Is retirement over?
Discussion
For most people in the street, I'd say so:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045lh2n#play
'For millennia human beings worked until they dropped. Then in the late 19th century, Otto von Bismarck started the first state pension in Germany. The idea caught on. By the 20th century, advances in medicine meant that many more people were surviving childhood and living longer and longer into old age.
This was great news for those individuals, but not such good news for governments and companies who found themselves having to fund ever-longer retirements. Many of the most generous schemes have now been withdrawn and it’s increasingly up to the individual to save for their retirement – but many aren’t saving enough.
Volatile stock markets and low interest rates are making the situation worse. Many think retirement will turn out to be a "blip" in human history; it didn't exist in the past, and it won't exist in the future. So, is retirement over?
Our expert witnesses are: Professor Noel Whiteside of the University of Warwick, UK; Thomas B Jankowski, research director at Wayne State University, US; David Blake, director of the Pensions Institute at Cass Business School, London, Andrew Scott, professor of economics at London Business School.'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045lh2n#play
'For millennia human beings worked until they dropped. Then in the late 19th century, Otto von Bismarck started the first state pension in Germany. The idea caught on. By the 20th century, advances in medicine meant that many more people were surviving childhood and living longer and longer into old age.
This was great news for those individuals, but not such good news for governments and companies who found themselves having to fund ever-longer retirements. Many of the most generous schemes have now been withdrawn and it’s increasingly up to the individual to save for their retirement – but many aren’t saving enough.
Volatile stock markets and low interest rates are making the situation worse. Many think retirement will turn out to be a "blip" in human history; it didn't exist in the past, and it won't exist in the future. So, is retirement over?
Our expert witnesses are: Professor Noel Whiteside of the University of Warwick, UK; Thomas B Jankowski, research director at Wayne State University, US; David Blake, director of the Pensions Institute at Cass Business School, London, Andrew Scott, professor of economics at London Business School.'
I think there are many schools of thought on the future of humans and work habits, one being that with technological advancements we'll work less and less resulting in more leisure time.
So perhaps retirement will go the way of the dinosaurs but we'll be working so little it won't matter!
So perhaps retirement will go the way of the dinosaurs but we'll be working so little it won't matter!
It's a nice idea but the money to live on will still have to come from somewhere. And 'leisure' usually involves extra expense! Since the internet and smartphones were invented I'm not sure many people do much (actual) work anyway. Didn't I see a 'Productivity down 27%' headline somewhere?
Simpo Two said:
It's a nice idea but the money to live on will still have to come from somewhere. And 'leisure' usually involves extra expense! Since the internet and smartphones were invented I'm not sure many people do much (actual) work anyway. Didn't I see a 'Productivity down 27%' headline somewhere?
The areas I was reading suggested the reduced working hours would progress over the next few hundred years so possible the economy may well be different, but yes likely to still need currency.I imagine at this moment in time majority of the western world in comparison to say 100 years ago physically work a lot less, mostly due to automation of many areas.
I like the idea of retirement (most people would) a sort of "goal" to work towards in life, I'm 29 and I started thinking heavily about my retirement about 3 years and realised that I needed to start putting a good amount away asap to have an average pension pay-out (aside from any inheritance etc).
I know people in their Mid to late thirties who only ended up with a pension after the recent government reforms...
Personally I've always thought personal finances should be included in the national curriculum, perhaps an hour every two weeks where the lesson focuses on Pensions, shares, savings etc
Many people leave school and enter adulthood without understanding any of this and are left to figure it all out during their twenties, imagine having the majority of first time workers immediately getting their finances in order!
I'm guessing that's partly the reason the government introduced the forced pensions.
Many people leave school and enter adulthood without understanding any of this and are left to figure it all out during their twenties, imagine having the majority of first time workers immediately getting their finances in order!
I'm guessing that's partly the reason the government introduced the forced pensions.
Simpo Two said:
It's a nice idea but the money to live on will still have to come from somewhere. And 'leisure' usually involves extra expense! Since the internet and smartphones were invented I'm not sure many people do much (actual) work anyway. Didn't I see a 'Productivity down 27%' headline somewhere?
Agreed, but it's mainly a problem in Britain (ok, maybe in Greece and Spain too!). There was a program on TV lately about it, they reckoned that one of the more industrious countries could end their working year in September, take the rest of the year off and still produce as much as us working until the end of the year. Interesting subject btw.
