Kelly Miles was horrified to discover she had a 'big red mark' on her credit file when she and her ex-partner applied for a mortgage. Unaware of the cause, the 33-year-old from Portsmouth, Hampshire, dug into her history and found the culprit: a missed £3.99 delivery charge for an iPad mini bought on a buy now pay later scheme.
Despite meeting the £500 repayment for the iPad within six months, the forgotten fee left her unable to take out a mortgage for six years. Her ex-partner had to buy the house without her. 'I never had notification of this,' she said. 'Each time I've missed the payment, it's put that massive red mark on my credit file.'
“A woman was denied a mortgage for six years over a forgotten £3.99 fee, as half of Gen Z expect no state pension.”
Miles, a advice charity manager, now checks her credit score every month and urges others to do the same. Her ordeal highlights how even tiny unpaid sums can have long-lasting financial consequences—a concern that resonates with many younger people who are already skeptical about the future of state support.
A BBC Your Voice survey found that around half of Gen Z—those born from 1997 to 2012—do not expect the state pension to exist by the time they retire. Joel, an early-20s graduate engineer living with his parents in London, is one of them. Instead of spending his first graduate salary, he is squirrelling extra cash into his workplace pension. 'I don't believe that I'll be a recipient of a state pension,' he said. 'It just mathematically doesn't make sense.'
Connor, a 27-year-old retail manager, expressed frustration that 'the goalpost keeps moving'. He said: 'At the minute I'll be 68 by the time I can retire, but I do think I'll be probably closer to 75.'
Currently, more than 13 million people—19% of the population—are of state pension age. By 2050, even with the age rising to 68, that group is projected to exceed 15 million, nearly a quarter of the population, and to climb towards 17 million by the 2070s. Meanwhile, almost half of working-age adults are not paying into a private pension pot, meaning many will rely solely on the state pension—which already sees relative poverty rates among pensioners at 14%.
For Kelly Miles, a single forgotten £3.99 fee upended her home-buying plans for six years. For Joel and his peers, the state pension itself feels like a promise that may not be kept. 'There just won't be enough money,' Joel said.