To cry over state pension age speculation rise to 75-81

[feellikeahugefailure]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/georgeosborne/12179375/Work-till-youre-75-or-even-81-under-Government-review-of-state-pension-age.html

Where has it all gone wrong? My parents could buy a home one one income for 3 times annual wage. Dad retired at 55, mum never needed to work and has been claiming a state pension for over a decade since 60. I do a similar job to my dad.

Where I live the average house price is 13 times my wage. My pension I've been paying into for over 10 years will if I keep paying into it for almost 40 more years give me 2'000 a year if it does averagely and 1'000 if it does poorly, and it probably will do poorly. Then no state pension until I'm about to drop dead. Can't afford a house or to put money away for retirement.

My dad developed dementia at 67. Now at 72 he is utterly and completely incapacitated. In a way that's simpler...clearly he can't work for his living. But there are many people his age who are in far from robust health. My mum is 68 and still has all her marbles but is utterly exhausted after a day with the grandchildren. Just because people are living longer it doesn't mean they're not old.

There has to be another, better way.

But if you do plan then at least you stand a fighting chance. Worthless investments and revolutions are always a possibility (although hopefully a slim possibility). If you've never even thought about putting money aside for those years then you stand no chance whatsoever.

No plan is guaranteed success. It could be using a pension, it could be saving in isas, it could be releasing money by downsizing. If you're a regular on the prepping board your plan could consist of stashing away thirty tins of beans, a box of candles and a woolly jumper every month in anticipation of a very dull retirement. But some sort of planning and thought is necessary

HP - I still feel that if as a society someone working full time as a shop assistant or gardener can't live a decent life without benefit top-ups, something is wrong somewhere, and it's not the pension system.

Didn't say we should bronco. Was simply correcting a poster who wrongly claimed nobody lived off the state pension alone. People do.

I do find it fascinating reading the comments of the pessimistic people. They are skittish and disconnected and read like they are written by people that give up at the first sign of difficulty. They love to write as if the system is against them and not their own ignorance.

Has thinking about your pensions for the past 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years been too difficult? Should someone else deal with this for you?

redhat

I really don't want to sped 20 years on the checkout at Tesco

You just want others (those still paying tax) to fund those 20 years for you?

That's not what I said at all. I said in the same post that im looking at retraining, etc which makes it obvious im considering other career options after leaving my current career which I plan to do in the next decade.

What im saying is that it's not fair that there's some sort of societal expectation that 50yos are only good to work at a nmw retail job. It's not fair that you're seen as old and useless at 50yo! It's not fair that it's so hard to be considered for a job purely based on your age.

WitchWay - me too though I am 51. a LOT of my time is spent working out how I can pay off my mortgage and stop - or at least go OT at 60, That 8 years and 6 months.... My pension will not be great but I will die if I continue at this rate,

I've thought about my pension but the bloody goalposts keep moving! My workplace pension is set to pay out at 60 (I can change it if I wish) so I've always known it would pay out before my state pension, giving me a few years where I could hopefully reduce my working hours but still have money coming in. I'm not ignorant and my company provides independent pension advice and I've never been advised to change the date.

I agree with the previous poster who said that ageing isn't always a gradual decline. Both my DM and MIL have found this. DM was fit and healthy until she suffered from a virus that really knocked her out. She's now nearly blind and struggles to walk. She's 85, not that much older than the proposed retirement age.

MIL could have been working in her 80s, but her doctor decided to change some medication, the change made her very ill (no one thought she would make it) and she's now in a home. This was around 4 years ago and, while she's 97 and (hopefully!) the government wouldn't expect her to work, it shows in both cases that things change dramatically in a short space of time, especially in the elderly.

And I don't think I will ever be in a situation where people who are still tax payers are funding my retirement when I do retire.

I will have two pensions which Ive paid 20plus years paying into already. By the time I retire it will be 30plus years that I have paid a considerable amount of money into them.

I wouldn't be suprised if the state pension is means tested by the time I retire and I won't get it.

hang on - those of us who made wise career choices in our teens such as to be lawyers and doctors are not on the scrap heap at 50! More many of we women 50+ is our golden age - chdlren leaving for university and able to work as long as we want on work we adore. Don't assume everyone over 50 is in minimum wage jobs. We all reap what we sow in life.

For reasons too complex to explain here, my mum (SRCN) worked as a part-time carer in a care in the community facility for two disabled mentally disabled young women until she was 79, and could no longer safely lift bodies heavier than her own unaided. Her pension entitlement was minimal and she receives pension credit on top. The poster who suggested taxing the over-80s' pensions at 70% did, I hope, have her tongue firmly in her cheek.

But I also have friends who retired between 50 and 60 with either significant index-linked public sector pensions or City pensions, and they are sitting very pretty, although most are helping their children out financially well into their twenties, and some are caring for their ageing parents as well.

I think there are a lot of rose-tinted specs on this thread. Life is nasty, brutish and short (if longer than it once was); it always has been. There has never been a Golden Age. Although it is worth pointing out that the first act Gordon Brown performed as Chancellor was a massive stealth raid on the tax treatment of pension funds' dividends and that has transformed the UK's private pension funds from the best funded in the world to amongst the worst.

hang on - those of us who made wise career choices in our teens such as to be lawyers and doctors are not on the scrap heap at 50! More many of we women 50+ is our golden age - chdlren leaving for university and able to work as long as we want on work we adore. Don't assume everyone over 50 is in minimum wage jobs. We all reap what we sow in life.

