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.

They'll have to change your deal if they increase the state pension age, I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Cleaty

The changes will be phased in by age, as the ones to date have been. So it's very unlikely that a current 51 year old would retire at 81.

So your pension age is 67 rather than the current max of 68 because of your birth date.

You should be somewhat protected again from any new increase.

i have dementia running strongly in my family if i follow suit i won't have a mind left by the time im 75 and i will be dead by 80

Ha ha ha, what a joke. Some of the clients that I nurse are this age. I can't see me having the where with all to conduct a safe drugs round at the age of 80. I'll end up killing folk how will I manage to change a leg dressing if I can't get down on my knees either? Where will I park my Zimmer frame when I'm trying to make a bed?

Ok, reading the article, it is an insurance firm that suggested retirement at 81 would be required to meet the standard of living of one's parents. Government hints are at 75. Also, remember that trailing 75 is a good way to make 70 seem "reasonable" down the line!

The results of the consultation won't be published until next May, cleaty, when you are 52 or 53, making it a bit less likely you will be affected.

A couple of our hcas are in their sixties and they just can't do the job. It's not a pleasant thing to say, but they just can't. They're simply not able to manage and they're not even that old.

When the state pension was first introduced, those working until 70 were just as unfit to work, if not more, than people now feel they would be at 70+

While that's true barefoot, I think most of us feel it's reasonable to look for a slightly better deal for the common man and woman than what was on offer in 1911. Clearly we can't carry on indefinitely funding people to spend more of their lives in childhood plus retirement than they do working, but there's a middle ground.

Cleaty this isn't going to happen to you now. You're being a tad dramatic. Earlier in the thread you seemed to claim the pension you'd been paying in for for 30 years had just... Disappeared.

She can't access it for an extra 7 years. Fair enough to be pissed off.

I do agree, Jizzy. But work is, generally, more sedentary than back then, so people should, generally, be in better shape at the same age.

No it has not disappeared. I had already explained that I can only access a small part at 60, and the rest is tied to state pension age. That is currently an extra 7 years.

So, in the meantime, you look for anything else to keep body and soul together. Hard, I know, but you will not be alone; this is the new reality for anyone in the changeover zone; we do need to work longer, but the new rules have been abruptly introduced. I think it had to be done, but am not liking it.

My father died in harness at 66 over 30 years ago, not being able to afford to retire: he was a lawyer. I have just retired at 59, having saved like billy-0 for 10+ years. Apparently I am a baby boomer, swanning about with holidays all year at public expense. The reality is a bit different. The pension is private, and if taken as an annuity (who would, now?) I would not get back what I paid in until I was 93, which is unlikely given accumulated health issues. While in theory I could continue with the desk job, in practice it becomes almost impossible: the expectation is 12+ hours daily, and there comes a point - in my case at 59 - when that commitment isn't possible. Modern work practices, and technology, have united to require longer working hours, not less. As for house prices, these are subject to the vagaries of the market. My parents sold their house in 1973 for 25 times what they paid for it 25 years previously. My house is worth a mere 6 times what I paid for it 20 years ago. The principal difference was that in the 1970s inflation was up to 25% annually, and now it is (supposedly) zero or negative.

Every generation feels able to complain about its lot compared to those before it. I have some sympathy with youngsters today, in respect of housing, but not a lot. I couldn't afford to buy anywhere until I was 30; the mortgage was cheaper than rent, but saving for a deposit was very tough. The numbers now seem to have moved up a few notches, but this seems to be in part because of easy credit, and the result that mortgages can be many multiples of income, instead of the old 3+1 or 2+1/4 times joint which acted as a brake on house prices. In the 1980s unlikely couples united to afford a mortgage/deposit. Sometimes these liaisons of convenience worked, and blossomed; sometimes they didn't.

The state pension was only ever a basic safety net, and never allowed 'luxuries'; the modern version is more explicitly just a safety net. None of this makes it any more comfortable now, but don't assume that so-called baby boomers have had and enjoy now easy times and long well funded retirements.

