To be fed up with the WASPIs' renewed campaign?

Sorry, I make it 34 too.

I’m the last person you’ll find disputing that it was atrociously and unfairly executed. I’m right at one of the cut off points - if I’d been born eight hours earlier I’d have got my pension four months sooner.

Whatever the arguments for and against;

Point 1 No benefit should ever be universal regardless of the wealth of the individual.
Point 2 No-one ever pays into "their" govt pension. You are paying the people who are retired today. When you look at the demographic timebomb of the workers to retired ratio you realise what nonsense the whole system is. Quite literally the definition of a Ponzi scheme and they never end well.
Point 3 The government every year spends more than it takes in tax, so to add more to that spending will add more to the debt which is being kicked onto our children and grandchildren.
Point 4 The generation this debt is being forced onto can't afford a house, AI is taking their jobs, they have student loans up the wazoo.

So in summary put your begging bowls away, there ain't any money left.

When I started teaching in 2000 everyone was retiring at 55. My retirement age was 60 when I was 21. I have had changes - including TPS being tied to state pension age. To be completely controversial are the late 70’s women the new Waspis as we now need to retire at 68?

When I first started work it was commonly expected that my cohort would retire at 55 , courtesy of early retirement , job pension , endowment payments etc .

I remember well the outrage when men’s and women’s pension ages were equalised . What I remember most is that the MP who represented Gowan (in Glasgow) said the whole pension debate was immaterial for men in his constituency where average life expectancy means that most will die before pension age . This is still true today where average life expectancy for men is 65.8 in Gowan .

It seemed perfectly fair that pension ages were equalised and long overdue.

Likewise as population has aged and pension bill has increased it has meant that pension age has increased . This is yet another bill which our children and grandchildren will have to pay.

Personally I have not been well enough to work in my main job until 67 but can see why age has been raised and had made provisions for increased working age as finances allowed and as the benefits I thought I was going to get from pensions disappeared.

I find it difficult to see the justification for compensation for pension changes that were discussed, well advertised, necessary and made up for unfairness in the system for men who have always had a shorter life span but had to work 5 years longer. Particularly as the cohort of people this affected had many welfare , housing , health and social benefits that are no longer available let alone better final salary pension arrangements for those with private pensions .

Just as many of my parents generation had early retirements , large endowment pay outs etc that my generation didn’t , we have had many benefits that the
next generation haven’t had .

With this background it’s difficult to have much sympathy for WASPI claims for compensation.

I'm born early 60s and of course started work with the 'expectation' that I'd retire at 60. The age was repeatedly increased well into my adult life. It really did have to be levelled up with men, was unsustainable at 65 and while I feel sympathy with the 53/54 cohort of women, I have friends in that exact demographic who managed fine, who despite being 'Waspi', worked, had private pensions and paid their NI. I don't recognise the world that some are describing although I was seemingly part of it.

Once said that if you claim not to know about all this happening you'd have needed to be living under a rock on Mars and that very much irritates me about their campaign.

OIh and for @notateenietiny , 40 + years NI in . Stop crowing over the young, they're the ones paying your State Pension and have challenges of their own.

Workplace are private pensions not state ones

Im really being dumb this afternoon - where have I mentioned private pensions? not being funny im struggling and have re read it but can't see it?

Do you want a refund because you don’t live close enough to a station to get full use of a senior railcard??

It’s a difficult one and I can see both sides. Like many others on here I expected to retire at 60 when I started work. Then the pension age was raised so both men and women retired at 65. That is ok as why should we retire before men can. But then it started changing again - some can retire at 66 but as I’m 65 in August I have to wait until my 67th birthday to be eligible. That’s fine if you are fit and well but if you are unlucky enough to get cancer or be disabled and in pain then it can be very difficult to keep working. Both of those happened to me since I became 60 and I’m lucky in that I am able to get PIP but I really like to see some sort of scheme where once you get to say 63 or even 65 you can claim your state pension on medical grounds if a doctor is willing to certify that you genuinely can’t work.

