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.

DH is a chef and can't imagine him working into his 80s.

(As an aside can we not turn every debate about pensions on Mumsnet into how teachers couldn't possibly work that long. Lots of people do physically demanding, stressful jobs too )

I always find threads like this interesting.

I am 42 and neither DH nor I have good pensions. We are now shifting our money into savings and pensions for retirement because if we don't do it now then we will not have enough and certainly not enough to also support our DCs if it becomes necessary for one or both of them to remain living with us. By way of illustration you need very roughly a million pound pension pot to have a £30k pension income.

Those who are berating the government for not "giving enough", how exactly are they supposed to find that money? The reason there seems such a large difference in what those of my generation will have and what the baby boomers have is precisely because the baby boomers were given way too much in the form of ridiculously generous and unsustainable public sector pensions etc. The government is now trying to force people to plan for their own retirement through auto enrolment into pensions.

PIL and MIL were both teachers. They retired in their early 50s about twenty five years ago on their public sector final salary pensions and are currently living happily ever after with days consisting of lists to the gym, popping in to have coffee at the shop in the village, having nice meals out and going to the theatre. They've just come back from an 8 week cruise around South America. MIL is now 76 and PIL is in his early 80s. They've been retired for longer than they worked. It clearly isn't a sustainable model.

You can't have your cake and eat it unfortunately. We need to lower our expectations significantly and take responsibility for our later years. I'm not saying that is easy and I know many live on very tight budgets but it is simply another essential than needs to be thought about and planned for.

So what did all these tradespeople, teachers and nurses do before all the early retirement came in? Not live as long, I guess.

I cannot believe some of the posts here. I am 62, I have worked since I was 15, paid full contributions but not able to pay into a private pension scheme. I definitely was NOT warned in advance about the changes to my retirement age. I live in a part of the North East where people do not as a rule live into and past their 90s and this notion applies to those born a lot more recently than the 50s. Why doesn't this rule apply to MPs? Why don't they work 7 days per week? Why have they got another pay increase? I do not expect to retire and then 'rely on the kindness of strangers' but would like to see some equity for all of us.

As a midwife I will happily change careers in my 50s now to something less physical. But to what? Where are all these jobs?

I see graduates in their 20s struggling for jobs.

I'm an intelligent person with two degrees and a masters and a well paid job. But I suspect I would be on the scrapheap outside of midwifery due to my age and lack of expereince doing anything else.

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

I'm slightly tempted to go back to uni and do another degree in something else in order to retrain but have no idea what and not sure I could afford it anyway.

Growing why weren't you able to pay into a private pension scheme?

My FiL didn't pay into a pension scheme and bitches endlessly about his friends who are enjoying retirement. It cost those friends 6% of their salary for 40 years though, and he seems to forget he had that money to himself for all those years

'I don't want to spend 20 years on the checkout at tesco'

There are a lot of people on here coming across as really lazy

My father didn't live long enough to claim his state pension at 65 despite having a fairly middle class desk job.
My mother had paid the reduced married women's NI so only receives a small state pension. So our parent's generation are not all better off by any means.

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?

"I don't want to spend 20 yrs on the check out at Tesco."

FFS.

Some mumsnetters really look
Down on huge swathes of society. Do you honestly think a checkout assistant doesn't work hard?

I paid into a public sector pension since I was 21. That pension is now tied to state pension ages. Many of us who have paid into pensions are getting screwed.

I know a couple of people who are still working in their 70's, they dont do it for the money, more for the social interaction

I think they are very lucky to still have employment at their age

Some people find the transition from working to retirement difficult

However, would you want to be doing a heavy manual job in your 70's+ ?

Some people do not pay into a private pension
Some people do pay into a private pension

Will we have good health in our 60's. 70's + ?

We all have choices to make

It doesn't make sense to retire at 65 & not die until 90yo. That's > 1/3 of your adult life in retirement.

Unless you believe that Arbeit Macht Frei, it's hard to see what is wrong with spending 1/3 of your adult life not in paid employment.

Peoe who are not in paid employment, and who are well enough to do useful things with their time, are incredibly valuable socially.

Surely the goal should be harnessing our wealth and technology to organise ourselves to do less work?

Rather than make sure the proles have to work until they keel over whilst paying to support a permanent leisure class?

I guess we all have to change our expectations and get used to the idea that there won't be a 'healthy' retirement period, and try to rearrange things so that we have elements of enjoyment spread through life rather than always deferring it until retirement. My guess is that a longer working life will actually increase healthy life length for some people further as they carry on working longer, as the structure will be beneficial for some, and (hopefully) society will become more accepting of older workers and be more prepared to facilitate part-time work in 'proper' jobs and professions. The others will end up being unable to work in their current roles from their 50s and 60s due to either the nature of their work or ill-health. This needs proper consideration as current policy does not take this into account at the moment, and I wonder when absolute crisis point will occur. Ditto care for those elderly who can't look after themselves any longer, many of whose children will still be too busy needing to work to become full-time carers. No government has addressed any of this, all they have done is to increase pension age. I'm not convinced the rest will just sort itself out on its own. There is evidence though that night shift workers have a shorter life expectancy, especially those on rotating shifts. I can imagine policy-makers thinking 'that's ok then, nurses, policemen, chefs etc won't survive long enough to be able to do their roles into their 80s so being too old isn't not an issue...'

'Isn't an issue'

I will get shot down in flames here but the problem is essentially the cost of houses. House price inflation really kicked off when the norm was for dual incomes in families rather than a single breadwinner. House price inflation is an absolute curse and has done this country no favours at all. I was always amazed at people saying "ooh I have made 60K on my flat in 2 years" no you haven't you haven't, it simply means that the next house you buy has just become 150K more expensive than it should be.

buckinbronco - how old are you?

I was reading the other day in the paper about whether it is right to break a promise if the consequence of keeping it is wrong - and this was in regard to pensions.

It does to me seem morally wrong to keep paying someone a large index-linked pension from the age of 60 and then in order to sustain it tax the next generation to the gills.

No one will bite the bullet but I would start taxing pensions more , with immediate effect. 70% over the age of 80. Well, it's an idea...

I can't really think of many jobs suitable for career changer in their 70s. I used to work for a charity with lots of excellent retired volunteers, but most of them couldn't have managed it as a job because of ill health or caring responsibilities.

DH and I both come from families with no assets and neither of us have relatives who have made it into their 70s. I expect we'll both be working until we're too ill or die, though I can't imagine what sort of work it will be.

I would remove benefits such as free bus travel to wealthy pensioners.

I mentioned my age earlier

Honeybadger there are absolutely people living off state pensions only. I think the top up benefit you refer to is pension credit, but people who have a full state pension aren't eligible for that. It's for those whose income is lower. I think what you mean is that you don't think anyone could pay housing costs out of that. It's true if you're renting you'd get some HB on top if all you had was the state pension, but there are a few paying out the remainder of mortgages on state pension alone. A couple with a full state pension currently get about 1k a month between them. It's certainly possible to be paying off the tail end of a mortgage from that and live off the rest, I know people who have done/are doing it. Of course these are relatively small mortgages, because people living on state pension now had the opportunity to acquire property before prices became deranged. It's not going to fly with the 1-2k a month mortgages, even with the full state pension for a couple going up to £1350 a month.

But wouldn't most mortgages be paid off by 65? That's the current calculation used when lending. I don't see that 80 year olds would be paying off their mortgages anymore than they do now