Go WASPI!

Bully for you.

I count my blessings that I read newspapers and follow current affairs. No random information from anybody.

BW

(Not so) Perfect Polly

I was born in 1954. At the age of 58 I received a letter informing me that my state pension age was being put back from 60 to 62.5 years. It wasn't too unexpected and so I planned my finances towards that. I heard nothing more from the DWP. When I was 61, a colleague mentioned that her date of birth was very close to mine and she'd received a formal letter from DWP to say that her new retirement age was 64.5. I'd received nothing and so checked on the government website and, sure enough, it was true. On the day of my 64th birthday, I checked again and saw that, for the 3rd time, my retirement age had been put back to 65.5. Again, I'd received no formal notification but my colleague had. So, could the Perfect Pollies who were oh so well informed and are so contemptuous of those of us who were told nothing, explain how we were supposed to plan our financial futures when the goal posts were repeatedly put back by 18 month increments but no one thought to inform us? Instead of sneering at how thick and careless we were, perhaps you should be counting your blessings that, for some random reason, you were kept regularly informed when some of us were not.

icanhandthemback

My sister made her working life and savings choices based on the fact she would retire at 60 but to find that she miscalculated completely because her pension age has risen by 7 years. She has intermittent heart and lung problems which is not be covered by long term ESA but had she received her pension at 60 would not be worried to death about how she is going to carry on working for several more years when she isn't well. She definitely feels cheated.

I'm so sorry to hear about your sisters illness. It's unforgivable that people are suffering so much because the DWP were negligent in their obligation to inform women well in advance that they were changing the retirement age and so quickly. None of us could prepare ourselves for the wait because we were not told it would happen early enough.

My sister made her working life and savings choices based on the fact she would retire at 60 but to find that she miscalculated completely because her pension age has risen by 7 years. She has intermittent heart and lung problems which is not be covered by long term ESA but had she received her pension at 60 would not be worried to death about how she is going to carry on working for several more years when she isn't well. She definitely feels cheated.

Good point. I don't know then. The public sector unions?

Doodledog

I put in an FOI request to see if I had been notified and forgotten and they told me I hadn't. I wonder if they notified government employees and left it to the discretion of others?

That might explain the smugness of some on this thread - it's one thing to know if you've actually been told, and another to find out for yourself pre-Internet. As I've said, I did know, but I can't remember how I found out.

I doubt it was government instruction to tell public sector staff Doodledog, in those days the NHS pensions team were on the case on behalf of the employees so I suspect it was their own initiative not a government directive - they no doubt wanted it to slip under the radar, which it largely did.

I put in an FOI request to see if I had been notified and forgotten and they told me I hadn't. I wonder if they notified government employees and left it to the discretion of others?

That might explain the smugness of some on this thread - it's one thing to know if you've actually been told, and another to find out for yourself pre-Internet. As I've said, I did know, but I can't remember how I found out.

Visgir1

The question is why did some people know and others not?
What happened to make the notices inconsistent from DWP?
My DOB is Oct 1954, I am a NHS professional, I got notified each time it was changed from 60, 63 to 66.
We all got notifications as I clearly remember staff room conversations.
There has to be a factor as to why, this inconsistent communication. Surely it wasn't difficult to post a notification to everyone concerned? Has any one been told why this happened as I have never read answers to this question.

I’m ex NHS too, and knew because we were told via the Superannuation and Pensions section in our Salaries and Wages Department when the age changed. I think we were the lucky ones though because our employer told us, I don’t remember seeing it on the news or in the papers as headlines.

eazybee - the reason it is so unfair is because it was not until our late 50s the system changed and so it was not remotely possibly to plan. Overnight our pension age was put back, for up to five years - had we known from the time we started work what the pension age would be when we retired then of course we would have worked to that end but we didnt. Retirement plans were abandoned and it was a nightmare for many of us.

I was born in September 1955. I had looked on line at my pension forecast and I had the required stamps to collect my pension at 60. I didn't receive any letters from the government and only found out about the changes in pension age from a younger colleague at work. At 1st I thought she was joking!
I finally got my pension age 66 and one month. I did manage to retire at 60 with a small private pension and my now husband supporting me.
I am afraid I am not so forgiving to those who say others should have known! How dare they insinuate the rest of us are stupid or liars. Just remember Karma is a bitch!
Anyway good on the Waspi women I wish I could have joined them and thank them for all their work!

The question is why did some people know and others not?
What happened to make the notices inconsistent from DWP?
My DOB is Oct 1954, I am a NHS professional, I got notified each time it was changed from 60, 63 to 66.
We all got notifications as I clearly remember staff room conversations.
There has to be a factor as to why, this inconsistent communication. Surely it wasn't difficult to post a notification to everyone concerned? Has any one been told why this happened as I have never read answers to this question.

