To think increasing pension age isn’t going to add up?

@CoughedBulldozerNumber With the current income tax threshold and the NMW level it doesn't make sense.

I have relatives who draw their private pension(s) but also work, plus I have friends who draw all their pensions and volunteer. I have been in the room when a few of them have worked out how much pension they were going to get and whether they should work or not based on the tax they will pay.

with mandatory deferral until such time as one is no longer capable of working

So, essentially you work until you lose your marbles?

@Reugny I don't think you understand what I said. I know you can defer state pension. The reform I am proposing would make it possible to do a 50:50 split of drawing half a pension and continuing to work half-time with mandatory deferral until such time as one is no longer capable of working.
It's not something I particularly want but it seems better than the vast numbers of fit, healthy and capable people aged 65-85 living without doing any work at all when they are perfectly capable of contributing. Maybe there could be an exemption for people who are doing at least 25hrs a week of voluntary work. But an option to do this is no solution at all.

@CoughedBulldozerNumber you can defer your state pension - https://www.gov.uk/deferring-state-pension

You actually have to claim it as you don't get it automatically. I only found this out because a OAP I know didn't claim it immediately and their other benefits had stopped.

As you pay tax on your pension(s) including state pension then you have to work out if you are better off deferring it or not.

@Teateaandmoretea

When I was at primary and secondary school very few people had a mother that didn't work even part-time. In fact I could count on less than one hand every year the number of mothers who didn't work at all. Most of the none working mothers had a child with a disability and/or they had large families and a baby/toddler.

My older siblings are boomers and so are most of their wives. (I'm Gen X and my youngest 2 siblings are millennials.) They have either retired early due to ill health or are still working and retiring in the next year or so. (You can work out their rough ages.) Friends parents who are boomers, as they had them young, and are now retired had both sexes working.

With the silent generation who were my parents and some other people's parents, again many women worked. Some had lost their jobs in the 60s/70s due to getting married so the working class ones did menial jobs e.g. cleaning while the middle class ones waited until their children were upper primary/junior school age then went back to work as teachers and nurses. My own mum had a period where she didn't work at all as she had 3 children under 5.

The WASPI women were only shafted because the government did not repeatedly state in the national media retirement ages were going to rise. IMHO government did this on purpose as they didn't want strikes and riots like they have had in other countries when rising retirement ages.

Or you can go into marketing or sales.

Younger ex-English teachers I know have gone into those areas and been very successful.

Ex-Maths and Science I know have gone into IT (or into transport jobs).

Those jobs cover a wide range of industries.

The system obviously needs reform. The idea of having so many people economically unproductive for 30 years when their working life might not have been much more than this simply isn't sustainable.
Possible solutions might include:
Incentivising every employer with more than 100 employees to earnark a proportion of roles for people over 55. This could be made a "soft" target by having a sliding scale of tax discount so that employers who meet the target pay less tax than those who don't.
Reducing employer's NI contributions for over 55s so that they are cheaper to employ.
Making the state-pension a two-level deal where you get a small pension at what we currently call "retirement age" but that's only expected to help you make ends meet as you are generally capable of continuing to do some kind of productive activity. Medical certification needed to progress to a "full" pension once you are beyond any kind of gainful employment, which you progress to some time before the age of 95 or so on a case by case basis according to how much the specific faculties you need have deteriorated.

The tax incentives for saving to retirement need to be rebalanced because it's currently entirely possible for well qualified professionals in upper-middle-class type roles to save enough for a comfortable full retirement in 30 years or less of economically productive activity whereas anyone who earns less than about twice the average wage cannot possibly do much more than scrape together a pot which will provide a modest supplement to the state offer over that timescale. However it's these high-income professionals who are most capable of continuing to earn productivly even into their 80s whereas those who have spent their entire careers in the type of work that is lower-paid are much less likely to be capable of continuing that for longer.

@GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing two generations, not one. And there’s always been people who retired and, having lived quiet and frugal lives due to growing up working class and born in the early 20th/late 19th centuries, didn’t see a huge change in their lifestyles on retirement.

My late DGM inherited most of my DGFs final salary pension (paid out until her death 32 years after his) and lived very comfortably. Now my DF and DM have retired and are living equivalently to how they did when working. They’ve always been fairly low earners, but have paid off mortgage and debts. They’re not flashy or in to big holidays, so their lives are comfortable. If they need care in old age the house will have to be sold, as late DGM’s was.

It’s the generation of people in their 50s down who’ll struggle- the cohort who haven’t built up enough pension having been auto enrolled too old but who also missed out on old final salary pensions who will struggle.

I despair when I see people my age and a bit older (late 30s) burning through cash like there’s no tomorrow: we will need it in retirement.

Yes it's very bleak.
My daughter is a millennial and is adamant that she doesn't want children as she doesn't feel there's much hope for the future.

Anyone going to promote the ideas of Jonathan Swift re children of the poor? Perhaps apply them to all those older people living the high life on their state pensions and living far too long apparently.

There are now huge numbers of state employees whose pensions are payable at state pension age. So raising that means keeping teachers and NHS staff working past 67. I'm already struggling to think how the hell I'd be working in my role at 67 and trying to make plans to step down/move sideways/ work less prior to that. But there's no way education and health will be able to accommodate all the staff that would like to work less/in a less stressful role for the final 8-10 years of their working life. And yet most people will need an income and won't be able to stop work prior to their pension kicking in. ..I predict trouble ahead ...

Where?

Yes it did 🤷🏻‍♀️😂

My post made no reference to what retirement was like in 1909.

It’s more sexist that women had less pension provision due to sexism in the workplace and society.

Why does what retirement was like in 1909 have any bearing on anything? Rape and battery of wives was legal too.

No it really wasn’t rare amongst boomers at all. My
parents and in-laws were both in this bracket.

The Waspi women were truly shafted.

In 1909 retirees hadn’t been paying a lifetime of National Insurance contributions.

Yes most people died in horrible poverty before getting a pension.

And children (except for the rich) left school and started work at 12 years old.

You want to go backwards and lose all the progress made in obtaining a fairer more civilised society?

There needs to be provision for people of that age. I don’t think I could be in teaching as a full turn employee in my 60s (I’m PT but still do all directed hours) but I could manage tutoring. Trouble is whether there is the flexibility for that or whether you are stemmed unemployable after a certain age.

Bloody hell, don’t say that. When I’m 60 my kids will only will be early 20s. Although they will be recipients of my pension, life insurance and house. The next generation maybe better off!

OP what you described matches my own experience. I think the Govt rhetoric doesn't match the on-the-ground reality and there is still a lot of age discrimination out there. The result will be that we'll have to live off any private pensions to bridge the gap until the state pension arrives.
Plus the bald fact is that there is a lot of ill-health which makes it difficult or impossible for many in their 60s to work.

1909 the UK state retirement age was 70 & it was means tested

A state pension age of 60 had become
unsustainable & was sexist !

With advances in medecine, better working conditions, health & safety regulations, people on average are living longer

If you do not agree with state pension at 66, 67, 68+
What do you propose ?