Preparedness for when

ALIBOBSY

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

ALI I think not all of us older folks have got the easy life as pensioners, we've enough for our needs but I only get the basic pension and that's only because we paid ALL the extra stamps I needed to qualify for it because I stayed at home to rear the girls. We have what we have today because we made decisions that made it possible. When we were overseas for the company we, unlike our other ex pat aquaintances, didn't spend, spend, spend and go off every weekend for breaks all over europe, we saved and lived as we had done before we went. When we were made redundant as our time there finished we didn't blue the lot on a new car and a trip to Disneyland Florida ( I know some who did!!!) we paid off the mortgage and made sure we had no debts. We came here to Hampshire after another redundancy and because the house prices here are so very much higher than Kent where we came from, we used to redundancy money from that to buy this house outright along with all we sold the Kent house for. Then we lived the way we always have and have managed to save a little, a very little to give us a buffer. We don't claim any benefits, the only thing I've ever had from the Government is Family Allowance and my Pension, same for He Who Knows, just his Pension. We do have a small works pension too so we can manage, and we manage because we've done everything we can to the house to insulate and keep it in good repair and we live frugally, providing a good proportion of what we eat by growing it ourselves. I don't think you can generally lump a whole generation together and lay blame for the ills of the world love, I think maybe some folks have played the system to thier advantage but it certainly wasn't us or anyone else I know personally!!! Lyn xxx.

TBH the thing that annoyed me over on the other boards was the people who reduce this to a personal issue. People are attacked for claiming what the government have offered-e.g tax credits, by people who are claiming a state pension and openly on other threads boast about second properties/savings etc. The state pension IS a benefit and has to be claimed in the same way-you qualify by paying a certain amount of "tax". In effect the government justified an extra tax by offering a benefit in return at retirement age.

I do not blame any single individual at all, the system itself is based on a false premise of constant growth in a finite world.

I realise many pensioners aren't living extravagant lifestyles, but on the whole they own houses without mortgages, have a cushion of some savings, and most have at least one holiday a year. They have benefited from economic booms which are unlikely to ever happen again and are living better lifestyles than the generation before them-this is partly through hard work, but a lot to do with luck and the era they lived through.

I don't believe any one person set out to "do better" than the next generation or deliberately play the system, honestly and know some people did better than others.

It just winds me up a bit when SOME (by no means all) in the older generation jump on the bandwagon of "we worked harder, got on our bikes, never claimed a penny off the government, the next generation are just workshy". Human nature is such that some of ANY generation are hard workers, some not, some are greedy, some not etc. etc. What we shouldn't do is let TPTB turn us against each other when its the whole system created and profited off by THEM which will leave us ALL in the poop eventually.

That will teach me not to read the other boards and stick with OS :rotfl:.

Ali x

[Deleted User]

True, but we only have the house because we invested the redundancy payout in paying off the mortgage and the savings have been hard earned by not having the holidays and posessions and accoutrements others value. It's not by luck but by being sensible that we have what we have, we may have had ecomonic booms to live through but we also had 17 1/2% mortgage interest too and the constantly rising prices are not a new thing either, it's what you do and why you do it and an element of luck that determines success and security, Lyn xxx.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Every now and again ( ok once in a blue moon) I go and find out how much we would get if hubby and I lost our jobs/didn't work.. it worked out we would get £112.55 per week for the 2 of us..

Assuming we didn't have ANY debt, I have been trying to work out how to budget it :eek::eek::eek::eek:

we use approx. £20 - £23 electric a week ( tokens) and we are not here most of the day, we have a coal/wood fire central heating,

Even though we have a smallholding, ( don't live there yet) We could not afford to rear our own pigs/meat if we had no savings, and only relied on the weekly money..

Life is only going to get tougher and all I can say is prep, prep, and prep even more. and I personally think governments are squeezing us into a place where we have got to provide for ourselves... and pensions/benefits will for extreme cases..

Hard_Up_Hester

I remember paying 19% interest on my mortgage, ouch, and I'm always aware that it could happen again.
I was chatting to my DD on Friday, we were queuing at the scrap merchants waiting to drop of some carp we'd had at home (we got £17).
I was saying that I felt I had a really high standard of living, when she stopped laughing DD said 'No, you are just used to having a poor standard of living so you feel like it's high now'. She's probably right, most of my furniture, clothes and housewares are 2nd hand. My idea of a high standard of living is to be warm, comfortable, well fed, well loved and dry. I've spent many years feeling none of these!
Hester

[Deleted User]

HESTER surely you've got the right of it? If you feel your standard of living is enough and you are comfortable and not feeling the lack of anything regardless of what you do or don't have and whether it was new or not, you've reached that point in life that so many people just don't recognise or ever find, contentment with your lot, and it's an indefinable and individual thing for each of us, I'm glad someone else has found it, and not just us, thank you, Lyn xxx.

mardatha

You're playing into the govt'shands by looking at other groups and envying them...divide and conquer is so easy isn't it
My own amazing huge pension is £103 a week... the RV gets a huge £143.. but we pay full rent and get a breathtaking £8 a month off the CT.
Better life for me would mean having a holiday, that's all. Longest one we had was 4 days, furthest we've been was Bruges and Galway.

westlothianlass

HI all
I had to pop out to the shops today to buy a new smoke detector (the old one went haywire last night) also bought a carbon monoxide detector. I've been meaning to get one for ages but kept forgetting so I feel better now that we have both up:).

