So Very Many Years For WASPI Women

They are shafting us olders too. I only had to wait 2 extra years, but my basic pension is lower than my same age husband, so year on year my increase is lower than his and the gap gets bigger.

Then there is a maternity gap, which lowers the number of "stamps" - the legislation is now allowing for a claim back for child care years, but only so far back - many older women were obliged to stop work on marriage, or later on first child. Then there are mothers who gave up work to care for their grandchildren, so their daughters could earn. Both can now claim back to 2011.

Dizzyribs, you should be able to claim NI credits towards your pension for the years you were looking after grandchildren and still of working age. I fell into this category too when I gave up work at 60 to help out with the grandchildren, as I’d always promised to do. You don’t have to care for them full time, and the claim form isn’t complicated. I hope this helps.

www.gov.uk/guidance/apply-for-specified-adult-childcare-credits

I had letter from the DWP in 2016 saying what my expected state pension would be (it was to be the full state pension) and that I would start to receive it on my 60th birthday in 2017.
I had 41 years full contributions.
I retired from work as I had caring responsibilities for a parent with dementia and my children needed care for my grandchildren so they could afford to work and pay increased rent and mortgages. I knew I could afford to do this because I was going to get my pension. I had a letter proving it.
I finally received my state pension in 2023 at the age of 66. I tried to get back into the workforce but was turned down for many paid jobs. Fortunately I have a (very small) occupational pension and good savings so I could get by.
To get full state pension I would need to pay just over £4000 in voluntary contributions to cover the years I haven't worked between 60 and 66. But my savings have been used up so it's not an option.
For those of you wondering where the WASPI campaign is at, this might help.
www.waspi.co.uk/2023/11/29/update-on-parliamentary-and-health-service-ombudsman-draft-stage-2-report-issued-to-claimants/

She is not exactly in charge though, as she is part of the Opposition.

Not for long🤞🤞🤞

Primrose53 you must have a certificate in "tongue biting" lol.

I too wouldn't have said anything either ( although I may have thought it)

Callistemon21

spabbygirl

I'm hoping that now Rebecca Long Bailey is in charge things will change, don't the families of those who died waiting for compensation have a claim? If we get compensated it'll be on the basis that its money we should have been paid years ago so surely it would go to whoever the deceased person left their money to in their will?

She is not exactly in charge though, as she is part of the Opposition.

Not only that, but she’s not in the shadow cabinet, so she only has the same influence as any other MP. Do you mean Rachel Reeves OP?

spabbygirl

I'm hoping that now Rebecca Long Bailey is in charge things will change, don't the families of those who died waiting for compensation have a claim? If we get compensated it'll be on the basis that its money we should have been paid years ago so surely it would go to whoever the deceased person left their money to in their will?

She is not exactly in charge though, as she is part of the Opposition.

I'm hoping that now Rebecca Long Bailey is in charge things will change, don't the families of those who died waiting for compensation have a claim? If we get compensated it'll be on the basis that its money we should have been paid years ago so surely it would go to whoever the deceased person left their money to in their will?

Some women were not very understanding or sympathetic to other women who had to wait several years to get their pension. I had friends just months older than me who got it much earlier. I think we lost out on £30,000+.

One of them in particular said “but they have to draw the line somewhere”. So she gets the old rate and I get the new which is about £50 a week more. She didn’t realise this until we had coffee with a third friend recently who is the same as me. She was furious and said that is so unfair. I was tempted to say they had to draw the line somewhere. 🤣🤣

Hope this makes sense. Am nursing painful broken toes and have covid. 😢

I am around £12 a week short of the new full pension. I now think this is because of the HRP . When I received my letter just over 2 yrs ago as to what my pension would be I just took it for granted it was right.

But on the bottom of the last page it stated "you told us you have not claimed child benefit after 19xx " which I thought was very odd as I had just had my 1st child then, so yes! of course I was claiming child benefit , or Family Allowance as they called it them days. I did ring last year around November time and was told "they would look into it" also I would get a reply within 10 days if anything needed to be done about it. (I am still waiting for that letter).

Yes I am still working 16 hrs a week at my local supermarket. Which I do enjoy, but cannot keep that up for ever. So any little bit of compensation if it be from HRP or Waspi will be very welcome. But as with others I won't hold my breath, at 68 it could be dangerous!

I retired in 2020 at age 66. I don't get the full pension as most of my working life I was contracted out, working either in the NHS or in a school, but the amount less is relatively small. I benefitted by being a stay at home mum and got Home responsibilities credits. I only worked a few hours part-time then so paid no NI so the home responsibilities credits give me 14 full years.

I did get a letter many years ago telling me that my retirement would be when I was about 64.5 years old, but never got anything telling me that it had gone up to 66. Thankfully I found that out because I generally follow the budget and government changes so it wasn't a surprise to me. With my small NHS and local government pensions I'm not too badly affected but I really would struggle on just the basic state pension, even at the maximum new rate of £203 a week. I don't know how people survive on the state pension alone!
I don't think there's an easy answer to the government's dilemma regarding compensation. Obviously it would be great to receive something but not if it is at the expense of others in greater need. Unfortunately there probably isn't any way of only compensating the WASPI women who are struggling without including people like me who are just about managing. It seems to me that what needs to change is the amount paid in pension credit as the people who get that really are the ones who are struggling.

