To think that constantly increasing retirement age will just cause an increase in health related benefit claims?

Dh works at a desk and his body is falling apart from sedentary working. Yanbu though.

My parents were incredibly fit and healthy. They didn't have a car, walked miles, cycled miles ---- sometimes hundreds of miles when they were on holiday.
Everything was eaten fresh, very little processed food.
Mum got to her early 50's and developed rheumatoid arthritis. This then seemed to set off lots of heath issues. Diabetes, heart issues needing a pace maker. She became incredibly frail due to all this.
Dad slightly better health wise, but again heart issues, lung cancer and various other health issues.

So just by living healthier lives does not always relate to being fit and healthy in later life!

Then I think the manual workers will need to swap jobs with the office workers in later life! That way they can keep working and use different muscles that aren’t knackered to work!

Yes, a lifetime of office work has stuffed my back. At age 60 I worked for a while in a temp job, standing all day, lifting heavy boxes, moving things around - my back was absolutely fine.

i agree. No way I’m working at Amazon in my 70s although there are jobs there I could easily do at that age. I’ll have a bad back by then

in a supermarket job and a lot of the 50 plus year olds are struggling (I’m 46 and not great but I literally want to hand them a lottery win and say you’re done!!) but we chose this op, and we need to find our out, because we can’t leave early (and of course definitely can’t afford to!!) so I think it’s more that we’ll have to figure out if we can change jobs- my friends who are nurses are now moving into more administrative hours within their job so less hours in wards more doing the paperwork- I think we need to figure out what we can do to not be hauling crates of beer, coke and water age 65!!!

Are you actually serious? Can you not imagine how it may not have been possible for some people to pay into a private pension?
For a while I was a divorced single mother with no maintenance (thanks useless CMS/ its equivalent) on minimum wage with top ups.
There wasn’t a spare penny to put into a pension. Fortunately I’m in a much better position now but there are plenty who are struggling and just worried about today.
Do you suppose people who have to use foodbanks have spare money for a private pension?

I saw a politician on newsnight say exactly this years ago. Said people could go and work at b&q 🤷‍♀️. Like there’s enough jobs for every 65yo there!

The retirement age is 65 where I live, but I don't recognise all these people who are knackered and can't continue. I have a 77 year old neighbour still working in a full time manual job, there is a builder who must be in his 60s working on six new properties just along the road (it's his business), I was talking to a nurse recently who is older than I am (I'm 67) who was still working and had no plans to retire (because she enjoys the job), and in fact I know a number of people who carry on working past retirement age, and not because of necessity, they just like working.

As for those who think they might like to work in an office, I hope you have sharp brains as the rate things are changing in technology you will need them to keep up!

Oh, and I forgot to say my hairdresser has no plans to retire in the foreseeable future and he is 64/65 I think.

I don't disagree that sickness benefits will increase however everyone in a physical job knows they are going to get older and struggle physically. You need to be making plans to switch careers as you get older in that case. I left nursing after 30 years but always planned to get out by my 50's. I now work from home, although working at a computer all day does come with it's own problems (neck and shoulders!)
My ex partner was a carpet fitter with knackered knees so he opened his own carpet shop and employed young ones to do the fitting. No-one has to stay in the same profession their whole life but you do need to be thinking about up skilling/retraining if you have a very physical job by the time you get to your 40's.

YANBU. For those in offices, I’m finding brain fog, age in general makes it harder to be on top of your game. Memory, sight, concentration is all impaired.

Staring at a screen all day or sitting with the same aches and pains you describe when really tired is not fun either.

Throughout history the powers that be never give rights unless they are agitated and fought for, I’d be up for a MN social movement not least as also predicted, when we job block the young ones can’t get on.

Money will obviously prevent people from retiring early if they only have the state pension.

The alternative? Who is going to pay £2.8 billion per year for illegal migrants? Who is going to pay for wars in Libya, Syria, Ukraine? Who is going to pay £570 to rejoin Erasmus so young Sebastians can go on a yah abroad? Who is going to pay £1.7 billion foreign aid? It has to come from somewhere, right?

