To be fed up with the WASPIs' renewed campaign?

So much for people taking more than they put in:

Furthermore, the National Insurance Fund has a growing surplus, due to paying price-linked benefits while collecting earnings-linked contributions. By March 2006 the surplus is projected to be £34.6bn, of which £25bn can be treated as usable surplus, above the reserve which must be kept for prudential reasons. If current policies continue, the surplus in the fund will be about £60bn by 2009. This is a convenient extra source of revenue for the Treasury, but it could fund better pensions. Income to the NI fund could be further increased by raising or abolishing the Upper Earnings Limit on contributions to the State Second Pension.

Good find @MikeRafone.

I'm sure that when the Waspi thing started, the focus was on the 2011 changes. So I too find it odd that this time round, they're focusing on the earlier changes which they have less justification for challenging.

I’m in the waspi range, not expecting a penny to be honest. Well pissed off, my really lovely sister in law who never worked but is a little older than me, got pension at 60, yet l who always worked had to wait until 66.

Quite.

ive already said upthread that I’m only just a tad younger than the WASPI women. My ‘expected’ state pension age for at least the first decade that I was in the workplace was 60. I’m pretty sure even as a youngster in my first job I grasped that it was bizarre that it wasn’t the same as men’s state pension age. Women were fighting for equality so why would any of us expect our pensionable age to be 5 years younger? It’s so disingenuous when these WASPI women bang on about ‘6 or 7 years of pension being stolen from them’ - it’s rubbish.

I wasn’t in the least bit surprised when the pensionable age was equalised. And of course the more recent raises have affected everyone - men and women. My pensionable age is now 67. Nothing has been stolen from me. I have the common sense to understand the simple economics of affordability.

I still work. My NI contributions are fully paid up so I don’t stand to personally benefit from continuing to pay in but again, I understand how it works. I’m not paying into some ‘personal pot.’

The grasping, individualistic attitude of the WASPI campaign has done them no favours. Particularly (and I accept this is on an anecdotal level but it’s a fair point) some these women had taken years out of the workplace or years working part time, and were disgruntled mostly about just not really wanting to go to work rather than a genuine belief that they were ‘owed’ money. Of the WASPI women i know, that’s the case. A fraction older than me. The maternity rights, childcare provision etc was exactly the same for me as it was for them - ie: really bloody tough! But some of us got on with going to work and taking personal responsibility financially rather than whinging.

That's life expectancy at birth - if you live to 65, your life expectancy is mid-late 80s: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/bulletins/nationallifetablesunitedkingdom/2022to2024#life-expectancy-at-older-ages

And almost all of this is utterly irrelevant to the question in hand. However good, or bad, their working conditions were, or happy or otherwise their marriages were, all they had to do was work a few more years til they could draw their pension. Plenty of unhappily married or single people today working with poor pay and conditions who will have to work longer.

I'm 38. I'm fully expecting to reach retirement age only for the government to suddenly say "sorry, starting today we are taking away the state pension. Soz."

But I dont begrudge these women their moment.

Why do you think you are "owed" anything? I'm not in the UK and was born in 1959. When I started work the superannuation age was 60, by the time I retired it was 65 - so what? I never took any notice of what anyone else was being paid, but of course men here also usually were paid more - so what? I only cared about what I was being paid, not anyone else, and no we didn't pay into private superannuation schemes when I was young either. However, unlike you, I have never felt I am "owed" anything.

"No-one ever told me the goalposts had changed re. the retirement age, there were no adverts I ever saw and this idea that we all had letters ??"

I'm not sure anyone can justify billions in compensation to people that are bad at "adulting" or the "mental load" of retirement planning.

Life expectancy is 81(ish) so why would it need to be 71 or 72 if it's based on 15 years?

That is the assumption used by insurance companies and pension providers, not the State pension.

Exactly. PMSL that poster thinks 50 years working is some kind of shocking number - EVERYONE entering the workplace now will be working for at least 50 years until retirement age. And that’s assuming that retirement age doesn’t get pushed back even further, or get abolished altogether.

I fully expect to still be paying for that poster’s pension well into my 70s, a good decade older than she was when she was able to put her feet up.

Most companies don't have to be open about what they pay- how would you know you weren't being paid less- if no one flauted the rules Birmingham Cuncil wouldn't have paid dinnerladies less than men of the same grade for 25 years (up until about 2017)
and the court case and disparity in pay cost them millions- it bankrupted the council, look it up.
Any law is only any good if it is policed- like the majority of laws this one isn't. In the 1980's I got paid less than two thirds what my male opposite number was paid- they just gave him a slightly different and it was perfectly legal- it will still go on to a lesser extent to this day- if you don't realise that you are being incredibly naive.

You could still be legally sacked for getting pregnant until the 1990s and it was happening.