To be fed up with the WASPIs' renewed campaign?

Ha! I know they’re linked to rank and years’ service so aside from the minority on good salaries; they aren’t that high. Although of course, what defines a high pension is subjective to the extent that people are likely to compare with their own situation. And of course any occupational pension is conditional to actually being employed in that occupation. The armed services is not something many people want to go into (look at the current recruitment difficulties) so imo they deserve the pension they get

You don’t think they’re that big? You really haven’t heard about them, have you?

Eh? I know they’re non-contributory but I wouldn’t imagine they’re that big apart from the minority of people in very high rank positions.

occupational pensions are a totally different kettle of fish from the state pension though

Wait until you hear about armed forces pensions …

Obviously going back to NI and pensions origins pre 1925 people didn't get it until 70 years old. It was literally to prevent people too old to.work dying of starvation.

That’s certainly an example of why the system needs reforming if people who worked part time were able to accumulate credits to give them the same state pension as someone who’d fully paid their NI contributions.

Public sector workers in defined benefits schemes are different because they’ll have paid a proportion of their salary as well as their NI contributions to get their occupational pension. To end up with a good occupational pension they’ll have likely been working full time and paying a pretty big amount, maybe 10% or more of their salary into it every month.

Ironically, NIC and state pension rules are pretty good for low earners as they can accumulate "credits" for state pension etc without paying any NIC if they earn below the thresholds.

I've quite a few clients who were low paid (mostly part timers) for most of their life, and actually have higher pension incomes than their average wages (adjusted for inflation etc) because of these rules for accumulating credits. Some basically got a "pay rise" the moment they retired, who'd previously worked part time (earning under state pension amounts) but then got full state pension. The position is even better for those, like part time NHS/school workers who also get a final salary public sector pension scheme and state pension.

And, of course, initially NIC was a fixed weekly amount (known as the stamp) regardless of your income/earnings, but over the years it became effectively a tax, variable according to earnings, which initially meant variable state pension too (graduated state pension, SERPS, S2P etc) which in turn were scrapped, and we've now got a scenario where your earnings (and NIC paid) is not linked to the amount of state pension. It's all been a big mess for decades that successive politicians have messed around with to raise tax revenue rather than raise income tax.

Misinformation isn't a good thing. Other people read forums like this and especially with tax matters, the detail really matters. You and me may know what you meant, but other readers may not have done. Some estimates suggest that 2.5 million pensioners may have a state pension alone that exceeds the annual tax free personal allowance.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/citizenship-and-the-origins-of-national-insurance/

This explains why older people see it as a form of social contract. I think it’s time for a overhaul as things have changed so much.

Paying national insurance entitled (and still entitles) you to certain benefits but it was never a pension or insurance in the generally accepted use of the term was it? I mean if it was then a lot of low earners would be bitterly disppointed with what thet got out. I assume it was called that to make the introduction of payments more politically acceptable.

To be clear from the outset I am not a supporter of the WASPI women, I am in that cohort myself and we knew all about the first change years in advance.
I do think there’s confusion though when people say pensions are a general benefit and NI is the same as general taxation. NI was sold to earlier generations as exactly what it says, an insurance scheme which you pay into which specifically covered sickness, unemployment and old age pensions.
The government then started using it for other things such as NHS rather than raising income tax so it got confused and more changes confused the purpose of NI further.
I know that there is no pot and the current generation pay for pensions but the concept of National Insurance is why some people are saying that they paid in.
It isn’t entitlement, they believe that they paid into an insurance scheme that would pay out when they retired.
It does make sense that the age for payment would increase as life span increases. Sadly healthy life span is different and a proportion of people over 70 are not fit enough to work in anything requiring physical activity.

Are pensions the only benefit you have to have paid a certain amount of NI to get and which count towards your taxable allowance?
Why are they so begrudged? Genuine question

I thought it was perfectly obvious that I meant the state pension that most people get.

Same. I genuinely don’t understand how they didn’t know.

Not strictly true. There are people for whom the state pension exceeds the personal allowance. I've got a client whose state pension is over £15k. You presumably mean the "basic" state pension, without the various add-ons that some older people qualify for, i.e. old graduated pension, etc.

Your children may all have good jobs and houses. Many more work hard and have little hope of one if not both, because the job market is terrible, student debt is at insane levels, and there's no recourse to the Bank of Mum and Dad that better off families can offer. (If you are in a position that you could hand off your state pension to your godchildren, I'm not surprised that you aren't familiar with this, but still.)

What this means is that fewer people are having children - would you if your rent is 50% of your income and you would have to move your family at two months' notice at any point? - and those who are are having fewer of them as space and childcare is so expensive, as well as the difficulties of being a working parent. And that means that by the time I hit retirement age, there'll be fewer working adults in the UK to pay my state pension for me.

Paying NI and taxes all my working life doesn't entitle me to full Universal Credit or housing benefit if I lose my job, because I have savings. Regardless of whether the taxes I paid every month were higher than the amount that would be paid to me. If the cost of the state pension gets out of control, it may well be means-tested like other state benefits.

Point 1 - if you have paid NI all your life, you should be able to get your due Pension, it doesn't matter whether you have some savings, you have paid in and it's FAIR. You could choose to hand it on to your children if you wanted to.

Point 2 - if you have paid all your working life for Pensioners, then when you yourself reach Pension age it's only fair that the younger people pay for you.

Point 3 - so what?

Point 4 - I have 2 children and 8 Godchildren, age ranges are 21 to 29 - they all have good jobs and houses. And if they didn't, and they needed some help - see Point 1.