It’s annoying that office work is dismissed as the easier option that doesn’t cause health issues.
Sedentary work can cause back and joint issues, poor fitness levels and then there’s the difficulty in keeping up with fast changing technology as well as legislation changes when your brain starts to get a lot slower.
While I very much agree that a rising retirement age is not a good thing, it’s equally difficult for people in fast paced and high pressure office jobs as it is for a builder for example as we age, but for different reasons.
We aren’t all drinking tea and doing a bit of filing and photocopying you know!

When I started working I was on something like £3.67 an hour. No compulsory workplace pension so it just didn’t exist. So I didn’t really have much to spare to put into a private pension.

Absolutely and so does things like cutting community services as it means less people looking out for the elderly, increased loneliness. Less sahp impacts as they would often pick up the care for elderly parents. When ever one area of funding is cut /reduced it just increases in another area.

I agree many just wont make it to state retirement age. Should havr stayed 60 for women 65 for men. Unfair as that was this is worse as now between a couple they already lose 8 years so 12x 8 and 3x 8 so 11x 12 132k…

But no, office workers are worse off. As mentally many people just arent on it by 60+ or are sleeping more.
my colleague was making so many mistakes and i was carrying her. And had other ops taking her lut for several months where there was no cover it was hell.

She did sadly die relatively young around 55-60.
In most offices there is pressure constantly to do more/take on more/more quickly and it makes many offices not pleasant.

But i think many younger people with sich expensive childcare and housing will struggle to retire early.
Whilst my reatives are still alive at 80 they havent worked ft since 55…

A bigger issue is lack of jobs or promotion due to older people in those roles.
Final salary and serps really would be much better for most.

My gen will have laid into state pension and into private as will their employer but will have mostly nowhere near the final salary amounts. If final salary paid say even 1/3 so 1:3 of 30k 10k you would need 300k in private pension .
Do employers need to pay in a higher % or maybe a minimum so it actually would provide a reasonable pension.

Maybe we should move to a system like France. If you work in certain roles, you can retire before state pension age if you meet the criteria.

All of that plus barriers to paying into works schemes at all. Certainly when I started work in the 80s you weren't eligible for an employer scheme until you'd been somewhere full time for two years and even then only a few people a year got let in. Mostly men, as I recall! Private pensions were available but as it turns out were often mis-sold, people lost a lot of money in what were basically Ponzi operations, it was all very shady and unregulated. The people who are going to be retiring over the next twenty years got screwed all ways and now are being told that it's their fault for failing to plan.

Why do they not have money?
Paying in to a private pension has always been an option!

Lots of reasons people might not have paid much, if anything, into a private pension.

low paid job
high living costs - rent and childcare etc
debts
caring responsibilities
ill health
disability
divorce/separation
financial/economic abuse

Good for you. Myself, in my twenties and thirties I paid into TWO (2) employer pension funds that went bust. All that money, my money, just gone. I've been playing catch-up ever since and I'm far from alone. There's no way I can ever recoup those losses via the shitty low risk low reward stakeholder schemes that we're all signed up to now. They're a bad deal.

The one bright spot is that now the schemes can't go bust so young folks now won't lose everything but fuck me it takes a full forty years of contributing to get anything halfway decent.

The state financing a lengthy, active retirement for otherwise healthy adults is unsustainable. Yes, there will be more people claiming benefits because they are physically unable to carry on but even getting a few more years (on average) before pension kicks in makes a big difference to state finances.

ultimately the state will be there if you cannot support yourself, but if you want an early, leisurely retirement you are going to need to fund it yourself.

Yes, but if you claim disability benefits, they get to call you a scrounger and deny you the payout.

I did lots of exercise and now my knees are knackered

People will have to start living healthier lives, eating more fruit and veg and doing more exercise in order to ensure they are healthy enough to work into their 70s.