Women's state pension age: Parliament debate - add your views?

Garlic-that is exactly what I was wondering. I thought that average life expectancy was mid 70s for men, late 70s for women.

The average person is living for nearly 30 years post retirement.

Really? Do you have data, please?

It's difficult to believe the average man & woman are living to 95 and 90 respectively.

I paid SERPS until it was stopped but I've been informed that I will not benefit by having paid into it.

Golly, I'd forgotten about that! Yes, me too. It was a major priority - pay your full stamp plus extras. That way you'll be sure of a decent retirement, whatever happens.

Yeah, right

Agree CS pensions are a very good deal 80s mum (or were, the scheme has changed now and is no longer quite as good as it once was). But I just wanted to be clear there are no special rules IRO state pension.

I've been watching this debate for the past few months with interest. In my opinion what the govt are doing is grossly unfair. If you equalise pensions between men and women then men and women have to have equal experiences. Women of this generation fought for equal pay but many did not benefit from it, if they did then it is more recently, not their whole working lives. For many women they were barred from taking out personal pensions. They fought for women to have control over their own bodies; free contraception, abortion, the criminalisation of rape in marriage. They fought for free nursery places but again did not necessarily see the benefit, relying on family members to take care of children, so they could work for a few hours. Government policies take years to be embedded They were probably dual workers and now work, care for elderly parents and grandchildren, so their own children can work. A lot of these women will also have raised children on their own.
Yes, women do live longer than men but they do so in chronic illhealth.

The civil service pensions are an incredibly good deal though phoebe.
I assume that those whose pensions are actually going to be £4k per year have been in relatively low paid work, worked part-time or have not been employed in the civil service for their whole working lives. The £4k is representative of what they have earned and the number of years of employment - and the amount is guaranteed and index-linked.
In a defined contribution pension scheme, to achieve an index-linked pension of £4,000 at age 60, you would need to have saved a pension pot of at least £150k. I doubt that anyone who is in line for a £4k civil service pension could have saved anything anywhere near that amount during the period of their employment, so they will be massively better off in retirement than their peers who have to accumulate their own pension fund and risk losing huge chunks of it when stock markets fall.
My own pension fund has in the past week lost the equivalent of 2 years worth of contributions!

Meanwhile civil servants have 10 years grace to "Provide transitional protection for those closest to retirement" .

This has nothing to do with the state pension - this is for the Civil Service occupational pension scheme (average pension about £4k a year).

It is depressing my money. My joints are knackered! It is hard not to worry. I find myself envying those people who are strolling to the shops to get their paper in the morning as I set off for another exhausting day!

I agree with the pp's. I have worked since I was 16 and have paid a full stamp all of my life. I really am not sure how long I will be able to continue to work, (I'm a carer) and even right now, while I am able, I am struggling getting enough hours to be able to earn enough to live on. Where I live there are very few jobs available.

I also strongly feel that the government would never dare to do this to men.

All in all, my future is very depressing.

Those of us that have worked for 40 - 50 years, and have paid everything asked of us, without taking anything out, justifiably feel that we have been shafted. We were never told about the increasingly delayed retirement age, we were simply left to discover that for ourselves via media or if we happened to look on a govt website. Because our retirement ages were put back repeatedly, at very short notice, we had no opportunity to set up a private pension plan. No other strata of society has been shafted quite so diligently as middle aged women.

There has to be a cut off somewhere.

The average person is living for nearly 30 years post retirement. Pensions were never supposed to be paid that on. You want it sooner? We will all need to pay a lot more national insurance.

I'm 62 now. Originally I was told that if I paid a "full national insurance stamp " instead of "married women's " stamp, that I would be able to claim a full state retirement pension at 60. When I was 52, my retirement pension age was put up to 62. Then 64. Now it's 65.5 years. I will have paid full NI contributions for over 50 years by the time I finish work. The private pension I paid into for 12 years vanished along with my ex employer. I paid SERPS until it was stopped but I've been informed that I will not benefit by having paid into it. I'm currently facing redundancy again and will have only JSA to live on if I can't find an employer to hire a 62 year old. I'm single and so have no one to help me financially. I've only ever had a low wage so have minimal savings and certainly not sufficient to contribute to another meaningful pension . Am I angry? Yeah, I think I am. The women who were born in the 1950s have been well & truly stitched up over their pensions. I feel desperately sorry for the younger generation who may never have a state retirement age/pension to look forward to. And how can they possibly trust the new government pension programme, knowing that any future government can raid their pension pots because that's never been done before .

That's what I thought Garlic, never claimed benefits so wasn't quite sure, but yes it would be a no no

Manipulating income in order to claim means-tested benefits is already illegal, Oldsu. I suppose some manage to get away with it but, when 'normal' people have a lottery win or an inheritance, they have to justify any expenditure that brings them below the income threshholds - it often goes to court.

There was talk recently about how the pension age may go up, but there was also talk (cant find a link) about maybe a two tier pension with people who started work earlier maybe being allowed to claim their pensions earlier.

That would be a much fairer way age its self is really irrelevant some like me 61 years old this year may have only worked and paid on for 30 years, but I have worked and paid in for 45 (51 when I get mine at 66).

So if there was a scheme where I could be offered the chance to retire now at say a proportion of my pension with the full pension at 66 based on my contributions to date, I would certainly think about it.

