Pension theft

Men live even less in retirement than women.

Why would be helpful to hear from people who shared beds as children?

There is no 'fund' as such; but people born in the 50s will have paid NI for decades by the time they reach 60. Each generation pays the pensions of the one before, so the 'fund' effectively comes in each month as the NI contributions come off the salaries of younger people, just as it did from ours. The fact that there is not an actual pot of money is a red herring, IMO - there never was, yet pensions have been affordable until a political decision to defer them was made.

When there were fewer women in work, the contributions of workers had further to spread, yet it was possible for women to retire at 60. Many of my mother's generation, for instance, retired and got bus passes etc, at 60, without having contributed much NI, having left work when their children were born. They also got things like Child Benefit/family allowance that wasn't means tested, mortgage tax relief and so on, all from the NI contributions of those in work.

I am, of course, generalising, but in subsequent generations more women have contributed, and more will be doing so now. There have been many cuts to universal benefits such as child benefit or MIRAS, so I just don't buy the line that paying pensions is unaffordable.

Also (and changing the subject a bit), as has been said, not everyone will get the full amount of the new pension - it depends on NI contributions - so initiatives to raise the threshold at which people start paying NI should be treated with caution. It might save the low paid a tiny bit of money now, but it will cost them dearly in the long run.

grow HRP started in 1978.

I am really surprised at the tone and attitude of many posters on this thread. It's true these days it can be hard to tell fake news from facts. But the reality is that thousands of women, especially single women, are living in poverty because of the changes made to SPA. I am a Waspi woman, having to wait the full 6 years for my SP. I am fortunate, I have small widow's pension and small private pension. As a former journalist, I have done a lot of research and reading around the SPA changes. I have read from several different sources that successive governments, of all colours, did not make the expected contributions that could have been used for pensions. We hear a lot about how we are the 5th largest economy and yet our state pension is considerably lower than those of other major advanced economies. Some say that's because UK pensioners get a higher proportion of their retirement income from work pensions or savings. But previous unfair policies, plus child or parent care, mean many women have very small private pension pots or none at all. Usually they are a third the size of men's. Peter Lilly, the relevant Secretary of State in 1995 when the first act was passed, made the decision not to write to all affected women. No government changed this. Some women got a letter, many didn't. I don't know about you, but when my children were younger, I didn't read the papers much. No internet then. If an employer or private company changed the Ts & Cs of their pension schemes without directly telling members, that would be illegal. Seems there continues to be lots of unfairness surrounding pensions. Let's be supportive of each other and the different challenges we face.

Lost my husband at 55, I have since found out that I can claim some of his pension when I am 66 in 2 years and 10 months. I could not work when the girls were younger as their Dad worked 3 months every year in America, hence I will get a reduced State Pension. The whole pension idea is a nightmare x

Don't worry, !maddyone*

What this kind of thread does do is encourage us to investigate further and someone who knows a lot about a subject will post and share their knowledge so it is not a bad thing.

JanCl I completely agree about the way in which 50s women have been discriminated against throughout our working lives having an impact on their pensions. This is why I feel that we should get them at 60, and if there has to be an increase in the SPA it should be introduced much more slowly.

I have lost the full six years, and whilst I was lucky enough to be able to partially retire at 60, I am certainly not having the retirement I was led to expect, and budgeted for for years. I have paid NI for over 40 years, contributing to the pensions of those who may not have worked, but got their pensions at 60, and feel that 50s women have been discriminated at both ends of our working lives.

I started work the year that equal pay became mandatory, but my employer simply re-named the jobs, so that men were called something different, continued to get paid more, and were given access to better training so that they could move up the scale whilst women were kept in lower status roles.

I moved out of that job, retrained and changed sector, but even when I left work a couple of years ago there was a 20% gender pay gap in my place of work.

I find it baffling that other people feel entitled to decide whether or not we 'need' a state pension - we paid for it, and were promised it, so it was on that basis that we made our financial plans for old age. To pull the rug from under us is morally repugnant, and whether or not it is illegal, I think that we have every right to feel short-changed and discriminated against.

Mealybug youndon't know that. You could live to 100.
I know people who have died shortly after retirement, people who lived just long enough so that they got less out of a private top-up pension scheme than they paid in (no refund to next of k) and someone who died 1p2 weeks before retirement.

We just don't know. It's no good at all being resentful or envious because you may think someone has done better out of the NI scheme than you; I did wonder why all our pensions would not be going up to the new amount as mine would be £40 per week more if that happened, but then again, I have received it since the age of 60.

I need typing lessons sorry, I hope you can decipher that!

@grandtanteJE65 ?
I think you might have miss-posted -
This is a pension related thread

I've done it myself a few times

It really is a pension-snatch, no other excuse.

Thank you for the info about HRP suzie. As I thought, it started well before the SPA was raised in the mid 1990s.

