Does the State Pension increase every year?

zagfles

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

The one graduate in the UK that wrote their final thesis on Kardashians is a nice story which perpetuates the myth that the young are feckless and entitled.

I work a 55 hour week, earn in the top 10% of incomes, put away 60%+ of it, got a 2:1 from a redbrick in computer science and maths a decade ago. I am the absolutely archetype of what some in the older generations say young people should be - yet I can't afford a four bedroom place, even when adding in my wife's salary. What are we doing wrong?

I really don't think some older people realise how broken our system is, nor how much they lucked out. It's almost like a form of survivorship bias.

Based on what you have said, I'm sure that you'd be able to afford a house like ours.

4 bed, 2 bath, separate dining room, utility, garage plus off road parking for at least 2 cars, decent sized garden in a very nice market town.  Yours for just over £300K.

The only thing it doesn't have is a London post code.  Choices, choices......

I don't live in London, I live in that notoriously well-to-do and expensive area of..... the East Midlands. A 4 bed like you described above, with a reasonable school to send our nippers to, starts at half a million. We're about £75k short, and whatever we save the affordability actually gets less each year.

East Midlands?  Wow, that's a shocker.  If you really want that particular area, could you go for a 3 bedroom with room for an extension/loft conversion later? 

Yes, we're on the look out for those as well - most of those are right at the top end of our ~£400k budget. Some you can get for £300k if they're in a complete state of disrepair, which would be fine but wife is due to give birth in six weeks so not really appropriate!

Sounds like discussions on student accomodation. Seem to have had loads of those recently where people have said it's horrendously expensive and then when challenged with actual facts admitted they were only looking at accomodation in expensive trendy areas.

Average price in East Midlands is about £228k  https://www.zoopla.co.uk/house-prices/east-midlands/

ewaste

It's pretty simple at the end of the day, people generally vote in their own best interests*. The demographics feed into the political policies which feed voting intentions which... it's all a vicious cycle. Until there is a fundamental shift in the demographics nothing is going to change.

*I did say generally... my old man who is a 'boomer' voted Tory and for Brexit despite firmly believing that there should be basic social housing provision, utilities should be nationalised and the local A&E shouldn't be closed due to the PFI hospital 30 odd miles away sucking up resources. He also retired on a DB pension at 55, 'unfortunately' will be a HRT once state pension kicks in, from a workplace that did have strong unionisation and is a landlord, beliefs vs self interest...

@zagfles average for a detached £347,133 add in nice garden with a garage etc.

Thrugelmir

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

I work a 55 hour week, earn in the top 10% of incomes, put away 60%+ of it, got a 2:1 from a redbrick in computer science and maths a decade ago. I am the absolutely archetype of what some in the older generations say young people should be - yet I can't afford a four bedroom place, even when adding in my wife's salary. What are we doing wrong?

You save. You start lower down on the ladder and work your way up.  Building equity as you go.

I started my first Saturday job at 12. Used to work on a petrol station forecourt in the days before self service. In the holidays used to do a few days cleaning the new cars coming off the transporters. Was a sound education that my parents gave me. Learnt the value of money, and how to be well rewarded for genuine hard work and productivity. 

mgdavid

MaxiRobriguez said:

Yes, we're on the look out for those as well - most of those are right at the top end of our ~£400k budget. Some you can get for £300k if they're in a complete state of disrepair, which would be fine but wife is due to give birth in six weeks so not really appropriate!

There are threads in the archive on the subject of life planning and prioritisation too - in my world we only started a family after we'd bought a house, and we sized the family to the house and lifestyle we could afford. Everyone is different, there's no right and wrong, but there are consequences.

zagfles

ewaste said:

It's pretty simple at the end of the day, people generally vote in their own best interests*. The demographics feed into the political policies which feed voting intentions which... it's all a vicious cycle. Until there is a fundamental shift in the demographics nothing is going to change.

