State pension

Who's going to provide for all the scroungers who have never worked?

One of my aunts was saying it when I was a child in the 1960s yet here I am 60 odd years later collecting mine. It’s scaremongering nonsense. No political party who suggested it would ever get elected.

@SurferRonawhen does it balance out demographic wise & how?

Over decades, demographic changes do not continue with the older /younger numbers imbalance. It balances back. Changes to state and private pensions are therefore decisions which need to be taken across decades, not what is happening now or even over the next ten years.

As always, it will be those who work and contribute.

It will never change.

He’s got £152k in those 20 years. He’s getting the old state pension which is currently £9614.80 pa. It was £4381 when he started claiming it. So it’s nowhere near a quarter of a million.

I love it when people say everyone should make provisions for their future. There’s people out there on minimum wage who are paying the same for childcare, utilities etc as someone on £100k. How do they pay into a private pension, do they freeze or starve? Not everyone can afford the luxury of paying extra into a pension until the cost of living comes down.

Where did you see this?

They’ll be fine. They will get pension credit. Those who actually worked won’t get anything.

I'm in my late thirties, DH is mid-thirties, and we are planning for little to no state pension.

When does it balance back because looking at the ONS data I’ve made it to 2095 and there’s still a huge number of elderly people versus children and young people.

It is always, without exception, unethical to rely on government largesse. So all age groups.

I'm early 50s. We were told to pay into a private pension when I left school and then college as we couldn't rely on a state pension.

I'm surprised you didn't get same advice being younger than me.

My DC have just stated work and are paying into an employer pension now at 16.

Cost of living

but specifically house prices - buy and hence rent - have risen way faster than anything else over the last 50 years. Which is why pensioners are locked in with vast wealth ( homes) and no money to maintain it or sell it or heat it

people are paying money to the bank ( via their mortgage or the landlords mortgage ) and paying money to private landlords wealth funds. It’s money for nothing for those

Key costs like childcare and care homes would be substantially lower if the buildings were significantly cheaper - and you wouldn’t want to reduce those costs by reducing worker numbers or salaries? Reducing taxes won’t give you anything like as much savings but will continue the shift of money from the public purse ( ours to spend on our people and our schools and hospitals and infrastructure ) to the banks and landlords and wealth funds

Property may be a larger cost than wages for many nurserys - the banks getting rich at our children’s expense - is that right? And it’s certainly way more than the taxes on workers that the government gets

for cost of living generally to fall you are looking at food - and farmers and shop workers need fair wages, and clothing ( ditto) and pubs ( ditto). Ie you shouldn’t want COL to fall by falling wages and falling levels of employment

the other bit i would tackle is fuel - where again significant profits are currently being made. The move the country has made towards renewables has been too slow to protect us well. And currently the richer people see more benefit with EVs and solar panels . The shift to virtually free green energy it has been resisted by the money of the oil companies in various guises - “oh that’s not important, climate change is a hoax, we want to invest to make things better and safer for you so we need all those profits “

Do more hours, LG pensions are heads and shoulders the best, better than standard CS ones. Prioritise this. Even if that means DH dropping some for childcare so you can do more. Not sure what an ARC is, but if you have any disposable income at the family level, paying more into the LG pension to make up lost years and P/T work will benefit you long term.

Apparently AI is killing is all off in under 10 years anyway. And even if it doesn’t there won’t be any jobs (again apparently due to AI) so no one will be able to save for a private pension anyway. Oh or maybe climate change will have made most of the world uninhabitable so food will be scarce and in this post apocalyptic world I don’t think anyone needs to worry much about whether they have enough funds in the bank if there’s no food or housing.

Life expectancy in the UK hasn't really had any noticeable change in the last 10-15 years (covid asides). Health going into old age is a different matter though.

Which is why pensioners are locked in with vast wealth ( homes) and no money to maintain it or sell it or heat it

What is preventing pensioners selling their houses? They may not want to pay stamp duty on something they downsize to but they aren’t unable to sell their houses.

The move the country has made towards renewables has been too slow to protect us well. And currently the richer people see more benefit with EVs and solar panels . The shift to virtually free green energy it has been resisted by the money of the oil companies in various guises - “oh that’s not important, climate change is a hoax, we want to invest to make things better and safer for you so we need all those profits

To encourage investment in green technology the government has had to commit to above market rate pricing for wind etc. Green technology is not going to reduce bills for a long time.

This would solve the pension problem true. Swings and roundabouts.

Im in my 40’s and not hopeful….

The issue with means-testing is it removes the incentive to pay into a private pension. Of course, there are the fairly affluent who will do so regardless and the hard-up who wouldnt anyway. But, in the middle, there is the larger group of households who could prioritise pension investment - but could equally well use the money for other things. It would seem really tough to essentially penalise those who made sacrifices to build up a personal pension by denying them a state pension. Meanwhile other households, who had similar income levels during their working years but just saved less, would get rewarded.

But I think that is the way it’s going to go. Always best to prepare for the worst and hope for a nice surprise!

The wealthiest tend also to be the healthiest and have to longest life expectancy. I wish there was a way that people with physically demanding jobs could be transitioned to roles that are less so as they age or get less fit no idea how that would be done, especially in the age of AI gobbling up jobs that don’t need a physical presence.

Removing the state pension for higher income pensioners will lead to behaviour change and won’t save anything like the money it would initially appear.

Higher rate taxpayers who are pensioners already only receive 60% of their state pension and there are a million of them already. Everyone with any kind of private, workplace or self invested pension will be paying 20% tax on that income as the state pension rises to meet the personal tax allowance.

My rough calculations are that anyone already who has a private pension income of £52500 pa (less in Scotland) plus the full state pension will already be paying their full state pension back in tax. We need more rich pensioners.

“Over 1 million UK pensioners (approximately 8.7% to 11.4% of the retired population) pay income tax at the higher (40%) or additional (45%) rates.”

It’s more about when you drill into the consumption of Gvt resources across populations and different groups. A little less confidence around those predictions than simple numbers of people, but there are factors which can impact confidence on both sets of predictions. Economic growth being a key one- hence my Brexit point- it’s all about what we as a society want to prioritise within the pot.

One other point when looking at how people in their thirties and forties have it bad, increasing costs of housing especially is how societal inequalities continue generationally. Intergenerational wealth is baked in. As those house values increase, that wealth is passed onto them when older generation die off, and in turn to their children and so on. Someone I know in their early 40s bemoans that they and husband both work FT, are in the painful few years of double childcare costs and high rent on a London flat. It’s tough for them yes, but others have it a lot worse and they will get half of an estate worth (today) £1.5m within ten years. Their kids will never worry either, and so on. And no, care fees will not eat anything like a significant amount of that up. It’s hard to look at that scenario and think that’s fair, whilst others have it a lot harder and growth is so low as well as health and social care still lacking.

I never really understand this argument. By that logic, no-one should ever change anything, even if it is demonstrably not affordable. I absolutely agree the way the loans are structured now needs a complete overhaul but to say people 'pull up the ladder behind them' is just lazy thinking. Its not a deliberate ploy to lessen competition. When Blair massively encouraged mass uni attendance it was obviously going to need a change in the funding structure. I dont think its right that people who will never earn a graduate salary have to contribute via tax to those that do. As I said, the loans need restructuring but i dont disagree with the principle.
As for pensions, I agree that eventually it will be means tested and needs a decades long planning and notice period.