I grew up surrounded by very wealthy Hampstead socialists and communists who were very keen on people (other than themselves, of course) paying a lot more taxes. I always found them ridiculous. If you give money to the government it's like giving beer to a drunk. You know what will happen to it, just not where. We now have the ridiculous situation where half the country pays no income tax and I am charged 45% plus NICS plus VAT plus sin taxes plus IHT when I die. For which I get sod all back that I can see. I get no warm feeling for some of this being redistributed to people of whom I know nothing and care less.

As I walk down the street
Seems everyone I meet
Gives me a friendly hello
I guess I'm just a lucky so and so

The birds in every tree
Are all so neighbourly
They sing wherever I go
I guess I'm just a lucky so and so

If you should ask me the amount of my bank account
I have to confess that I'm slipping
But that don't worry me, confidentially
I've got a dream that's pippin

And when the day is through
Each night I hurry to
A home where love waits I know
I guess I'm just a lucky so an so

Puts a different perspective on the numbers if that is the case. The couple with a £400k house and £350k savings/investments - as £350k would equate to a 10-12k occupational pension between them.

There must be large numbers of people in civil service jobs that rise to 40-60k salaries over their career, accruing a 20-30k inflation protected pension worth £600k-£900k alone. So a couple with 1 such person and the other with no pension whatsoever would already be around median even if they owned no housing equity whatsoever.

I have always thought there should be more effort in schools to teach kids about the economics of life. I guess a large chunk of kids drift through unaware into a lifetime of low paid jobs without ever really being aware of where they are going financially.

If you want to be very comfortably off, get some qualifications, get married, both work full time, buy a house as soon as possible, do the house up yourself, don’t have kids, and save and invest. Don’t buy fancy cars, fancy phones, fags, or collect shoes and handbags.

Mass secure lifetime employment has withered away. In my 20’s I worked near a large corporate site with 14,000 people, now only 3000 work there. The same thing has happened across so many industries.

Not just civil service. Anyone with a well paid job and a decent DB pension could be in that position. At https://henrytapper.com/...rt-on-the-fca-and-bsps/ on the scandalous IFA feeding frenzy on the British Steel workers, I see a mention that the average pot size was £365K "with some worth more than one million".

BTW, if you dig into the motherlode of ONS pension data at https://www.ons.gov.uk/p...lthwealthingreatbritain , that reckons (latest release, table 6.9) the 25th, 50th & 75th percentile valuations for 60-64 year old men with a "pension in payment" is £149K, £490K & £779K. However if you compare the pot sizes of accumulators in DB and DC pensions (tables 6.2 & 6.3).. it's an absolute shocker how far the DC accumulators are behind DBers of the same age.



I agree. You'd almost think there was a deliberate conspiracy to keep people ignorant... they make better wage slaves and debt slaves that way. It's factors like that which led to the steelworkers being ripped-off, and countless other pension mis-selling episodes. Folks just don't understand the value of a guaranteed income for life vs. a big pile of cash.

By the time children get to school it's already too late.

It is the responsibility of parents to raise their children with basic starting blocks of learning, communicating and manners. The government should try to facilitate this.