State pension rise

The government want our generation to be dead. The sooner the better as far as they are concerned. Pensioners ith index linked pensions from their former careers annoy me intensely when they come on here with their patronizing statements . They clearly have no idea about how poorer people cope. People who have spent years caring for older relatives and now only qualify for the very lowest amounts. Also those people who were due the lowest pension and so foolishly paid into modest private pensions only to find that the tiny amount from those pensions stops them from being eligible for any extra state help and yet they do not have enough to live on. These are people who have worked for their whole lives . they have taken time out to care for their children in their early years and then gone back to work but sometimes find that they have elderly parents or grandparents that need to come and live with them to be cared for. It is a privilege to care for one's elders even though it sometimes doesn't feel like it but at the end of the day the carer can be almost destitute. They save the state many thousands but a triple lock pension is considered generous when we have one of the lowest pensions in the world. Get real.

Kwest surely the point is that Pension Credit should be raised to ensure that the poorest pensioners, those living on the state pension only or with a small quantity extra, have incomes that are adequate, while those of us with extra pensions, get rises in line with the pay rises those in work are earning.

As for dying off, don't forget that every year everyone one gets a year older, so those falling off the top of the age range through death are replaced by those reaching pension age at the bottom.

No it should not be curtailed. The elderly worked hard for this pension.
Those who have, paid maternity and paternity leave as well as the high cost of benefits must be addressed.
I don’t want folk to be suffering but free this that and the other must stop.
We pay tax on our pension and we were originally taxed on this earned income. This is double tax.
So sad our once extremely rich country is throwing money at areas we really can’t afford. The welfare system is causing problems but this is not the fault of the pensioners.

Blackcat3

No I believe it should be kept. The state pension is pitiful compared to other countries and I can’t see how those with only a state pension cope. But maybe it would be good to raise the state pension for those who rely on it and stop taking tax from pensioners who have less than 20k pension income. Personally the state increase means I pay more tax so give with one hand and take with the other! We’ve all paid for our pensions….it NOT a benefit it’s an insurance!

There is one thing wrong with your above suggestion. People who paid into private pension or employment pensions received tax relief on those contributions. That is why the pensions they receive are taxable.

If the government really wants to save money, stop the charity status on private schools. Stop grammar schools. Yes this would mean more in state schools but there would be more teachers and a level of academic achievement without creaming off the top students.
Give free transport thus having fewer cars. Free the roads in our capital cities and free busses would be the answer. Less admin staff and more real teachers. Make schools 9-5 working.
Perhaps this is too far but I’d only allow airports to operate on certain days eg. Mon, Wed and Sat. The pollution would be less!! I’d not allow planes to fly over homes. Have a huge tax on the aircraft.
Tax sugary and fat food more.
Ensure those educated here had an agreement to work here for so many years post graduation or training. Leaving early would nullify their qualification.
Well that’s what I’d do to get our once wonderful country back to a decent economic standard.
Will this happen? Of course not.

I'm glad you're not a politician Lovely lady

In this discussion we have been forgetting life expectancy (LE). Those born in 1945 had an LE of 64.01 years. For those born in 1955 the LE was 69.41. I suspect that increase was due mainly to the introduction of the NHS. For those born in 2020 the LE has increased to 81.15 years.

There are many of us alive who were born between 1945 and 1955 who have exceeded their LE so it is not surprising that the pension age had to increase. Many of us working during the 1960s and 1970s were not in a position to join pension schemes because many small firms did not operate such schemes. If we were employed by larger organisations the rules for joining the schemes were quite strict. For example you had to wait for a period, often two years, before you could join. If you left that organisation the pensions were not portable so you either claim a refund of contributions or leave them in place.

Nowadays there workplace pension schemes into which an employee is automatically enroled, subject to certain conditions. This means that in future more people will have
pensions in addition to the state scheme.

A promise is a promise. I know it's good to hep others but if the government says
we are short of money how can we send millions in aid abroad. Doesn't make sense.

Yet another WASPI here, just wanting to echo what many others have said.
I think it’s shameful that we have the lowest state pension in Europe. Women are particularly disadvantaged, both because of the malarkey with the pension age and because we tend to have fractured employment records due largely to caring responsibilities. That means we are less likely to get the full state pension AND have lower occupational pensions. A 10% rise does little to address those inequities.