I disagree - not everyone on MN is middle class and advantaged.

And at the end of the day, you can take a group of people who start off with the same set of circumstances/ challenges and they won’t all have the same outcomes, because people make different decisions and take different approaches to circumstances.

And the reality is that many of us know women in the WASPI age group and it’s simply not true that they were all as a group disadvantaged in the same way or unable to access widely available information.

I know two WASPI women very well (alongside others who I’d describe as acquaintances.) The two who are most vociferous about feeling ‘cheated’ actually worked for a relatively small proportion of their adult lives. Both had more than a decade out of the workplace and neither of them ever returned to full time work after having kids. One worked in a 0.5 role and the other 3 days a week. This was after their offspring had reached adulthood. It was a choice. It’s so ironic that they are complaining about the state pension changes when they’ve had every opportunity to earn more and save more but made a different choice.

I’m not saying that’s the same for all WASPI women - I’ve already said that those just the ‘wrong’ side of the cut off are going to be most impacted, and it’s obviously disappointing for all of us who just miss out on something by a few months or years - whether that’s longer maternity leave, subsidised childcare or a lower pensionable age. But that’s life. Policies change in response to circumstances.

People would have more sympathy if the campaign targeted the very small number of women who were most affected (though even then, I disagree there’s a case for giving them a payout.) But the campaign has become a case of people jumping on the bandwagon and just being aggrieved that they don’t get to draw a pension at 60 - even though ironically many of these women never worked anything like a full time career.

My post was simply in response to those who have posted to say that the women affected should have taken out private pensions. Nowhere have I said that the information about the changes wasn't available. I'm saying that even if they knew about the change, only a small minority of people would have been in a position to know about, and have the spare money to spend on, private pensions.

Again, many of my colleagues of my age had been on minimum wage for most of their lives and would neither have the information, the financial savvy, or more importantly, the spare money each month.

MN is so middle class that everyone's focusing on those who are educated, comfortably off and 'should have done something about it'. But outside the Mumsnet bubble is another world of people who simply don't have those advantages, and back then didn't have access to financial information. And they're the people who are struggling because of those changes.

Fortunately I'm one of the fortunate ones, and I'm focused on helping my kids who have a whole different set of challenges.

But the information has been very accessible and in the public domain for literally decades.

im not a youngster: I’m not very much younger than the WASPI women. I spent the first decade or so in the workplace with the ‘expectation’ that I would be eligible for the state pension at 60. It was subsequently equalised to be 65, same as men, quite rightly, and I’m actually not eligible until 67. These changes were all necessary because of affordability and changes in life expectancy

of course it was much harder in the pre internet age to access information. My generation all lived through this era. The fact that society evolves and technology develops applies to us all.

The fact remains that everyone is impacted by the changes to state pension. The men who are the same age as the WASPIS aren’t getting their pensions any earlier!

As with any change, there will always be people just the ‘wrong’ side of the cut off point who will be impacted more - but that’s inevitable. Applies to everything. I missed out on 6 months maternity leave. I missed out on free childcare hours. It doesn’t mean I expect to be compensated for the thousands of pounds I could have saved. And later on, People who were eligible for only 15 hours of free care might feel a bit disgruntled that nowadays it’s increased to 30!

people keep pointing out that there are upsides and downsides to being born into any generation. And with any changes to policy, some people will inevitably be impacted more than others because cut off points have to fall somewhere.

There was a pension mis selling scandal in the 1980s/90s which probably put many people off taking them up. Nurses and teachers were particularly targeted by salesmen on commission.

https://pensionjustice.co.uk/pension-mis-selling-1990s/

All if this. Back then, the average woman (and man) in the street did not have the kind of access to financial information and financial products that we have now. It just wasn't a thing. Investing and private pensions were for wealthy people.

The internet wasn't available for us to have information at our hands, and what we did tend to hear about private pensions was when they went wrong. A lot of people lost money when they started dipping their toes into making their own pension arrangements.

I was a teacher, and there was a scheme at one point to make extra payments into a private scheme. It was disastrous and I was very glad that I hadn't paid into it (I couldn't afford to say the time) and my friend who did all lost money.

So basically we didn't have the financial information or access to it back then that younger people on this board take for granted. And I was educated and middle class. Those who need the money most, now, will be those who were on minimum wage and probably didn't have a background (or the income) that would have enabled then to make their own pension investments.

I must admit I don't quite follow the argument that 'We had to fight hard for equality...so it's utterly dreadful that we've now been given it in respect of the state pension'.

These threads are always exhausting though. There is certainly a debate to be had over the manner in which the state pensions increases were brought in, but what we instead get is every example of sex (in)equality over the last 70+ years being given an airing and litigated via anecdote.

I don't understand why pensioners are so reviled on MN.
They have worked for decades and paid NI with the expectation of a pension at the end and MNetters seem to think that is utterly unreasonable and greedy.
Yet criticise UC claimants who have not worked and paid NI and you are accused of 'benefit bashing'.
The fact that the critics will get a pension themselves seems to pass them by too.
It is always stated on threads like this with grave conviction that today's workers will not get a pension at all, with no evidence whatsoever to back this up, yet at the same time, pps say no government would even dare tamper with the triple lock.
Just because pensions make up the biggest part of benefit spending atm does not mean the recipients are fair game. As a group, they are the onky 'benefits claimants' who have paid for their money at all.
And before it's pointed out, i know all about net contributors, no pot with my name on and the myriad of other things used to justify pensioner hate on MN

Edited to add: don't support the Waspis though. I think they may have a case regarding the amount of notice they got in some cases, but campaigning for compensation is tone deaf atm