Report: Building a house as retirement provision? No way!

It was convenient when the woman took care of the children and household. Eventually, the bill comes.

And what conclusion can you definitely draw from this statistic?

Besides the common factor that they are tenants, these are either ex-wives, ex-husbands, or groups with low to middle income.

Whether there are ex-homeowners among them after all the divorces, you cannot see that at all.

From the statistic, you can only read that divorces and low incomes can make someone dependent on social welfare in old age.

Maintaining a partnership and financing a household together in retirement puts one in a better position than living alone, possibly after a divorce. Surprise, surprise...

For every person who can keep a house after divorce, there is probably one tenant receiving basic social security.

That's what the statistic says. It also says that for men, a good retirement provision is to let the ex bring up the children and then dispose of them. Then you also brighten the statistics as a non-tenant. Reading it maliciously.

The statistics show that a bourgeois conservative lifestyle model is successful in the long run. Owning a paid-off house, an intact marriage, a good relationship with children and grandchildren, stable roots in city or village life, are guarantees not to have to beg at Freestyler afterwards. It’s that simple. Karsten

The statistics show that the bourgeois conservative lifestyle model is successful in the long run.

It indicates that the bourgeois, conservative lifestyle model is less likely to lead to basic social security in old age. If that alone is enough as a definition of success, I now understand again why I am so little conservative. That completely unsuccessful life paths can exist, which end in a stable marriage without basic social security, and successful ones that end alone (or divorced) with basic social security, does happen. Success in life would just have to be defined in such a way that one could follow the path autonomously, which provided meaning. It does not have to be economically successful. Then it is no longer conservative bourgeois. That one, meanwhile, is economically preferable.

Paid house, intact marriage, good relationship with children and grandchildren, stable rooting in city or village life are guarantees not to have to beg at Freestyler afterwards

There are so many factors involved that a man, woman, or child cannot influence, that this life model feels unattainable for about 90% of those involved, including myself, until the grave.

And I write this as someone who considers his relationship extremely stable and mostly "harmonious."

Since a house is quite often not really seen as retirement provision here, I ask: What do you consider a good retirement provision?

For me, a good retirement provision is a form of living (whether a house or an apartment) where I can stay as long as possible, even if my health is not so great anymore and a functioning environment of people who take care of things for me that are necessary but that I might no longer be able to do. I am currently doing a lot of volunteer work, but I am convinced that my generation cannot expect in 20/30 years that so much volunteer work will continue to be done without pay. So we will have to prepare to open our wallets and think about maintaining contacts and not isolating ourselves from the environment.

We both had good jobs, so we both have a pension from which we can live (well), have lifelong residential rights on the barrier-free ground floor, and handed the house over to one of our sons about three years ago. Now we just hope that we are not among the 10% of Austrians for whom care in a nursing home later becomes unavoidable, although at the moment in Austria care in a nursing home is free of recourse. I just wonder how this will be financed by the state in the long run. Unfortunately, it was neglected 20/30 years ago to introduce long-term care insurance.