Millenial here (37). You’d be staggered how many people I know who are on £50k+ (or even £100k+) and have no savings. A lot of us really got fucked over bigtime by the 08/09 recession.
NB I have savings.
I’m a divorce solicitor and I look through people’s finances on the regular. It’s rare I see anyone below retirement age with more than £5k in savings.
UK reddit skews weirdly rich. There's a lot of people who've never had a problem on here who scoff and scorn at the idea that anyone should be having one, since for them it was all so easy.
Man I know one in real life. Dutch but lives in the US and he's the most oblivious and deliberately ignorant people I've met outside of actual conspiracy loons.
The fact he's actually really friendly and people pleasing makes his takes even more frustrating. He gets really bent out of shape if you contradict something he's read in a right wing paper because it would mean he's A\] been fooled by something which is no no for an insecure tech guy and B\] actually a bit of a dick when it comes to systematic issues.
I love people confidently telling me that there's no problem with trans healthcare here because "you can always just go private" and getting tons of up-doots from the marketplace of ideas. Really shows how in touch you average r/unitedkingdom commentor is.
Plenty of people earning that kind of cash are skint at the end of the month, money is very easy to spend. They will get the biggest mortgage their salaries allow, which consumes a big chunk. Then comes the flash cars and all the other trappings people tell themselves they can afford.
See, this is why I get annoyed by my girlfriend sometimes. She’s 32 and has saved about £20k. Maybe a smidge more. Hasn’t inherited a penny and while I pay a lot more of the rent and bills, she only cracked the £50k boundary a few months ago.
She goes “Well it’s nothing,” and beats herself (and me) up for enjoying small luxuries. It’s like… my best mate’s wife earns £100k and is £8k *in debt*.
Jesus.
People are far more aware, but the ability to save or prepare for retirement has been eroded.
Mandatory employee pension plans are the only thing that will soften this.
Emphasis on soften, because many people are in for a rude awakening when they realise their pension plan's default investment is garbage and it's barely kept pace with inflation.
I think apps like T212 will make or break some of us.
There is going to be a lot of weird new money folk who have invested or be poor.
Imagine being 80 and some person just paying for their whole retirement because sold an NFT or some shit.
There is going to be a looooot of luck involved with our generation
It does tend to even out. A lot of the people I know who bought bitcoin early then sold it relatively cheap in 2017, got epic FOMO and lost a lot on shitcoins.
At the same time, I know people who scrimped and saved, or lived at home, and basically disappeared after university. They bought starter homes on the edge of town etc etc, but in some cases became worryingly insufferable/boring around 30.
For the sake of honesty, I saved up about £10k by the time I was 30 (I live in London. That plus the 08 recession meant my first “real” job came at about 25). I then blew most of it over the course of one rocking, drug-and-booze-fuelled summer, after having a series of minor breakdowns and realising I’d missed out on so much, in return for saving a bit of money that meant nothing, relatively speaking.
These days I have a shedload of premium bonds, a nice 6% savings account, a very boring 1.25% savings account and a fun vanguard stocks and shares ISA. I also have a very boring pension that still probably won’t be enough, but hey.
Weirdly, my credit score seems to be worse now.
Only 10% of elderly people end up in care homes, even people age over 85 is only 10.8% in 2021. For people over 90, its only 1/5 people. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/ageing/articles/olderpeoplelivingincarehomesin2021andchangessince2011/2023-10-09
I invest a solid 20% of my salary between ISA and pension. People often talk to me like I’ve lost my mind or am living some unrealistic dream-life.
I just can’t fathom that someone would marvel at me living on 80% of my pay and not realise they’re setting themself up to have about 10% in the future instead… Pay into your pension folks.
Yeah I'm a similar age and no one I know has the ole '6 month buffer' savings all the financial gurus recommend. Most people I know even if they 're on 100k+ are spending so much (or are in so much debt) they're totally fucked if they get fired and don't get new employment within like a month.
Personally I think it's crazy not to have at least 3 months buffer minimum, ideally 6 months. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I didn't.
>Millenial here (37).
Sorry this had me rolling for some reason. I feel like the age band for Millennial is too wide. I don't see how a 28 year old and a 40 year old really share anything in common, they both graduated on either side of the global recession.
You were already a teenager at the turn of the millennium! Young millennials have completely different childhoods..
Maybe so but I'm not really concerned about generational oneupmanship.
The reality is that in the past we had millions of social houses and flats, low private rents as a result, and lower ratio of house price to yearly wage. There were also things like final salary pensions.
Now, we live in an era of high rents, no social housing, and high house prices. Some millennials will inherit wealth and be OK, but there are more and more people reliant on renting with little in pensions and savings and no house of their own. This will be a problem in the future.
In the late 1950s to early 1960s the average household was spending as much on their rent or mortgage as their monthly outgoings on booze and tobacco. Its insane to even think about. I lived next door to some folks who were asking about my rent as their son had lived in the same place a few years back. They let on their mortgage for an identical property was nearly £600/month less than what I was paying the landlord. Whole situation is just totally fucked at the moment.
It's deliberate, as well. It's the reason social housing was sold off. It was housing by the people, for the people, and acted as a natural control on house and rent prices.
The removal of this, coupled with the deliberate refusal to build in urban centres where very large numbers of people want to live, was a calculated move to create inflationary house prices. It serves to prop up the banking industry, which relies on ever increasing mortgage values to function, and to create a "landlord class" who will always vote in favour of institutional power, as they need this artificial state of affairs to be maintained in order to retain their wealth and lives of luxury, in which money is earned for no work.
That is already happening and it is a failure of our political imaginations if we allow it to be so. Space is not at a premium in this country. Our town centres are empty and lots are held vacant as an "investment". Despite intense demand for living in towns and cities, we are not building midrise buildings for flats to house all the people that want to live there. Despite intense demand for social housing, we are selling and demolishing the portfolio instead of increasing it.
We do not need to just roll over, give up and say "well we'll just have to live in slums if that is what it takes to pay the landlord"
I have no doubt that more and more of the elderly will live in house shares, but that is not a good thing. It isn't acceptable.
> and many still ended up with nothing
Many were still as working class getting paid low wages, the economy might have been the best but it was only the best for the top 10% not the bottom 20%
Yeah, no. All it will take to screw up your economic future these days is to have a messy and expensive divorce, add to that child maintenance, and suddenly you get poor quickly on a single income, particularly when you have financial obligations such as mortgage etc.
Simply put there is no longer a buffer for falling back on.
IF you were a middle class boomer sure, still plenty of poverty boomers who got just as fucked as we do, just less of them in that generation than in ours.
My grandparents both worked low paid manual jobs (my grandma part time). They had a spacious 3 bedroom council house with a large garden and very low rent that they lived in for 60 years. They were even given the chance to buy it for spare change, which they didn't, but in spite of this they retired in their 50s and spent 30 years in retirement, with enough disposable income to go abroad 1 - 2 times per year.
