Is my friend being unreasonable about her pension.

Why is it trivial to say that if someone had been born a month later she would have retired four months later, but have gained £35 a week, and soon have made it up? As it is, on £120 a week, she will always be behind that woman who was born a month later.
Not trivial to my sister!

Not trivialising it at all. Why is it trivialising it?
Just saying that it's not as straightforward as made out.
The example of March 1953 was my sister. I asked her if she could retire a year later, and she said it would not make any difference. It depends on the date you could retire, not the date you do. She had over forty years of contributions, too, working for the post office.
So why is it trivialising it?

Plenty of us have lost out on years of pension, durhamjen, and will not receive the £155, so please don't trivialise our position. Any years when we paid into a public service pension no longer count towards the state pension - they did under the old system. And as has ready been said, the extra contributions we made towards SERPS no longer earn us a top up. In my case I had 41 years contributions by the time I was made redundant at 60. I now care for my grandchildren and am 62. I have another 4 full years to wait for my state pension, and because I worked in local government, my pension forecast under the marvellous new system is around £100. Under the old system I would have earned the full state pension, plus a small SERPs top up, so I will get the equivalent of that under transitional arrangements, around £125.

Having lost 6 full years of payments, yes, I have lost out, to the tune of about £39,000. Plus, of course, the costs of public transport. My husband got his free bus pass at 60, and that gives him half price local train travel too. To add insult to injury, women in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, still get their bus passes at 60, and some in England get free transport in their own areas from 60 (London, for example). It costs me £5.80 to get to my nearest large town and back.

I hope all those women affected have joined the WASPI campaign, and that those who are able will travel to London on 8 March for our second demo outside Westminster. Many of us are working, not fit or simply can't afford the fare, so those who are able need to fight for them too.

www.waspi.co.uk

Not if she had a private pension which took it up to that. Many women who have small private pensions had no choice because they worked in a company that took superannuation. So they ended up paying not just the NI but also x% in superannuation.

Yes but the one getting only £119.20 a week would get pension credits bringing it up to £155 wouldn't she?

A woman who was born in March 1953 and claimed her pension in March 2016 would only get £119.20 a week.
A woman born in April 1953 and getting pension in July 2016 would get pension of £155+ from that date.
Who is losing out there?

You're right lemon women over 60 have been well and truly screwed over. Mhairi Black did her best to highlight the unfairness re pension age for women born between 1953 - 1954 in January 2016 but she was pretty much rail roared into having to accept it. As were we. I estimated that I personally will lose £45,000 in state retirement pension due to having my retirement age increased from 60 to 65 and a half. And that doesn't factor in the missing SERPS! I suspect than "women of a certain age" were deemed easy targets, especially because they were given no little formal information about the changes.

That's so bad Chew they've been well and truly screwed over. Shame on the government. They'd be so happy not to have to pay us anything, meanwhile what age can female MPs retire i wonder.

In addition, "the government didn’t write to any woman affected by the rise in the pension ages for nearly 14 years after the law was passed in 1995. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) started sending out letters from April 2009 onwards. Responding to a Freedom of Information request, the DWP revealed that some women did not find out until they were 59 that their SPA of 60 had been delayed. “Women were given as little as one year’s notice of up to a six-year increase to their state pension age,” says the campaign group Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi), adding: “Many women report receiving no letter ever".

Think so lemom. I've just had a look and found this "A woman born on 5th March 1953 reaches state retirement age on 6th January 2016, ie aged 63. However a woman born exactly 12 months later will not reach state retirement age until 5th July 2019; 3 and a half years later. This will result in a total loss of £26,000 in state pension. There are growing calls for the government to take action following claims that several hundred thousand women born in the 1950s, particularly those born in 1954, have had their retirement plans “shattered”, campaigners say. Many say that for decades they had expected to receive their pension at 60, then subsequently discovered that their SPA had increased by perhaps four, five or even six years."

