Why the baby boomers shouldn't feel guilty

CLAPTON

olly300 wrote: »

I'm confused by your last sentence. Why would it mean taking less from pensioners?

The majority of them aren't working and the ones who are aren't paying NI.

Also it means when you retire you get a more equal pension to what you realistically put in over your working life.

You can't expect the working population to support you for 40 years of retirement or the government not to have problems with having a reduce pool of workers to support the increased number of pensioners.

as I said it all depends upon what you mean by 'cost'


and yes, the ONLY way that retired people can have ANY income is if the working population supports them although I'm not suggesting that retirement for 40 years is reasonable as an average

Butterfly_Brain

On the news debt hits people under 40's
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16345896

These are the children that were brought up in the 80's and were not taught how to live within their means.
Most baby boomers were brought up to save for what they wanted because there were no credit cards - not for ordinary folk anyway, yes we had the provi, HP and catalogues, but most of the time we saved for what we needed.
Most of us who bought houses started with little or no furniture and that was either donated by family members or bought second hand.
You were lucky if you could afford an overseas holiday or even a car when you first had a mortgage and that was with both working the minimum 40 hour week.

pineapple

I guess I'm a baby boomer.
I got a degree courtesy of the state - no tuition fees. Jealous much? Suck it up. My education also came at a time when degrees and 'A' grades weren't dished out to all comers like so many smarties. And I did actually once exist with no carpet, camping gaz for a stove and newspaper up at the windows in place of curtains. At the same time I held down a full time job followed by an evening cleaning job to make ends meet. In fact degree or not, my first full time job was a cleaning job. But there again I was a bit old fashioned. I would rather take a low paid job than no job. And if I couldn't afford it, I didn't buy it. So now I am in retirement land. But boy did I earn it.
The point is, we are all dished out different cards according to time, country, place of birth, family circumstances etc. It's not the fault of the person and there will always be people who are better and worse off. My parents and grandparents had to go through wars and rationing for heavens sake. Make the best of what you have and stop looking over your shoulder and whining about the person next to you.

ash28

ruggedtoast wrote: »

I think it is time to bring Paxman into this, one of the chief boomers.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055497/JEREMY-PAXMAN-Baby-Boomers-selfish-generation-history.html



Paxman has told it like it is. At least there is one boomer out there with the decency to appreciate how lucky he has been. Shame he appears to be the only one.

Paxman on his £1million taxpayer funded salary - if he feels so bad why doesn't he give three quarters of it away? Thought not.....

He must have new book coming out or someithing - I see the article is from October funnily enough he did have new book out. Not that I'm a cynic or anything you understand.

ash28

pineapple wrote: »

I guess I'm a baby boomer.
I got a degree courtesy of the state - no tuition fees. Jealous much? Suck it up. My education also came at a time when degrees and 'A' grades weren't dished out to all comers like so many smarties. And I did actually once exist with no carpet, camping gaz for a stove and newspaper up at the windows in place of curtains. At the same time I held down a full time job followed by an evening cleaning job to make ends meet. In fact degree or not, my first full time job was a cleaning job. But there again I was a bit old fashioned. I would rather take a low paid job than no job. And if I couldn't afford it, I didn't buy it. So now I am in retirement land. But boy did I earn it.
The point is, we are all dished out different cards according to time, country, place of birth, family circumstances etc. It's not the fault of the person and there will always be people who are better and worse off. My parents and grandparents had to go through wars and rationing for heavens sake. Make the best of what you have and stop looking over your shoulder and whining about the person next to you.

I think (pensions aside) people have different expectations today when buying or renting a house - and rightly so. My expectations were different to my parents - I didn't expect to have to "live in" when I got married, I expected to be able to, in the fullness of time,buy a fridge and washing machine. Again in the fullness of time be able to have a telephone in the house - even if we had to wait almost a year for BT to be able to do it. I expected to able to have some sort of TV and radio.

My own children had all of those things - today they are classed as essentials - when I married they were non essentials - the essentials were a bed and something to cook on. When my parents married most of those things were out of reach of the normal working people - my mother had a cold shelf in the pantry until I was about 15, and she used a bucket of cold water to stand the milk in during the summer.