Ive been thinking about menu's etc that we could make from stored goods, so that every meal doesn't consist of corned beef and pilchards(hopefully it will never get so bad that we consider putting them together:rotfl:).
I bought a couple of tins of chilli today that could go with some long life wraps and instant rice. To be honest I hadn't thought about buying mince in a tin before but somehow it being made into chilli made me think differently (odd i know:D).
My biggest battle today is trying to dry washing, I'm so reluctant to put the heating on as the price of oil is astronomical so been merrily moving things from outside into house then back again when it stops raining. Who says frugal living can't be fun eh :rotfl:.
Hope everyone is having a peaceful and enjoyable day.
WLL x

ALIBOBSY

pineapple wrote: »

As one of the oft maligned baby boomers I have to step in and say many bought their houses during sky high interest rates and lived extremely frugally to do so - without the gadgets thought of as 'essential' these days and at a time when there wasn't the current raft of benefits even with todays cut backs
It is estimated that a quarter of all pensioners are living in fuel poverty and many die of hypothermia each year.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9078273/Hypothermia-deaths-double-over-five-years.html
The double wammy is that as you get older and more infirm and are confined to the house more, your heating needs actually increase
Things might be changing now due to the Greek and Spain debacles - but for years, UK pensioners have been considered amongst the worst off in Europe
http://think-left.org/2013/07/22/uk-neglect-of-the-elderly-is-a-disgrace/

Personally I don't see this majority of pensioners who are living it large (I wish I was one of them!). But I do agree with things like cutting bus passes, fuel allowances etc for weathier pensioners. A lot of better off pensioners would agree with this too. Maybe the savings could be redistributed to those in need - of whatever age. But then we are back to the government's argument that there would be little saving because universal benefits are cheaper to administer.

A quarter of all households are in fuel poverty and apart from the greed of the power companies part of that has to be the decline of cheap oil as fossil fuels start to run out.

I have seen on TV and spoken to pensioners who say even though they don't need certain things-like free prescriptions or fuel allowances that they will not vote for any party who will take it off them. The trouble is once you have something no one wants to loose it, that isn't a generational thing, just human nature.

In some ways my generation is to blame as the older generation are a big block vote when it comes to elections, too many of my age and younger don't even bother to turn up to vote, so no wonder MP's are loath to do anything that might annoy the generation that most consistently turn out to vote them back in (or not as the case might be).

I think the reality is the pot of money is running out, growth will not appear over the horizon to save us as in the past and benefit after benefit will be cut, until all that's left will be pensions and then they will be unpaid. I honestly don't expect to get a penny state pension and expect to be far worse off in retirement than my parents are. That's why we are working hard to clear our mortgage and won't be stretching ourselves to buy a bigger house-even if we could get a new mortgage.

We hope one day to be able to get some land to be able to become more self sufficent and prep for our kids future. But that may never happen, we will see.

Finally can I just say how much I respect the older generation and think we all should respect and look after the generation before (who brought us into the world) as well as caring for the ones to come after us. I honestly wasn't having a go at any individual pensioner or baby boomer personally. I hope I didn't offend any one on this thread as I'd like to think on here we are all in it together.

Prep harder.

Ali x

bluebag

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

Every now and again ( ok once in a blue moon) I go and find out how much we would get if hubby and I lost our jobs/didn't work.. it worked out we would get £112.55 per week for the 2 of us..

Assuming we didn't have ANY debt, I have been trying to work out how to budget it :eek::eek::eek::eek:

we use approx. £20 - £23 electric a week ( tokens) and we are not here most of the day, we have a coal/wood fire central heating,

Even though we have a smallholding, ( don't live there yet) We could not afford to rear our own pigs/meat if we had no savings, and only relied on the weekly money..

Life is only going to get tougher and all I can say is prep, prep, and prep even more. and I personally think governments are squeezing us into a place where we have got to provide for ourselves... and pensions/benefits will for extreme cases..

Nothing wrong with providing for ourselves, but how are we to do it? Zero hours contracts, no jobs, ever reducing wages, cost inflation, lack of redundancy pay, rip off pension schemes, negative interest rates on savings.

The whole thing is leading to lower and lower living standards, I don't mean losing a holiday or buying a smaller car. I mean being too poor to have a small savings cushion, having to use expensive credit to cope with an emergency. Going cold because there is no money to put in the gas meter.

This used to happen to a small section of society, but that section is getting larger and there is no change on the horizon, it's only a matter of time until we are all in this place.

[Deleted User]

ALI course you didn't, it's a good debate and it's an honest one too, Love Lyn xxx.