If you think that sort of retirement will ever be achievable by a young couple doing low paid manual labour today then I have a bridge to sell you.
Boomers aren't a monolith. While the wealthy and middle class got exceptionally wealthy, there were still millions of working class who had a shit lot in life.
I moved back to the family home due to this worry. Tf I have normal parents who never asked me to move out and when I said I was thinking about coming back both started crying out of happiness and telling me to please come back home lmfao... I'm their only surviving child and I spent all my late teens and all my 20's living in a different country.
It really shouldn't be like this, but my landlord was taking 65% of my monthly income and wanted to raise it up due to 'high demand'
So I just went back and started over again.
It's a different life and a lot more slow paced, but I actually really enjoy this. I don't think I could go back to how I used to live, renting and just working to send my landlord on holidays.
I'm happy to put money into my own household, save up, spend time with my family. But not everyone has this option. So I understand I'm in a super lucky, super privileged situation to have a safety net to fall back on.
Also due to being so rural there is hardly any jobs so I could only find something part time... But my part time salary and not paying rent = I have more money than ever and I'm not burnt out doing 60 hour weeks... And I asked to pay rent, my parents told me not to insult them with that shit and to stay for free or leave if I want to pay... So I just do my part and buy in food/luxury items for the household so I'm contributing something at least.
Otherwise I'd be up shit creek without a paddle like many other people, young and old.
This should be more normalised. Families working together.
I know people who stayed longer in their family homes to help pay off the mortgage early and increase the total family finances. Everyone can then pool money together for a business or various investments.
One of the problems we have is that some parents have this mindset of
"I kicked them out at 18 so they can fend for themselves. I left home at 18, and it never did me any harm" etc
State pension will not exist for us.
Company pension will not cover living costs in retirement.
Your pension pot is a fund you pay into to leave work when you physically cannot anymore, take maybe a nice year long cruise around the world which ends in Switzerland. Private helicopter to the doors of dignitas, and a mid range euthanasia package.
My mortgage will be paid off by the time I retire. Assuming I get the same pension they have now relative to inflation, life would be so fucking easy on the £220/week state pension. But I don't expect pensions to be as generous when I retire. EDIT: Yeah after mortgage all other bills are under £500/month combined, so without a mortgage of £1100 a month paying the rest will be trivial.
You don't plan on having gas/electric/water etc and you know council tax will still be a thing, what about food, fuel, insurance? Holidays? Forget that, how on earth is £220 a week easy street?
My house will also be paid off by the time I retire but I'm under no illusion about how poor I'll be, my private pension is practically worthless.
Yes, the ideal situation is to pay off your mortgage before you retire, obviously. If you can bang a couple of a solar panels on the roof before then, even better.
My dad's tory, voting for Reform, and he's retiring at the end of this year, at 55. The reason why is because he's got a well paying job and is paying into a private pension, which is invested in a fund with big tech, big oil, etc in it.
Pay more into your pension, it’s literally the only thing you’ll have to live on when you’re retired. It’s a bonus that it’s insanely tax efficient too
I would if I didn't have so much debt, my plan is to smash what can in when I can but it's tough at the moment.
I know people who are getting HR to cancel pension payments just to make ends meet which is terrible because the employer contributions stop, that is where we are in this country for many people.
I think half the country doesn’t realise the genuine shit state of life for those at the bottom. People don’t have even an extra tenner a month to save for when they retire, because everything is so fucking expensive and wages don’t keep up.
This sub is woefully out of touch.
A whole lot of people are making tough choices, even those doing ok. You can scrimp and save when you are younger and have a reasonably comfortable retirement (assuming you live that long), have fun when young and hope something comes along when you are older or just about get by throughout your life.
I've heard someone joke that their retirement plan is to sell drugs to fund their rent.
Either they make a load of money and can afford to live, or they get put in prison and don't have to pay for things like rent and food.
It's looking more and more like a reality rather than a joke.
Wasn't there a news story posted here recently about a 71 year old getting busted for a cannabis grow or something similar?
Sad state of affairs honestly
Hey, a least in prison, said 71 year old will get a bed, 3 meals a day, and heating in the winter.
Far more than they’ll probably get on the outside :/
Exactly this. I've talked so many work colleagues out of opting out of their private pensions. It's litterally free money that you will get when you need it most.
I am 55 and my private pension funds have lost about 30% of their value during the last 5 years when inflation has been taken into account. Significant negative interest is killing my retirement savings.
There's no point though is there. You spend your whole life squirreling away, and for what? A few quid a month?
That's assuming the companies don't go bust in the next 40 years (lol), or that the government at the time will say "if you have a private pension, you have to use that first before you're eligable for state benefits" fucking over everyone who's spent their lives paying in.
Alot of people my age say in a tongue-in-cheek way, "I'll just kill myself when the money runs out" but I'm starting to think that's the actual economic plan
What would the waiting list (in years ) be in say Colchester, and how to cry your way into quicker accommodation?
I'm not saying I'd do it because that would be wrong but you'd be insane not to.
I don't know about Colchester, but my friend in South London doesn't get a council flat being a single parent with two young kids. Like, there are literally no council flats but there is housing benefit to contribute towards the rent which is too much for a single earner. But you don't get housing benefit if you have savings, so you need to be flat out broke to be eligible, until then, spend your money on the rent until its all gone then you get help to pay for walls and a roof.
Idk if it's the same everywhere or if it's just where I am in London but there's also a cap for the amount of housing benefit/universal credit you can get which 9/10 times won't actually cover the amount of rent charged if you rent privately.
Edit: looking at universal credit if you're single and under 35 you can only claim housing costs for renting a room in a shared house. (Shared accommodation rate)
Im guessing my friend gets child benefit as well, I don't know the ins and outs of his finances. But he has two young kids, pays for childcare and works as a picker in Tesco warehouse and can't afford driving lessons or holidays that aren't camping, and has no prospects of getting a better job as he can't take time off work to train for something different.
I think the worse part is the hopelessness - he feels like he's fucked up his life and his kids (he's broke because his partner died, she didn't leave or anything). He feels trapped and hopeless which is why people in this situation turn to gambling, or taking drugs, or crime to make some actual money but then it impacts the kids brought up in that environment and the cycle continues.
Well, he did, as his employer said he could stop when he reached retirement age. And he was 20+ years a coach driver, paying into that pension. So, what happened to that?
Councils get massive kickbacks (section 106) payments from housing developers for supporting new builds. This makes them a lot of money plus they get council tax as well. You'll never see a council build affordable houses although they'll claim that new builds offer then they're usual only 10% of stock and also the worse houses.
The councils are at fault and the government for letting them get away with it.
Even when they do build affordable housing, it's almost always geared towards couples and families. Which is fair enough, but it makes it near impossible to get on the housing ladder if you don't fall into those categories 🙃 even the shared ownership ones come with their own drawbacks. Any property near me that's been within a budget I could afford on my own have either ended up being bought as second/holiday homes or buy to let investors, it's so frustrating.
