I rarely get angry with my son. He’s 40, my only child and we’re close. However, six months ago, I was appalled at something that came out of his mouth. “Your generation have all had it so great,” he opined, “and it has impacted us. You’ve got all the wealth and my generation are left suffering.”
I was shocked and outraged in equal measure. Boomers are not all loaded. I know, because I’m not.
I was a single mother for most of his upbringing – his father and I split up when I was 41 in 1994 and my son was eight. At that point, I was a freelance journalist with less than £1,000 in my bank account and no savings. I had to move out of the family flat because his father’s name was on the mortgage and he wouldn’t go. We moved into temporary accommodation – someone I knew didn’t need her one-bedroom flat because she was moving in with her partner – and there was no bedroom for my son. I put up a tent for him at the top of the stairs. That precarious state of existence lasted for 18 months.
So how did my son get this idea that life was so luxurious for his mother’s generation? It certainly wasn’t his lived experience. I carried on being in a fragile economic state, although with the financial help of my mother and ex – they provided the deposit – I was eventually able to buy a two-bedroom garden flat in Harlesden, north-west London. I had an interest-only mortgage so that my meagre earnings as a freelancer were just about enough to cover the bills. After that, I got very little financial help from his father.
My son doesn’t read those newspapers which are prone to repeating that Boomers are the richest generation and the Gen Zers are the poorest. Or those glossy supplements which feature older people clad in cream jumpers, swinging golf clubs or cruising in their glory retirement days. It’s important to acknowledge there is a disparity within the Boomers who are officially born between 1946 and 1964. According to the Centre for Ageing Better, 2.1 million people over 65 are living in poverty.
Not everyone who is a Boomer – I dislike that expression intensely, I just prefer to be my age which is 73 – is loaded and financially secure. Far from it. And it’s important that younger people know this. The picture is more complex than it appears. Margaret Thatcher is responsible for a lot of the growing poverty in this age group because she decimated council housing by selling it off to sitting tenants and didn’t replace it. Hence, there is a housing crisis and has been for many years, which means that older renters have to rent privately and are vulnerable to unreasonable rises. “UK Government figures showed that 16,440 older households were facing homelessness in the year to the end of March 2026 in England, the highest number since records began,” explains Morgan Vine, director of policy and influencing at charity Independent Age.
Take Tom Morley, 71, former band member of Scritti Politti, which had hits in the 80s. He and his wife found themselves unemployed (he leads team-building drumming circles for companies and she’s a storyteller) after Covid. They also lost their rented flat when the landlady decided she’d like it back. They both have state pensions but in terms of income, that’s it. Being the go-with-whatever-happens-in-life sort of people they are, they started house-sitting. “When people say to us, ‘What happens when you get ill and you have no security?’, we say that we don’t work from that paradigm,” he explains. “We are Zen about it. We are enjoying what today brings. I’ve had periods of major depression in the past and now I’m simply grateful every day to be alive.”
It is true that a section of Boomers are property-rich. In fact, people over 60 own 55 per cent of the property in the UK, whereas those aged 40 and under own 10 per cent. However, that is only one perspective on the bigger picture. Granted, I am one of the property owners but I only have a state pension – which is not enough to live on if you pay all your bills yourself. My partner lives in North Wales and we don’t share expenses so I have to work in order to survive. I also do unpaid grandson care one day a week. And I am happy to do so.
Boomers who are not in the golden retirement category are fed up with the headline blaming. “I didn’t get a free university education, introduce tuition fees, sell off council houses, create the misery of the rental market or single-handedly ruin the environment,” explains Patrick Bryan, 66, who lives and works in Spain with his wife, Jane, 63. He posted this comment on the Facebook group that I run called “Advantages of Age – Babyboomers and Beyond”, and it is a common opinion. Being held responsible for all the country’s woes is definitely a disadvantage of being born during that post-war era. And many of us didn’t vote for Thatcher. In fact, we were actively voting for more equally distributed wealth.
There are a variety of reasons that Boomers can be vulnerable around housing and finances – women being particularly badly affected. “Separation from partners, women who went part-time because they became mothers and weren’t then allowed access to occupational pensions, health issues, looking after family members can all affect income and stability in life,” says Morgan Vine. “Also, older pensions still have a considerable gender gap. Men get paid more. The government has tried to even it out in the new pensions.”
Sally (not her real name) is 72, lives on her own in the East of England, and feels bitter about her lot. She worked all her life – as a teacher, then a waitress and a retail assistant – was a single mother, paid her taxes and National Insurance but doesn’t feel looked after. She has a teacher’s pension plus a full state pension but has had to rent a house. She also thought she was getting her pension at 60 but, in fact, it was 65. “My mortgage company went bust in 2008, my debt transferred to a closed-book lender and I was unable to get a new mortgage. So I had to sell,” she says. “Now I pay £1,000 a month in rent which is just about covered by my state pension, but the rest of my private pension barely covers my costs. I haven’t had a holiday for years and am struggling to pay a dentistry bill at the moment. My daughter and her partner can just about pay their bills so I also do a lot of child care. It just doesn’t seem fair.”
The Boomer myth is well and truly broken by these stories. I hope my son is reading.
Rose Rouse is the co-founder of Advantages of Age, a social enterprise which challenges the media narrative around ageing.