The real problem is that we live in a country that doesn't employ people over the age of 55 yet now needs them to work until they are 75. That's 20 years on jobseeker allowance for most pensioners of the future.
Re the current situation, the core problem is that the baby boomer generation were massively over paid in pension contributions, there are an enormous number of them, they won't die and they have been stopping work decades before they should have. Not their fault but a massive problem that now means that the generation above and behind must finance this enormous financial short fall.
In addition, the Millenials have grown up in these Boomer households of largesse and are a generation of spenders and consumers not workers and savers so almost none of them will have any form of assets or savings at the point at which companies stop employing them. They will have no means by which to either bridge the enormous time gap from when they become unemployable at 55 and entitled to pension at 75. And post 75 they will have no means of earning at all and no wealth. It very brutal terms the Millenials who do not have proper professions and career prospects or who's inheritance will not be consumed by care costs are basically an army of walking dead.
In reality, the solution to this huge impending problem will be found by remembering how and why people used to live before the Boomers and the cultural revolution of the 60s. People will revert to having their parents live with them instead of farming them out to special processing units to be tortured by shouty little foreign people. They will revert to moving back into the family home which will once again become a generational asset rather than a means to pay off a massive consumer debt pile once the farmed out parental liability has been slung in the oven. And people will revert to doing all the work that they have previously decided is beneath them and must be done by shipping in millions of servants from overseas.
When will this happen? It will probably start just as soon as the Millenials work out that a sandwich from a pop up shop should actually be the third of the price of a sandwich from a conventional shop and not three times. Or when the Boomers realise that the care farms they knocked up on the cheap in order to get rid of their parents are mostly awful hell holes that no human should be subjected to, let alone the humans who raised you and gave you everything.
So, it's not going to happen any time soon.
Re the current situation, the core problem is that the baby boomer generation were massively over paid in pension contributions, there are an enormous number of them, they won't die and they have been stopping work decades before they should have. Not their fault but a massive problem that now means that the generation above and behind must finance this enormous financial short fall.
In addition, the Millenials have grown up in these Boomer households of largesse and are a generation of spenders and consumers not workers and savers so almost none of them will have any form of assets or savings at the point at which companies stop employing them. They will have no means by which to either bridge the enormous time gap from when they become unemployable at 55 and entitled to pension at 75. And post 75 they will have no means of earning at all and no wealth. It very brutal terms the Millenials who do not have proper professions and career prospects or who's inheritance will not be consumed by care costs are basically an army of walking dead.
In reality, the solution to this huge impending problem will be found by remembering how and why people used to live before the Boomers and the cultural revolution of the 60s. People will revert to having their parents live with them instead of farming them out to special processing units to be tortured by shouty little foreign people. They will revert to moving back into the family home which will once again become a generational asset rather than a means to pay off a massive consumer debt pile once the farmed out parental liability has been slung in the oven. And people will revert to doing all the work that they have previously decided is beneath them and must be done by shipping in millions of servants from overseas.
When will this happen? It will probably start just as soon as the Millenials work out that a sandwich from a pop up shop should actually be the third of the price of a sandwich from a conventional shop and not three times. Or when the Boomers realise that the care farms they knocked up on the cheap in order to get rid of their parents are mostly awful hell holes that no human should be subjected to, let alone the humans who raised you and gave you everything.
So, it's not going to happen any time soon.
^^ Well said.
The trite theory is of course that all the foreign servants aka immigrants will pay lots of tax to keep us all going. I don't believe it; we need to get our own people working properly. And who will pay the new resident's pensions when they get old...? It's a Ponzi scheme.
The trite theory is of course that all the foreign servants aka immigrants will pay lots of tax to keep us all going. I don't believe it; we need to get our own people working properly. And who will pay the new resident's pensions when they get old...? It's a Ponzi scheme.
DonkeyApple said:
.
In addition, the Millenials have grown up in these Boomer households of largesse and are a generation of spenders and consumers not workers..
I think this is a good point, I was born in 1987 but persons in their lates teens and early twenties at the moment seem to think they'll all be successful and earning large amounts.In addition, the Millenials have grown up in these Boomer households of largesse and are a generation of spenders and consumers not workers..
A lot are able to get brand new Mercs and BMWs on lease/finance (I've no issue with these options on a balanced income) as they have a fair amount of disposable income which they are disposing of.
At a couple of locals pistonheads meets I regularly speak to Lads with the latest Fiesta ST, Merc etc complaining they can't save enough for a deposit for a house.