Yes, Cherrytree59, they have backdated my pension. I was offered an extra £30 a week, or a lump sum, and as I don`t think that at £30 a week I`ll be on this earth long enough to amass that amount, I`m taking the lump sum and having long standing necessary repairs done to the house, thereby, hopefully, making it more comfortable to live in.

Was it women born after april 1953 who missed out Chew?

I think it was 500,000 women who were born between 1953 and 1955 who got the worst deal granoftwins. But then that was the very age group who would put up the least fight, I suppose. Friends who are just 1 year older than me retired at 62 with bus passes and state pensions. It's galling that I've lost all the extra money I paid into SERPS as well.

Yes Chewbacca the same happened to me! The thing that really gets my goat is no bus pass either! The whole thing is iniquitous

It is harsh lemon . My friend is 5 months older than me and her state retirement age is given as 66 and 6 months. I'd love to retire and move over so that a younger person could have a job with prospects. The young people today must feel like they're waiting for dead mens shoes!

callgirl could you get your pension back dated?

That's so harsh chew, to think not that long ago it was 60 for everyone, now just depending what part of the year you were born you can miss out. By the time we get to 65 i just don't think we're up for going out to work.
Jud that's my philosophy in life too, not to be bothered about someone else's good fortune. But tbf on my friend, i think she just feels as if all her good efforts aren't being fairly rewarded, even if they are itms.

lemon if your friend has enough income to live comfortably on, why is she concerned about someone else? Surely she should just be enjoying this part of her life without adopting an 'it's not fair' attitude. Would she want this other person to be starving?

I took 11 years out of the workplace (and contributions) to raise my 4 children past infancy and then went back part time for several years. At that time I was not entitled to a work pension because I was part time. I was, however, paying NI contributions. So my pension is very small. Luckily I have a husband who worked really hard setting up a business which he recently successfully sold so we have enough to live comfortably. He was able to do this because I did the childcare 24/7 while he worked.

Note that if some of the younger generation had their way, we would all be euthanised instead of receiving a pension. ? So maybe your friend needs to get things in perspective.

I wish lemon! I received a letter to tell me that my state retirement age was being put back to 64, then, in March of last year, thinking I had only 6 months to go, I went on the government website to double check. Good job I did because it's been put back to 65 years and 6 months. I didn't get any letter to formally tell me, just the YOU GOV info based on dob and NI number.

chewbanc if you're 63 shouldn't you be getting your pension now or later in year depending on the month you were born? or have i got that wrong.

I paid the full stamp from the day I started work aged 16. When I was 21, I was advised to pay the enhanced stamp, SERPS, so that I would get "a better pension " when I retired at 60. I'm now 63 and, like many others, my state retirement age has been put back to 66. When I applied for a pension forecast, I noticed that it was for the basic pension and so phoned the pensions department to enquire about my SERPS contributions. I was told that they weren't paying "enhanced "pensions anymore, instead everyone would get a higher basic pension. Whilst I'm happy that everyone will get a fairly decent income, it makes me think that I contributed more of my income to benefit me in my retirement, not everyone who either couldn't or wouldn't do that and spent their money on other things.

jane I gave a very poor example there! I should know better as I'm self employed myself.

I only paid the housewives stamp, and was told by people I worked with that I wouldn`t get a state pension, so, although I stopped going out to work aged 49, I didn`t claim a pension at 60. Since my husband died in October, I`ve found out, by accident, that I should have received a pension from when my husband started to claim his, just over 7 years ago. I`ve been in receipt of a small works pension ever since I left, I now get a state pension of £155 a week, but it`s minus my works pension, so I get £119 a week instead, and count myself extremely fortunate.

Another thing is that someone who is renting may get help with rent, but what happens if someone who owns their house but is on a basic state pension and no other income or savings, needs to carry out essential repairs, new boiler, etc? If they raise money from the equity how can they afford to repay it?

Someone with a total income of £200 a week wouldn't pay tax Gettingon. The tax threshold is £11.5K a year, so you have to receive £221 a week before you pay income tax.
I don't know whether housing benefit is counted as taxable income or not.