The pros would be that my job could be freed up for a younger person.

The cons would be that I would be contributing less to the country as the Government would lose 5 years of nics from me, also 5 years of tax if my private pension falls under my tax allowance (which it would as will be under 11k a year)

Also there maybe a problem with actual means tested benefits, would anyone be allowed to make the decision to reduce their income and still be allowed to claim benefits like HB

I was due to get my state pension next year. I now have to wait six more years. I will be joining any legal class action on this issue. As a Carer there is absolutely no way I could have found work even with adequate notice of these changes. I agree on the equalisation of pension ages but this addition of six years to the state pension age has come too fast. It is unfair and will put many women into poverty at a time of their lives when the job market is effectively closed to them.

What points do you think a second debate should focus on?

Fair redress, which WASPI is well able to frame. Previous posters have referenced preferential transitional schemes for judges and MPs. I should think those would make a good basis for our compensation.

I would like the Ministers to keep in mind that we vote and are not taking this quietly.

No, Eliza, of course it isn't fair. We're just old women, you can always put one over on us

Totally agree carers get the shitty end of every stick - and a lot of carers are women who're also being stuffed by this pension trick. It's another thread, and part of this one too.

Eliza I receive paperwork a couple of times a year from my contracted out provider. Have you had any paperwork at all? Because though it is linked and variable the last time I received anything it was saying I should be getting about 1,200 per year from them which goes some way to make up the shortfall plus we did pay less NI contributions for years. So though not ideal and I wish my 21 year old self had understood it fully I'm not sure if it's quite as bad as it seems.

I was born in 1954. Original retirement age was 60. It was then moved to 64 in 1995, then moved to 65 1/2 in 2011 after I'd already taken early retirement. On top of that I find that I was contracted out so not only have I to wait for my pension I will not get the 'universal flat rate'. When I retire in 2019 I will only get £119 per week - with 42 years contributions! That cannot be fair can it?

I'm really angry about it! And also about the widespread bad-mouthing of greedy pensioners, some of which is on this thread.

I'm in the hardest-hit group, born March 1955. Like many others, I drew down cash from my very small occupational pension to help offset the problems of having my retirement expectations drastically altered in short order, having been made redundant and developed a chronic illness. The illness would be much less of a problem if my pension had started on my 60th birthday - as it is, I'm currently embarking on the inevitable legal battle with the government that says I should be looking for a job

My occupational pension is tiny because it was embezzled. Twice.

The 'Ponzi' aspect of National Insurance shouldn't matter. Governments don't work the same as businesses, which is why government bonds are supposed to be the safest and most boring investments. The fact that it appears to matter now is evidence of gross mismanagement (and/or dishonesty). As a PP said, where is all the money going? We're borrowing like never before, yet still "can't afford" to honour our civil commitments to one another? Pull the other one.

Before any generational whiners pile in: I requested a lifetime statement after being made redundant; I have paid over a third of a million on taxes & NI. I haven't "had that back" and never will if I live to 100, which I won't. There has been, and should still be, ample funding for all the retirement, health & social needs of this country. It would be jolly interesting to find out where it is now.

The disappearance of my private investments (pensions & insurances) through what amounted to malicious incompetence may have made me less tolerant of my money being fucked around by my government. WASPI has done well-balanced calculations of what each sector of cheated women have lost. I want mine back.

The ldoomsday predictions for the next generation are precisely why this issue isn't being properly discussed. The media will gave you believe people in their 50s. And 60s all brought homes.for pennies, went to uni for free and all the men at least have large private pension pots.

I think people should start threads in aibu and chat to get this more widely discussed.

I was always planning to work until 75, so doesn't make any difference to me.
My dad is 73 & will work as long as he physically can, but he does work maybe 3 wks/7 type of schedule.
I am lucky I can get by financially working 4 days/week, too.

this has led me to check my own state pension age and to discover it's already set as 67 - i'm 40 so by the time i get there i'm sure they'll have added another 5 years at least to that figure. joy. so basically now that they've started doing this none of us can have any confidence on this issue as we know they can change it with impunity at any stage

and bear in mind the generations coming up behind them will likely have no savings, low home ownership rates and may even still be paying off student bloody debts in their sixties.

we'll end up with a huge proportion of older people living on benefits because they can't get work or are too ill to continue working. their children, unlike the generation represented on this thread, will be unlikely to take them in and support them as they will have no money or space or time to do so.

i'm so sorry for all the women on the thread effected by this. it seems so shocking that they can dump this on people so close to the expected finishing line.

financially speaking i cannot believe it makes any sense. in reality very many people will end up on unemployment benefits (like the many who have been made redundant and face little chance of finding work in this climate at their age) or on sickness benefits. if someone is forced to leave their job through not having the health or fitness to fulfil the duties they will end up on full benefits eg. sickness benefits, housing benefit, council tax benefit etc likely at a higher level than their state pension would have been. those who have savings will have to spend those first obviously but unless they have massive safety nets, and few people do, that won't take long. then you have people on full benefits costing more than pensions up to retirement age and then being the kind of pensioners who have no savings at all and are therefore still entitled to housing benefit etc.

i can't see how it makes financial sense unless really it's abotu getting those few who can afford to support themselves for many years on their savings to do so but without offending their core 'we did the right thing why should we be punished' sentiments by announcing something like the end of universal state pensions.