But they have the latest Iphones, clothes etc
The Generation of wanting their cake and eating it but not realising it was their parents generation that ate the cake!
OP sorry for going off tangent but I think it's all connected in someway, this is a good read about Generation Y
http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yup...
Simpo Two said:
^^ Well said.
The trite theory is of course that all the foreign servants aka immigrants will pay lots of tax to keep us all going. I don't believe it; we need to get our own people working properly. And who will pay the new resident's pensions when they get old...? It's a Ponzi scheme.
Many of the jobs that the industrious immigrants do for us are going to transpire to be the flexible, low skill jobs that the indigenous people will need to be doing to fill the time void from being evicted from the conventional employment pool and when they can obtain State aid. The trite theory is of course that all the foreign servants aka immigrants will pay lots of tax to keep us all going. I don't believe it; we need to get our own people working properly. And who will pay the new resident's pensions when they get old...? It's a Ponzi scheme.
The theory that immigrants will pay the tax needed to keep it all going has one small flaw that is never mentioned. We import from all over the world humans who are 'winners'. People willing to travel to a foreign country and then graft long hours in crappy jobs to better the future of their families. So importing such high quality labour is good. The problem is that it only works if you dispose of the inefficient, low quality labour but instead of catapulting an inferior labour unit out to sea for each superior labour unit we buy in we just give them money for the rest of their lives as compensation for not being able or willing to compete in the labour market.
So, as it is not acceptable to send the least productive elements of the labour pool to the glue factory we must turn away from importing the more efficient labour from overseas and find the best compromise between a less efficient labour pool and higher employment across the entire age spectrum of the pool.
Put simply, you can't import superior labour and gain true efficiencies if you are not going to simultaneously export the least efficient labour.
Edited by DonkeyApple on Sunday 4th September 11:03
Good timing! I think this thread answers the question I was about to ask, which was going to be:
I've just run through a quick and dirty pension projection calculator to see what I'm likely to need. My (vague) details are:
- Started a pension about 9 or 10 years ago (I'm currently 35)
- For the last 6 or 7 years I've been paying 10% into my pension (I believe that's the maximum you can put in tax free)
- Previous employer contributed 3%, current employer contributes 2.5%
Based on this, the calculator reckons that I am about 50% of the required amount to achieve 50% of my salary (required to maintain current lifestyle, according to research) - and that includes state pension. If I change the retirement age from 68 to 74 (the maximum it will take) then I'm still short by about 33%.
So yeah, my question was going to be how can anyone retire?
OK, lifestyle could take a hit, I'll have definitely paid off my mortgage by then, I could pay more (already taxed) money in to the pot but it seems pretty worrying. To meet the target I should be paying just over 21% every month. I suppose it's not too unfeasible as your retirement period could be easily be 20% of your working life (say working 55 years, 20-75, living to 86), but it's more than a little worrying.
I've just run through a quick and dirty pension projection calculator to see what I'm likely to need. My (vague) details are:
- Started a pension about 9 or 10 years ago (I'm currently 35)
- For the last 6 or 7 years I've been paying 10% into my pension (I believe that's the maximum you can put in tax free)
- Previous employer contributed 3%, current employer contributes 2.5%
Based on this, the calculator reckons that I am about 50% of the required amount to achieve 50% of my salary (required to maintain current lifestyle, according to research) - and that includes state pension. If I change the retirement age from 68 to 74 (the maximum it will take) then I'm still short by about 33%.
So yeah, my question was going to be how can anyone retire?
OK, lifestyle could take a hit, I'll have definitely paid off my mortgage by then, I could pay more (already taxed) money in to the pot but it seems pretty worrying. To meet the target I should be paying just over 21% every month. I suppose it's not too unfeasible as your retirement period could be easily be 20% of your working life (say working 55 years, 20-75, living to 86), but it's more than a little worrying.
xRIEx said:
Good timing! I think this thread answers the question I was about to ask, which was going to be:
I've just run through a quick and dirty pension projection calculator to see what I'm likely to need. My (vague) details are:
- Started a pension about 9 or 10 years ago (I'm currently 35)
- For the last 6 or 7 years I've been paying 10% into my pension (I believe that's the maximum you can put in tax free)
- Previous employer contributed 3%, current employer contributes 2.5%
Based on this, the calculator reckons that I am about 50% of the required amount to achieve 50% of my salary (required to maintain current lifestyle, according to research) - and that includes state pension. If I change the retirement age from 68 to 74 (the maximum it will take) then I'm still short by about 33%.