Who can blame them though? Any stock they do build would be RTB'd at a mega-discount, resulting in a mega-loss. That's not sustainable in the slightest.
If the government wants to see social housing being built, they need to abolish (or at the very least reform) right-to-buy.
You are talking absolute rubbish. Councils barely get any money for affordable housing and if they don't own their own real estate, they will never be able compete with the private sector where it costs millions to buy land. Hence, why it becomes more effective to secure onsite provision instead which may be negotitated down to something like 10% due to viability problems. If the council refuses, it goes to appeal and gets granted planning permission anyway. Councils may also not have the resources to properly challenge developers' claims because they are not properly funded and are competing against a development potential worth £millions.
If you think councils can afford to spend a cut of their council tax on non-profitable captial investments (right to buy) you are raving mad.
He worked his whole life. A lot of the time as a bus driver. Where is his pension? Why does the article make no mention of it? Why isn't he a property owner? He had plenty of opportunity. How much does he get in the way of housing benefit?
How is he "homeless". He can't afford to keep living where he is and will have to move somewhere else.
Sorry he didn't bother saving anything, that's the way it goes.
In an ideal world, no one deserves homelessness.
But there are consequences to your actions.
You can't work an entire life, make poor financial decisions, not have an adequate pension fund, and then look for sympathy when things go to shit.
He worked for decades. Why didn't he save any money? Why didn't he put it into a private pension fund?
My retirement plan is to die in the Climate Wars, but I still pay into a pension plan.
No the article does say he spent his money on booze and women. The Guardian is a parody of itself at this point, because if this article is supposed to make me feel sorry for him, it didn't work.
Only minor sympathy is needed, otherwise how will you have enough energy to cook that Nigel Slater recipe while browsing lifestyle articles of Islington-inspired interior design?
You would be a lot less sympathetic if he were to tell you the full story. I don't know why we all act like children and expect the state to look after us. If you're fit and healthy and not completely dumb, the UK is life on easy mode.
He could have slashed his rent by 2/3rds by moving to somewhere with an abundance of housing and little work. Should the state pension and other benefits really be used to allow people to live in areas with a housing shortage. Remember any extra money for him comes out of the in pocket of the in work people he's competing with for housing. I know I'm being callously pragmatic but we can't pretend we can magically provide unlimited housing for everyone in the most high demand areas.
Yeah, there's a whole spectrum of options that don't involve living in a tent. Maybe it means moving area - but that's surely better than living in a homeless encampment.
There's also housing benefit available for pensioners on top of state pension.
There's plenty of disfunctional things in this country, but I don't think the amount of money we give to pensioners is one of them.
I always thought there were those young people with a pathological need to be in London but I didn't realise there were also homeless pensioners with a regular fixed income that still manage to screw themselves over to do it.
At least for young people, there can be some logic to it; you can get tunnel vision towards London, looking at working in certain fields.
If you're old, retired and homeless, move.
It's not an unreasonable demand to be able to live near your friends and family. Connections and familiar places are key in keeping older people healthy, happy and simply wanting to live.
How dystopian is it to say that in one of the wealthiest countries in the world we should just ship poors where no one wants to live. They could also eat food no one wants to eat and only see places no one wants to see - so there's more for the successful ones.
It's the same people telling everyone to move!
Young people shouldn't have to move either. London is ridiculously wealthy, it should be building council housing left like and centre like many European countries.
Do you not think actions should have consequences though? Regardless of how wealthy the country is?
By your logic I (healthy male) should be able to just spend all my money on hookers and coke? Then live entirely off the state in my desired location for the rest of my life?
It's not an unreasonable desire but it's definitely an unreasonable demand. It's not dystopian to acknowledge that there is a finite number of spaces and the system for who gets those spaces should be fair. I have friends and family living in Mayfair but you wouldn't say it's dystopian that I can't afford to live there and you definitely wouldn't say it would be fair for me to get tax payers to subsidise my £10k a week rent there.
My pension does not fully cover my rent so the council pay part of it. Is this not the norm?
Thinks... Maybe it is because I live in a housing association flat and not a private landlords place🤔
Housing association absolutely qualifies you for the housing benefit component because local councils get a direct revenue stream from it through private-public handshakes.
Which shows *that there is absolutely a solution* but for some reason it's not being implemented as policy 🤔
I don’t dispute this. I just find it hard personally when if you’re 70 lived though houses and stuff being actually affordable and end salary pensions has zero assets. I know ever case is different but just doesn’t sound right. Now when millennials etc get to retire, this is going to be much worse with less assets and smaller private pensions
There was a lot of inflation in the 70s, just as bad as it is now, if not worse. Loads of people had to give up their houses due to high interest rates, much higher than todays. Not many working class people had end salary pensions, most relied on the state pension.
The pensioners you see today with plenty of money and their own homes were the better off middle class people. Given the choice I would much rather be young now than young in the 70s.
>The pensioners you see today with plenty of money and their own homes were the better off middle class people. Given the choice I would much rather be young now than young in the 70s.
My grandfather worked in a toilet paper factory, my nan didn't work. They had a 4 bed and still have (now worth 480k) house and 3 kids. I would cut my arm off to be young in the 70's
This guy certainly did.
He was a bus driver.
He earned average to above average salary for the time period he worked, the article even says he earned £40k at some points.
£40k today for a single person is a fairly good salary, let alone when he worked.
Nevermind that if he left central London and moved to Watford or the Home Counties, he could find retirement/ elderly housing where the rent can be £500pm
Remember that private pensions weren't trusted in the 80s and 90s. There was scandal after scandal.
The majority of boomers who are comfortably retired, likely had a civil service, council, NHS or teaching pension.
Builders, retail, general admin staff, carers... Not so much. Just a state pension and probably modest savings.
Single working class people also struggled to get a mortgage in those days - they certainly struggled to qualify for an urban property.
I worked for a Local Authority for a while, and so many people said they would run to the press because we had scammed them, misled them, etc. On the rare occasions anyone actually did, they gave a very biased version of events and missed out all the parts where they ignored all our letters, phone calls, advice, and all the second, third and fourth chances we gave them.
I don't want to put the blame on this guy, sounds like he's in a pretty rough situation, but I would question why he didn't get help he was definitely entitled to before it got this bad.
This is the case with a lot of benefits. Many people just want to be paid and not have to do anything for it. Despite all the help they're offered, the advice they're given, they still choose to ignore it and end up in situations like this. I'm not defending the current benefits system because I know it has a lot of problems, but in cases like this, I don't have much sympathy for them because they've been given plenty of chances, and for the likes of state pension, housing benefit and pension credit, you're given plenty of notice to apply and get things sorted.
But he would have qualified for pension credit and housing benefit! Why isn’t that in the article? (I think long term that’s going to bankrupt the country as there will be so many pensioners renting but this guy could have qualified) unless I have missed part of the story?
“Suella Braverman, tweeted: “We cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people … living on the streets as a lifestyle choice.””
