50s women

I am absolutely devastated by the dismissal in court yesterday. I have been campaigning and demonstrating for over 3 years and belong to several on line groups as well as WASPI.
I am 63 and desperate to retire as I am in pain constantly with my joints and mentally exhausted at doing my job.
I have worked since I was 15 and have very little in the way of a private pension as I supported my ex husband in his climb up the career ladder. He worked away quite a lot and I worked jobs around the child care (term time and part time) and in our latter years together looked after his mum.
The idea was that his pension would be sufficient for us both to retire together.
When I was 40 he left me for my friend, I had a breakdown and was quite ill at the time. I signed a divorce settlement that said I would not touch his pension.
He retired at 55 and lives very comfortably (still with my ex friend who is also retired)

This is the only reason I am glad to be a bit older and so received my pension at 60.I was widowed at 61 and would have been in difficulty without my pension, (my DH left me with several debts to pay! ).
I know several people who are affected by the change in pension age ,and feel that it is totally wrong.,especially with so little notice. No doubt the powers that be will continue to refuse any change as none of them are affected.

Polly Toynbee has a good article about this in the Guardian. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/03/older-women-pensions-retirement-age?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I like to think I keep up to date with things but I was unaware of the change of age from 62 to 67 before my dh retired and I requested a pension forecast.

It affects me as I born in the wrong year. Just two years to go then.

I have just received my state pension after having to wait 5.5 years and when I work it out I have lost over £48,000 of MY money. What have they done with it??????

Brunette10 I have to wait 6 years, I'm 64 now and should have received my pension four years ago, now it will be another two years. They've spent the money already propping up other failed departments and that's why they are quoting such a high figure to pay us out. In any other walk of life that's fraud and they would be prosecuted for using other people's pension funds.

I got my pension at 62 and 8 months as part of the sliding scale to push pensionable age for women to 65, initially. Although I was peeved by this as I lost about £20,000, I was given plenty of warning before I was 60. Every women was, and it wrong to say we weren't, although it didn't affect how much I could save elsewhere. It was all over the tv news, online and I had an official letter informing me, probably more than one letter.

No one complained about the men having to work 5 years more, I don't remember!

I'm disappointed with the verdict but not surprised.
I'm 64 and won't get my state pension until I am 66.
I've had health problems since I was 15 and didn't go back to work after I had my son back in the 70's but I've been on the lower level of DLA for some years so will get a pension.
My partner and I manage on Pension Credit and it's really not a lot to live on. I'm just thankful that we had managed to pay our mortgage off before my partner took early retirement, hate to think how we would manage if we still had that to pay!

It's a disgrace & I cannot believe they got away with it. I was one of the lucky ones as I was in the last year of women who got their pension at 60- my best friend is a few months younger then me & she has to wait until 66.

I think when other aspects of women's lives are equal , that'll be the time of equal pensions. Women are still paid less than men, they still do the lion's share of home making and childcare and precious few men I know take care of their elderly parents and their grandchildren.

If you haven't already done so you can write to your MP and ask them to sign the Early Day Motion EDM #2296 edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/52822/providing-financial-restitution-to-1950s-women Only 221 MP's have signed so far so there are a lot out there who need to be prodded in to action!

To add to my original post, it does show how out of touch politicians are with ‘normal’ people. When I had children in the seventies, it was hard to work...there wasn’t much child care, employers weren’t as flexible as now, the opportunities all round, weren’t as they are now. Many women stayed at home with the children, giving up good jobs, and were ‘out of the loop’ when they came to look for work many years later. Those are just facts-not judgements-and yet it has been deemed to be ok to say to those women, you need to work six years longer. I know a number of people that took physical, caring jobs for example, or cleaning work, as it was all they could find as they were out of touch with much in the working world, when their children were old enough to be left alone...and can’t continue to do that work well into their sixties. It was just the culture for many women, to sacrifice work to bring up children and an unrealistic expectation that they should magically be easily employable at a later age, much less to 66.

Meant to say’had children in the eighties’! (Seem to have aged myself by ten years?)