So yeah, my question was going to be how can anyone retire?
OK, lifestyle could take a hit, I'll have definitely paid off my mortgage by then, I could pay more (already taxed) money in to the pot but it seems pretty worrying. To meet the target I should be paying just over 21% every month. I suppose it's not too unfeasible as your retirement period could be easily be 20% of your working life (say working 55 years, 20-75, living to 86), but it's more than a little worrying.
I think many people expect inheritance to some how shore up the difference, nobody really knows though if they will get what they're expecting though.I've just run through a quick and dirty pension projection calculator to see what I'm likely to need. My (vague) details are:
- Started a pension about 9 or 10 years ago (I'm currently 35)
- For the last 6 or 7 years I've been paying 10% into my pension (I believe that's the maximum you can put in tax free)
- Previous employer contributed 3%, current employer contributes 2.5%
Based on this, the calculator reckons that I am about 50% of the required amount to achieve 50% of my salary (required to maintain current lifestyle, according to research) - and that includes state pension. If I change the retirement age from 68 to 74 (the maximum it will take) then I'm still short by about 33%.
So yeah, my question was going to be how can anyone retire?
OK, lifestyle could take a hit, I'll have definitely paid off my mortgage by then, I could pay more (already taxed) money in to the pot but it seems pretty worrying. To meet the target I should be paying just over 21% every month. I suppose it's not too unfeasible as your retirement period could be easily be 20% of your working life (say working 55 years, 20-75, living to 86), but it's more than a little worrying.
The concern, as already expressed, is that people aren't taking the problem seriously, or are hoping that it somehow goes away.
Some believe that they'll continue working into their 70's and 80's, when they will be less capable due to failing health and mental acuity and their jobs will be under threat from younger people. Others think that they'll downsize their property, and everything will be alright. It might be, if they own a house worth in excess of £1m and can downsize sufficiently, but you need c.£500k of pension for an annual income of around £15-£17k. Buy-to-Let portfolio? Dream on. Successive Governments will turn the tax screw further, under the guise of releasing lower-end properties on to the market.
We are sleep walking into a Pensions trap. Unless people can be shaken from their torpor and made to realise the implications of failing to provide for their later years, we're looking at generations of elderly, infirm people with very little or no income. At one end of the scale the implications for welfare services and the NHS are mind-blowing, and I can't see any Government gearing up the welfare state to cope. And what about those who don't own their homes? How will they pay their rent?
At the other, "First World Problem" end of the scale, a lot of leisure related businesses will fail. I wouldn't want to have anything invested in a golf course or cruise line in 20-30 years time.
Some believe that they'll continue working into their 70's and 80's, when they will be less capable due to failing health and mental acuity and their jobs will be under threat from younger people. Others think that they'll downsize their property, and everything will be alright. It might be, if they own a house worth in excess of £1m and can downsize sufficiently, but you need c.£500k of pension for an annual income of around £15-£17k. Buy-to-Let portfolio? Dream on. Successive Governments will turn the tax screw further, under the guise of releasing lower-end properties on to the market.
We are sleep walking into a Pensions trap. Unless people can be shaken from their torpor and made to realise the implications of failing to provide for their later years, we're looking at generations of elderly, infirm people with very little or no income. At one end of the scale the implications for welfare services and the NHS are mind-blowing, and I can't see any Government gearing up the welfare state to cope. And what about those who don't own their homes? How will they pay their rent?
At the other, "First World Problem" end of the scale, a lot of leisure related businesses will fail. I wouldn't want to have anything invested in a golf course or cruise line in 20-30 years time.
ZOLLAR said:
I think many people expect inheritance to some how shore up the difference, nobody really knows though if they will get what they're expecting though.
Yup. Huge numbers are currently boosting their lifestyles by not just spending the money they need to be saving for their pension but in addition spending the money they have calculated they'll be inheriting. Such calculations by over spenders rarely are remotely accurate and normally comically optimistic to farcical in their workings.
They certainly tend to ignore snippets such as this:
"Care home costs. According to PayingForCare, a report by healthcare specialists Laing & Buisson in 2013/14) depending on where in the UK you live, care homes can cost an average of: £28,500 per year for a residential care home, or. £37,500 per year if nursing is required."
