mtbc | Declining retirement prospects

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I see many ordinary older people on British television who have retired and are enjoying their lives of leisure. I suspect that many bought their house decades ago, they enjoy some workplace pension provided on rather better terms than any we get now, we still have plenty of working taxpayers left to fund the system, etc.

Given that Britain has been seeing many years of slow growth, cost-of-living crisis, lack of affordable housing, a population that is growing older, etc., I wonder if these happy everyday retirees are a dying breed, if increasingly many people are on course for retirement poverty. If younger people have a hard time making ends meet now and we're shooing all the immigrants away and anything else that might light the tunnel's mouth, how on Earth will people put aside enough to retire on pleasantly?

A bit of searching online suggests that some people hope that their cryptocurrency holdings will help, oh dear.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

aldabra

I have no idea what the arrangements are for private renters who hit retirement age with no property and minimal income. I daren't look. I am hoping that enough other people hit this point over the course of this government that they have to come up with some sort of programme. Currently the state pension would pay 2/3 of my rent with nothing over for bills or food; clearly I could downsize but this doesn't actually reduce the rent by much because rents have kept rising since we moved here. Unless I downsized to Hull while somehow maintaining a Cambridge salary.

From:

wpadmirer

Yeah, it's bad. Here in the states we don't have the infrastructure to support retiring. They're now threatening medicare, which is the elderly's health care.

(sigh)

From:

armiphlage

The maximum Old Age Security payment in Canada is $814.10 per month.
The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto is $1715 per month.

From:

thewayne

I saw an article recently about how much Brexit cost the UK economy. It was not a pretty picture. Every first-world country has a problem with falling birth rates and increasing lopsidedness of retirees vs those paying into the retirement system. It's definitely a problem and I have no idea what the solution is.

Here, there's an easy way to prop up Social Security - remove the cap on those paying into it, not that the rich actually draw salaries. There - well, I don't know how it's financially structured. Russet and I may do okay on our retirements, it's still a bit up in the air right now.