Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

589 replies

feellikeahugefailure · 02/03/2016 07:20

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.

OP posts:
suzannecaravaggio · 03/03/2016 22:04

..but never mind data mining/metadata analysis
we aint seen nuthin yet
next up the big DNA sequencing project
we will all be encouraged by the promise of individualized medical treatment to have our DNA sequenced, who owns that data base owns us all

BarefootAcrossHotLegoPieces · 03/03/2016 22:07

It was extended in 1946 though:

1946 National Insurance Act - introduced contributory State pension for all. Initially pensions were £1.30 a week for a single person and £2.10 for a married couple. Paid from age 65 for men and 60 for women, effective from 1948.

Not sure how you can conclude if we could afford it then, we can now - the population is larger and it is living longer, with more related costs eg health and care homes.

BarefootAcrossHotLegoPieces · 03/03/2016 22:11

When an early form of a state pension was introduced in 1906, male life expectancy was 48; it had risen to 62 by the creation of the modern welfare state after the Second World War, underlining the vast extension in years when pensioners need to rely on savings or state help.

So the average life expectancy was lower than the retirement age for men in 1946

Read more: www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/pensions/article-2050996/Rising-life-expectancy-heaps-pressure-Britains-pensions-crisis.html#ixzz41se7Jcjy
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Arrowminta · 03/03/2016 22:32

I haven't had time to read any of the posts on this thread but I am absolutely livid about this.

I started work at 17 and expected to get a state pension at 60 but it will be 67 now. They have basically stolen 41K off me. To think about putting it even further away is utterly disgusting.

Young people need jobs and older people need to retire, after they have contributed all their working lives into the system it's the least they should receive.

I hope all the Tory voters are happy now and I despair for the younger generation who not only have to contribute 9% more tax, when they have been to university to get a well paid job. My DC has had 36K debt that the students in the year above didn't have. It's only getting worse for next years poorer student's, no grants, just loans :( How can they to pay for a mortgage and pension, which they will have to, as well as bringing up the next generation?

Of course, it won't matter to the rich as they have the money to pay for everything and can retire when they want on their private pensions etc.... I despair and hate this government. They have cost me and my one DC 77K already. We are a hard working low paid small family.

Please, please don't vote them in next time.

Arrowminta · 03/03/2016 22:35

Don't compare to year dot... There are more people paying in too by working longer and with immigration which isn't always a bad thing btw. Think out of the box.

robin4 · 03/03/2016 22:36

ok 1911 or 1946, still say it's a political choice not an economic one.

robin4 · 03/03/2016 22:39

Absolutely agree with Arrowminta....Young people need jobs and older people need to retire, after they have contributed all their working lives into the system it's the least they should receive.
Make way for younger people to have their chance.

BarefootAcrossHotLegoPieces · 03/03/2016 22:43

There are more people, but they are only working longer because of the increased pension age!

More of them aren't starting work until 21 with increased university attendance, and men, who are a larger block of workers than women, given SAHM prevalence, have only had a 2-3 year increase.

The average length of time people live after drawing a pension means there are way more pensioners now.

Radicalrooster · 03/03/2016 22:50

Suzannecaravaggio, we're not talking about the internet. We're talking about vast proportions of an economy. The means of production. Ergo you then have far greater scope for a citizens wage than you ever will at the moment.

BarefootAcrossHotLegoPieces · 03/03/2016 22:51

If working patterns continue, the ‘old age dependency ratio’ (that is, the number of people over the state pension age for every 1,000 people of working age) is likely to increase:

in 1971 the ratio was 280 per 1,000
in 2009 this ratio increased to 314 per 1,000
by 2032 the ratio will become 349, even with implementation of higher state pension ages.

robin4 · 03/03/2016 22:53

Pensioners don't stop contributing just because they are pensioners. The pension money tends to be spent in the economy rather than saved.

Arrowminta · 03/03/2016 23:21

So true Robin, Council Tax, VAT, Fuel Taxes, Taking most of your capital assets to pay for care, the list is endless. And also just because you are 70 doesn't mean you don't get state support if 1) you cannot work due to illness or 2) you are unemployable...

BarefootAcrossHotLegoPieces · 03/03/2016 23:23

Never said they did, Robin.

It's undeniable that the number of pensioners per worker is going up, though.

buckingfrolicks · 03/03/2016 23:33

whoever said there is no state upthread - are you an anarchist?

Anarchy is the state of there being no state. No one - or very few - would want anarchy in the UK (oooh, reminds me of a song...)

so stop talking balls about there being no state and just think about what that really means.

[as you were]

commonsenseplease · 04/03/2016 00:19

Not that will be any heavy industry left in this country soon, but for thousands doing 12 hour shifts, night and day, with an hour or more commute each way, working to this age will be physically impossible. Especially in industries that have high heat or demand hard physical working conditions.