*I did say generally... my old man who is a 'boomer' voted Tory and for Brexit despite firmly believing that there should be basic social housing provision, utilities should be nationalised and the local A&E shouldn't be closed due to the PFI hospital 30 odd miles away sucking up resources. He also retired on a DB pension at 55, 'unfortunately' will be a HRT once state pension kicks in, from a workplace that did have strong unionisation and is a landlord, beliefs vs self interest...

@zagfles average for a detached £347,133 add in nice garden with a garage etc.

Yeah and add in a trendy area in the catchment area of the school one must get one's kids into otherwise their whole future will be ruined and the price rockets... One could never see oneself living in a common semi or (god forbid) a terrace, imagine the indignity!

When I was looking round for areas to live in I shortlisted it to two local areas where I knew people, they were very similar, similar distance from city centre, similar road and PT links, similar crime rates, similar schools, but one was 50% more expensive than the other! For, it seems, no other reason than snobbery and trendyness.

Now living in a large semi with a large garden for the same price as a poky "dolls house" detached with tiny rooms, low ceilings, and postage stamp garden in the other area.

ewaste

@zagfles I was just getting a more apples to apples to what Silvertabby and Maxi were talking about. If the average cost of a detached is around £350k then what Maxi is looking for will be toward that £400k mark. The poor sod probably already lives among the peasantry in a semi-detached 3 bed but is now looking for more bedrooms, which tend to then be detached properties, and a garden now the kids are getting a bit older. Schooling and catchment areas are a major issue unfortunately.

As for snobbery and trendiness when it comes to location I can understand where you’re coming from, I currently reside on the ‘wrong side' of the river with often inexplicable differences in property prices.

I also prefer older established properties which tend to have bigger rooms and gardens vs the plasterboard tents, shoe boxes or dolls houses being passed off as houses these days. I suppose part of that comes from knowing tradespeople and not being afraid of living in a mess for a month or two while a Kitchen or bathroom gets gutted back to the bare walls and rewired. I’ve lived through a full 4-bed detached rewire, dropped all the ceilings and tossed all the carpets, a good plasterer is truly an artisan.

Andy_L

MaxiRobriguez said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

The one graduate in the UK that wrote their final thesis on Kardashians is a nice story which perpetuates the myth that the young are feckless and entitled.

I work a 55 hour week, earn in the top 10% of incomes, put away 60%+ of it, got a 2:1 from a redbrick in computer science and maths a decade ago. I am the absolutely archetype of what some in the older generations say young people should be - yet I can't afford a four bedroom place, even when adding in my wife's salary. What are we doing wrong?

I really don't think some older people realise how broken our system is, nor how much they lucked out. It's almost like a form of survivorship bias.

Is a 1st in Sociology at Durham even evidence of the young being feckless & entitled?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/686382/Kardashian-dissertation-Durham-University-Kim-Kardashian-first-class-degree

Andy_L

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

Are Todays generation of military families able to do that? Probably not.

bluenose1

The younger generations coming through mostly won’t have the advantages of people 50+ who quite often have decent pension contributions from their employer, especially the older ones who got state pension at age 60, never mind housing.

I also on reflection had a deprived background, outside toilet etc,  remember my mum trying to get enough together to buy a loaf. The penny never dropped until I was an adult why every year I was chosen by school to go to a holiday camp in the country. 

Feel sorry for working class kids today growing up in deprived areas, don’t think there is the upwardly mobile opportunities we had. The middle class children who have had a better education etc will get most of the decent jobs. 

Plus they will have to work until their 70s to get their state pension.
Read somewhere that in UK and USA your wealth and opportunities are very much defined by the wealth of your parents whereas in the Nordic countries they pay more in tax, everyone has decent education, child care etc and your opportunities in life are not dictated by your parents wealth.
I would much prefer a society like that whereas think we are moving to a more USA model with underfunded public services and a culture of blaming the poor for their poverty. A dog eat dog society. Unfortunately even Covid has had a disproportionate financial hit on the young. 