I know how lucky I am to have been born early enough that this didn't affect me, but I really feel for those who came after who have had the rules changed in mid flow. It is so very unfair, expecially when the government manages to find money for things they want (income increase, for exaample). Our pensions are already poor compared to most EU countries and this makes them, in compaarison, even worse.

Like others on this thread, I have to wait until I'm 66 to get my state pension (another 5 years for me). I divorced 2 years ago after a very long marriage and in many ways have had to start all over again. However, I count myself as one of the lucky ones as I have quite a good occupational pension and am able to supplement it by doing occasional freelance work. I worked full-time from age 23 to 57 and never had any children. I know many women aren't in this position and it makes me angry to think that so many gave up work to look after the home, a husband and children only to lose out by yesterday's decision.

The whole idea of 'equalisation' was floated by Ken Clarke in Budget of 1993. It became law in 1995. (Part of the problem is that since 1980 no govt has been topping up the Nat Ins fund as envisaged by those who first floated the concept. This saved £300bn approx) The only 'headline' was in the sidebar on The Times erroneously saying that equalization would take place IN 2020.
Osborne then concertina'ed bringing in the changes, and then Cameron changed the 65 to 67.
In the last 10yrs, the total yrs of NI contributions required for a full state pension has changed from 39 to 30 to 35.

I agree with all thoose having to work longer when their health is not good. My poor sister is one of those. She works from 6pm to 2am in the morning as a packer for medical supplies. I can see her flagging as she has several health issues and it breaks my heart. She will be 60 soon and i could weep for her, as under the old ruling she would have retired nest month. Unfortunately i dont think the ruling will go back.

Gingergirl, I like you was never informed of this change, I was speaking to a friend one day when I said I would be retiring in a couple of years, she said, oh no they have changed the retirement age, this was the first I had heard. I am now 64 working full time and I feel desperate to retire and wonder how I will keep this up for another 2 years, I am divorced, only me earning, so I have no choice. Its an utter disgrace what they have done. They have given us parity with men, great, it would however have been better to inform us of this and given us the time to digest the change and try to prepare.

glammanana the rules for a full pension are quite complicated now. I retired at 60 because I had hass enough of work and was bevoming more and more anxious a about it. I only had a very small work pension because of years of bringing up a family and then working part time. But luckily we had paid our mortgage and my husband has a decent works pension and we had some savings so was sure we could manage until state pension age. . I knew I would have to wait 6 years to get my state pension but thought at least then DH and I would get full pension because we both had over 35 years contributions. But no to get the full state pension we have to continue to pay NI contributions until we reach state pension age! Which is over 3000 a year.

How are we expected to work till 67; even if we were fit and able? Employers want to employ young people, and rightly so. We would be accused of swiping their jobs and they are at the stage in their lives of taking on mortgages and having children. If we can’t get jobs what are we supposed to live on? It’s going to get worse isn’t it.

I remember being informed that my pension age would be increased to 63 when it was first changed and that was what I planned for. I think that was well advertised and discussed, with posters in workplaces etc. However the increase to 66 was brought in very sneakily without any publicity that I can remember. I paid into an AVC and was lucky to have some savings to bridge the gap, but my younger sister has been badly affected by the changes and has to keep working despite several health problems.

GillT57 I don't have a problem with the philosophy behind equalising pension ages, but I have a huge problem with the huge leap in qualification age. I will be 66 for mine, and feel that a more gradual incremental rise to equal ages would have been fairer.

I agree with this completely

No, you are not being unreasonable.

If it is any consolation, the same thing has happened both in Denmark and the Netherlands where it affects both men and women.

Not that we ever had the option of retiring at 50, but could take early retirement at 60- this has now been altered to 63 or higher depending on the person's year of birth. Retirement age is at minimum 67, again depending on what year you were born.
There is no appeal and no compensation being offered.

How much notice do you think you should have been given?

More and more people are citing 'health issues' as their reason for not being able to work past 60-65 and I wonder why that is.
We have more immunisations than before, more cures than in the post war years, staggered working hours, the ability to work from home in some types of employment, more cars per family to make working at a distance, easier. More modern household appliances which ease the burden of housework, cooking and laundry, yet people are denying that 60 is old but conversely, saying that ill health is the bane of their lives and they find it difficult to see how they can work till 66/7.