State pension

Wow, what a horrific view! This is why I wonder why I fight for pensions. Why is it always someone else's fault? Young people today need to make sure young people today are ok. We have to stop this entitled thinking of it's always someone else fault and its someone else's responsibility to sort it.

Why is the triple lock important? Don’t you trust politicians to recognise when pensions need increasing and increase it, like they do with every other benefit? Why are pensioners more important than say the profoundly disabled?

Or you? Why are you pushing the blame on to someone else. Did you push your unions?

Its a shame today's and yesterday's pensioners were too stupid to ensure the system would be sustainable...

If the state pension becomes means tested, people will simply opt out of workplace pensions or stop paying into private pensions as it will disadvantage them when it comes to getting their state pension. The whole point of auto enrolment was to encourage people to make their own provision alongside state provision. Any govt would be shooting themselves in the foot to take away or reduce the state pension.

It'll reduce to a pathetic amount. Pension credit will be more as those with literally nothing still need food/ medicines etc. It will end up being a token payment eg £100 a month and probably frozen to erode in value over time.

You’re definitely contributing to the pensions of those younger than you. Older than you, yes, but not younger.

Not so easy if you’re ninety with Alzheimer’s.

Also where did the idea go of a good social security system needing to have some universal benefits to be acceptable for those paying into it? I find it bad enough at the moment that we have to repay most of our child benefit and to be honest makes me resent the whole welfare system much more for it as that isn’t spare money for us at all. I know people on far lower incomes than us who are better off as they haven’t got such a huge mortgage. So annoys me too when people assume people at the threshold must be rich. We obviously wouldn’t have been claiming it forever but the resentment will stay that the welfare system was never there to help us when we needed it. It’s a very small amount compared to what some people claim but taking it away sends a very strong signal (same as taking away free pensioner bus passes I imagine) personally think such means testing will be the downfall of the entire welfare system

I bloody hope so! I am in my sixties and have seen friends suffering dreadfully with unbearable pain and distress.

What I meant was, the maths doesn’t work. When the system was put in place, pensions were drawn for an average of ten years. There were far more young people than old people. The maths worked then.

It doesn’t now.

I’m 56 and paid my full 35 years of contributions age 51! I damn well hope they don’t tell me I won’t be entitled to my well earned state pension and also those younger than me, as I’m contributing to theirs too!

Absolutely this, have noticed many 20 somethings starting to make their own provisions under the assumption the state pension won’t be around, probably due to the rapidly changing goal posts over the last few years. However us 40/50 year olds have spent most of our lives relying on the fact it will be there. Work in the public sector and our pensions have now been aligned with the state pension age leaving many of us wondering if we’ll ever get them at all now, in retrospect this change really should have been fought more against by the unions imo

Bingo!!! If young people are too stupid to fight to protect their future then that is their problem I suppose. I can see a whole world of pain for our current young in the future with their attitude towards pensions and pensioners. (Appreciate that's a sweeping statement and that not all young people are so entitled and stupid!).

People are always scaremongering about this but in reality the chances of it happening are zero. The triple lock will have to go at some point as it can't carry on forever and the age of receipt may go to age 70, but I actually doubt the latter. The cost of the state pension is a bit of a problem now and in the near future largely because the relatively big boomer generation is all but retired leaving a worker:pensioner ratio that is low by historic standards. As the boomers die off this part of the problem will largely sort itself out. And anyway, look at the ridiculous screeching that accompanied the attempted removal of the winter fuel allowance that lead the government to chicken out; what politician is going to be the one to say 'no more state pension at all', even if they do give decades of notice? Never going to happen.

But it won’t be current pensioners OR the young that will be worst affected will it? It will be those aged 45-60ish. As you say, many current pensioners have benefited from good pensions and property price increases. (However not all obviously. Many women especially who did not have careers due to childcare and did not get on the property ladder etc). So if a current 70 year old with a final salary pension and house worth 800k gets his pension removed then yes he’ll likely be ok. But if a 50 year old with a minimum wage workplace pension from that was only started between 2012 and 2018 has their state pension removed they are quite frankly fucked. If an 18 year old has their state pension removed and workplace pensions improved they will likely not be fucked.

Your last paragraph is what makes the 'remove the triple lock' and 'there'll be no pensions' views so stupid. At my age, there is no way they could change my pension as I wouldn't have enough time to backfill, (and I also have an ample private pension). Any future pension changes will not affect me. Also at my age as I am nearing pension age, I realise how important state pensions and the triple lock are. Sadly it's the young and naive that don't seem to understand that their blasé approach to pensions is going to come back to bite them in the future.

I will continue to fight to protect the state pension and the triple lock but I'm not sure why I bother. It won't affect me and my kids will have big enough private pensions so it won't really affect them either. The disdain shown to pensioners from young people and the unwillingness of them to learn why pensions are so important sometimes makes me think I shouldn't bother, you reap what you sow etc...

Well thank God it's not your job then.

Yes, but we're talking about people below pension age having a 10-year notice period, so they are not the current pensioners.

I'm pretty sure removing pensions from existing pensioners would be illegal, and certainly open to compensation claims, swallowing up any savings on pensions!

I see, I will explain myself then. Not sure what definition you are going by, I go with the one from a dictionary 'a temporary stop'. A temporary stop/pause in the triple lock, whether that be 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years would have a negative impact on vulnerable people, who have no other means to support themselves and who are often already living in poverty. And that is not just our current pensioners but you, me and every other person of pension age for ever. Are you seriously advocating for pushing more and more elderly people into poverty?

I’m in my 50’s and it’s already been delayed from 60 to 67 since I started working. I am counting on it

I do understand why people say that any change needs a decades-long planning, advertising and development process, but that is even more frustrating. I don’t want the burden to be falling on the younger generations all the time. This current generation of pensioners are the ones who’ve benefitted, from raised living ages, from a great working economy and initial democracy (until the 80s), from buy to let and hugely raised house prices.

Why does nothing ever touch them, why are they always protected and the ones who gain? They’ve never paid anything like enough for the costs they’ve incurred, they’ve never been in any way sympathetic to the costs they’ve forced on those of us immediately following or the adjustments the younger generations have made - most of them have no awareness of how much things have changed, much less give a damn - and they never will. WHY are they so protected? They’re not the bloody war generation!

Funnily enough I was asking Co Pilot this question yesterday - that's where I got the answer.

All the people saying they are assuming they won’t get it by then, won’t this just turn into a self fulfilling prophecy as much easier for politicians to do away with pensions if this is the increasing acceptance by many younger people?

It isn't.

It's baffling.