Prescriptions yes , but a rail card , yes at a cost but as I live in a fairly remote place , a rail card is not something I would really need for day to day living and my nearest station is 30 miles away .

But private pensions are not the problem surely?

the issue is people had planned their finances to retire at 60 and were taken aback that they had to work 5 more years.

Some people missed the info and so were pushed to retire at 65 say and had not realised the change and were completely shocked when they got to 59 that no state pension was available at the time. There was one woman I read about who literally ‘retired’ at 60 and went to claim her pension and was gobsmacked she didn’t have an income and wouldn’t be getting anything for many years. She felt it was unfair as she was (somehow) completely in the dark that she couldn’t retire at 60.

there are other women who know about the change but just felt it was unfair they had to work longer. You could argue working longer gave them 5 years more to invest in a private pension anyway so helped them plan more for retirement. I can see how you would be upset if you were a month off the change and had to work 2 more years as a result. Someone is always going to be the cut off. Bit like tuition fees. Someone was born on the last date they were zero and then the next day someone was born and they were liable to pay. I’d be annoyed if I was on the cut off so I totally get it but ultimately people complaining that they had to work to 65 when they were told at 35 doesn’t get much sympathy.

im acting dumb this afternoon - sorry

Yes so weirdly aggressive! Why am I an oik? How rude. FWIW I’ve paid in for about 32 years. High earner for most of it so possibly a net contributor. Dh and I often say how we had it easy compared to this generation. Minimal student loans. Graduated into a booming economy (early 2000s). Lots of graduate jobs. We have nothing to moan about.

Really? You’re going to have to count that out for me because I can’t see it. Every time I take 1961 from 1995 it comes out at 34!

The changes were announced in 1995 - if you were born in 1961 you would have been 44 at the time not 35

The life expectancy of the ‘baby boomer generation’ is 79-83.
The life expectancy of the silent generation (1925-1945) is 74-80.
So, as I said, the baby boomer post ww2 generation are the first generation to leave their offspring with shorter life expectancy and poorer.

Everyone gets affected by changes in government policy. It’s annoying but the consequence of having a ridiculously large population for the size of country we have

To have changes in policy is part isn't the actual problem, it was the way that this has been completed which put some woman at a disadvantage without the ability to make those changes as time had passed.

If you were born in 1954 you would start work on average in 1968, without the ability to have a work pension, without maternity pay and the prospect of being sacked/let go when you got married or pregnant and not being paid the same wage as a male counterpart. All those factors in a job would affect the ability to pay into a pension and make provision. If you returned to work in 1994 at 40 years old you would then have equal pay and the right to have a workplace pension - but by now you'd have to pay much more into a pension at 40 years old to have the same affect as paying into a pension at 20 years old.

To say everyone gets affected by government policy, can you name another policy int he last 100 years that has changed and had so many factors that were affecting a group of people?

You were 34 when the first changes came in. So you’d been working 18 years. If you still thought after that that you’d be retiring at 60, you must be been amazingly isolated.

You are already entitled to free prescriptions and a Senior Rail card.

🤣🤣🤣 50 years of contributions is hardly excessive or out of the ordinary though. I will probably end up doing 55 or 56 years of contributions. Before you ask (like you ask someone else) l have already done 30 years

Agree…this is a small group of women who say they missed the information…I belong to this age group and it was widely discussed with friends and colleagues. Of course it was . It was a significant change and everyone was aware of it.

Exactly. I’m under 50 and have very little chance of retiring at 67 which l worked out years ago. So l chuckle when my mum moans at retiring “late” at 62. After years of part time work as well. By the time l retire then l will probably have worked about 25% more hours over my working life than her

The horse / pony analogy is spot on

You did have plenty of time to make plans early 50s women had much shorter time to prepare for the 2011 changes. I just carried on working but some probably struggled with that.

no time for this - this is a small group of women who somehow missed the very public information that state pension age was changing.

we all have to work these extra years before claiming state pension.

yawn.