Such costs will mean many will see little to no inheritance. Plus, the failure to realise that work will be almost impossible to find after 55 means that many will be drawing on savings and investments far, far earlier than they are expecting having based calculations on working until 70+
At current rates of life expectancy combined with the lack of employment opportunities for over 55s the reality is that many will be living in a state of retirement for longer than their working careers!!! And with absolutely no means to self finance 30 year + retirement periods.
DonkeyApple said:
The real problem is that we live in a country that doesn't employ people over the age of 55 yet now needs them to work until they are 75. That's 20 years on jobseeker allowance for most pensioners of the future.
Re the current situation, the core problem is that the baby boomer generation were massively over paid in pension contributions, there are an enormous number of them, they won't die and they have been stopping work decades before they should have. Not their fault but a massive problem that now means that the generation above and behind must finance this enormous financial short fall.
In addition, the Millenials have grown up in these Boomer households of largesse and are a generation of spenders and consumers not workers and savers so almost none of them will have any form of assets or savings at the point at which companies stop employing them. They will have no means by which to either bridge the enormous time gap from when they become unemployable at 55 and entitled to pension at 75. And post 75 they will have no means of earning at all and no wealth. It very brutal terms the Millenials who do not have proper professions and career prospects or who's inheritance will not be consumed by care costs are basically an army of walking dead.
In reality, the solution to this huge impending problem will be found by remembering how and why people used to live before the Boomers and the cultural revolution of the 60s. People will revert to having their parents live with them instead of farming them out to special processing units to be tortured by shouty little foreign people. They will revert to moving back into the family home which will once again become a generational asset rather than a means to pay off a massive consumer debt pile once the farmed out parental liability has been slung in the oven. And people will revert to doing all the work that they have previously decided is beneath them and must be done by shipping in millions of servants from overseas.
When will this happen? It will probably start just as soon as the Millenials work out that a sandwich from a pop up shop should actually be the third of the price of a sandwich from a conventional shop and not three times. Or when the Boomers realise that the care farms they knocked up on the cheap in order to get rid of their parents are mostly awful hell holes that no human should be subjected to, let alone the humans who raised you and gave you everything.
So, it's not going to happen any time soon.
'Walking dead'..... brutal but true, nothing like a cheerful dk post on a sunday morning....Re the current situation, the core problem is that the baby boomer generation were massively over paid in pension contributions, there are an enormous number of them, they won't die and they have been stopping work decades before they should have. Not their fault but a massive problem that now means that the generation above and behind must finance this enormous financial short fall.
In addition, the Millenials have grown up in these Boomer households of largesse and are a generation of spenders and consumers not workers and savers so almost none of them will have any form of assets or savings at the point at which companies stop employing them. They will have no means by which to either bridge the enormous time gap from when they become unemployable at 55 and entitled to pension at 75. And post 75 they will have no means of earning at all and no wealth. It very brutal terms the Millenials who do not have proper professions and career prospects or who's inheritance will not be consumed by care costs are basically an army of walking dead.
In reality, the solution to this huge impending problem will be found by remembering how and why people used to live before the Boomers and the cultural revolution of the 60s. People will revert to having their parents live with them instead of farming them out to special processing units to be tortured by shouty little foreign people. They will revert to moving back into the family home which will once again become a generational asset rather than a means to pay off a massive consumer debt pile once the farmed out parental liability has been slung in the oven. And people will revert to doing all the work that they have previously decided is beneath them and must be done by shipping in millions of servants from overseas.
When will this happen? It will probably start just as soon as the Millenials work out that a sandwich from a pop up shop should actually be the third of the price of a sandwich from a conventional shop and not three times. Or when the Boomers realise that the care farms they knocked up on the cheap in order to get rid of their parents are mostly awful hell holes that no human should be subjected to, let alone the humans who raised you and gave you everything.
So, it's not going to happen any time soon.
DonkeyApple said:
Many of the jobs that the industrious immigrants do for us are going to transpire to be the flexible, low skill jobs that the indigenous people will need to be doing to fill the time void from being evicted from the conventional employment pool and when they can obtain State aid.
The theory that immigrants will pay the tax needed to keep it all going has one small flaw that is never mentioned. We import from all over the world humans who are 'winners'. People willing to travel to a foreign country and then graft long hours in crappy jobs to better the future of their families. So importing such high quality labour is good. The problem is that it only works if you dispose of the inefficient, low quality labour but instead of catapulting an inferior labour unit out to sea for each superior labour unit we buy in we just give them money for the rest of their lives as compensation for not being able or willing to compete in the labour market.
