1950s women "Fight Back Rally"

Doodledog:

"I shall ignore the dig about transgender issues, growstuff."

What on earth are you going on about? I didn't make any digs about transgender issues!!

I think it is 'weird' how some people just can't imagine that not everyone does things the way they do, or knows the things that they know.

Are you (both) saying the posters on this thread who have told you that they did not understand about opting out are weird? Or saying that it was 'weird' that if nobody told them they didn't somehow know that they should look it up?

Women of my mother’s generation I can understand - though she was not unaware or lacking in personal responsibility. Nor indeed was her own mother, born in the 1890s. For women of my generation there is no excuse.

notgran

Germanshepherdsmum It is weird how lacking in personal responsibility some people seem to be.

Indeed.

When they were young the world worked differently? You’re talking about women younger than me and you, VS, are young enough to be my daughter!

If all women couldn't do it, then women didn't have that right... not until the sex discrimination act came out in 1975.

I don't think women are feeble at all I think discrimination played a part in marriage for a long time and a lot of women left financial things up to their husbands... because at one point, there wasn't much choice.

I don't blame women if they didn't know about the change in pension age, because when they were young theworld worked differently

Germanshepherdsmum It is weird how lacking in personal responsibility some people seem to be.

VioletSky

I think we need to remember women weren't even allowed to open their own bank accounts till 1975

It's not supposing to me that pensionable age women aren't as aware of their rights and expectations...

It's also probably why the divorce rate is so much bigger

What? I opened my first bank account when I started work so my salary could be paid into it. That was 1968, I was 16. Like all new employees in my office I went to the local bank with my letter of appointment and a current account was opened and the bank contacted my Personnel Dept. with my account details. It didn't matter what your gender was, the process was the same. Also the divorce rate is so much bigger than what?. I despair that you are generalising about "pensionable women " all being so feeble. Are you saying that pensionable men are all aware of their rights and expectations?

Yes, the call handlers are very helpful, Doodle, and very tolerant of the fact that we’re not all experts. Nice people, in my experience. As you say, getting through to them can be a challenge - I spent many a happy half hour hanging on the line with my various queries during lockdown, and once even fell asleep waiting for someone to answer. I’m just glad that I’m (finally) retired and don’t have to worry about it any more.

The woman on the Clapham Omnibus may need to be told that she can’t have the icing as well as the cake. It seems, though, that she may be incapable of understanding.

I think we need to remember women weren't even allowed to open their own bank accounts till 1975

It's not supposing to me that pensionable age women aren't as aware of their rights and expectations...

It's also probably why the divorce rate is so much bigger

As I have said several times, the increased occupational pension through contracting out should more than compensate for a reduced state pension - people need to understand that overall they are better off.

What people 'need to understand' and what they do understand are not necessarily the same thing, though. Many people are shocked to learn that their state pension will be reduced because their employer contracted them out, whether you accept that or not. And it is, IMO, the responsibility of the government to communicate things so that the 'woman on the Clapham omnibus' is fully aware of any changes to government policy and how they will affect her.

Anyway, I think we have both made our respective points clearly enough, so I'll stop repeating myself, (for now, anyway ).

Good point, MM. Not only that, but if you find out too late that you have overpaid they won't refund you.

I have found that the people on the phone (if you can get through!) are very helpful. They can't give you advice, but if you ask them for a forecast based on buying x or y years as opposed to what it will be if you don't, they happily give out all the information, which can steer you in the right direction. I have made enquiries for several people, and have always found the call handlers patient and well-intentioned.

I haven’t said that anyone has lied. I do, however, criticise a lack of awareness - leaving all financial matters to ‘someone else’ and simply expecting a payout at a particular age. We all have to take responsibility for ourselves.

As I have said several times, the increased occupational pension through contracting out should more than compensate for a reduced state pension - people need to understand that overall they are better off.

The increased pension age has been so widely publicised - even in women’s magazines which anyone might pick up at the hairdressers - that I have zero sympathy for those who say they didn’t know and great envy for those whose contracted out years had the intended effect. Do these same women say they are unaware who the prime minister is and that there’s a war raging in Ukraine?

www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-insurance-credits-for-adults-who-care-for-a-child-under-12-fact-sheet/specified-adult-childcare-credits-fact-sheet

I’m sure you’re very savvy, Doodledog, certainly more than I was, but can I mention for the benefit of anyone who isn’t that I was strongly advised to check with the Future Pensions service before I bought up any missing years. It’s a good job I did, as I found that two of the years I was hoping to pay for wouldn’t have made any difference to my pension, and I was told that HMRC wouldn’t have warned me of that, they’d just have accepted the voluntary payments.

Also, for anyone who does any childcare at all for grandchildren and hasn’t heard of Specified Adult Childcare Credits, they are a simple and free way of adding to your state pension.

Thanks. Yes, my occupational pension will be higher than if I hadn't contracted out - I understand that, even though I don't know by how much exactly. My point though, as I keep saying, is not about me, but about how a lot of people don't accept that not everyone was aware of either the fact that they had been contracted out, or the impact of doing so, and on top of that did not realise that the SPA had risen for women.

