State Pension Affordability

[NotAllThere]

Having worked and saved and paid taxes for 50 years (and still paying taxes now I'm retired), why should I sacrifice my comfortable, paid-for, spacious house to live in a shoe box for someone else? And get rid of a life's worth of possessions to do so?

I'm planning to move into a comfortable spacious smaller house or apartment in a few years. You don't have to move into a shoe box.

Not because I want to free up housing stock, but because I want to cash out - which gives my kids their house deposits - and the house was fine with 6 adults, but with 2, it's a little too big. We barely use half the rooms.

[WTFH]

You want a house, then f***ing work for it. Even if you start from where I did, £17 a week, a pregnant girlfriend, no family support and nowhere to live. And I'm a long was from being the only one.

And back then you could get an averaged size house for 3 times the average wage.
What about today? Average salary £32k, Average house price £290k.
And that's not including the student loan (in your day, university was free, and you might even have been given a grant to study)

[WTFH]

Data from a few years ago indicated that the total tax take from retirees exceeded that from the under 30s. But perhaps all that highlights is the poor income and opportunities for under 30s ...

That's probably because the number of "retirees" is greater than the number of under 30s of working age, and the income of the under 30s is nowhere near as high as the income of retirees. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/pr...ousing-wealth/

[malvolio]

And back then you could get an averaged size house for 3 times the average wage.
What about today? Average salary £32k, Average house price £290k.
And that's not including the student loan (in your day, university was free, and you might even have been given a grant to study)

Bought a £12,500 ex-council house on a sub-£3k a year salary working a three shift rotation, so "3x salary" doesn't work...

Didn't do university. Did day release/evening class at college but had to stop that when I went on the shift rotation.

We had zero social help - not a failure to qualify, there simply wasn't anything.

Don't believe everything you read in the papers. What my generation has (and a fair bit of what the next one have) we worked for.

[Snooky]

Data from a few years ago indicated that the total tax take from retirees exceeded that from the under 30s. But perhaps all that highlights is the poor income and opportunities for under 30s ...

Is that tax take per head, or total tax take? In which case it could easily make sense as we probably have way more retirees than under 30s with an income.

[Protagoras]

Is that tax take per head, or total tax take? In which case it could easily make sense as we probably have way more retirees than under 30s with an income.

It was data from a few years ago.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-b2715839.html

"Over 5.4 million Britons aged over 70 paid income tax in the 2022-23 financial year, while there were 5.23 million taxpayers aged under 30, according to the latest data from HM Revenue and Customs.

There were more taxpayers over the age of 75 than in any other age range, with 3.63 million people recorded as paying income tax for the demographic.

People aged over 70 paid £19.1bn in income tax, while £18.3bn was paid by people under the age of 30."

[WTFH]

Bought a £12,500 ex-council house on a sub-£3k a year salary working a three shift rotation, so "3x salary" doesn't work...

So, you were paid well below the average salary at the time and bought a house off the government, and consider yourself “average”.
When Maggie started selling off council houses in 1980, the UK average salary was £6k. By 1988, the UK average salary was £12,130. In 1980 the UK average hose price was £18k.
It appears you were way below average, and if you were actually working a full week, you might not even have been getting paid the legal minimum, if anything you claim is actually true.

[DoctorStrangelove]

UK Minimum Wage was introduced in 1999.

House prices depend on Location Location Location.

[malvolio]

So, you were paid well below the average salary at the time and bought a house off the government, and consider yourself “average”.
When Maggie started selling off council houses in 1980, the UK average salary was £6k. By 1988, the UK average salary was £12,130. In 1980 the UK average hose price was £18k.
It appears you were way below average, and if you were actually working a full week, you might not even have been getting paid the legal minimum, if anything you claim is actually true.

It's all true, sweetpea.

We didn't have minimum wage legislation

We bought on a local government mortgage scheme just before it closed giving a 95% mortgage. Tte other 5% we had to find ourselves. Nothing o do with right-to-buy.

You clearly have no idea of the financial problems in the 70s. And fwiw Thatcher was very clear up front that fixing them was going to hurt, but they were fixed. Blair ran on her solutions for several years before remembering he was supposed to be a Labour politician and f***ed it all up again.

However if you're' going to insist on using 21st Century approaches to 1970s reality, you're really wasting everyone's time. Again...

[woody1]

Property certainly seems a lot more unaffordable now than it was back in the 80s and 90s.

In 86 we bought a new 2-bed semi in Stockport for £20k, on a 95% mortgage, based on one university research assistant £7k salary.
The following year we bought a 2-bed semi in York for £30k, on a 95% mortgage, based on a university research £10k salary.
In 92 we bought a 3-bed detached in Wantage (Oxfordshire) for £85k, on a 90% mortgage, with two modest research and admin salaries (£14k + £16k).

Couldn't see that being anywhere near attainable now.