State Pension

Final salary was stopped years ago.

@edwinbear My real fear is that a government will nationalise private sector pensions to cover the shortfall in the public sector and state pensions.

@edwinbear “Stop final salary schemes for new entrants to the civil service”

They did that 17 years ago!

“had optimistically assumed we would have 2 state pensions coming in for at least a few years.”

For a different reason, there are going to a lot of unmarried and suddenly single people in the future I think - who assumed that their boyfriend’s larger pension was going to cover them both, and then they split up. At least for unexpected death you can plan with life insurance - not so a relationship being ended. Of course it’s not always the boyfriend with the better pension, but 🤷🏻‍♀️
It’s hard enough not being able to share the costs because you’re single when working. In retirement it can get a lot harder.

I came on to say exactly the same as @TheNoonBell . It's the public sector, final salary schemes that need to be stopped - £2.6trillion, above the size of the UK economy. Stop final salary schemes for new entrants to the civil service, but pay them wages more closely aligned with the private sector so they can make proper contributions to a DC scheme. Then everyone can still have their normal state pension at a sensible retirement age.

I do agree you deserve a pension, we all do, the real question is how it will be funded and how much it will pay out.

Will be interesting to see what the upcoming Labour government plan.

If it becomes means tested and dependent on savings, I will be massively PISSED OFF! Why should I work for little over min wage all my life but sacrifice the latest phone, the big house, the new car so I can be penalised?

Massive NO!

I am an NHS employee. I work incredibly hard to care for people. I contribute a significant amount from my relatively low salary for my pension. My pension payout is tied to state pension age as we were all forcibly migrated to the 2015 scheme. In return for years of hard work and service in looking after other people and years of paying in significant chunks of my salary I expect at least to be paid a pension that allows me to afford to live when eventually I do get to retire.

The issue is more about inequality - rather than blaming pensioners (or e.g. immigrants) for taking too big a slice of the cake. But that’s what Mr I’m Allright Jack would like you to get worked up about. We are drifting towards the USA economic model.

“For comparison, in the United States, which has more billionaires than any other country, the top 1% of earners take 20% of income and the bottom 50% of earners take 10%. The less inequality/greater equality in Europe is attributed to the fact that Europe has not let its market economy become a market society, where market forces control other areas of society such as education, health, and wages. Examples of this are social healthcare systems and more favorable labor markets.”
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-inequality-by-country

Sorry to hear that, @primroseandplum .

I empathise. My DP died at 60, and had very little private pension provision, although I got a couple of small lump sums.

And he was between jobs, he was about to start a new job the week after he died. If he'd died a few weeks earlier, I'd have got a death in service pension of 50% of his salary, which would have been around £18k pa.

The UK will be utterly bankrupt by the time you can take the pension.

The real scandal is public sector pensions with £2.6 trillion liabilities which is larger than UK GDP. https://www.pensions-expert.com/Defined-Benefit/Public-sector-pension-bill-exceeds-UK-GDP-for-the-first-time?ct=true

Yes, but it's even more marked for mixed-age couples. They used to be treated as a pension age couple, so could get pension credit, now they're treated as working age.

That's how my (very experienced) colleague explained it, anyway. It's not really my area, as all my clients are referred by projects that deal with people of working age and my experience is very limited.

Many people die before or shortly after the age at which they can claim the state pension. My DH died just 4 months after his state pension kicked in at the age of 66, after working without a break since age 15.

I am barely managing now I'm state pension age - we had optimistically assumed we would have 2 state pensions coming in for at least a few years.
I have a very small widow's pension from my DH's work, and a tiny private pension from my own work (£600 / year). Back in the day women often weren't eligible to join the company pension because they didn't earn enough to qualify for entry.

But those are not promised to you no matter what.

In the case of the state pension, the government HAVE been saying that once you hit 35 qualifying years you WILL get the full state pension.

He should also be pleased that if his mum needs care at some point, she will be able to afford to buy in all the help she needs, or afford a good care home that has extra luxuries.

Odd that @hairbearbunches thinks that people who are able to "do very little"should not be allowed to have the comfortable income that they have spent their life building up.

You’d think he’d be pleased, wouldn’t you since it’ll be his money soon. Or perhaps he thinks she should give it to him now.

The employer contribution is part of the renumeration for the job. As another poster pointed out many public sector jobs often pay less and have fewer perks than jobs in the private sector.

Means testing the pension would be expensive , my husband pays tax on his work pension and that is fair and it takes into account his state pension as its over his personal allowance .

What a nice son he must be, talking about his mother's personal finances.

Is 3k a month really an obscene amount?

Plus as blossomtoes pointed out, tax will be paid on the £3k.

Where does the idea that pensioners are so affluent come from?

Old age pensions have never really been adequate. In their basic form, they are designed to be enough for an individual or couple to live on, for a short time to the end of their lives.

For example, the original 'Old Age Pension', introduced in 1908, was for people over 70. It was five shillings (25p), and it was means tested. I think the average (mean) life expectancy then was under 60, so people were lucky to reach pension age

From 1948 until 2010, women could retire at 60 and men at 65. In 1948, the average life expectancy was just under 70, so, again, people weren't expected to live very long as pensioners.

Currently, I will be eligible for my state pension at the age of 67, and life expectancy for a female is 82, so, according to statistics, I may have 15 years as a pensioner.

Yet, like many people with no private or professional pension, I will have to either live on a pension that gives little more than a subsistence, or I will have to remain in the workforce, even though my physical health and mental faculties are declining.

I will remain in the workforce even though there are younger and fitter people looking for work. I will remain in the workforce mopping up those part time, low paid positions that employers will keep offering as long as there are people, without too many commitments, who will take them.

I don't know what the answer is to the question of whether state pension age should continue to be raised, but I do know that even if people do live longer than they used to, it does not mean they can or should work longer.

@CookStrait most people can not save enough to manage without a state pension. So a half a million pension pot would give you about £15k a year.
To achieve this realistically you need to be earning above average salary. And you still get a low annual pension.

Private pensions mean people are not claiming to up welfare benefits. That is the benefit to the government.

That was true, I believe, for older pensioners where the pension was based on the husband's contribution and covered both of them (because at the time women were unlikely to be working in a job where they paid NI, and even if they were, they could opt out and pay "married women contributions). But that stopped a long while back.

We’ve been encouraged for many years now to sort out our own pensions. Don’t waste time arguing about this, otherwise you will never retire.

That’s the case for most couples reliant on benefits

But a few years ago they decided to change the state pension. They could have decided to increase the means tested pensions credit and leave state pension untouched, which over time would have the effect of the pension being almost entirely means tested. But instead they decided to bring in a new increased non-means-tested state pension for younger pensioners, and to maintain the increases on both the new pension and the old state pension - so now younger pensioners (under 70) are getting 33% more state pension than older ones.

This doesn't suggest a desire to bring in means testing for pensions.