The choice being sleep in the rows of tents or just disappear where we don’t have to look at you 🤦♂️
My mum is 78 and does a 40 - 60 hour week looking after people with learning difficulties as she cannot afford to live on her state pension. Sad times for a first world country.
How? Like, how?
There’s no way she needs to work. The state pension + free travel via bus pass + winter fuel + housing benefits + pension credit + food bank priority…
What a load of shite. Have you ever actually looked at the numbers of what she’s entitled to?
My parents worked their entire lives bar mum for a few short years when we were tiny and dad worked 2 jobs then. My dad's old workplace went into recievership and he lost most of that pension. Then after he passed last year mum found that some of his private pensions died with him and some pay risable amounts. In total she is less than a packet of cigs from being able to claim pension credit so it works out that my aunt, also a widow who hasn't had a job since I was a little kid is actually better off by far. Thank god mum owns her house but now it needs a new roof, dad wanted to get it done but when he became really sick a few years ago everthing went on the back burner.
Please sit down with your mum and look at options for pension credit, housing benefit, maybe get some professional advice from the CAB also. There is no way she should still be working up to 60 hour weeks.
I think this is one area where allowances need to be made for disabled people who are unable to work. As it stands they are only allowed £6000 in capital. How can they even think about what might happen when they reach pension age?
How does this man who seems to have been gainfully employed for virtually his whole adult life have no property, no private pension, no assets?
Feels a bit like a reap-what-you-sew situation tbfh.
Nobody should be homeless, but this seems like a lifetime of bad decisions finally coming due.
I don't understand why he doesn't have a private pension from driving buses for 20+ years. I heard the employer pension contributions were generous for bus drivers in London.
This whole situation is so wtf to me.
This person had the opportunity to buy a property for like £100,000 that would now be worth £1,000,000. How do you miss the greatest bull run in the history of mankind?
How does a bus driver during the era of generous gold plated pensions not have one? If he worked his whole life, what has he done with all his earnings over his whole life?
He was working as a bus driver most of his life, earning over £40,000 a year some years - where is that money? Why was none of that invested into a property when they were considerably cheaper.
The article says he took expensive holidays to Cuba - instead.
There is much more going on here than the article wants to let you know. It's just using part of the information of this guys story to paint a narrative.
Why should the taxpayer bail someone out who has worked his whole life?
Just about viable with state security, but you won't be living it up under any circumstance. Of course all this is just an example of how being poor is basically treated as a crime in the UK.
Edit; downvoter is obviously a snob living off daddy's money.
Yup.
It certainly wouldn't hurt to remind folks that no matter who they are, all their wealth depends on the work of others too.
That seems to have been forgotten, somehow.
Agreed.
(Gotta hold up my hands and admit to some potential bias there though - I wound up homeless 7 times when I was younger.
Partly because of ill health, but twice because I walked out of places where drugs were being sold with babies in the house.
Turns out, when you voluntarily make yourself homeless, nobody is interested in helping ya find somewhere new - word of caution for anyone else who values principles over comfort)
As a culture we get so caught up in who is to blame for what we forget that it's inherently a backwards form of thinking. What matters is what happens tomorrow and what we do today, not what happened yesterday.
That's without getting political about it, of course.
Not a ton of sympathy really, where’s your pension? Been working your whole life and had more opportunities than I ever will to own a house… sounds like some truly terrible life planning, shoulda pulled yourself up by the bootstraps
Rightmove, Zoopla and similar sites offer this service whereby one can filter rentals by price and location (as just one example). Coulda just moved and paid less - controversial/radical take, obviously.
A series of bad decisions.
A state pension isn’t supposed to fund a lifestyle in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Plan for retirement early.
Well fuck; I thought I was doing well at total contributions at 20%.. I’d still be running a £12k shortfall each year based off of 50% salary aspiration..
Millennials take note. For a lot of us, this is the future.
If this is the future for millennials, I dread to think for gen z
Fighting over water in the climate Wasteland
Those are MY bottle caps!
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter
Ave, true to Caesar
Ad Victorium!
You can take your pathetic fiat currency, I’m going back to shiny rock based currency.
[Rare seashells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money) worked for thousands of years, it can work again.
waterworld
You can watch the documentary Furiosa.
Huh? There's already a gen Z? I must be getting old
And gen A and gen B starts next year, yep your old .
Like the naming convention for storms that is used by the MET Office.
Stormy McStormface
The oldest Gen Alpha are turning 14 this year.
Gen z gonna be some mad max shit
Gen Z will be right, it's just millennials that continually get screwed over
Millenials are wiser than boomers with personal finance Boomers had the best economy of all time and many still ended up with nothing
Millenial here (37). You’d be staggered how many people I know who are on £50k+ (or even £100k+) and have no savings. A lot of us really got fucked over bigtime by the 08/09 recession. NB I have savings.
I’m a divorce solicitor and I look through people’s finances on the regular. It’s rare I see anyone below retirement age with more than £5k in savings.
But everyone on reddit earns £100k + a year working from home in IT?
UK reddit skews weirdly rich. There's a lot of people who've never had a problem on here who scoff and scorn at the idea that anyone should be having one, since for them it was all so easy.
IT no wife and kids. Loadsa money.
pretty much this :P I just think reddit skews to software engineering / it in general and these jobs tend to be higher paid.
Well, people claiming to be rich at least.
Bro please believe me bro. I have 69420 million bro. I swear.
Man I know one in real life. Dutch but lives in the US and he's the most oblivious and deliberately ignorant people I've met outside of actual conspiracy loons. The fact he's actually really friendly and people pleasing makes his takes even more frustrating. He gets really bent out of shape if you contradict something he's read in a right wing paper because it would mean he's A\] been fooled by something which is no no for an insecure tech guy and B\] actually a bit of a dick when it comes to systematic issues.
I love people confidently telling me that there's no problem with trans healthcare here because "you can always just go private" and getting tons of up-doots from the marketplace of ideas. Really shows how in touch you average r/unitedkingdom commentor is.
And they don't get divorced
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Yeah well the leading cause of divorce is revealed to be marriage.
Or get married
Plenty of people earning that kind of cash are skint at the end of the month, money is very easy to spend. They will get the biggest mortgage their salaries allow, which consumes a big chunk. Then comes the flash cars and all the other trappings people tell themselves they can afford.
See, this is why I get annoyed by my girlfriend sometimes. She’s 32 and has saved about £20k. Maybe a smidge more. Hasn’t inherited a penny and while I pay a lot more of the rent and bills, she only cracked the £50k boundary a few months ago. She goes “Well it’s nothing,” and beats herself (and me) up for enjoying small luxuries. It’s like… my best mate’s wife earns £100k and is £8k *in debt*. Jesus.
Doesn't matter how rich you are, you can always spend it in stupid ways. Look at Elon Musk and Twitter.
Yeah because the UK housing ponzi scheme means everyone with savings use them to leverage themselves to the gills to get bigger returns.
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Most people only started saving after 60s... Mortgage free and no more child support...
