To be fed up with the WASPIs' renewed campaign?

I agree. In my lifetime I have narrowly missed out on things that previous generations benefitted from. The full student grant ended the year before I started uni, this was also the year after they stopped students being allowed to claim unemployment benefits in the summer holidays. MIRAS ended just after I bought my first flat. Married Couples allowance stopped the year I got married. There was a £500 payment in pregnancy that I missed by weeks. Child Benefit rules changed when my daughter was 2. Free childcare was introduced in the year my daughter left nursery. I became a higher rate tax payer the same year ScotGov decided we should pay more than our English counterparts.

I don’t see why I should complain about any of this, because it is all about protecting the future economy for the next generations, living within our means, and with each change, I have simply understood more that my financial future cannot rely on the government. I’ve had opportunities previously denied to women, and understand the privileged situation I am in, that it’s my responsibility to give something back, not to insist on taking just because I feel it’s owed to me.

Once the state pension was introduced it should always been the policy that the age for it would rise as life expectancy increased.

After a cancer battle my mum was able to retire at 60. This was back in 2006 a friend of hers she worked with was a few months younger than her and wasn’t able to retire for a few more years. Just because of when she was born.

My mum died in 2007 after her cancer returned. She would be spinning in her grave if she knew this campaign was still happening. So yeah damm right they have the right to campaign.

but I still don’t make the connection being to be ‘owed’ anything. My mum is 10 years old than you and was always planning and looking at finances and working out how she was going to provide for the future. When she found out about the change in the 1990s she changed her plans accordingly. She is honestly baffled by the fact she would be owed anything. It was just one of those things. She doesn’t feel robbed just as when NI went up by a % a few years ago we all had to take on the chin even though we’re paying more than the generation before.

But what difference did it make, though? We all realised that things were getting tougher and we’d have to work longer and longer.

My friends and I used to say that the way things were going, we’d never retire. And, as far as I’m concerned, that really is the point. Young people today have decades of warning that they’re going to have to work into their dotage. That notice makes no difference to them because the reality is: they just have to keep working.

Forget the rights and wrongs no government of any party is going to spend billions on this and the idea they have some kind of electoral clout is laughable.

It’s the sense of grievance that stops the heart from rusting over

Don't forget about the multiple endowment and pension selling scandals and company pension losses though. Many feared that paying into a pension was a high risk strategy. It is only over the past 20 or so years that the pensions industry has managed to build more trust. I think most today trust that their private or company pension contributions will not disappear but that was not the case for people with earlier working lives.
https://citywire.com/funds-insider/news/10-pensions-scandals-the-ghosts-of-past-present-and-future/a457227
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/jun/21/financial-advisers-scandals
https://www.nestinsight.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pension-Reforms-in-the-UK-1997-to-2015.pdf

I’m a 1954 WASPI and I and all my friends knew exactly what was going to happen and when. Can’t say I liked it, but the women who say they weren’t notified are just embarrassing themselves by their ignorance.

Actually, I correct myself. Before ISAs there were TESSAs and I never understood what was wrong with Tessa’s and why they had to be replaced.

You didn't pay for your pension, you paid for your parents. The change was announced for years in advance.

I understand your logic and reasoning but I also think that you’re being a little emotionally unfair. For people who were earning not very much, it was a completely different financial landscape even in the mid 90s. Although, incidentally, I am sure that the changes to the pension age had been talked about for sometime before then.

Anyway, come back to the point: it just wasn’t within the usual practice of most working people, earning the average salary or less, to think about making financial provision for themselves as we do now. Remember that ISAs were introduced a few years later and it did take time for them to catch on. For many years a basic pension had been just about enough to live on and that was the idea of it. It was enough to give you subsistence.

Today there’s a much bigger financial market than there was and it’s much easier to find financial advice and there are High Street products you can get. Finance planning is a far more normal part of everyday life.

In my view, the biggest change came in --was it 2008? - when employers had to introduce an occupational pension. That was a very good idea and it made a huge difference.

So, whilst I do think women knew of the change to the age at which they could draw state pension, and it was very well advertised, your average person who earned enough to get by would not at that time have considered buying a financial product, wouldn’t have had a clue how to and would probably have felt quite out of place in trying to do that. Having said that, I accept that the gas privatisation in the 80s and the “tell Sid” and the “tell said he owns it already” campaigns did bring shareholding into everyday conversation.

i think maybe the WASPI women should concentrate on the rise from 65 to 66 years in pension age. They may stand more of a chance of winning. This rise from 65 to 66 was brought in in less than 10 years notice. It is now a Bernie t rile that everyone should have at least 10 years notice of any rise in the pension age to give them chance to save up.