So, as it is not acceptable to send the least productive elements of the labour pool to the glue factory we must turn away from importing the more efficient labour from overseas and find the best compromise between a less efficient labour pool and higher employment across the entire age spectrum of the pool.
Put simply, you can't import superior labour and gain true efficiencies if you are not going to simultaneously export the least efficient labour.
You are assuming there is a fixed amount of work to do, or to put it another way that all human needs are satisfied. This isn't true even before you consider that all these immigrants from (insert country of your choice) will create a demand for more (insert gratuitous ethnic stereotype of your choice). In general immigrants create as much demand as supply.The theory that immigrants will pay the tax needed to keep it all going has one small flaw that is never mentioned. We import from all over the world humans who are 'winners'. People willing to travel to a foreign country and then graft long hours in crappy jobs to better the future of their families. So importing such high quality labour is good. The problem is that it only works if you dispose of the inefficient, low quality labour but instead of catapulting an inferior labour unit out to sea for each superior labour unit we buy in we just give them money for the rest of their lives as compensation for not being able or willing to compete in the labour market.
So, as it is not acceptable to send the least productive elements of the labour pool to the glue factory we must turn away from importing the more efficient labour from overseas and find the best compromise between a less efficient labour pool and higher employment across the entire age spectrum of the pool.
Put simply, you can't import superior labour and gain true efficiencies if you are not going to simultaneously export the least efficient labour.
I'm too busy worrying about paying off my massive mortgage before I have the luxury of planning for the future
It's not my fault my house cost me 5 times the cost compared to the generation before me and I don't even have enough space for a dining table
Like everyone points out, the end game is bust, in the future automation will take over so much work. I could spend my finite time on earth worrying about all these problems and making myself Ill or just go out and have a nice time instead. so many people drop dead straight after retirement and dont get the chance to enjoy it so I'm enjoyjng it as I go along, seems to be a foreign concept to so many people
It's not my fault my house cost me 5 times the cost compared to the generation before me and I don't even have enough space for a dining table
Like everyone points out, the end game is bust, in the future automation will take over so much work. I could spend my finite time on earth worrying about all these problems and making myself Ill or just go out and have a nice time instead. so many people drop dead straight after retirement and dont get the chance to enjoy it so I'm enjoyjng it as I go along, seems to be a foreign concept to so many people
rossmc88 said:
I'm too busy worrying about paying off my massive mortgage before I have the luxury of planning for the future
It's not my fault my house cost me 5 times the cost compared to the generation before me and I don't even have enough space for a dining table
Like everyone points out, the end game is bust, in the future automation will take over so much work. I could spend my finite time on earth worrying about all these problems and making myself Ill or just go out and have a nice time instead. so many people drop dead straight after retirement and dont get the chance to enjoy it so I'm enjoyjng it as I go along, seems to be a foreign concept to so many people
It's how the gay community and women have tended to live and they've done fine. It's not my fault my house cost me 5 times the cost compared to the generation before me and I don't even have enough space for a dining table
Like everyone points out, the end game is bust, in the future automation will take over so much work. I could spend my finite time on earth worrying about all these problems and making myself Ill or just go out and have a nice time instead. so many people drop dead straight after retirement and dont get the chance to enjoy it so I'm enjoyjng it as I go along, seems to be a foreign concept to so many people
Also, your life insurance policy rate will be making it very clear to you that almost no one drops dead straight after retirement. And if you don't have life cover then it's inconceivable to have not noticed the slight problem of the NHS being swamped by pensioners living longer and longer. The whole 'gay disco - live for today' waffle is just marketing schpeel for selling punters stuff they don't need or can afford.
And who needs a dining room table when you have pop up shops?
Like all over spenders in history the solution is and always has been to just stick your tits out, pucker up and marry someone with lots of money.
On a serious note, I don't envy your generation at all. My generation appears to have split into haves and have nots based pretty strongly on who saved in their youth and bought a property versus those who didn't save and bought cars and holidays instead but twenty years ago it was a choice to throw away your long term wealth through short term over spending. Today's generation have a mass addiction to living beyond their means combined with excessive property inflation meaning the prospects for long term wealth are very heavily stacked against them and as you say it isn't 100% their fault and very much of the mad lifestyle can be pinned on the excessive cost of housing.
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