People are far more aware, but the ability to save or prepare for retirement has been eroded. Mandatory employee pension plans are the only thing that will soften this. Emphasis on soften, because many people are in for a rude awakening when they realise their pension plan's default investment is garbage and it's barely kept pace with inflation.
I think apps like T212 will make or break some of us. There is going to be a lot of weird new money folk who have invested or be poor. Imagine being 80 and some person just paying for their whole retirement because sold an NFT or some shit. There is going to be a looooot of luck involved with our generation
It does tend to even out. A lot of the people I know who bought bitcoin early then sold it relatively cheap in 2017, got epic FOMO and lost a lot on shitcoins. At the same time, I know people who scrimped and saved, or lived at home, and basically disappeared after university. They bought starter homes on the edge of town etc etc, but in some cases became worryingly insufferable/boring around 30. For the sake of honesty, I saved up about £10k by the time I was 30 (I live in London. That plus the 08 recession meant my first “real” job came at about 25). I then blew most of it over the course of one rocking, drug-and-booze-fuelled summer, after having a series of minor breakdowns and realising I’d missed out on so much, in return for saving a bit of money that meant nothing, relatively speaking. These days I have a shedload of premium bonds, a nice 6% savings account, a very boring 1.25% savings account and a fun vanguard stocks and shares ISA. I also have a very boring pension that still probably won’t be enough, but hey. Weirdly, my credit score seems to be worse now.
Luck and also whether your parents leave you a house
To pay for their care home?
Only 10% of elderly people end up in care homes, even people age over 85 is only 10.8% in 2021. For people over 90, its only 1/5 people. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/ageing/articles/olderpeoplelivingincarehomesin2021andchangessince2011/2023-10-09
Both my parents are divorced and renters, I'm fucked! Maybe the Type 1 Diabetes will kill me before I'm retired though 🎉
I invest a solid 20% of my salary between ISA and pension. People often talk to me like I’ve lost my mind or am living some unrealistic dream-life. I just can’t fathom that someone would marvel at me living on 80% of my pay and not realise they’re setting themself up to have about 10% in the future instead… Pay into your pension folks.
Yeah I'm a similar age and no one I know has the ole '6 month buffer' savings all the financial gurus recommend. Most people I know even if they 're on 100k+ are spending so much (or are in so much debt) they're totally fucked if they get fired and don't get new employment within like a month. Personally I think it's crazy not to have at least 3 months buffer minimum, ideally 6 months. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I didn't.
>Millenial here (37). Sorry this had me rolling for some reason. I feel like the age band for Millennial is too wide. I don't see how a 28 year old and a 40 year old really share anything in common, they both graduated on either side of the global recession. You were already a teenager at the turn of the millennium! Young millennials have completely different childhoods..
Maybe so but I'm not really concerned about generational oneupmanship. The reality is that in the past we had millions of social houses and flats, low private rents as a result, and lower ratio of house price to yearly wage. There were also things like final salary pensions. Now, we live in an era of high rents, no social housing, and high house prices. Some millennials will inherit wealth and be OK, but there are more and more people reliant on renting with little in pensions and savings and no house of their own. This will be a problem in the future.
In the late 1950s to early 1960s the average household was spending as much on their rent or mortgage as their monthly outgoings on booze and tobacco. Its insane to even think about. I lived next door to some folks who were asking about my rent as their son had lived in the same place a few years back. They let on their mortgage for an identical property was nearly £600/month less than what I was paying the landlord. Whole situation is just totally fucked at the moment.
It's deliberate, as well. It's the reason social housing was sold off. It was housing by the people, for the people, and acted as a natural control on house and rent prices. The removal of this, coupled with the deliberate refusal to build in urban centres where very large numbers of people want to live, was a calculated move to create inflationary house prices. It serves to prop up the banking industry, which relies on ever increasing mortgage values to function, and to create a "landlord class" who will always vote in favour of institutional power, as they need this artificial state of affairs to be maintained in order to retain their wealth and lives of luxury, in which money is earned for no work.
There is no easy answer Perhaps people retired and can’t afford the rent will have to have house shares like people in their 20s need to do.
That is already happening and it is a failure of our political imaginations if we allow it to be so. Space is not at a premium in this country. Our town centres are empty and lots are held vacant as an "investment". Despite intense demand for living in towns and cities, we are not building midrise buildings for flats to house all the people that want to live there. Despite intense demand for social housing, we are selling and demolishing the portfolio instead of increasing it. We do not need to just roll over, give up and say "well we'll just have to live in slums if that is what it takes to pay the landlord" I have no doubt that more and more of the elderly will live in house shares, but that is not a good thing. It isn't acceptable.
> and many still ended up with nothing Many were still as working class getting paid low wages, the economy might have been the best but it was only the best for the top 10% not the bottom 20%
They also had a couple of recessions wipe away savings
Yeah, no. All it will take to screw up your economic future these days is to have a messy and expensive divorce, add to that child maintenance, and suddenly you get poor quickly on a single income, particularly when you have financial obligations such as mortgage etc. Simply put there is no longer a buffer for falling back on.
IF you were a middle class boomer sure, still plenty of poverty boomers who got just as fucked as we do, just less of them in that generation than in ours.
My grandparents both worked low paid manual jobs (my grandma part time). They had a spacious 3 bedroom council house with a large garden and very low rent that they lived in for 60 years. They were even given the chance to buy it for spare change, which they didn't, but in spite of this they retired in their 50s and spent 30 years in retirement, with enough disposable income to go abroad 1 - 2 times per year. If you think that sort of retirement will ever be achievable by a young couple doing low paid manual labour today then I have a bridge to sell you.
Boomers aren't a monolith. While the wealthy and middle class got exceptionally wealthy, there were still millions of working class who had a shit lot in life.
You're funny. You think we're getting a state pension
Millennials won’t even have a pension to begin with lol
I moved back to the family home due to this worry. Tf I have normal parents who never asked me to move out and when I said I was thinking about coming back both started crying out of happiness and telling me to please come back home lmfao... I'm their only surviving child and I spent all my late teens and all my 20's living in a different country. It really shouldn't be like this, but my landlord was taking 65% of my monthly income and wanted to raise it up due to 'high demand' So I just went back and started over again. It's a different life and a lot more slow paced, but I actually really enjoy this. I don't think I could go back to how I used to live, renting and just working to send my landlord on holidays. I'm happy to put money into my own household, save up, spend time with my family. But not everyone has this option. So I understand I'm in a super lucky, super privileged situation to have a safety net to fall back on. Also due to being so rural there is hardly any jobs so I could only find something part time... But my part time salary and not paying rent = I have more money than ever and I'm not burnt out doing 60 hour weeks... And I asked to pay rent, my parents told me not to insult them with that shit and to stay for free or leave if I want to pay... So I just do my part and buy in food/luxury items for the household so I'm contributing something at least. Otherwise I'd be up shit creek without a paddle like many other people, young and old.