I was born in 1952 and knew that my pension age would be higher, long before I reached that pension age When I started looking at how much I might get, the years spent not in paid employment but caring for our children were compensated for as 'paid up' years. When I finally retired and then decided to take my state pension, in 2021, some years after I had reached State pension age, I received a large tax free sum as well as my 4 weekly state pension.

No idea if that means I might get an increase cos nobody has told me one way or the other.
You'll be able to see at the top of the page what your predicted pension is (assuming you continue to pay NI until SPA) and what the is maximum that you can achieve. If there is a discrepancy you can pay extra NI to bring the lower figure to the higher, but there is no point if they are the same. The people on the helpline are very good, and will talk you through your statement and what your options are, although they can't give advice. It's not straightforward - a full year runs April-April, so anyone leaving a job and taking the wrong few weeks as holiday before starting the next can lose out, for instance.

A friend of mine never worked after she married, and has children the same sort of ages as mine. I have worked since I was 16. She got her NI paid for not working, whilst I did work and had to pay mine (despite having the same responsibilities to look after a home and to bring up the children as well as working), but because my employer contracted me out for a while I now have to pay £800 a year to bring my pension up to the level of my friend's. I believe that she made voluntary contributions after they changed the rules so that the subsidy ended when the youngest was 12 rather than 16, but the voluntary ones are tiny compared to those paid by people in work. Not only that, but because my friend didn't work she wasn't contracted out, so her pension was 'paid up' at the age of 60, whereas I have to continue to contribute until I'm 66. It's so unfair.

I've posted about my pension before. I'm a WASPI too, got my SP at 63 (45 years of contributions - albeit some "contracted out" and some HRP years when I also paid NI due to part-time work that seemingly was of no benefit to me), and for a good 30 years also paid Class 2 self-employed and Class 4 which is just a form a tax and qualified me for nothing at all. Three lots of NI plus HRP. My hubby paid NI for only 40 years, no other NI even though he was also self-employed at the same time, and also Contracted Out, but his SP is £20 a week more than mine.

I recently checked my NI record online and unlike the last time I checked a few years ago it now shows every single year I worked as counting towards the SP. No idea if that means I might get an increase cos nobody has told me one way or the other.

Merhaba

Hi. They did me out of 3 yrs to get my government pension. So I was 63 yrs old when I got mine.
I get paid the old style pension like them that retired at 60. I wish I did get the new pension of 815 a month. I get 635 a month. Fully qualified stamps.

That's approximately what I get too, yet my friend born a month after me gets the larger new pension. There is unfairness and inequality all across the board.

Yes, I get the old pension. I retired at 63 because that’s when I was able qualify to receive my state pension, which is the old pension. The new pension was brought in about three weeks after I qualified to collect my state pension. However I’m fortunate because I paid into my professional teacher’s pension all the time I worked as a teacher and I was able to get that at 60. So I retired from teaching at 60 but on my professional pension, but only qualified to receive my state pension three years later. Had I not had a professional pension I would have had to continue working until I was 63. So I’m a WASPI woman.

Thank you Maddyone. I didn’t realise that this could be the reason.

Very well said Doodledog

I will have to pay 40 years of contributions in order to get the full amount of pension next year.

NOT 35 years as some people seem to think?

I have worked as both employed and self employed.

Frizzywizzy

Maddyone, I don’t understand this at all. Are you saying that you only get £156? I sincerely hope that is not the case.

Yes.

They are the group of women I feel most sorry for.

I'm not one of them; being older my age group was made to retire at 60 whether or not they wanted to, were lied to about the Married Women's Stamp by Public Service employers and had their Civil Service pension contributions returned to them as a Marriage Gratuity if they got married.

Overall, many women of all ages have been cheated out of full pensions by successive Governments.

Maddyone, I don’t understand this at all. Are you saying that you only get £156? I sincerely hope that is not the case.

Sadly, over a quarter of a million women have died without receiving their pension since the WASPI campaign began in 2015. This has saved the government millions of £s! Apparently Rebecca Long-Bailey is taking over as chair of the Across Party Parliamentary Group for WASPI in January 2024. She’s been a long term supporter of the campaign so, under the new Labour government, things may move in the right direction.

I get the full pension but why? Paid all my life.

How was it right that women could retire at 60 and men have always had to work till 65 even though their life expectancy is less? Those that have said they have struggled to work past 60 due to medical issues hasn’t this always been the case for men?
It was right because the gender pay gap has always worked in favour of men, because it was legal to pay men more than women until the mid 70s, because even after that it has traditionally been women who took time off to have children, because both that and discrimination kept more women than men in lower paid jobs, and because (probably the most likely reason) when the ages were set, women tended to marry slightly older men, and if they had both retired at the same age there would have been nobody at home to look after them .

The main objection, however, is that women were not properly informed that this was going to happen. I know that there are those who refuse to believe it on the grounds that because they knew, everyone should have known, but I'm afraid that nobody can know what other people knew - it's just not possible.

The government has admitted that women were not informed. I was aware of the changes, but I was not told - I have a letter from HMRC in response to an FOI request I made years ago, which clearly states that they have no record of any correspondence with me about my pension. When the changes were made, few people had access to the internet, and the people most affected would be unlikely to read financial pages either. Many employers didn't point it out, and many women weren't in unions.

Also, it is not, or shouldn't be, a race to the bottom.

And me.