From employers and home buyers to pensioners and the parents of private school pupils, the queue of those complaining about Rachel Reeves’s Budget grows longer by the day. Just when things can’t get any stickier for the Chancellor, along comes Ruth Davidson waving a steak bake.
The former leader of the Scottish Conservatives has compared imposing inheritance tax on farms to the pasty tax, an idea (from the mind of Tory Chancellor George Osborne no less) so obviously wicked it was reversed soon after.
The NFU says it has never seen farmers as angry as they are over the inheritance tax move. Many fear they won’t be able to hand farms to their sons and daughters without landing them with a huge tax bill. Farms will go out of business, they warn. Food supplies will suffer. The Government says only a minority of the wealthiest landowners will be hit.
Wiser heads might have warned Reeves to steer clear of anything that interferes with people’s desire to do what they want with their money once they reach a certain point in life.
There’s a lot of such meddling about. Anyone fortunate enough to have money to pass on faces no end of advice about what to do with it. The children expect an inheritance. Charities need your money or good causes will suffer. This Labour Government wants to take from the old and give to the young.
It is a way of thinking that belongs to an age that is going fast. People are now living longer, healthier lives. Why shouldn’t they spend whatever money they have on themselves? Blow the lot and to heck with other people’s expectations? While not a view you will hear expressed openly it is out there, and attracting a growing band of believers. New industries are springing up to satisfy the desire for a different way of doing things.
Take retirement homes. At the moment most people over 50 go on the same path. The family home becomes too big and too dear so you downsize. You live in the new place, which is not ideal, as long as you can, helped by family and care services if you are lucky. When your care needs increase it is off to sheltered housing, then a retirement home and finally a nursing home, paid for by the sale of your house. Watch the money drain away at an eye-watering rate.
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You could wait for governments to finally get their act together and reform social care, but you know that is not going to happen because it would cost too much and the country is broke. So what else can you do?
At the start of the noughties, there was a trend, inspired by the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, of pensioners moving abroad to make their money go further. Most only went as far as Europe rather than India, and many still dream of doing so today, if programmes such as A Place in the Sun are any guide.
Brexit put paid to much of that, and when illness or bereavement strikes people want to come home. But what if you could move somewhere in this country? A place that might not have the weather but guarantees luxury surroundings, company whenever you want it, hot and cold running activities and quick access to a doctor whenever you wish?
You may have seen the type of thing in The World’s Most Luxurious Retirement Homes, a Channel 5 documentary still available on catch-up. Basically, although there was nothing basic about any of the places, they were fancy hotels that rented suites long-term. The prices - some cost $100,000 a year - ensured only the seriously rich could live there.
As is capitalism’s way, the idea has been taken up and scaled down to become a more achievable proposition. Options now include round-the-world cruises that you can stay on for years, or leave and rejoin as you fancy.
If bricks and mortar are more your thing, luxury developments are opening around the UK, including Glasgow, to cater for the well-off and well. Each flat is fully furnished and ready to rent or buy. Some firms offer help with decluttering your old home before you sell, so you can make a fresh start in every sense.
If that is still too rich, there is always banding together with friends to buy a place. More purchasing power equals a bigger, better, more accessible home and you would never be lonely. Sharing a house is not for everyone, mind. But what about sharing a street, living a few doors down from family or friends? Everyone remains independent but near enough to keep an eye on each other.
It is easy to find the faults in such ideas. No matter how much the model is adapted it will still be beyond the means of many people. It is essentially trying to recreate what we used to have, communities and homes that generations would share. And what happens when you need nursing care? Providing that would soon eat into the profits of a luxury hotel. You might still end up in a nursing home, and you will have burned through the money that could have gone to help others. Perhaps that is the biggest obstacle standing in the way of blowing it all. It could be seen as selfish, uncaring, and irresponsible, especially to children who may never have enough to get on the housing ladder.
Something has to give, however. With fertility rates falling, the number of older people increasing, and attitudes against immigration hardening, there will soon be fewer people around to take care of any of us. Becoming self-sufficient, as much as you can for as long as you can, will be the goal for most of us.
But life should be about thriving, not just surviving. Like millions of others I have been much struck by the way Sir Chris Hoy is dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis and his wife Sarra’s multiple sclerosis. If you did not see the interview with the Olympic champion last night it is on iPlayer and BBC Sounds. One piece of advice in particular resonated: to take that thing you have always planned to do one day and do it today. Whatever our daily frustrations and concerns we should never forget how lucky some of us are to reach old age at all.
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