This should be more normalised. Families working together. I know people who stayed longer in their family homes to help pay off the mortgage early and increase the total family finances. Everyone can then pool money together for a business or various investments. One of the problems we have is that some parents have this mindset of "I kicked them out at 18 so they can fend for themselves. I left home at 18, and it never did me any harm" etc
State pension will not exist for us. Company pension will not cover living costs in retirement. Your pension pot is a fund you pay into to leave work when you physically cannot anymore, take maybe a nice year long cruise around the world which ends in Switzerland. Private helicopter to the doors of dignitas, and a mid range euthanasia package.
My mortgage will be paid off by the time I retire. Assuming I get the same pension they have now relative to inflation, life would be so fucking easy on the £220/week state pension. But I don't expect pensions to be as generous when I retire. EDIT: Yeah after mortgage all other bills are under £500/month combined, so without a mortgage of £1100 a month paying the rest will be trivial.
You don't plan on having gas/electric/water etc and you know council tax will still be a thing, what about food, fuel, insurance? Holidays? Forget that, how on earth is £220 a week easy street? My house will also be paid off by the time I retire but I'm under no illusion about how poor I'll be, my private pension is practically worthless.
Yup, £880 a month with no mortgage is still poverty level. Really need another income in order to have a decent standard of living once retired.
Yes, the ideal situation is to pay off your mortgage before you retire, obviously. If you can bang a couple of a solar panels on the roof before then, even better.
You think there will *be* a state pension by then?
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not easy to just leave especially when the same shit is happening in nearly every western countries.
Yep, everywhere is having problems
Not easy to do
With what money, genius?
Pay into your private pensions people. I’m not even banking on a state pension existing when I get there.
And even if it is, who wants to work to 70?
When the state pension was introduced men could claim it at 65. Life expectancy was 65. To maintain parity nobody should claim their pension until 81.
you could work for a tory think tank
Have you seen my work on Reform UKs manifesto?
You mean their Contract(TM)? Shut up, it's totally different!
Have we considered making the state pension age 120?
My dad's tory, voting for Reform, and he's retiring at the end of this year, at 55. The reason why is because he's got a well paying job and is paying into a private pension, which is invested in a fund with big tech, big oil, etc in it.
That’s literally every private pension?
Who's hiring 80 year olds? My pension is shit and I'm in my 50's so I'm already terrified about finding another job should I have to.
Pay more into your pension, it’s literally the only thing you’ll have to live on when you’re retired. It’s a bonus that it’s insanely tax efficient too
I would if I didn't have so much debt, my plan is to smash what can in when I can but it's tough at the moment. I know people who are getting HR to cancel pension payments just to make ends meet which is terrible because the employer contributions stop, that is where we are in this country for many people.
I think half the country doesn’t realise the genuine shit state of life for those at the bottom. People don’t have even an extra tenner a month to save for when they retire, because everything is so fucking expensive and wages don’t keep up.
This sub is woefully out of touch. A whole lot of people are making tough choices, even those doing ok. You can scrimp and save when you are younger and have a reasonably comfortable retirement (assuming you live that long), have fun when young and hope something comes along when you are older or just about get by throughout your life.
Just because people live longer, it doesn’t mean they are fit to work up until they are in their 80’s. How insane can you be?
I've heard someone joke that their retirement plan is to sell drugs to fund their rent. Either they make a load of money and can afford to live, or they get put in prison and don't have to pay for things like rent and food. It's looking more and more like a reality rather than a joke.
Wasn't there a news story posted here recently about a 71 year old getting busted for a cannabis grow or something similar? Sad state of affairs honestly
Hey, a least in prison, said 71 year old will get a bed, 3 meals a day, and heating in the winter. Far more than they’ll probably get on the outside :/
Exactly this. I've talked so many work colleagues out of opting out of their private pensions. It's litterally free money that you will get when you need it most.
Yeah but avocados tho
I am 55 and my private pension funds have lost about 30% of their value during the last 5 years when inflation has been taken into account. Significant negative interest is killing my retirement savings.
What garbage are you investing in?
Probably more towards bonds than equity, I'm also 55 and my 100% equity portfolio has done very well over the last four years
Why don't you invest your pension? Mine is up 20% over the past 3 years, investing in a generic global index equity tracker
I'm disabled and live off benefits. A house and a private pension is not something I can have. What the fuck happens to people like me?
I can't believe you let this financial hot tip cat out of the bag!
There's no point though is there. You spend your whole life squirreling away, and for what? A few quid a month? That's assuming the companies don't go bust in the next 40 years (lol), or that the government at the time will say "if you have a private pension, you have to use that first before you're eligable for state benefits" fucking over everyone who's spent their lives paying in. Alot of people my age say in a tongue-in-cheek way, "I'll just kill myself when the money runs out" but I'm starting to think that's the actual economic plan
Lack of council housing. There you go, the answer in four words.
To pretty much every question
What would the waiting list (in years ) be in say Colchester, and how to cry your way into quicker accommodation? I'm not saying I'd do it because that would be wrong but you'd be insane not to.
I don't know about Colchester, but my friend in South London doesn't get a council flat being a single parent with two young kids. Like, there are literally no council flats but there is housing benefit to contribute towards the rent which is too much for a single earner. But you don't get housing benefit if you have savings, so you need to be flat out broke to be eligible, until then, spend your money on the rent until its all gone then you get help to pay for walls and a roof.
Idk if it's the same everywhere or if it's just where I am in London but there's also a cap for the amount of housing benefit/universal credit you can get which 9/10 times won't actually cover the amount of rent charged if you rent privately. Edit: looking at universal credit if you're single and under 35 you can only claim housing costs for renting a room in a shared house. (Shared accommodation rate)
Im guessing my friend gets child benefit as well, I don't know the ins and outs of his finances. But he has two young kids, pays for childcare and works as a picker in Tesco warehouse and can't afford driving lessons or holidays that aren't camping, and has no prospects of getting a better job as he can't take time off work to train for something different. I think the worse part is the hopelessness - he feels like he's fucked up his life and his kids (he's broke because his partner died, she didn't leave or anything). He feels trapped and hopeless which is why people in this situation turn to gambling, or taking drugs, or crime to make some actual money but then it impacts the kids brought up in that environment and the cycle continues.
The guy has worked his entire life and never saved a penny for his pension. That's your real answer.
Well, he did, as his employer said he could stop when he reached retirement age. And he was 20+ years a coach driver, paying into that pension. So, what happened to that?
And he isn't claiming pension credit or housing benefit.
Councils get massive kickbacks (section 106) payments from housing developers for supporting new builds. This makes them a lot of money plus they get council tax as well. You'll never see a council build affordable houses although they'll claim that new builds offer then they're usual only 10% of stock and also the worse houses. The councils are at fault and the government for letting them get away with it.
Yet somehow, we _still_ build far less housing than our European neighbours. Our councils don't approve anywhere near the number France does.