Shift working is known to take years off your life anyway. Lack of sleep during the night at work is bad enough, being unable to sleep in the day do to day-to-day noise is even worse.

This really will be working to their grave for many.

PennyDropt · 04/03/2016 06:40

I don't think the elderly now expected to be living on their own. In their youth elderly rellies lived with their extended family. In fact very few owned their own homes, Drs, Solicitors etc but most folk lived in jobs connected with their jobs and council houses.

People now assume they will have their own home but if they'd lived as they did previously there wouldn't be a prob as if they couldn't pay rent the council would step in, or another family member they lived with would 'keep' the family.

So many things have changed it's hard to compare.
And even now women in their 60s are living on air, their pension age has jumped 6 years (and in some cases 10 as women used to retire at 55 I think) - with little time to save or change their life choices careerwise.

alreadytaken · 04/03/2016 07:12

A quote from up thread

"the system we have is fundamentally based on exploitation, on paying people less in wages than they produce in value.

Secondly, that those who have, have what they have on the basis of that exploitation. And on older acts of enclosure of things that once belonged to all (like natural resources).

Thirdly, that there exists an ideology of work designed to obscure this and to peddle the nonsense notion that those who work hard get on by their own merits and not by exploitation.

Fourthly, that on this basis the split between those two things the rich are getting richer. And richer. And richer.

Fifthly, that there is diminishing marginal utility to wealth. £10 when you're on benefits is the difference between starving and having food. £10 to a millionnaire makes very little difference at all."

One other well made point - your pension funds are managed by people allowed to cream off a lot in inflated salaries.

Pension rules have been changed for the 50+ and women were hit hardest by this. No-one is safe from further changes. Don't expect a welfare state to support you when you cant work, we are already forcing people in poor health to food banks and labelling them scroungers.

Tory economics doesn't work. Take money from the poor to give to the rich and less is spent in this country supporting our economy - and generating tax income. Give money to the poor and it stays in your local economy. Under Thatcher the country suffered, it is suffering again now. Austerity doesn't work but Tories are very good at obscuring that with lies and half truths.

Want to do something to change this - vote against the Tories in any election.

DeoGratias · 04/03/2016 07:24

It was a Pensions Act in the 1990s which increased women's pensions age from 60 - 65 gradually, 1995? This is certainly not a new thing and as said above originally many people would have died before pensions age. We are owed nothing by the state. Don't trust the state ever of any piolitical party and always look after yourself. Don't trust a husband or his pension to keep you either. Look afetr yourself and those whom you love.

It is very wrong though to be party political on pensions. Labour Governments and much as Tory have worked on our current pension legislation and increased pension age to reflect longer life expectancy. Given retiring early tends to make people less happy as they are less occupied the best thing the state might do fo you might be extend your retirement age by the way. Every cloud has a silver lining. Just look on the bright side.

BarefootAcrossHotLegoPieces · 04/03/2016 07:28

No woman who is 60 today is ineligible for the stAte pension, it impacts those born after 6 April 1953. It was never that logical for women with a longer life expectancy to retire five years earlier.

IIRC, Labour introduced the first increase, the Tories accelerated it.

frumpet · 04/03/2016 07:31

most of them aren't starting work until 21 , well that's simply not true for a start !

How much income tax do I personally pay ? Not sure exactly to be honest , would I pay more if it were to be exclusively put in the pensions pot ? Yes I would . I am under 50 and am quite happy to pay for the pensions of those retiring now , who apparently have never paid into the system for the last 30 years , do not pay tax on the pension they receive and are immune to paying VAT on anything Wink

BarefootAcrossHotLegoPieces · 04/03/2016 07:33

Yup, 1995 act, Deo. The ECHR rules the difference in men and women's pension aged was discriminatory.

IAmNotDarling · 04/03/2016 07:43

To the poster asking why MPs don't work 7 days a week. Most of them do. You just don't see them in the Commons 7 days a week.

The Ministers that I've come across in my professional life work very long days, typical diary starting at 7am and not finishing until after perhaps 12am when they have read papers for the next day and made decisions.

Mentally tough jobs, not flaky jobs. I personally wouldn't be an MP (or a govt minister).

Agree we're all fucked. I work in a highly technical profession, I can't see my mental ability keeping pace as I get older.

Flowerpower41 · 04/03/2016 07:43

I think apart from obesity and alcohol problems more people live healthily now in older age than they did before.

They are certainly living longer.

People in their seventies quite often are still working and going on holiday, living fulfilling lives etc.

I intend to 'retire' at 66 so I can get my state pension (born 1963) but will no doubt have to work part-time to subsidise it but it is good to keep busy so I don't foresee a problem. I know I will need at least twice what the state pension is to live on to start with, and I would only get bored alone at home all year .....

frumpet · 04/03/2016 07:44

And whoever said more people is a bad thing? not sure that is true either , although it does of course appeal to certain mind sets .

Swipe left for the next trending thread