You don’t see the men demanding compensation - the ones who had to work five more years than their wives or female colleagues before getting the state pension! That was always an injustice.

I think people don't realise how short the notice of the second change was for some. I was born in 1953 so yes the notice was short. I'm not asking for compensation and I feel like it's ancient history now but I do think the short notice of the second change was hard on some, I was lucky as I was fit and healthy with a job I enjoyed but I realise it was tough for some. However, it was years ago and we need to move on.

Where did I defend it?

If you want your particular case addressed, take your ex employer to court. Better still, get a whole bunch of women and start a class action. The point is, you have a very good chance of winning now there is case law to support it. Compensation is being paid out. Were you a member of a union? Are you active in the WASPI campaign?

Or, more likely you won’t do anything other than moan about it on the Internet, stamp your feet about what you are entitled to and expect the government to cough up compensation which you would no doubt gladly accept.

It's only a discussion nothing more than that. Why be rude to another poster?
The workers that are working now are paying your pension now just as you were paying into pensions for pensioners when you were working. I'm paying into the system gor yours and others pensions, my kids will be paying mine.
It's quite straight forward.

Personal Pensions were introduced to the U.K. in 1987. There were so many high profile stories about pensions in the following years, I find it hard to believe anyone was unaware that it was possible to start a personal pension.

The pensions act in 1995 gave an advisory that companies should provide access to a group personal pension to all employees and this was made mandatory in 2001 with a minimum employer contribution of 3%. A person on the average salary would have a pension pot of 50k over that 20 year period, which would give a monthly pension payout similar to around half the state pension. If that person also contributed the same amount, they’d match the state pension. 3% isn’t much in a month for someone on the average wage.

It isn’t that women couldn’t build up a pension, it’s that they didn’t. That’s on them.

They need to stop buying avocados.

Youth today.

I’m not a WASPI woman. My pension age is 67. I started full time work (post degree) in 1986. Pension age was 60 then as the increase was announced in 1995. By your argument I should have been able to get mine at 60 too. It didn’t actually start to change until much later either - 2010 if I recall correctly. I knew all about it and while not delighted, it was clear it needed to happen. The increase to 67 happened in the mid noughties, so I’d been working a good long time - almost 10 years expecting to get it at 60 and then another almost 10 expecting 65. But you contend the government shouldn’t have been able to change it?

Each generation could find things they feel are ‘unfair’! Is it fair that as a woman I got 12 weeks mat leave when if id been born a few years later, I’d have got 6 months? Or later again and I’d have got a year? And what about those of us who paid full childcare fees? We don’t get compensated just because now people get 30 hours a week free, funded by tax payers (and I’m still one!) I’m fully paid with NI contributions - but I still have to pay out because I still work. And what about my dh - is it fair that he had to go back to work the day after each of our babies were born, when now he’d get paid time off?

where there were clear, systemic injustices (such as women not earning the same as men for the same job) there is rightly legislation which addressed that. But the different challenges which face each generation are just part of life.

The WASPI women are being ridiculous. The thinly veiled excuse that they ‘didn’t know’ information which was widely publicised is disingenuous - the reality is that they just wanted to get state pension at 60. In many cases, they’d already had years out of the workplace, or were only working part time, often funded by husbands working full time who were never going to get their pension until 65 anyway! The irony!

and no, I don’t believe Mumsnet ‘hates women.’ The reality is that many of us don’t see women as helpless and incapable of working, taking financial responsibility or keeping ourselves informed about important issues.

Nail on the head.

Me too. Baffled. I knew and it's honestly something I don't pay much attention to.

Yep. I honestly don’t know how women who have in total worked for about 20 full time years expect to use public services all their lives, draw a pension for 25 years from the age of 60 and argue for that by saying they’ve ‘paid their stamp’

I think you're being unfair with your comments about iPhones and back pats

I started full-time work at 15 so yes we could stand on our own two feet as there were jobs to be had at the time. Seems unbelievable now that at 15/16 you could get a clerical job in a high street bank, shipping office, construction company, whatever, right out of school!

Younger people will never have the security we had with the ability and ease to buy our own property. In 1978, aged 24, we paid £20,000 for a 2-bedroom flat in Chiswick!

No matter how high interest rates were at times it was always do-able, unless you'd been reckless in over-borrowing or were made redundant etc. Younger people have plenty to squawk about