'Are you an financial optimist for 2012?' poll

airbus330

Of course the baby boomers have had it good, they have ridden on the back of a post war boom which has continued almost unabated for 60 years, even this recession may only be a temporary glitch in the relentless rise in living standards that we, our parents and grand-parents(depending on your family) have experienced. If you have got to the end of your working life and both own the roof over your head and have a modest, but liveable, income for the rest of your natural, in the GLOBAL lottery of life, you have WON, big time. Forget the very rich and the very poor (not literally, for this argument only), the vast bulk of British society live without the threat of famine, destitution or disease taking them, for which we should be profoundly grateful.
The biggest worry is what a poll like this will look like in 80 years time, will our children and our grand-children be able to look back on such gilded lives?

runaroundpauper

Everybody s situation is different but one nagging thought is house prices are high but when a baby boomer was young 1950 or 1960 say and a house £ 2000 and they earnt £10 a week say as the years went buy better pay and mortgage came down paid off ! fair play ! And during the mortgage repayments you would have a black and white tv and a decka turntable and your basic house hold appliances you get the picture


Where as know the young want hd tv. Blue ray ,laptops ,iPad ,mobile phone contracts ,broadband ,cable ,nice posh car foreign holidays you get the picture ,I am not by any means saying it was easy 50 40 years ago because I pretty confidant it was dam hard

what I am saying is are the younger ones know caught up as victims of our own evolution they expect all of these things and a nice paid for roof over there head and comfy old age they have all of these distractions that where not there in the 50s and 60s
And why should the older generation pay to get the young out the mess it's not there fault the country has gone to pot

So to the younger generation don't get bogged down in a mobile contract don't have sky don't have broadband don't have credit cards don't have flash cars like I say everyone is different but intodays society what you can afford today you may not afford tomorrow and still have a big mortgage to pay

Uplink

That poll looks a bit skewed. So many votes above 250k in assets.

I have savings because I'm in my very own "Grumpy Lifeless Scrooge Programme"(TM), but I don't know pretty much anybody who'd be able to put up with it besides me. But it would take a very long time to get over 100k because my family has a tradition of being in the "Money Spilling Expert" category, and they slow me down.

I'm looking forward to the day when I swap rent payments with mortgage payments - and this wouldn't affect how I voted, because the house and mortgage cancel each other, if I understand how the math works.

cruselly

Five years ago we had debts of £6,000+, mortgage payments with 12 years left to pay and three children to support. After signing up to this site, we started to save, cut back (no holidays for instance) , did the credit card stoozing as recommended by Martin and overpaid the mortgage. Now, as of last year, we are mortgage free, have no debts and a few thousand pounds savings in the bank for the first time in our lives. We are also supporting two at university. (Which is why we had to do it!)It hasn't been easy, but have tried to treat it like a game! If we can do it, anyone can. Thanks Martin lewis!

silvasava

coupleuk wrote: »

Dont you think that is what people are doing now?

The difference - which was stated by Sepa74 is that the people doing it now dont have the "luck" of 10%-30% annual house price increases to bump up their "wealth".

(most) people have worked hard but those in retirement now have benefited hugely by just being "lucky" at the right time.

Sadly, they now want even more.

Hmm - only trouble is although house prices have risen us BB's still need somewhere to live. I started work at 14 and 'retired' at 62 (redundancy) so I've worked for 48 years - I've cleaned, served drinks and done anything legal that would bring in some money I had a month off working for my fist child and a week off for my second - never claimed ANYTHING from the state (dont forget we only had child allowance for the first child and could only get a mortgage on twice hubby's earnings or 2 1/2 times joint & dont even think about interest rates of 12 - 16%) like previous posters - no central heating, no fridge (definitely a luxury then!) second hand furniture which we were very grateful for & and no disposable nappies. Through bad advice I have a pension on my husbands contributions of £200 a month and a work pension of £60 per month - we can just afford to pay our bills. I hoped our retirement would be 'comfortable' but its not & I bless the fact that the scrimping I did when younger pays dividends now 'cos we need every penny

ifan.goch

BobbinAlong wrote: »

I'm a baby boomer and the only reason I'm now a saver rather than a debtor is because my mother died and I benefitted from the sale of her property and paid off the mortgage.
Inheritance is why baby boomers are better off and as each generation reaches our age, they'll generally receive inheritances too. It's not being a particular generation, just a particular age.

I agree that in some cases inheritance is why baby boomers are better off. However it is unlikely that the current baby boomers' children (mine included) will receive inheritances. Having worked hard all of our lives and paid taxes we are now being told that we are too expensive to maintain in our old age and are living far too long, and that we must use our assets, including our properties, to pay for any care we may require.

I wonder why I bothered working, paying taxes, struggling with a mortgage and trying to save for retirement when I could have had a life on benefits and let the state pay for everything including elderly care. Is it my expectations that are too high, or are the expectations of the "I want it all and I want it now" generation too high?

pug33

Dudley_1066 wrote: »

I am surprised that there are so many people with assets. I expected more people with debts to be using the site and this would show up with the results

I would really like to know more about people's assets/savings - it's a pity the large single group 'Saver: £250,000 - £1 million' (currently representing 20% of responses) could not have been broken down into three smaller groups '£250,000 - £499,999', '£500,000 - £749,999' and '£750,000 - 1 million'. This would have given better detail on whether the majority within this group sit at the lower or upper ends of it - a big difference worth knowing!

sparrer

I'm a baby boomer. Lived through 4 recessions, redundancy, lost a home, bought a business but failed so went into vol liquidation, got on our bikes as per Tebbit's advice which led to a job then more redundancy, lost another home.

Now in a little HA house, drive an old banger, chronic illness so living on DLA. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, like me

tescobabe69 wrote: »

I would have thought age needed to be taken into account, to show how the baby boomers have all the money.

I'd like to know where it is!

relaxtwotribes

Had to vote for the last category - why wasn't there an option for Over £5m......?

Sueinbirmingham

Couple of points - this could be taken to represent society but doesn't because people at the poorer end can't afford computers and internet connections.

People may often underestimate how much money is in their pension funds, especially if they've been saving a long time. A small amount put in forty years ago will be a lot now.

House prices make a large difference, because even though they've dropped recently, they have gone up incredibly over recent years so that people that didn't get on the property ladder in recent years may never do so unless the market really crashes. I'd like to see a poll on how much the value of people's homes has increased during their lifetime.