are too high, they blame the previous generation for ‘having it easy’.

What they don’t take into account is that yes, their parents/grandparents probably did have an easier time as graduates were rarer and house prices lower, but also it is to a large extent because of that blip in social mobility that they are graduates themselves and haven’t left school at 15 to do a manual job as a few generations ago they would have done. They are having it easier too. Maybe not easier than the early ‘boomers’ (later ones had comprehensives, mass unemployment and rising inflation when they were young adults) but almost always easier than the generations before. Add in a possible inheritance (which the ‘boomers’ probably didn’t have) and there is little to complain about really.

maddyone my first son is married with no children. He is living in his third property having each time upsized. He has just had a large extension built on to this house which has increased the value and the size considerably. He says the best place to keep money is in property. His brother has two houses, one in Surrey to enable him to get to work in London easily when he has to be in town. The other is in a village near to us and is used at weekends, and sometimes school holidays. Both houses have been considerably improved since purchase.

Agreed. Leveraging savings and assets.

Buying small properties to let is also leveraging assets.

Our children have followed along, doing the same. We've no education only a 'work your socks off ' mentality, not sure how education enters.

Indeed Monica, my first son is married with no children. He is living in his third property having each time upsized. He has just had a large extension built on to this house which has increased the value and the size considerably. He says the best place to keep money is in property. His brother has two houses, one in Surrey to enable him to get to work in London easily when he has to be in town. The other is in a village near to us and is used at weekends, and sometimes school holidays. Both houses have been considerably improved since purchase. Both sons and our daughter benefited, as Doodledog says, by the fact that we were the first generation in our families, to go on to higher education and that we therefore valued education, and expected our children to go on to university themselves. One set of my grandparents were comfortably off, but the other set were very poor. In four generations we have gone from an unskilled railway man (the poor grandad) to a financial director, a barrister, and a doctor. I think that’s what Doodledog is saying.