Also those people who were due the lowest pension and so foolishly paid into modest private pensions only to find that the tiny amount from those pensions stops them from being eligible for any extra state help and yet they do not have enough to live on.
I agree. Means testing is invidious, and drags people down. We should be looking at ways to encourage people to save, to provide for themselves and to have decent standard of living, not penalising people for doing so whilst rewarding those who don't. It is deeply unfair that saving for retirement should leave someone in a worse position than if they hadn't. Governments pretend that mean-testing is 'targeting', but the reality is that it discourages people from self-reliance and keeps people 'in their place'.

I received a letter some years ago telling me that I would receive my pension at 64 and a half as I was in the age group being gradually equalised with men. I later found out that my retirement age had moved to just before my 66th birthday but I never received notification - I saw it in the news then did a forecast. I couldn't afford to go earlier as my private pensions were nowhere near enough to live on, though they make the state pension enough.

In the end I didn't retire when I planned due to the pandemic as I didn't want to leave from working from home. I went back for half a term so I could leave properly and have a small send-off.

Sadly I suspect the triple lock may be unaffordable in the long term but I do think some new formula needs to be agreed to prevent the poorest pensioners becoming even poorer. A simple link to inflation would be fair enough. The 2.5 % minimum was designed to gradually increase the value of the state pension in times of low inflation and low interest rates. We already had a year after the pandemic when the average wage rise element was not carried out due to the pandemic skewing the figures apparently. That didn't seem too unreasonable to me at the time, as the economy was not normal, but if inflation is completely abandoned more pensioners will end up on pension credit or suffer extreme poverty, and those of us who have small private pensions are losing out anyway with the freezing of the personal allowance.

What about the fact we had to wait 6 hears longer than you did to get our pensions, what about the 250 thousand women who died not receiving any pension at all, women who had to sell their homes to make ends meet, and the one's who could not work due to illness.
Not all pensioners who have worked all their life are wealthy, I am fortunate to have a occ pen,others my age are not.

Sorry my post was in reply yo the poster who is moaning that we are on the new pension and getting s higher amount paid for our pension. I forgot to quote it.

maddyone

Urmstongran

I got my (smaller) state pension at 63. Do I have to count my blessings and say how lucky I am because I received my much reduced (£50 per week reduced) pension at 63? No, I think not

But maddyone you still got 3+ years of pension earlier. About £18k in total better off than someone who had to wait all those 150 weeks you were getting it.

So yes, you were diddled too just by a lesser amount. Think how I feel (and others) at twice what ‘you lost’. No wonder we got put onto enhanced SP payments but it will take 12 years to make up our ‘lost’ amount compared to the lower, ordinary pensions. Now that really does rankle.

Urmston
I totally agree with your post, every last word of it. I think you’ve been treated appallingly by the government, but I actually think that all is WASPI women have been treated badly. I feel particularly aggrieved to have missed out on the new state pension by exactly three weeks, because that will now affect me for the whole of the rest of my life. For just three weeks! But that doesn’t mean I don’t have total sympathy for those in your situation; many of my friends are in that in that situation.

As for those who insist we were all informed of the changes, you’re wrong! I was informed by letter of the first change to my pension age. I was told my new pension age would be 61. I was never informed of the second change to my pension age. I found out by doing a search online that my new pension age would be 63. Of course I saw news items about this, which I assume is what made me check on the Government site for my new pension age. I didn’t read newspapers. I was teaching full time, involved in after school meetings, and planning and preparation. When I came home I was continuing to do school work most evenings. I was also a mother to three children who needed care. I spent my weekends washing, doing housework, shopping, and involved in things to do with my children. Luckily my teacher husband shared much of the domestic duties and childcare with me, alongside his heavy load as deputy head and teacher at a school for 11-18 year olds. We were busy. We didn’t watch television or read newspapers, but we did listen to the evening news bulletins. Maybe other Gransnetters were busily raising children and working in a full time career as we were. I’m surprised anyone living such a life had the time to sit reading newspapers!

But maddyone you still got 3+ years of pension earlier. About £18k in total better off than someone who had to wait all those 150 weeks you were getting it

We didn't choose to retire at 60, that was the age at which many had to retire in many jobs and professions.

