Winter fuel payments for pensioners scrapped

[MidnightPatrol]

Unless they are in receipt of pension credit or other benefits.

I suspect this will be the first of many benefits which will be restricted as part of cost-cutting measures.

What else might we see / should we see?

Not sure what you are replying to but my point was that if it is believed that a pensioner’s income of around £1200 pa without needing further help is fine, why not cap Cab the same?

The pensioners of today are the working people of yesterday.

With any luck you and everyone else on this board will make it to retirement age.

I hope you have planned well for it.

By which I mean, planned for the things you think will be in place to no longer be there - such as free healthcare or the state pension.

Hopefully if you have children you have had the foresight to forego holidays and put the cash into an account for them now instead. Don’t assume that you can help them out ‘in future’ nor assume that inheritance tax won’t be applied to all properties over a minimum amount, say £75,000 - nor that IHT will remain at 40%.

Because if you haven’t, if you assume things will continue as they currently are, that you will still be fit and healthy (or alive!) in five years time you and your family could be in for a shock.

If Capital Gains tax is applied to the family home then should you ever need to sell in order to fund healthcare or retirement plans, then you could find your plans in disarray.

But the again, you may be like the many millions of pensioners who live above the pension credit cut off but below the minimum wage level who thought their retirement plans were ok. Sadly, successive governments have ensured this is no longer a given. Rising prices mean that what they thought would be a reasonable retirement is now one on the breadline.

And people on here are celebrating that.

I've two friends who've worked for HMRC for 40 years. They've both said it's broken they don't have the offices locally it's all centralised which is a huge disadvantage.

Working from home has caused huge issues. There's no inter department liaising. No tax inspectors sitting outside your business or arriving unannounced to go through your books.

No point in snitching on a bent employer, there's no-one able to follow up.

This started with Blair/Brown, the Tories did bugger all to remedy it. Starmer has his work cut out for him

So removing free healthcare and future state pension the removal of winter fuel allowance is small fry, that's what you're saying yes?

No, I don’t.

But our new government apparently does!

The New State Pension is £220.21 a week.

Pension Credit tops up the recipient’s income to £218.15 per week.

Anyone - with no savings or private pension - who receives the full New Sate Pension has just lost the Winter Fuel Allowance!!

Rachel Reeves has said that wealthy pensioners will not receive this £200 annual payment any more as it will be means tested.

Labour have redefined wealthy to be a total income of £220 per week.

would you want to have your life dictated by the kindness of the state? My answer is a big no. Because as you point out so clearly it may change. So no, I don’t think the state is going to help me. It doesn’t currently.

It is actually. We've only had a glimpse looking westward to Wales you'll get a better idea. That's where the ideas are born and tested out

@justasking111 Oh I know it’s a massive tasks and unlikely to resolved anytime soon. It’s just one of my pet peeves.

I’m saying be careful what you wish for.

Cemetery, apparently.

It ought to be simple.

Any pensioners with an income of not much more than the state pension pay tax. Any tax return or tax bill of more than a set amount could trigger a ‘stop the winter fuel allowance’ alert for that person, surely?

We wish for functioning services with some hope for younger generations and healthcare for the elders.

But it's hard staying optimistic when many only care about just themselves their fully funded retirement screw the young. Odd they think children should suffer when they didn't save for themselves.

Still we work, we pay, we work, we pay, we save, we invest, we pay.

Thankfully we can pay a creative accountant. Which i am more inclined to do after this evening. Nothing illegal just you know the minimal. If you can't beat them join them.

Ho hum.

My DF just misses the cut off for pension credit due to having a very small army pension. This is another thing that feels like a kick in the teeth. He's not jetting off or cruising around the globe. He's an elderly man who has stage 3 cancer and arthritis who struggles with fuel and food bills.

Sorry to hear this, it’s hard.

But according to @frozendaisy it’s his own fault for not saving enough.

😡

That's a shame. I was going to suggest the same thing. I was unemployed at the age of 59 and got some temp work - some of it was classed as labouring, which I enjoyed far more than the office work! The agency didn't care about my age. I ended up with part-time, then casual, work at the first place the agency sent me to. I officially "retired" last week from the job - and today they've asked if I can come in for a couple of hours. 😁I don't drive either, so had to take work within walking distance.

I'll be sure to let him know his 16 years as a Royal Engineer was a waste of time (which he was told was the likely cause of the arthritis and bone wastage in his wrist too).

Guess he shouldn't have fallen on hard times when he got out of the forces. Should've just saved money he did not have...

My poor mother loses out, not eligible for pension credit but has a small income just over the threshold. She gets the old state pension and due to being contracted out it’s not much compared to the newer one, and her NHS pension wasn’t enormous either as she wasn’t in long enough. She got divorced just before the sharing of pensions became common so fuck all there either.

If she was renting she’d get it but as she owns she doesn’t, but she has a house to
maintain.

As per usual it’s the same people that get shafted. I’m furious on her behalf. It shouldn’t have been universal but this is just too harsh.

Let’s hope it continues. For too long the young worker with a family have been slammed at every corner to provide for a generation who had it all. Opportunities our young will never have.

Why are so many incapable of understanding that pensioner does not necessarily equate to boomer? The oldest pensioners belong to the generation before that, some of them lived through WW2, some were born in the depression years.

Hear me out guys

Maybe we should apply the same cap we do to Child Benefit to the state pension. Any pensioner earning £50k a year in retirement surely doesn't need the state pension on top.

Can't imagine there are many like that, though, so it probably wouldn't raise loads

Are the youngest pensioners Boomers?

Why not just bump off all pensioners, the disabled and anyone claiming benefits!
After all, they seem to be nothing more than a financial drain on the state.
There, problem solved.

I'm joking, before anyone jumps on me!

@frozendaisy you are so out of touch with pverty you have no clue, social housing is more expensive than many think, and people do still move into social housing everyday. Not sure where you get your figures from of 75% of property is owned by pensioners, can you quote that source? We are not talking about the wealthy though but those just over the threshold who willnit get a penny, someone living on £11000 a year for example. You are clearly on large salaries so you have no clue , your idea of sacrofcing was having a modest house and older cars , how old are your cars, and your modest house is probably manys dream. Many of these pensioners will be the women whose pensjon age was changed with little notice. Imagine if they start taxing any savings over £10000 40% , then that would affect your plans and you would be shouting, but your kids can get jobs and take out debt like many others in the last few years, they won’t be choosing between eating and heating

@frozendaisy you have also admitted to paying a creative account so you play the system, apparently they are closing those loopholes wgich is a good thing as poor people can’t afford accountants and trust fund, after all we are all in it together so you should be fine

The proportion of people over 80 is under 5% I believe. Many of those will already be in residential care so heating bills are irrelevant. The vast majority of pensioners are Boomers.

@MrsSunshine2b what so you think most 80 year olds live in homes ? What about those who don’t, i have zero respect for anyone that calls someone a boomer anyway, groups all people as one , lets eait and see when they hit the more well t do on mumsnet soon, will be watching and laughing as im one in the middle , get screwed all the tome, but def stopping my work pension now and living for today as willget more help latet on, extra few hundred poind a month when we both stop paying into a pension.