I'm 52 and still have 15 years on my mortgage on my small flat. Don't even know if I will be able to get up the bloody stairs by then but will still have to work. I have two DDS in their 20s, both studying for degrees, working part time and with little or no savings and still relying on us for financial help. No way can they save a deposit and we can't give them money for a deposit. No grandparents to help them out either.
Just pray that dh and I can stay well enough to keep working I to our 70s.

Maybe we'll be allowed to have a Dignitas in every health centre, I certainly don't want t stagger on way past the time I can enjoy being alive.
I certainly don't want to face a long, impoverished old age wearing 17 layers of cast off clothing because I can't put the heating on and with endless chronic problems I can't get fixed due to an NHS that's overloaded and broken.
I'd like a free opt out facility.

Most work is more sedentary barefoot, but it's also demanding in different ways to a lot of jobs a century ago. Which is also important. There's a lot been written about the sort of emotional labour that service sector jobs now require. I can see that there were some jobs that required certain behaviour in 1911, house servants for example, but there are also a huge amount that didn't. You didn't need to show positivity, come up with a dozen reasons why it was your dream job and sign up to the company's key values to be a miner.

And it's not just people in the lowest paid occupations who are experiencing very different mental demands. At professional level, people are less likely to be able to switch off now. Again, one of the few benefits of working in a pit or a mill compared to being a solicitor or banker now is that you weren't expected to be available to dig coal on your blackberry at home. The stress is different. People who've been expected to work like this for all or most of their working lives may behave differently in their 60s to people who'd spent 45 years in a factory in 1911. People with at least some dementia, which is a not insignificant percentage of 70-75 year olds, aren't necessarily going to be capable of the sort of persona increasingly required in service sector roles. Any more than they'd be able to do physical labour in a factory.

I certainly don't want to face a long, impoverished old age wearing 17 layers of cast off clothing because I can't put the heating on and with endless chronic problems I can't get fixed due to an NHS that's overloaded and broken.
I'd like a free opt out facility.

It's very depressing . Even more depressing is the fact that I don't know how all this will affect my dc and I won't be here to help them . It feels like looking into an endless pit of despair .

This was meant to be in bold:
I certainly don't want to face a long, impoverished old age wearing 17 layers of cast off clothing because I can't put the heating on and with endless chronic problems I can't get fixed due to an NHS that's overloaded and broken.
I'd like a free opt out facility.

Cleaty I am in a v similar position but I don't understand quite what you are saying? You don't have to leave your job at 60 do you? So isn't the solution just to stay in your job until 67 and then draw state and occ pension?

The worst case scenario for us is that they speed up bringing in the new pension age of 68 ( currently due to come in in 2046). But tbh I doubt they will bring it forward enough for us to be affected.

We have been shafted a little bit but the younger generations are being completely shafted. I hope one day soon they they get together and fight what is being done and stop falling for the divide and rule tactics that the government seems to be getting away with at the moment.

The whole pension issue - for future pensioners have been brought through wth little outcry, at the same time social benefits are being cut but against a massive outcry. Personally I think that there needs to be some cuts, and acknowledge that it is difficult to make those. Nevertheless benefits for those not working should be cut to encourage them to work.

Oh Pontytidy that is exactly what I mean about divide and rule tactics. Get people to blame each other instead of fighting for a fairer society.

Well I've realised for awhile I'm not going to get much pension if any. I'm 33 we have 4 dc, we now home educate as 2 of my dc have autism and could not cope in school - resources in schools are stretched to breaking. We have one very changeable income. I've not worked in ten years. My husband will have a pension. In a few years we hope to be debt free and then hopefully we can address the issue.

We are not in denial our future looks a bit bleak. I'm hoping we can turn things around but everything is so tight at the moment our options are limited.

"t you weren't expected to be available to dig coal on your blackberry at home. "

I reckon Steve jobs could've done an app for that

In all seriousness, I see your point.