WASPI Women - getting compensated

There were no fixed mortgages, every single mortgage fluctuated in tandem with the interest rates. Hence half the country nearly being sick on its shoes on Black Wednesday.

If the state retirement age was 60, why would you not expect to retire then? You are just being silly now.

Yes, and me. All those saying that we should have all been checking online for years don’t seem to understand that organisations and customers weren’t online decades ago. 🙄

But, the point is now is that a court has decided procedures weren’t followed properly, and after the fiasco of the WFP, the government are trying to persuade pensioners to vote for them in the future. As the Tories did. 🤷‍♀️

I don’t know it anything will be paid. If it is, it’ll be a bonus. If it isn’t, then ok.

The high interest rates didn’t last that long and surely everyone wasn’t affected by it. Some people will have had a mortgage in place and that would have just continued. Plus 10-15% on a mortgage of £40k or £50k really isn’t that much anyway. Quite different to if it was £290k (average house price in England in 2025 is about £300k)

I also find it easy to believe that there were women who were informed and who planned responsibly for their retirement, but who were significantly and disproportionately disadvantaged by the accelerated timetable brought in at a time when they were already close to retirement, when there was simply not enough time left for them to put any new plans in place.

That’s the category I fall into. I had literally two years notice that my pension age was increasing by three years. I might have dreamed this but I seem to remember that as a result of the 2011 debacle future pension changes must now legally have to give those affected ten years’ notice.

If the state retirement age was 60, why would you not expect to retire then? You are just being silly now.

Yes they are figments of your imagination. For example, interest rates weren’t in fact 14% in the 80s: they reached that level in 1990 for a very short period after the exit from the ERM. Inflation in the 1970s was actually good for the working population: it raised wages and eroded mortgage debt very quickly, leading to higher home and asset price ownership across the population. Childcare subsidies? You are laughing? My DD’s childcare cost 1500 a month and the “free” hours were equivalent to about £100 of that. And she did’t even go to nursery full time! (10 years ago).

Some people miss out on free nursery hours because their kid turns 9 months on the 2nd of April and they only get hours from the September term - where I live that's worth over £6.5k in post-tax nursery fee savings.

Cliff edges are stupid in many cases although I cannot see a way you could practically avoid cliff edges entirely if you are trying to gradually increase the age. How would you have done it?

We hear you. No generation has ever had it worse than yours and the wars, 14% interest rates of the 80s, rampant inflation of the 70s and rubbish maternity entitlements and no childcare subsidies of the 90s are just figments of our imagination 🙄

You only had 7 years added to your working life if you mistakenly thought you had some kind of absolute right to retire at 60! Whereas I have never thought I had a right to retire at 65 anyway.

The state pension is a benefit like any other, and the government of the day can change that as they wish! If you didn’t realise that, that’s on you.

catontheironingboard

youve had 3 years added to your working life before state pension

Ive had 7 years added to mine - but I’ve had over 2 decades to plan for that and easy accessible information on internet. Also without further changes. Though those born in 1971 are looking at possibly 10 years change within their 4 faces of working life

youve had 4 decades to plan for those 3 years, you’ve not been sacked for being pregnant without it being illegal

When the women who born in the 50sbegsn their working licence was very difffernt , someone born in 1950 would have most likely begun working in 1966. At that time no equal pay, less protection and a world where when women had children most gave up work. They would have Nolan’s for a retirement at 65 as the law was different the , expectations and societal norms were different. The change in the retirement age has impact all and there needs to be a cutoff but given the time frame I believe the waspi women should be compensated. In addition Labour promised this before they came to power.

Are we meant to be shocked at the idea of missing out on four months worth of pension payments? My retirement age got bumped up from 65 to 68. Why is missing out on four months of pension payments so awful? You had to work for FOUR MORE MONTHS?!?! 😮

Houses in my town have more than quintupled in real terms since 2001. Where’s my compensation for the extra £500k I’m owed for not being able to buy a house before it got expensive? University grants were phased out just before I started university. Where’s my compensatory £5k that I unfairly missed out on? At work the final salary pension scheme closed a month before I joined it. Why don’t I get a payout?

I find it somewhat ironic that posters here are castigating Waspi women for not knowing something that was readily available, whilst at the same time displaying a lack of knowledge about the different categories of Waspi women, the nature and timing of the changes made, and the content of the Ombudsman's report, all of which are currently readily available.

There also seems to be a lack of understanding about what information was actually available back then. There was no going online to check your pension forecast. There was only write in, wait for someone to reply, and hope that the reply when it finally arrived was accurate. There was no way you could check it for yourself without a deep understanding of how the system worked.

I find it easy to believe that there were women who were not fully informed through no fault of their own. Knowing that changes are happening is not the same as fully understanding how they are going to affect you personally. The previous State pension system was horrendously complex (indeed, this is one of the reasons it was scrapped). It's hard to appreciate just how complex, but my personal experience is that I was completely unable to work out how my pension was adjusted after my husband's death because it involved knowing how his pension had been made up, which wasn't information that simply wasn't available to me because it was his pension and not mine. It took me two letters (the first of which never received a reply) and three phone calls to track down someone capable of explaining how his age, his pension contributions, and the contracted out element of his pension resulted in a figure which was then not directly payable to me but instead added to my pension entitlement, meaning that it was then further affected by the contracted out element of my own pension. I am reasonably financially astute and computer literate and there was no way I could have worked that out for myself even in this information age.

I also find it easy to believe that there were women who were informed and who planned responsibly for their retirement, but who were significantly and disproportionately disadvantaged by the accelerated timetable brought in at a time when they were already close to retirement, when there was simply not enough time left for them to put any new plans in place.

I don't think the Waspi campaign has done anyone any favours by calling for compensation for all women affected in any way, but that doesn't detract from the fact that many women were badly treated and deserve compensation.

It’s probably some legal issue that they can’t just put to bed. Thank god people are able to have a voice and protect themselves when governments make changes. If you want to moan at the government, moan at them for not taxing the multimillionaires, why concentrate your annoyance on women that were approaching retirement then found out the goal posts had shifted massively for them. Women always hate on women don’t they?

Some people miss out on free nursery hours because their kid turns 9 months on the 2nd of April and they only get hours from the September term - where I live that's worth over £6.5k in post-tax nursery fee savings.

Cliff edges are stupid in many cases although I cannot see a way you could practically avoid cliff edges entirely if you are trying to gradually increase the age. How would you have done it?

There was a second change in 2011. That resulted in a spectrum of differing retirement ages for a tranche of 1950s women with incredibly unfair cliff edges. I missed out on four months pension payments because I was born eight hours too late!

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f02e640f0b62305b84929/spa-timetable.pdf

Are we meant to be shocked at the idea of missing out on four months worth of pension payments? My retirement age got bumped up from 65 to 68. Why is missing out on four months of pension payments so awful? You had to work for FOUR MORE MONTHS?!?! 😮

Houses in my town have more than quintupled in real terms since 2001. Where’s my compensation for the extra £500k I’m owed for not being able to buy a house before it got expensive? University grants were phased out just before I started university. Where’s my compensatory £5k that I unfairly missed out on? At work the final salary pension scheme closed a month before I joined it. Why don’t I get a payout?