So many women now affected by the increase in the SPA will have had HRP credits added to their pension. I think they're called something else now - NI credits maybe?

JanC1 More men than women in their early 60s are living in poverty. What about them?

The benefits system needs a thorough overhaul for all working age people, which includes those whose SPA was delayed with 25 years notice.

What I really hate about Waspi threads is the entitlement of people who only think about their own group. Maybe if there had been more solidarity with all people in poverty, Waspi women would be more successful.

grow exactly.

Doodledog I agree that the initiative to raise the NI threshold could cause problems later. Hopefully, threads like this will encourage people to research their own situation. That's why I have paid voluntary contributions, even though my income from self-employment hasn't reached the threshold. It really has been worth it (provided I live a year beyond my 66th birthday).

Underpinning so many issues ( this one, that of low wages and the classifying of skilled/unskilled work on the points thread)are fundamental questions that never really get addressed properly. The relationship between the state and the individual, the extent of individual responsibility and where the state should guarantee a minimum whatever, our moral responsibility for each other ( not just close families) how we treat the vulnerable, the criminal, the inadequate and our social responsibilities to such people. We just don’t have these ‘big’ conversations. Most WASPI conversations I’ve heard never discuss men in their late 50s worn out after a lifetime of hard manual work yet forced to soldier on. Or the way in which disability benefits have been slashed and the hoops people have to go through to claim them. Or how disabled people who could work just don’t get the support to do so. A bit more solidarity and addressing of the big picture would make all groups in society stronger by coming together but instead, time after time, we retreat to our own little group and swallow the argument of the real ‘haves’ in society that it’s another group that are to blame for our misfortune. As I’ve posted elsewhere today, they, them, the others

I see what you are saying, suziewoosie, but with sort of thing is not about emotion - it is about trust in the government, without which a society based on consent can't operate.

50s women were told that we would get a pension at 60, and made arrangements accordingly. If people are not able to expect the government to keep their part of the bargain, then how can they make plans and provide for themselves?

If we start allowing others to decide what constitutes 'need', we are on a slippery slope when it comes to compulsory payments such as NI. We all need to know what to expect so that we can do what we can to live our lives the way we want to. Some save every penny, and others spend. Both are valid choices, and IMO should not determine what we are given in old age - that should be based on contributions (number of, not amount of - I'm not suggesting that State pension should be earnings related).

Disability benefits, along with other social issues are a separate fight (and a worthy one). I think it would be a mistake to conflate them, as the basis of the injustice is different, and the same applies to people on pension credit. If people are not earning enough to make contributions, that is the fault of the employers, who should have to pay a minimum wage that allows everyone to save for old age. If they don't, then the rest of us are contributing to the profits of the companies who pay low wages.

For any government to decide that people's expectations should be just pulled away is very wrong, IMO, and is the sort of thing that destabilises consensual government. It's not about selfishness, or thinking about one group over another, it's about trust and fairness.

What I would say about the WASPI issue is how it was implemented was wrong ,not the basic principle of equalisation upwards of pension ages for men and women. I think the two issues get conflated. The implementation had two aspects - informing women from the get go and secondly the pace at which women were affected. It should have stayed as it was at the beginning but that was accelerated and cliff edges came into play. Women were let down on both fronts. But going back to the bigger picture, WASPI women are one set of victims and if we all realised who’s side we should really be on, we all could have done more for each other - instead we were and are being played and will continue to be.
NI is a very unfair tax and needs a complete rethink. I know this doesn’t help the WASPI women. But no one is going to help them - it’s a complete lost cause. Completely.

Divide and conquer playbook in action.

There is no pension fund as such as has been noted above. The increase in pension age for women from 60 to 63, then 65 and now 66 has been excused as an evening out of the discrepancy between male and female pension age but really has more to do with an ageing population and the overall cost of pensions.

The new pension is higher than before but requires 35 years of contributions. I retired early but am paying class 3 NI contributions to bring my pension up to nearly but not quite the full amount as teachers were deemed to have a decent pension scheme.

My two children have differing views of pensions. One thinks the pension bill is a drag on the country’s finances and the other is busy piling as much as she can into her own employers’ pension. I dare say their view might modify when they near retirement.

Also as for trust and fairness - again, it’s not just WASPI women. Think of men ( and women) now in their late 50s worked all their life, paid NI and now have much less generous NI related benefits for eg long term sickness and unemployment than they had when they first joined the scheme and for their first few decades.
Because we are so atomised now and generally so ill informed, most people don't realise how the NI principles have been attacked and undermined to the detriment of many, of whom Waspi women are one sad example. Finally, it has to be acknowledged that all the worst attacks on NI benefits and tge WASPI women have been by Tory Governments

Lily there is no fair argument in the world for unequal pension ages for men and women

I have found so much fake news on Facebook. Most you can check easily. I never believe any of it.