The only retirement plan for millennials is the grave

The age pyramid of this country is far too top heavy and is becoming even more lopsided.

In an article published yesterday in the Guardian, ominously titled ‘Millennial generation despairs of being able to afford to retire’, paints a tragic but necessary message, and this generation, a demographic squished between the haves and the have nothings, can’t seem to catch a break.

The corporate press has convicted the millennial of anti-GDP carpet bombing, from murdering the napkin industry to massacring the diamond trade. The Banking crisis of 2008 crashed into the foothills of their career, plunging their average wealth below sea-level compared with their elders on more financially lucrative shores, and are consequently one of the first generations in perhaps hundreds of years to be poorer than their parents.

Yet whilst their economic outlook remains as bleak as a Shakespearean tragedy, their mortal clocks are still clicking. Millennials are getting older, hovering around the 27 – 45 age mark – many are closer to the human life expectancy than their own birth, which leads us to another unfortunate but inescapable crisis bearing down upon this group: retirement.

Already less likely to live in their own home due to a choked housing market driving up the costs of renting as well as a mortgage deposit, thinking about their twilight years has taken a backseat when their adult lives haven’t yet reached noon. A 32-year-old solicitor parting ways with 45% of his pay check just to keep a roof over his head he doesn’t have the deed for; a highly qualified IT professional who can’t even afford to rent privately as he says goodbye to his 20s; a product manager on 85K who has skipped her pension contributions in order to have a place she can call home.

These are not just cherry picked tales of misfortune the Guardian had to search far and wide for, in order to whack the wicked Tories with. No, this is the story of millions; the cry of a generation which has been neglected, left behind, and forgotten. Well, forgotten in the sense that the state (which their compulsory taxation supports) never gives a glancing eye in their direction.

One of the interviewed hit the nail on the head: the millennials are to be skinned, gutted, and bled dry to prop up an unfair pensions system that diverts their salaries to those who have more wealth than they do- a system supported by a triple-lock vote baiting scheme that millennials will never be the beneficiaries of. That is because the age pyramid of this country is far too top heavy and is becoming even more lopsided; millennials will be lucky to see a state pension at all.

That is why the most heart breaking of outcomes is dawning upon this generation now fast approaching middle-age. After a long and unfulfilled life of cramped, shared housing, three jobs per decade, an economic crisis every two decades, and ever deflating purchasing power to boot, the only realistic millennial retirement plan is the grave.