I start to get my state pension from today. I have worked the extra 6 years and retire this month.
Jaciest I am sorry about your Father, but he knew he would have to work until 65. What Waspi are saying is that it came as a complete suprise to some women, and it did cause them alot of hardship. I am not going to struggle I have my state pension and my occ pen, not a fortune but I will be OK. I just feel that the last 6 years have been a hard slog.

I really can not understand people being nasty to others simply because they disagree with the person's post. It's unimportant and helps no one. Let's all be nice to one another. It costs nothing to be pleasant .

I agree, SoD, but someone will be along soon to crow that there was never a contract, that there is no pension pot, and that other groups in society deserve more than pensioners.

I agree with a previous poster - it was a breach of contract. The government hit the least able to fight back section of society - the older people at the end of long working lives. I'm glad to see some have found the energy to fight this on behalf of many others - and I hope they win this before those who deserve recompense die off!

Personally I'd be grateful if, on social media in general, women would stop saying 'I knew, so others should have known'. You gave no idea of the circumstances of other people, then or now. Govt should have sent everyone individual letters and didn't. Some women, in their early 40s, were working flat out 16, 17 hours a day in 1993
Now to increase SPA by one year, ten years notice must be given. Did some WASPIs get 60 years' notice?

Couldn't agree more. I'd love to see people so readily accept that an insurance scheme they paid into all their working life did not pay out when and what was expected.
Many relied on what they were told to expect as an outcome of their pension payments. Those 'waspi' women were not paid what was promised, and when it was promised.
Utterly crass to blame these women for not seeing the agreement changed without their input in the newspapers papers or on line.

There’s a video on YouTube of George Osborne saying it was one of the least controversial things he’d done to raise money. Other countries have managed to raise/equalise their pension ages much more gradually over a significantly longer period, avoiding such a severe impact on one particular cohort and giving people notice so that they had time to prepare and adjust. I sometimes think we are far too accepting.

When Icstarted work and started paying into a pension, it was on the understanding that I would be able to retire aged 60. I consider this to have been a "contract" which by making the required payments, I accepted. I therefore consider that if thd pension age was to alter it should start with the people just entering into their pension "contracts", not those who had been paying into them for many years already. Insurance companies have statistics which give an indication of how long people will live, so thd government would have similar statistics and should have anticipated when the change needed to start. I have always considered the government to be "in breach of contract" over this as you can't just change a contract part way through without the agreement of all parties.

I've always felt that pensions should be equalised for men and woman. But my gripe is that it should have been done more gradually to compensate for the fact that many 50s women don't have private pensions, as many stayed at home or took low paid jobs, to look after children. Plus there was little pay equality in those years. Whereas many men have work pensions so if they need/want to retire early they may be able to do so. I'm lucky. I worked decent jobs most of my life and have two small work pensions. But my DHs work pensions are far higher than mine. The changes should have been introduced more gradually. But perhaps we should have objected at the time. The French would have.

If it comes to that my friend with birthday only six weeks before mine got her pension at 60.

growstuff

Maggiemaybe Your last paragraph touches on a change which was brought in with the introduction of the pension changes in 2011.

Before then, unemployed over 60s didn't have the same conditions applied to looking for work and the number of hours needed before claiming support.

After that, everybody had the same conditions applied and there were no exemptions for over 60s. That meant that over 60s who felt they could only do part-time work lost out.

If WASPI had ever looked at the wider picture (benefits for over 60s, men and those born after 31 December 1959), I would have felt more inclined to support them.

My friend lost her job in 2016, when she was 61. She would have been fine with working full-time, though she struggled (and who wouldn't?) to apply for 30 jobs a day, with no internet access at home. But when she was told she would have to look for jobs that would have meant her travelling for 4 hours on public transport on top of every working day, she signed off and managed to limp through the next 5 years on her small savings and whatever casual work she could find.

growstuff

Primrose53

Freya5

Primrose53

I never understood why friends who were born before end April 1953 got their pensions years before me. For being born just 6 months after them 4 years were added to my wait.

Because the pension age needs to rise.

Thanks, I understood that. But how could a few months difference translate into a few years. If I had been told x is 6 months older than you so you will get your pension 6 months later that would have seemed fair.

It doesn't translate into a few years.

Of course it translates into years! If my friend born on 1 Feb 1953 got her State Pension in 2015 and I was born just 9 months later in Oct 1953 and I had to wait until 2018 to get my pension then that is 3 years!!

I am not going to argue with you any more over this because you clearly don't want to understand and you are being very rude to people.

Aveline

growstuff I'm surprised and disappointed at you.😑

Same here!

growstuff I'm surprised and disappointed at you.😑