I was union rep in my last job, and I dealt with a good few cases where people were astonished that they wouldn't get their full pension, and I am very well aware that those cases are very common amongst people in lower paid occupations. Similarly, knowing about the raised SPA might have been expected if you have been able to access the Internet since it happened, and if you could afford a daily newspaper, and had time to read the financial pages, but not everyone is in that position, and as a feminist it saddens me when other women deny that those who say so are telling the truth.

Your occupational pension should be considerably higher than it would have been because each year you were contracted out not only you and your employer but the government were paying into it. I’m considerably worse off because my pension provider went bust. I don’t get a full state pension but haven’t bought any years of NICs to cover the contracted out period. It galls me to see my husband receiving a higher state pension but what happened to me with Equitable Life happened to so many others too. I’m fortunate not to be wholly dependent on my pension income, but if I were dependent on it I would weigh the cost of buying extra years against the risk that I may not live long enough to enjoy much benefit. I would rather keep the money and spend it as I wish than risk the Treasury ending up with the benefit of it.

Tbh, GSM I don't know what it would have been if I hadn't been opted out.

I don't really understand the last bit of your post, sorry. I have three years to go to get my pension, and three more years to buy back. I retired at the age of 57, and drew my occupational pension at 60, living on savings before then. What could I do to improve my position, given that I could, if necessary buy all the years now? I have been buying them a year at a time, so that in the event of an early death there would be more to leave behind. At this stage, I am only a few pounds short of a full State Pension, but it was quite a lot when I started paying.

Doodledog: Is your occupational/private pension not greater than it would been if you were not contracted out? It certainly should be. And it is normally the case that you can access it earlier than you can now receive the state pension and take a lump sum from it. In which case why the need to buy extra years of NICs, as opposed to the opportunity to even further improve your position than contracting out has done?

Well said Doodledog.

Germanshepherdsmum

The point I was trying to make about being contracted out, Doodledog, is that government contributions to your private pension should more than compensate for a lower state pension so one would, in the absence of one’s private pension provider going bust, actually be better off overall.

As for women being unaware, that can only be so if they don’t read newspapers or listen to the news. I have no sympathy for the ‘I didn’t have time for that’ attitude. One can listen to the news whilst doing all manner of household tasks if need be. I’m sure you did it, just as I did.

Potentially so, GSM, but that doesn't alter the fact that whether you sympathise with them or not, there are women who did not know, or fully understand about opting out, including some on this thread.

I do understand that opting out has shifted some of my contributions from State to Occupational pension (I'm not sure at what point I realised the implications, to be honest, but it was before I stopped working), and I am able to pay for the missing years, but as I keep saying, that is not the point. The information that people can easily access, or more accurately the information which is freely given, is the headline rate of the State Pension, and people can be forgiven for assuming that that is what they will get if they have worked and paid in for decades, and that it will be paid in full on top of their occupational pensions.

We keep hearing about civil servants getting 'gold plated' pensions, but according to The Institute For Government Nearly half (49.7%) of civil servants are paid below £30,000. Higher salaries are less common: just under a quarter (24.2%) of civil servants earn more than £40,000 and less than 3% earn over £70,000., so for most civil servants even full pensions are not going to be high, and when you bear in mind that many people will have been contracted out too, and their State Pensions will be reduced accordingly, these 'gold plated' sums don't seem so attractive. Of course, most people will not even get the apparently 'good' pensions of civil servants, so the impact will be even greater on smaller amounts.

It is relatively recently that most homes have had access to the Internet, and without it, getting hold of forecasts and so on was something that people with no computer expertise (which was fairly common until recently) would struggle to do. I don't suppose that YouGov and the like would even have had personalised information online in the 90s and early 2000s, as far fewer people would be able to access it than can do so nowadays.

Yes, there are those who have their finger on the pulse of finance and government announcements, and those who follow the news more than others, but someone working long hours with small children and all sorts of other things going on in her life can, IMO, be forgiven for skimming the financial pages and glancing at the take-home bit of her payslip.

I do think that it was the responsibility of the government to actively inform people (not leave it for them to find out) of the additional years that were added to the working lives of women, and that they did not do so at least in part because it was women who were affected by the changes.

You were far from the only one who didn’t know the details of the rise in state pension age, Ailidh. The Parliamentary Ombudsman has conducted an investigation into how women were informed and this is from their report:

Unpublished DWP research from 2007 found 85% of women aged 48 to 59 knew State Pension age was going to be equalised, but many women did not know when it would happen. The research also found that 50% of women whose State Pension age had risen to between 60 and 65, and 36% of women whose State Pension age had risen to 65, still thought that it was 60.

I heard about the changes through my job, and passed the information on to friends and colleagues, many of whom hadn’t realised the implications for themselves.

The point I was trying to make about being contracted out, Doodledog, is that government contributions to your private pension should more than compensate for a lower state pension so one would, in the absence of one’s private pension provider going bust, actually be better off overall.

As for women being unaware, that can only be so if they don’t read newspapers or listen to the news. I have no sympathy for the ‘I didn’t have time for that’ attitude. One can listen to the news whilst doing all manner of household tasks if need be. I’m sure you did it, just as I did.