It's a only a wise career choice if you actually want to be a doctor or a lawyer!

DeoGratias, not everyone can be a doctor or a lawyer! If we were, who would do the nmw jobs you so despise, like packing your Ocado deliveries, and wiping the backside of the old boy next door?

If retirement age goes up to 75-81 then does that mean we could get 40 or 50 or even 60 year mortgages? Sure the interest would be insane but perhaps more affordable

this is already happening, a colleague has just exchanged on a tiny 2 bed first floor maisonette with a 45 year mortgage! I thought he was lying but I witnessed the paperwork to say it was him signing!

deogratias

That's not what I'm saying

I have a very well paid job, I have two degrees and a masters. Ive made good career choices.

What I said in my first post was that I do not wish to stay in my current field past 50yo as I will not be able to cope with it. I'm sure some will be able to but I won't. So what I'm saying is how difficult it is at that age to find another job in a totally different field when you have no experience. It's like your transferrable skills and experience counts for nothing.

Ive seen older colleagues go from earning 50k a year to working in
Tesco or having an office junior job. Which is fine if that's what you want to do. But it seems unfair that other opportunities don't seem open to you because you're deemed too old.

If you adore your job and want to stay in it past 50yo, great. If you find you don't enjoy the job or it's too stressful past 50yo I think you might be in for a shock when you realise how limited your options are.

Personally I haven't seriously started job hunting yet so maybe I will suprise myself and find a more sedate, less stressful job in a decent wage where I still get to use my brain. But I kind of doubt it.

'They love to write as if the system is against them'
But the system isn't a failsafe bank, it's a risk and a gamble, in any sector, just as buying property is. Perhaps people retiring now will do well if they have paid into a pension during their working life and have been lucky with their health. The rest of us can't predict, over decades, the stock market or new government policies on retirement ages, or control how much money our pension provider loses as a result of investing in Icelandic banks.
Perhaps one advantage our young people will have over the rest of us is the ability to be adaptable and not put all their eggs into one basket or assume property prices will always rise.

Loads of jobs don't need physical effort.

OK, I'd love a breakdown of jobs requiring no physical effort that your average man or woman who left school with a handful of CSEs and a much worse grasp of written English than you or I can do.

Ageism is rife. I made a decision to do a PGCE at 50, having had a very highly paid freelance career. Curriculum changes aside, having retrained I have never got an interview for a teaching job (which would only have halved my income) and unless I again become self-employed in another field still thinking about what it could be the options available locally are nmw seasonal work. It definitely won't be interesting stimulating work making use of my transferable skills! Thank heavens we took steps to set up and save into a personal pension plan at a young enough age. It's called being responsible. Sadly, today's politicians see people who have always saved for retirement as ripe for ripping off.

I save for my old age, but I just can't afford to be bitter if it doesn't work out the way I planned, as that isn't going to help me. I would rather be pleasantly surprised by things going to plan than bitterly disappointed when they don't. It's my children I am more concerned for - they will have fewer of the advantages that have been afforded to me and which have enabled me to save and have a reasonable quality of life while doing it. So I'm saving for them, too. I don't think this government actually likes us saving too much, though, unless we simultaneously make lots of profit for someone else from our savings, as they are busily trying to get people to risk their pension savings on spending now, not saving it all for the future. Government strategy is to create lots more losers for the winners to gain from, not to encourage us all to be prudent.

Deogratis thinks everyone who didn't "choose interesting, rewarding, challenging and very well paid careers" when they were young is simply guilty of having made the wrong choices. She won't budge an inch and won't be drawn on who she thinks will be postal workers, carers and shop assistants.

These are just scare tactics anyway.
it is constantly being reviewed and changed.
In a few years time we'll be back to 65 again, I wouldn't worry.

Deo
Thing is not everyone wants a boring job like you. I'd have hated it tbh.
In fact, none of the well paid jobs like yours appealed to me.
I'd think a 50 something person having to work all their life would be more on the scrap heap than somebody who has had a life of leisure and pursuing interests and hobbies.
Pensions, or should I say money to finance pension and retirement come from many sources, for some working was just not what they wanted.
I do agree, you reap what you sow. In other words you need to make provision one way or another.

There's no way I can do my current job until I'm 80. I'm 30 now and it's already starting to take a toll on me physically.

Actually deo is about to come back and tell you that her son is a postal worker

I hope not in London, or her praising the fresh air of such an occupation would sound a bit hollow! The one thing DeoGratias does demonstrate is that it is better for your sense of well being to insistently tell yourself what excellent choices you have made and how you would never have done anything different than to tell yourself how awful your life has been and you've been conned into making the wrong choices!

We have made good choices too, (but mostly just been very very lucky how things have turned out) and we won't be struggling for money. We could retire now (early fifties, own business) but we are still working to earn money for our children. I fear the future is going to be very much the haves and the have nots and I want to help them stay on the right side of it.

The thing is though, however comfortably off you are, you live in a society, not a vacuum. I don't want to be popping to Waitrose to but the Sunday joint stepping over begging old people. I don't want to be nursed by physically exhausted struggling people or have my children or prospective grandchildren taught by people losing their intellectual edge. Everyone should have the right to a decent retirement.

I think we need to look really hard at how we fund this and all the money being creamed off in the pensions industry. And we also need to look at how people who scrimp to afford a modest pension are effectively penalised, because people who have never bothered to save for a pension are handed the same sort of amount anyway, in the form of a state top up.