I bought a tumble dryer when I had my first child in 1979 - my mother almost fell off her chair - you only got tumble dryers in launderettes and we used them plenty as youngsters. She used to tell everyone how well we were doing!!

We did have 2nd hand furniture - mostly given to us when we were first married - and our wedding list consisted of small things like a washing up bowl and towels or sheets - we didn't have high expectations and people didn't have the money to spend on you.

I do recognise times and expectations have changed and young people don't need to put up with a load of 2nd hand stuff - to be honest in the scheme of things furniture in real terms costs a lot less than it used to. And if they can afford it or someone is prepared to help them - why shouldn't they have new. If there had been such things as mobile phones for masses when I was young I would have had one - same for the computer.

I've spent a lot of time defending my generation on here and rightly so - there are a lot misconceptions out there about life not all that many years ago - but at the end of the day the next generation will have worked just as long and as hard as we did. Their circumstances are different - some things are better and some things are worse. They face an uncertain world - just as we did - theirs (and ours going forward) is financial and ours was the cold war and terrorism (Northern Ireland).

Percy1983

I do like the misconception that all us younger people all have iphones and ipads and foreign holidays.

I can confirm I haven't been abroad since 2007 and it was reasonably cheap (Malta, loverly place) I have never owned any of the 'i' products and never intend to and my mobile phone costs me £6.80 a month (free phone with that I will add).

With that I will admit I am going to have a much better life than my parents, constant bad money management by my dad means much is lost in interest and always will be, on that subject I don't expect any inheritance.

I have been blitzing the sales and bought most of the stuff needed for my impeding house purchase and I haven't needed to get the credit card out once due an excellent turnover on my business this year (nothing massive but year on year profits are growing nicely, and I have never made a loss).

+ Just visiting one more venue early next year and we will be setting a wedding date soon enough.

Interesting thought, I have more than my parents as I have worked harder than them, but if they worked as hard they would have more than me, fair I think not. But I am just getting on with it and making the best of the world around me.

StevieJ

pineapple wrote: »

I guess I'm a baby boomer.
I got a degree courtesy of the state - no tuition fees. Jealous much? Suck it up. My education also came at a time when degrees and 'A' grades weren't dished out to all comers like so many smarties. And I did actually once exist with no carpet, camping gaz for a stove and newspaper up at the windows in place of curtains.

Comedy does quite a good job of reflecting the times, The Cuckoo Waltz was such an example, note that deckchair Can you imagine todays young professionals putting up with that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MCbmEXQOAg

ILW

StevieJ wrote: »

Comedy does quite a good job of reflecting the times, The Cuckoo Waltz was such an example, note that deckchair Can you imagine todays young professionals putting up with that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MCbmEXQOAg

Leaving aside it now seems embarassingly bad, the lifestyle in On the Buses gives a fair reflection of what life was like for many of the boomers.

StevieJ

ILW wrote: »

Leaving aside it now seems embarassingly bad, the lifestyle in On the Buses gives a fair reflection of what life was like for many of the boomers.

I agree, married couples living with inlaws, also other lodgers being fairly common in the 50's and 60's. I guess the grass was not always so green.

ruggedtoast

Todays boomers relish the misconception that no one is born poor anymore. Poverty and income inequality are rampant and growing worse. Where is the fighting fund that the golden generation have left behind to tackle this? There isn't one, only an incomprehensible national debt and millions of people who own 80% of the nations wealth who are moving into a retirement that will have to be funded by people poorer than they are.

I am generation X and I know what poverty is like, it looks a lot like my childhood, freezing in winters in a house that had one gas fire downstairs and a paraffin heater upstairs, condensation everywhere and black mould on the walls. Walking miles to the shops because we didn't have a car and never going on a school trip.

I wouldn't wish that on anyone, nor do I think that the younger generation now should have to endure something similar as some sort of smug validation of my own self worth. The fact that moving into 2012 people are still living like this needlessly is a crime.

Some people on this thread need to take a good long look at themselves.