Silvertabby

Andy_L said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

Silvertabby said:

Nebulous2 said:

eastcorkram said:

Often puzzled by the fact that apparently I'm to blame for the fact that houses were cheap, well, relatively cheap. I bought my first house in 1982 , a one bedroom so called starter home. It was £21,500. I borrowed £18,500. 
 It didn't feel cheap at the time. 
When I went to view it, what should I have done? Offer £27,995?
I had no influence on the price of houses. Then or anytime since. 

You weren't to blame for getting a cheap house, I wasn't to blame for getting a cheap flat in 1984. Equally, individual members of our generation aren't entirely to blame for having taken more out of the system than we put in over the years. 

However neither are the younger people to blame for not being able to afford the same houses that we could, at the same age and in the same occupations. 

Where members of our generation are very much to blame is in getting opportunities to climb the greasy pole and then pulling up the ladder after us (to mix my metaphors) It's bordering on criminal that a generation which received not only free education, but a grant to live on while they studied, decided to charge their own children tuition fees and gave them loans to fund inflated rent in student accommodation.  

University education may have been 'free' but barely 12% of my generation actually benefitted from it.  In the case of my class, only the GP's daughter went on to do her O/A levels and then university.  The rest of us had to leave school at 15 in order to get jobs and bring money into the house.  

It was Tony Blair's New Labour who introduced university fees, as part of his drive to get at least 50% of children into university and so off the unemployment statistics.  Even he knew that the taxpaying voters would baulk at the idea of paying for this extra flood of uni entrants!

I was brought up in what would today be termed abject poverty.  Outside loo, no central heating, no hot water on tap.  Our summer holiday was a day trip to Blackpool or the Lake District, and our telephone was in a red box in the next road.  Tea on Thursday night (before dad got paid) would be something like jam butties - and my sister and I would be told to be grateful as 'poor' children would only have bread and dripping.  But we clearly weren't officially poor, as we didn't qualify for free school meals.  Cue more jam butties.

Time has moved on, and I would hate to think that children today could be living in those conditions were it not for our current welfare system.  But I certainly don't feel guilty about Mr S and my very comfortable retirement, which is mostly down to our combined 50+ years of service in the Armed Forces.  

I'm not asking you to feel guilty. I don't know your attitude towards younger people. I'm simply saying that my (our?) generation needs to recognise that younger people are not the architect of their own misfortunes. They have been dealt a fairly poor hand. My generation had an expanding middle class, which provided opportunities for lots of us to get out of the poverty you describe. Nowadays the middle is being squeezed, meaning everyone can't aspire to the opportunities we had. In fact the children of many middle class people are dropping into the gig economy, or landing up in minimum wage jobs. 

I wish our youngsters all the best.  My only problem is with those who believe that they are somehow entitled to it all.  Now.  Mr S and I had to work up to what we have, and were only able to buy our 4 bed house (as first time buyers) because of the years we spent in Armed Forces married quarters.  Put some of today's entitled youngsters into a typical married quarter, and they'd scream blue murder!  

As for uni, I think it's sad that so many are putting themselves into needless debt by opting to study for Mickey Mouse degrees.  I recently read about a graduate who had written her final thesis on The Kardashians - and was complaining that she couldn't get her dream job because the companies she had applied to weren't impressed with her "qualifications'!

As a taxpayer, I would be perfectly happy for my taxes being used to train medics, engineers, teachers and other essential professionals.

Are Todays generation of military families able to do that? Probably not.

Perhaps not someone who just opted to serve for a few years, leaving in a junior rank, but can't see why today's SNCOs and above still can't do it.

Married quarter rents are heavily subsidised,  so more chance to save.  The Armed Forces have (or at least had) a scheme which offers an interest free loan for house purchase deposit, with any residual being recovered from the pension lump sum or resettlement grant.  Plus, of course, those of us who served at least 22 years receive an immediate pension from age 40.  Not enough to retire on, but certainly enough to make a big dent in any mortgage payments.