1950s women "Fight Back Rally"

It is deeply unfair, but often how it works, I'm afraid 😡. As you are not yet retirement age, it might be worth ringing the pensions helpline and asking if you can pay additional contributions, if you can afford them? They will be able to tell you the figures, so you'll know if it's worth it.

I chose to retire at 60 as I had a decent workplace pension that I could take and after working full time for 45 years thought I’d have more than enough national insurance contributions for my state pension. I then applied for my state pension back in July 2022 in readiness for my 66th birthday in Sept. I had 45 years full National insurance contributions, but because I chose to retire at 60, I lost out on the new state pension, and my state pension is about £130 less as according to the DWP, I am 6 years short on my contributions. You only need 35 years, I have 45 so how does that work out 🤔.
However my friend who never worked full time from the age of 21, then only went part time for the last 20 years gets the full new state pension. A gross unfairness in my opinion to all of us who had to work full time to pay mortgages etc.
To add insult to injury, I also pay tax on my pension…….

Honestly, Pammie you are wasting your breath .

growstuff

Maybe it will be a lesson to people to take more notice of changes which government makes, rather than ignoring them unless they're directly affected in the very near future.

Depends on how well it’s publicised. The original pensions act was implemented in 1995 but notifications didn’t start to be issued until 2009, and were sporadic. And the coalition government speeded up the changes which were supposed to take place between 2010 and 2020, and were actually implemented by 2018.

Sorry Millie - I quoted you by mistake. I agree with you though

Millie22

How easy to say women should work full time until they are 66 or 67.

Yes if you're sitting behind a desk all day. Not if you're in one of many other manual jobs which are incredibly tiring.

People who were contracted out will see on their pension forecast that their years have been reduced by that number of years. You can click through from there to see how many years, and what the impact has been - it is often quite a lot.

As I said, but maybe wasn't clear enough, the money will have been added to your occupational pension, and you will probably be better off, but if you thought you would get a full state pension on top of the occupational one, you will be mistaken. Your SP will be significantly reduced unless you can afford to buy back the years, at a current cost of about £800 a year (slightly more, I think). You can pay in instalments, or wait until your pension is due, but the price rises every year.

eazybee

There was plenty of notification about the raising of the pension age for many years before it was implemented.

I think the main grievance is that the coalition government speeded up the changes, so a lot of women weren’t given the amount of notice recommended - between 10 and 15 years.

I will be there.

Millie22

How easy to say women should work full time until they are 66 or 67.

Yes if you're sitting behind a desk all day. Not if you're in one of many other manual jobs which are incredibly tiring.

Why just women? What about men?

Ramblingrose The government hasn't added anything to your state pension, but the civil service pension scheme has. Yes, you paid for it and you paid less NICs as a result.

These days, those paying into occupational pension schemes don't pay a reduced rate of NICs, so they will receive their full state pension with occupational pension as an addition.

How easy to say women should work full time until they are 66 or 67.

Yes if you're sitting behind a desk all day. Not if you're in one of many other manual jobs which are incredibly tiring.

Maybe it will be a lesson to people to take more notice of changes which government makes, rather than ignoring them unless they're directly affected in the very near future.

Doodledog Until the 2011 changes, people who had "opted out" didn't have reduced state pensions. It was written in the small print of the 2011 changes, along with other changes such as the eligibility criteria for claiming unemployment benefit (universal credit), but people didn't take much notice of that either. (sigh)

The gist of it is that when people were contracted out, some of their pension contribution went to their occupational pension instead of the state one, so they were 'out' of the state one but paying more into the occupational one. So you would get a higher occ pension but a lower state one. On the whole, this left people better off, but as with the extra years, not everyone knew or understood, and assumed that they would get a full state pension because they had always paid NI contributions (it was only the pension bit of NI that was 'opted out'.

Those people (men and women) planned their retirement on the assumption that they would get a full pension as well as their occupational one, which was a double whammy for those who were not aware of the added years either. People may not have lost actual money by contracting out (most, if not all, were better off), but they lost what they thought they would get, so their plans were based on inflated figures.

I am one of the women affected by the pension changes. A friend 6 months older than me got her pension about 9 months before I did.

I knew about the planned changes to the state pension age from the news but later on found a letter from DWP who notified me. I am still at the same address since 1986 so DWP knew where to write to me. I wonder whether DWP were unable to find addresses for women who moved more frequently than I and /or who maybe had stopped working when notification letters had been sent?
My other question is whether women who suddenly learned that they could not claim state pension at 60 and had to wait till 64 or 66 would have been eligible for state benefits if they had stopped working at 60 and had no other source of income? I suppose the ones in poor health might have been able to claim benefits but what about the other women who chose not to carry on, perhaps because of having to look after elderly parents?My funal question is rally for GSM and doodledog about contracting out.
This was never explained to me when I was first contracted out and I am not aware of the Government adding extra to my civil service pension because of it. I thought the way that civil service pensions are calculated (no. of years service times annual pensionable pay divided by 80) has been the same for many years. Can you explain what the Government added please? TIA.