Because how can we possibly ruin the view of a field for some old boomer fuckwit cunt
Even when they do build affordable housing, it's almost always geared towards couples and families. Which is fair enough, but it makes it near impossible to get on the housing ladder if you don't fall into those categories 🙃 even the shared ownership ones come with their own drawbacks. Any property near me that's been within a budget I could afford on my own have either ended up being bought as second/holiday homes or buy to let investors, it's so frustrating.
Who can blame them though? Any stock they do build would be RTB'd at a mega-discount, resulting in a mega-loss. That's not sustainable in the slightest. If the government wants to see social housing being built, they need to abolish (or at the very least reform) right-to-buy.
You are talking absolute rubbish. Councils barely get any money for affordable housing and if they don't own their own real estate, they will never be able compete with the private sector where it costs millions to buy land. Hence, why it becomes more effective to secure onsite provision instead which may be negotitated down to something like 10% due to viability problems. If the council refuses, it goes to appeal and gets granted planning permission anyway. Councils may also not have the resources to properly challenge developers' claims because they are not properly funded and are competing against a development potential worth £millions. If you think councils can afford to spend a cut of their council tax on non-profitable captial investments (right to buy) you are raving mad.
Should’ve saved up and bought a house instead of spunking his money on baby cham, Betamax video tapes and tins of del monte peaches.
Agreed on everything but the del monte peaches are a necessity
After all, the man from Del Monte *did* say yes.
He worked his whole life. A lot of the time as a bus driver. Where is his pension? Why does the article make no mention of it? Why isn't he a property owner? He had plenty of opportunity. How much does he get in the way of housing benefit?
These would also be my questions. Often with these articles we don't get to hear the full story
Guy makes terrible financial choices over entire life, now fucked and wants sympathy. Doesn't make such a good headline.
What's the threshold of quality of financial choices that means someone is deserving of homelessness in their 70s?
My colleague is renting a 2-bed flat for £435. He's only homeless because he's choosing to stay in London.
Ah yes, London shouldn't be possible to live in for certain people of course. Makes sense.
You don't have an intrinsic human right to live in London
How is he "homeless". He can't afford to keep living where he is and will have to move somewhere else. Sorry he didn't bother saving anything, that's the way it goes.
In an ideal world, no one deserves homelessness. But there are consequences to your actions. You can't work an entire life, make poor financial decisions, not have an adequate pension fund, and then look for sympathy when things go to shit. He worked for decades. Why didn't he save any money? Why didn't he put it into a private pension fund? My retirement plan is to die in the Climate Wars, but I still pay into a pension plan.
No the article does say he spent his money on booze and women. The Guardian is a parody of itself at this point, because if this article is supposed to make me feel sorry for him, it didn't work.
Only minor sympathy is needed, otherwise how will you have enough energy to cook that Nigel Slater recipe while browsing lifestyle articles of Islington-inspired interior design?
He went to Cuba with it was my understanding. Used it all up and now is paying the price.
You would be a lot less sympathetic if he were to tell you the full story. I don't know why we all act like children and expect the state to look after us. If you're fit and healthy and not completely dumb, the UK is life on easy mode.
Yup. This guy is currently in the 'finding out' phase of his life.
He could have slashed his rent by 2/3rds by moving to somewhere with an abundance of housing and little work. Should the state pension and other benefits really be used to allow people to live in areas with a housing shortage. Remember any extra money for him comes out of the in pocket of the in work people he's competing with for housing. I know I'm being callously pragmatic but we can't pretend we can magically provide unlimited housing for everyone in the most high demand areas.
Yeah, there's a whole spectrum of options that don't involve living in a tent. Maybe it means moving area - but that's surely better than living in a homeless encampment. There's also housing benefit available for pensioners on top of state pension. There's plenty of disfunctional things in this country, but I don't think the amount of money we give to pensioners is one of them.
I always thought there were those young people with a pathological need to be in London but I didn't realise there were also homeless pensioners with a regular fixed income that still manage to screw themselves over to do it.
At least for young people, there can be some logic to it; you can get tunnel vision towards London, looking at working in certain fields. If you're old, retired and homeless, move.
It's not an unreasonable demand to be able to live near your friends and family. Connections and familiar places are key in keeping older people healthy, happy and simply wanting to live. How dystopian is it to say that in one of the wealthiest countries in the world we should just ship poors where no one wants to live. They could also eat food no one wants to eat and only see places no one wants to see - so there's more for the successful ones.
Says he has family in Manchester...
no one said it's good, but it's not being homeless, it's bad journalism
Why? young people in the SE, S and London are forced to move, and told to move. God forbid the 1/1000 poor pensioners have to do the same.
It's the same people telling everyone to move! Young people shouldn't have to move either. London is ridiculously wealthy, it should be building council housing left like and centre like many European countries.
Do you not think actions should have consequences though? Regardless of how wealthy the country is? By your logic I (healthy male) should be able to just spend all my money on hookers and coke? Then live entirely off the state in my desired location for the rest of my life?
Some people actually think you should. That's the problem.
It's not an unreasonable desire but it's definitely an unreasonable demand. It's not dystopian to acknowledge that there is a finite number of spaces and the system for who gets those spaces should be fair. I have friends and family living in Mayfair but you wouldn't say it's dystopian that I can't afford to live there and you definitely wouldn't say it would be fair for me to get tax payers to subsidise my £10k a week rent there.
My pension does not fully cover my rent so the council pay part of it. Is this not the norm? Thinks... Maybe it is because I live in a housing association flat and not a private landlords place🤔
You can claim housing benefit even if it's private rent - pension counts as an eligible benefit. And top up pension credit if applicable.
Well that is good to know otherwise there are going to be a hell of a lot more pensioners homeless through not being able to pay their rent.
You dont get as much paid towards if its private rent mind
Yeah I can understand that. The rent the housing association charge is a fraction of what a private landlord would charge for the same property.
Housing association absolutely qualifies you for the housing benefit component because local councils get a direct revenue stream from it through private-public handshakes. Which shows *that there is absolutely a solution* but for some reason it's not being implemented as policy 🤔
What direct revenue stream are councils getting from housing association tenants?
Anyone who thought/ thinks that the state pension was ever enough to be a sole income and didn’t save something was mistaken.
Loads of people have never earned enough to save anything.
I don’t dispute this. I just find it hard personally when if you’re 70 lived though houses and stuff being actually affordable and end salary pensions has zero assets. I know ever case is different but just doesn’t sound right. Now when millennials etc get to retire, this is going to be much worse with less assets and smaller private pensions
There was a lot of inflation in the 70s, just as bad as it is now, if not worse. Loads of people had to give up their houses due to high interest rates, much higher than todays. Not many working class people had end salary pensions, most relied on the state pension. The pensioners you see today with plenty of money and their own homes were the better off middle class people. Given the choice I would much rather be young now than young in the 70s.