I do feel sorry for those who weren't informed of the changes and agree they should have been. I feel extremely sorry for those who fell into that 3 year gap such as maddyone and I do always thought that the pension age differential between men and women was wrong.

Add to that the fact that many women were conned into paying the Married Women's Stamp and receive very small pensions, if at all.

As I said , perhaps 64 for both, or 63, should be perfectly possible in a nation like ours.

Perhaps everyone should become as rebellious as the French.

But maddyone you still got 3+ years of pension earlier. About £18k in total better off than someone who had to wait all those 150 weeks you were getting it
£6,00 a year?

It mght be now but it wasn't then!

Let's not forget we paid for our pensions - they are not a hand-out. If the money was invested properly it should be inflation-proof

It's not, though.

Investing in pensions or AVCs isnt always inflation or fool-proof either.

I am not sure about women being 'conned ' into paying the married women's stamp.

Back in the mid 1960s I can remember it being widely (and hotly) debated at work when anyone was getting married. Many of the women I worked with just assumed that marriage was for life and that once they stopped work when their first child was born, they would not be returning to the workplace, so paying the extra stamp was pointless. Even when they later did return to work, they still assumed that the married man's pension their DH would get would be sufficient to live on

I was considered unduly independent and bolshie and risking a broken marriage by being determined to continue to pay the full stamp in order to have a pension in my own right and also for wanting a proper career and planning to return to work as soon as was practical.

Many women, later on, as social and economic circumstances changed, had good reason to regret their decision, but most made what seemed to them the best and most advantagious decision at the time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

NICs are supposed to cover not only pensions but healthcare. Though of course it all goes into the pot, some people seem to forget how much free healthcare they have received.

Yes MOnica, I worked with just such a woman. She thought the rest of us were daft for paying the full stamp. She wasn’t ‘conned’ into her choice. Had children, didn’t work again, got divorced, didn’t remarry - I imagine she regrets her choices now.

Germanshepherdsmum

NICs are supposed to cover not only pensions but healthcare. Though of course it all goes into the pot, some people seem to forget how much free healthcare they have received.

Aha, so the NHS or pensions, which is the sacred cow? My guess is that it's the former, but as Callistemon suggests, other countries (FR) might be more passionate about the latter and the retirement age. Does anywhere successfully enjoy both without it costing people somewhere along the line?

From what I hear on the news it is looking more like we will not receive the full amount.
Both parties arealso quoted as saying that the Triple Lock is NOT sustainable.
I hope I'm wrong

I definitely had no formal notice of the change in pension age for women. Of course, the goal posts shifted several times before (and after) the final decision was made, so nothing concrete could be planned. I was 63 when I got my pension but my friend 4 months older got hers at 61.

As a result of leaving school at 16, fulltime working for 32 years, part-time working for 11 years and being self-employed for many of those years at the same time (and at 72 still self-employed) I paid 50% more in NI contributions than my husband who was always in full-time well-paid employment. And yet his state pension (both of us on the "old scheme") is £80 a month more than mine.

I'm not complaining about our total income - we are very comfortable - but about the inequality of it. If he dies first my annual income will be nearly ten thousand a year less than he would have if I die first.

Re the triple lock, I don't think now is the time to expect it to continue given the financial chaos in every other area. The whole of government spending needs a re-vamp - starting with increasing tax on those who can pay it without a blink - i.e. the wealthy. Nearly 15 years of so-called austerity has brought misery to too many and it needs drastic action.

I never fail to understand why the government is suddenly shocked to learn that many of us are living longer (wasn't the NHS meant to enable that?). And to those of you who baulk at overseas aid or giving shelter to refugees, surely a country like ours should be able to look after its own and have some spare? But not right now.

I'm not convinced that a Labour government will have the answers we need but this lot sure as hell haven't.

Germanshepherdsmum

Yes MOnica, I worked with just such a woman. She thought the rest of us were daft for paying the full stamp. She wasn’t ‘conned’ into her choice. Had children, didn’t work again, got divorced, didn’t remarry - I imagine she regrets her choices now.

We weren't stupid women.

We worked for an Area Health Authority and yes, we were lied to about our pensions.

I am not sure about women being 'conned ' into paying the married women's stamp

We've had this discussion previously but yes, many women were.

The triple lock will stay until after the next Election. And unless we vote for another party other than the Conservatives and Labour, I believe it will end. Both are very non-committal about keeping it.