Pensions… again

How?

I wouldn't call it a hell of a break - it was fairly normal at the time I had my daughter. There was no free nursery provision and the vast majority of children in my daughters class had stay at home mothers until they moved up to the juniors. During the time I was off work, my husband was still paying national insurance and tax which helped to fund the cost of education, university and college fees, and other benefits. I was not a burden on society during that time and I think 43 years of me working and paying tax and NI does give me some entitlement to the paltry amount of pension I'm now receiving. Could you manage to live on that amount OP?

Sorry, delete the first privately. The 2m was all renting, private, social and sheltered.

For the final year I got my ‘free hours’ which aren’t actually free because you’ve paid over the rate for the 3 years beforehand to keep the system going.

Well I never got any childcare paid for so I do consider 30 hrs/week free a real bonus. I don't think it is based on what you have paid for previously but it's just the age of the child. So you could not pay any childcare and then when they reach 3 start working & get 30 hrs/week free. So I think that's a huge bonus for your generation. So the fact you paid £1200/month for first few years isn't relevant.

You can't start means testing pension provision because people have factored the state pension into their retirement planning. I'm mostly going that I'll be able to claim it and at 50ish my current other planning takes that into account. If you told me I'd have to save enough over the next 17 years to have a pot that gave me 12k a year more income I'd be in trouble. Even if you did that for those in their 20's (so giving more time). The unintended consequences would be a bunch of people investing in other stuff (housing) rather than a pension savings vehicle so that they can claim means tested when the time comes not to mention the amount of people who is were not compelled would not save for their future at all...Or maybe you're proposing a complex means testing that took into account all assets including housing? Good luck with that, the state has no capacity to administer that and telling people to sell their houses to fund retirement would be very unpopular.
The universal state pension is a social contract, much like having an army or education or roads . It's a socialised insurance scheme.... That's why every developed country has a similar approach.

I would have like to have seen it become means tested alongside the increase.

Personally, I think reversing the recent increase of the annual tax free pension allowance that allows the wealthy to put up to £60k per year in a pension without paying any income tax on it would be most disposable to me. Well off people can get by with paying tax on their ££££ tens of thousands extra pension savings per year more than pensioners can get by without £100/mo in a cost of living crisis.

Hope you’ve got a health private pension.

They can’t be blamed for voting for governments that then went on to break fiscal promises. Does the £350m extra per week for the NHS ring a bell? Millions voted for Brexit due to that promise. What makes you think politicians were honest back then? That people were voting for irresponsibility?

Apart from, of course, for a lot of the pensioners of the baby boomer generation the NI contributions fund was exactly that when they started working. A contributory fund that they were required to pay in to for a period of time to fund their state pension. There was a contributions card they filled in, with a special Stamp from the PO to prove they had made their required payments, which is why some will still refer to having ‘paid their stamp’. And it still has a time limit of 35 years contributions on it unlike any other tax. Hardly the their fault if they were misled and the goalposts were changed.

Which will need to be £1.1m in FMV in twenty years to match the buying power of £11,500 per annum for life. Is OP’s pension pot on track to hit £1m by 2033?

Im similar to you. I worked full time from 16 until I reduced my hours slightly at 65, but am still working for around 27 hours per week at 66, and still paying tax. I had six years off work when my daughter was young but other than that I've had no breaks from work and have over the 40 years of national insurance contributions that I needed to finally get my pension. When I started work at 16, it was on the understanding that I would retire at 60 and whilst I don't have an issue with the equalisation of the retirement age, I do have a problem with how it was done and the lack of communication when the implementation of the later retirement date was brought forward, which gave me and thousands of other women no chance to make further provision for our retirement. My pension is now going up by the princely sum of £17.35 per week. Are the people who are opposed to the increase in the state pension similarly outraged by the extension of free childcare? Unfortunately I can't do anything to stop myself from ageing and getting to pension age, but the taxes I pay are still being used to fund childcare for people who are complaining about the pension increase.

It’s over 2 million pensioners who privately rent now, that isn’t “very few”. More are paying rent on social/sheltered housing. It’s a growing crisis.

This isn’t true. There haven’t been any good projections published by your media, only projections that look at two solutions- increase individual taxes or increase retirement age. Projections based on reforming IHT, wealth tax, corporation tax, employer tax, and so on are never published.

You can’t afford their childcare without a tax free contribution from the government apparently. Or else why would you be using it?

You do realise they were once working people themselves, struggling with bills, mortgages etc. and they don't pay housing costs cos they've paid their mortgage for years.

So now you want to punish them and make them live like paupers for doing the right thing and working?

If you don’t support pension increases now, good luck living with a state pension with 1/4th the buying power it has now in twenty years!

Pensions have to be inflation protected otherwise it is future generations that will lose the most.

1. I'm talking about your generation as a whole, not you specifically.

2. Labour governments of the past don't cover themselves in glory on this front either.

The bottom line is that, socially, economically and environmentally, we're in hole and I don't think it's right that my generation and below should be the ones thrown under the bus to solve it. Especially when the generations to cause all these issues are still about, still in power and, again in general, still refuse to make any sacrifices themselves.

Ffs it's £11500 per adult per year.
Any less than this and you are simply paying other benefits, which pensioners have historically not claimed and lived in poverty.
There are increases, to the living wage and UC etc.
It's not a race to bottom.

I didn’t say free child care. I said tax free childcare. Which is a funded childcare savings scheme topped up by the government.

Anyone getting free hours and not working is probably infinitely worse off than you due to things such as illness - do you have something against those people too?
And what would be even better for the economy is if you worked full time and waited to have children until you can actually afford to pay for them yourself without government funded top ups.

My generation can only vote for who stands in the GE. So out of interest who should we have voted for because the only choices for years and years were Conservative, Labour or Lib Dems? If we voted that was our only choice.