No pay rise? Blame the baby boomers' gilded pension pots

PlymouthMaid

Guess I have young parents as they didn't really live and fight through the war (Dad was born 1936 and Mum 1941)- that would have been my grandparents.

patanne

I bet no-one gets asked by their mothers to be nice & smile at the butcher so they could get a relatively decent cut of meat. Meat rationing didn't come off until several years after the war finished. Malnutrition was the norm unless you lived in the country. But yes we had it really good. No borrowing money unless you went to a loan shark.

My first house was bought with a deposit from my parents (much too old to be baby boomers) and even then (1969) HP was only rarely available. And as for mortgage interest rates from 7% to 15% in a year and it was payable the next month. We actually bought NO furniture at all, everything we had was donated by older relatives updating their own. That was how it was done then unless you were rich. No new sofa for £3k bought on interest free loans - they didn't exist. But yes we did have it good, because what we had we owned and owed nobody for & that is how we managed to have a little more (but not much more) than people do these days. Although I do deplore the lack of proper contracts employees have these days but you can blame Maggie for that.

ukcarper

PlymouthMaid wrote: »

I must be a boomer (1962) but I definitely don't feel like it. No pension to speak off just a couple of piddly pots from jobs long past. Private pensions were not really a 'thing' when I was young enough for it to be affordable. The job market never seemed easy to me as my timing was always off eg trained as a teacher as the Government flooded the market with NQTs so ultimately I have ended up in a poorly paid teaching role with no pension as the rules covering new teachers' induction years were harsh and unfairly applied in a period of oversupply (too boring and irrelevant to go into).

It seems to me that the generation before me did so much better and now have lots of disposable income whereas if my generation has much money, it is swallowed in either uni fees or care home fees. I don't know anybody in my age group who could be classified as a 'boomer' so perhaps the cut off point is earlier than the 1960's born folk.

I think you are missing point completely not all of the people born before 1960 have final salary pensions and lots of disposable income. I'm fortunate enough to have a final salary pension (although I made the decision in 80s not to move to higher paying jobs to save my pension) but out my old school friends I keep in tough with I'm the only one who has.

Sapphire

Sadly, they don't appear to teach people social history in schools these days, and some people just aren't willing to do their own research on post-war history, but spout any old rubbish based on nothing in order to try and prove a 'point'.

Perhaps we need another war ugh.

gadgetmind

Sapphire wrote: »

Perhaps we need another war ugh.

A sodding great big clue bat might work just as well.

We call them LARTs (Luser Attitude Readjustment Tools) otherwise known as a "Clue by four".

Sapphire

gadgetmind wrote: »

A sodding great big clue bat might work just as well.

We call them LARTs (Luser Attitude Adjustment Tools) otherwise known as a "Clue by four".

Dunno what you're talking about, but it sounds good.:beer:

BobQ

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Not low enough to cover the true cost of the pension provided. My employer currently contributes 26%. Hardly surprising that restructuring abounds.

Now they do but what were they paying 40 years ago when those about to retire started with the firm?

My point remains that it is not your fault that your employer did not calculate the true costs of its employment package at the time.

Thrugelmir

BobQ wrote: »

Now they do but what were they paying 40 years ago when those about to retire started with the firm?

Although as an organisation we are in the private sector our shareholders are entirely public sector entities. Our pension scheme mirrors that of the Civil Service. The organisation isn't 40 years old.

kabayiri

It sounds like the much publicised NEST scheme with auto-enrollment is not going to fix things, or am I expecting too much?

Thrugelmir

kabayiri wrote: »

It sounds like the much publicised NEST scheme with auto-enrollment is not going to fix things, or am I expecting too much?

A stepping stone. Small steps to re-educate people.