Probably nothing, kjmpde, but it might draw attention to their plight, and maybe get through to people that just because they knew about the changes, not everyone did. That might just stop future governments from doing something similar - who knows?

for women aged 64 (now) and 65 - they had notice . The women who are older were not told about the rise in age. I worked with women who expected to retire at 65 but were told they had to work to 62/63 with only a few months notice. They did not get sufficient notice. Any compensation will be minimal - possibly not enough to cover the train fare to go to London. The final report is expected around May this year. What is the point of the march? what will it achieve?

Gabrielle56

Aware or not the fact remains that we have had 6years worth of pension simply stolen from us. Paying in at a rate accomodating retirement at 60 then left 6 years without pension on a whim? It's not what we do in UK -its the way in which we do it. Germany is also increasing age to 67 for both but scaling over time gradually and will be achieved no earlier than 2029, not a guillotining of funds and stripping us of our earned money, to spend on what? HS1/2/3 Boris bikes or some other utter waste of our money.......

That's what happened in the UK with the main rise in the 1990s. It was introduced with plenty of notice and gradually.

Gabrielle56

I've just received my pension last year after waiting the six years dumped on us. I worked almost 40 years and it an ok pension but I'm furious at the nearly £60k they've STOLEN from me!!!!!
I wouldn't be traipsing down to London anyway it would cost well in excess of £400 ! And for what?

How do you work out that nearly £60k has been stolen from you? I think you should go back and do your sums again.

Overthemoongran

I was affected by the rise in the pension age, but I was given plenty of notice, I cannot understand why some of us would be told and others not? I have always read everything official that pops through my letterbox, I do wonder if some of those claiming they had no notice are the same people that just throw brown envelopes in the bin.

No. When I realised how few people had been told about the changes, I couldn't remember whether I had got a letter myself, so I used FOI to ask for copies of anything I had been sent, and was told that no, there was nothing. I am not in the habit of throwing away correspondence, and yes, I was aware of the changes, but I Did Not Get A Letter.

I don't know how often people have to say it. Whether you (generic) were notified or not, there are other women who didn't. I have met plenty of them. What are they going to gain by pretending?

Whether women should have the same retirement age as men is a different question. That is not what is being argued by WASPI (of which I am not a member - in fact I find it rather irritating that the name is used to signify all women born in the 50s who missed out on the pension they expected).

Similarly, the way the scheme is organised doesn't matter to WASPI either. Yes, each generation pays for the one before them, rather than accruing a 'pot' of their own, but the point is that this was done without objection because people expected to get a pension in their turn. Nobody had a choice about paying - it was a compulsory payment. Nobody has a 'contract' to say that they are entitled to benefits or NHS treatment in return for contributions either, but similarly, it's not unreasonable to expect either or both when you need them, if you have paid in for decades. It's a moral contract.

The question WASPI is asking is whether the changes were notified to those affected with enough time for them to make such plans as they could be reasonably expected to make in order to make up the loss of six years' pension.

Those who can't accept that because they knew about it, and/or they were able to fund another source of income to compensate, that everyone else did are being very narrow-minded, IMO, and the same applies to being contracted out. I can't remember how I knew about that, either. There may have been a note with my payslip, or I may have read something in the paper. Again, though, just because some are aware doesn't mean that everyone was. Most of those retiring now will have been quite young when opting out started, and with the best will in the world, if something is going to happen decades later, and you are busy, mentally filing it under 'worry about that later' is a fairly natural response, surely. It's probably what I did, as I have no recollection of finding out that it had happened. There are also people who moved to a contracted out job during the time it was happening, and had no idea of the difference between their new pension and their old one (if they had one, which not everyone did, or does).

I don't understand why people saying that women did know about the changes think they would lie? What could possibly be gained? If there is ever to be compensation (unlikely) it can't just be given to those who say they were not informed - it would have to go to everyone. There is just no incentive.

Well said eazybee. 👏👏👏

Not everyone has the time money or inclination to buy papers and sit watching TV news when working full time and keeping family going
Nonsense
Perfectly possible to work full time until 65, bring up children, look after elderly parents and read newspapers, watch and listen to daily news and find out about pensions.
The onus is on you to ascertain your future.

I absolutely think pension ages had to be equalised between men and women. My complaint is that they should have been done more gradually. Many of our generation of women didn't have careers or well paid jobs due to child care. So many don't have works pensions. Whereas many men have works pensions which may allow them to retire before state pension age if necessary or desired. I am lucky to have had decent jobs and two work pensions. Yet my private pensions are worth under half those of my husband's pension.

I am a waspi myself and lucky enough to have been able to suffer the six years of state pension taken from me without having to work on full time. Many ladies would have planned on the state pension being paid from the age of 60 and, even if they were told of the changes a few years prior to reaching 60, would have been unable to financially plan to cover such a loss. The sums are anything up to £60k and ladies affected deserve to have their say. I appreciated the age must change but at least give people time to make up the difference through private pensions or additional savings hence a warning at least 15 years before the new pension age is implemented should have been given. It’s always those who can least afford it who suffer most. And yes, I paid 48 years of full class 1 NI contributions so looking forward to receiving my first state pension payment later this year unlike some who may never see it.

But the money we paid in paid for the pensions of our parents’ generation. Our pensions are funded by our children.