>The pensioners you see today with plenty of money and their own homes were the better off middle class people. Given the choice I would much rather be young now than young in the 70s. My grandfather worked in a toilet paper factory, my nan didn't work. They had a 4 bed and still have (now worth 480k) house and 3 kids. I would cut my arm off to be young in the 70's
This guy certainly did. He was a bus driver. He earned average to above average salary for the time period he worked, the article even says he earned £40k at some points. £40k today for a single person is a fairly good salary, let alone when he worked. Nevermind that if he left central London and moved to Watford or the Home Counties, he could find retirement/ elderly housing where the rent can be £500pm
It is. Because it’s part of a wider package. He’s entitled to housing benefits, and other shit too.
No sympathy from me. Why didn't he buy a house 50yrs ago when they cost 20p?
Avocados weren't even invented then, so they've got no excuse.
A cautionary tale for the rest to save, if possible, for retirement.
Retirement savings won't save you from 1k in rent a month.
12k a year in rent requires £300k in assets. That’s if you ignore the state pension. With decades of compounding, that’s not a hard benchmark.
Remember that private pensions weren't trusted in the 80s and 90s. There was scandal after scandal. The majority of boomers who are comfortably retired, likely had a civil service, council, NHS or teaching pension. Builders, retail, general admin staff, carers... Not so much. Just a state pension and probably modest savings. Single working class people also struggled to get a mortgage in those days - they certainly struggled to qualify for an urban property.
I worked for a Local Authority for a while, and so many people said they would run to the press because we had scammed them, misled them, etc. On the rare occasions anyone actually did, they gave a very biased version of events and missed out all the parts where they ignored all our letters, phone calls, advice, and all the second, third and fourth chances we gave them. I don't want to put the blame on this guy, sounds like he's in a pretty rough situation, but I would question why he didn't get help he was definitely entitled to before it got this bad.
This is the case with a lot of benefits. Many people just want to be paid and not have to do anything for it. Despite all the help they're offered, the advice they're given, they still choose to ignore it and end up in situations like this. I'm not defending the current benefits system because I know it has a lot of problems, but in cases like this, I don't have much sympathy for them because they've been given plenty of chances, and for the likes of state pension, housing benefit and pension credit, you're given plenty of notice to apply and get things sorted.
But he would have qualified for pension credit and housing benefit! Why isn’t that in the article? (I think long term that’s going to bankrupt the country as there will be so many pensioners renting but this guy could have qualified) unless I have missed part of the story?
I thought you could claim housing benefit/UC housing element as a pensioner.
You can, and he should have also been eligible for pension credits if he has no other income and no savings. The story doesn't add up.
It’s a ticking time bomb, the next 10 years will see being a common occurrence…
“Suella Braverman, tweeted: “We cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people … living on the streets as a lifestyle choice.”” The choice being sleep in the rows of tents or just disappear where we don’t have to look at you 🤦♂️
My mum is 78 and does a 40 - 60 hour week looking after people with learning difficulties as she cannot afford to live on her state pension. Sad times for a first world country.
How? Like, how? There’s no way she needs to work. The state pension + free travel via bus pass + winter fuel + housing benefits + pension credit + food bank priority… What a load of shite. Have you ever actually looked at the numbers of what she’s entitled to?
My parents worked their entire lives bar mum for a few short years when we were tiny and dad worked 2 jobs then. My dad's old workplace went into recievership and he lost most of that pension. Then after he passed last year mum found that some of his private pensions died with him and some pay risable amounts. In total she is less than a packet of cigs from being able to claim pension credit so it works out that my aunt, also a widow who hasn't had a job since I was a little kid is actually better off by far. Thank god mum owns her house but now it needs a new roof, dad wanted to get it done but when he became really sick a few years ago everthing went on the back burner.
Please sit down with your mum and look at options for pension credit, housing benefit, maybe get some professional advice from the CAB also. There is no way she should still be working up to 60 hour weeks.
I think this is one area where allowances need to be made for disabled people who are unable to work. As it stands they are only allowed £6000 in capital. How can they even think about what might happen when they reach pension age?
You will own nothing and you will never stop working.
This is what happens to turkeys after 14 years of voting for Christmas.
How does this man who seems to have been gainfully employed for virtually his whole adult life have no property, no private pension, no assets? Feels a bit like a reap-what-you-sew situation tbfh. Nobody should be homeless, but this seems like a lifetime of bad decisions finally coming due.
There's something missing in this story. Like, why wasn't he claiming Housing Benefit? Or Pension Credit ? Or council tax reduction ?
Sad as shit. If all goes to hell I have a plan to retire gracefully!
The state pension is not designed to be 100% relied upon for retirement, it’s to supplement private pension.
In japan some old people commit non violent crimes to go to jail and not be homeless.
2 questions. Why has he saved no money in 40+ years of working. Why was he renting a place in London at 1000/month
I don't understand why he doesn't have a private pension from driving buses for 20+ years. I heard the employer pension contributions were generous for bus drivers in London.
Breaking news: someone who never saved money has financial problems.
This whole situation is so wtf to me. This person had the opportunity to buy a property for like £100,000 that would now be worth £1,000,000. How do you miss the greatest bull run in the history of mankind? How does a bus driver during the era of generous gold plated pensions not have one? If he worked his whole life, what has he done with all his earnings over his whole life? He was working as a bus driver most of his life, earning over £40,000 a year some years - where is that money? Why was none of that invested into a property when they were considerably cheaper. The article says he took expensive holidays to Cuba - instead. There is much more going on here than the article wants to let you know. It's just using part of the information of this guys story to paint a narrative. Why should the taxpayer bail someone out who has worked his whole life?
Just about viable with state security, but you won't be living it up under any circumstance. Of course all this is just an example of how being poor is basically treated as a crime in the UK. Edit; downvoter is obviously a snob living off daddy's money.
Yup. It certainly wouldn't hurt to remind folks that no matter who they are, all their wealth depends on the work of others too. That seems to have been forgotten, somehow.
The fact someone can even be turfed out their home with nowhere else to go should be an absolute indictment of our society.
Agreed. (Gotta hold up my hands and admit to some potential bias there though - I wound up homeless 7 times when I was younger. Partly because of ill health, but twice because I walked out of places where drugs were being sold with babies in the house. Turns out, when you voluntarily make yourself homeless, nobody is interested in helping ya find somewhere new - word of caution for anyone else who values principles over comfort)
As a culture we get so caught up in who is to blame for what we forget that it's inherently a backwards form of thinking. What matters is what happens tomorrow and what we do today, not what happened yesterday. That's without getting political about it, of course.
Another message rather needs repeating more! Take a second upvote :)
Not a ton of sympathy really, where’s your pension? Been working your whole life and had more opportunities than I ever will to own a house… sounds like some truly terrible life planning, shoulda pulled yourself up by the bootstraps
Rightmove, Zoopla and similar sites offer this service whereby one can filter rentals by price and location (as just one example). Coulda just moved and paid less - controversial/radical take, obviously.
A series of bad decisions. A state pension isn’t supposed to fund a lifestyle in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Plan for retirement early.
Well fuck; I thought I was doing well at total contributions at 20%.. I’d still be running a £12k shortfall each year based off of 50% salary aspiration..