Over 50's, how did you accumulate your wealth?

Terron

Marine_life wrote: »

What is wealth?

The usually measure is how much you own minus your debts. It does give some strange results, like newly qualified US doctors being the poorest people in the world (due to their large student loans). Still it works for most purposes.

Here are the statistics for the UK.

You need £1.4million to be in the top 1% and £700,000 to be in the top 2%. I am in the latter but not the former, with the largest part of my wealth being in my pensions. Since I am not drawing them yet (20 months to go) my income is around the UK average,

michaels

Terron wrote: »

The usually measure is how much you own minus your debts. It does give some strange results, like newly qualified US doctors being the poorest people in the world (due to their large student loans). Still it works for most purposes.

Here are the statistics for the UK.

You need £1.4million to be in the top 1% and £700,000 to be in the top 2%. I am in the latter but not the former, with the largest part of my wealth being in my pensions. Since I am not drawing them yet (20 months to go) my income is around the UK average,

Seems to say 700k for top 5% and that was back in 2012?

Terron

michaels wrote: »

Seems to say 700k for top 5% and that was back in 2012?

Sorry, my mistake about the lower percentile.

I found the chart for 2014



I'm no longer in the top 5%

It seems the largest component of housewealth is pensions at 40% followed by property at 35%.

k6chris

Bought a house to live in early, rented out spare rooms to help pay the mortgage (which helped when interest rates went to 15%!). Overpaid the mortgage, contributed 15% of all my earnings into a pension (plus what the company put in). Got into credit card debt early, but managed to fight my way out of it again, this taught me a lot. Avoided BMWs, expensive watches, the latest gadgets (always buy n-1 technology) and fashion. I am by no means wealthy, but am planning to retire before 55 with a comfortable but certainly not luxurious lifestyle.

westv

Pension wealth?
Mine was/is:-

DB pension job for 9 years (was actually there from 16 but their pension didn't start until 25)
20+ years of 20% DC contributions from various companies
Same years between 5%-10% my own contribution to DC pension.
Marrying a civil servant.

michaels

Terron wrote: »

Sorry, my mistake about the lower percentile.

I found the chart for 2014



I'm no longer in the top 5%

It seems the largest component of housewealth is pensions at 40% followed by property at 35%.

Hmm - I wonder if the first chart was personal and the second household as it seems unlikely that wealth more than doubled between 2012 and 2014....

fred246

jerrysimon wrote: »

As an IT manager I used PCs and and Android phones for ages. However after rebuilding my PC every year and chasing virus and my phones only lasting a couple of years, I now own an iMac/iPhone and all my family have iPhones. We facetime and share photos (new grandchild) with each other, it just works.

In my experience whilst these products are expensive (if you settle for a lower/older iPhone they are cheaper) they last much longer and dont need as much maintenance. My iMac was purchased through Uni discount as was my Mac Mini, now 8 years old.

I was going to do IT as a teenager. However, I went to do work experience and the IT manager there was hopeless. Everyone laughed at him. It actually put me off doing IT. Later one of my relatives had a brother who was an 'IT professional'. She used to laugh because if she had a computer problem she would ask him to solve it. He normally couldn't and then she would ask me. I always sorted the problem in a few minutes. An IT manager who can't build a PC that can last more than a year? Can't cope with viruses? Dear, dear.

ewaste

To be fair a lot of IT managers really don't do much of the technical side these days, they are rightfully busy managing projects and trying to explain to the rest of the business that IT isn't just a random auxiliary service. These days it's often core to how they essentially do business, without IT they wouldn't have much of a business to run in the first place. Management often doesn't join the dots between under-investment in their IT department, especially the retention of staff, and things going to hell in a hand cart.

marlot

fred246 wrote: »

...An IT manager who can't build a PC that can last more than a year? Can't cope with viruses? Dear, dear.

In my department of 300 or so, there are 3 people who build PCs. The other 297 rightly do other things. And many of them are very, very good at their jobs. Only a handful of the 297 could build a decent PC - but we wouldn't want them to.

enthusiasticsaver

A mixture of things contributed towards our financial position which has meant us comfortably taking early retirement.

In the early years of our marriage we lived in London area and moved house three times each time improving and selling at a profit. My husband was offered job transfer to the West Country 30 years ago when our children were tiny so we moved to cheaper and bigger house for same price as we sold our London property. No increase in mortgage term or amount borrowed ever. No loans or credit card debt ever except for 0% furniture finance and once a car on 0%

We spent less than we earnt and overpaid into pensions and mortgage so that was paid off 10 years ago. Started investing 3 years ago.

We have had luckily some large cash gifts from my mum over the last 30 years but much of that has been passed on to our children or contributed to family holidays, daughters wedding, home improvements or university costs etc. Some also invested.