To feel sorry for women having to work till they're 66

[lazylab]

I have 2 friends, one 60 the other 61 who are just so tired and worn out. The 60 year old works full time in a factory, she's totally shatttered at the end of her shift. Basically they're just desperate for retirement, but no chance of that till they're 66. Both these women are single, still paying mortgages, one of them earning fairly good money but the other is basically working just to live, can't afford luxuries or holidays etc. It's just soul destroying. These are just two examples of the plight of those affected by the changes to pension age.

Working full time as a young woman is definitely not the same once you hit 60, the body struggles to cope. I realise it's the same for men too, especially the ones doing physical jobs.
Sorry if it sounds like i'm moaning, but isn't life just shit for some people.

[Ch33s3cake1]

Have you investigated how much money you would need to live on to retire ?

Most people continue to work for money
Some people dont have the need for the money, they work because of social interactions and to feel useful and have a purpose

[expatinscotland]

Don't be ridiculous! Retirement wasn't supposed to mean 30+ years of being economically inactive.

[CPtart]

I'm a nurse and can get a decent pension at 55 and will absolutely be going. I''m investing and saving some inheritance now rather than spending to allow me to do that. Luckily we've no mortgage either. So admittedly very lucky in some respects. Ten years to go and counting. I'll even cut my cloth accordingly if needs be but no way will I be working as a nurse past that.

[TheNaze73]

It's only the state retirement age that's gone up. Invest wisely & you'll be able to go in your mid 50's

[corythatwas]

I am delighted that I will be able to work at least until I am 68: many years as a carer for my disabled dd, without the choice of claiming benefits, has left me with an absolutely shitty pension. My only hope is to work till I drop. Thankfully I enjoy my job and don't see why I would be any worse at doing it in my late 60s, if anything I should be rather better.

But agree that it is shit for those who have physical jobs and/or should have a pension they could live on.

[BonnieF]

My mum retired from her public sector job on her 60th birthday. She said she barely felt middle-aged, never mind old.

60 isn't old in 2017, and the equalisation of retirement ages between men and women is long overdue.

[WhataHexIgotinto]

I've been putting £20 a month into a savings account for DS for his retirement. It sounds ridiculous because he's only 13 but I'm seriously worried about what life will be like for older people in 50/60 years time.

[ClarkWGriswold]

My official retirement age will be 68 - 31 years from now. I expect that this will be raised so I am working into my 70s. This is life.

I feel more fortunate though as I work in the public sector and have a good pension. The best thing I ever did was to go part time after my first DD was born 5 years ago. I have decided that I will never go back to work full time as I may as well enjoy the time I do have off with my family while I am young enough to do so. I earn a decent salary as a part time worker and this approach suits us.

[Lollyb86]

I'm 31 I expect to be working til 80+

[MrsExpo]

Not read all the posts, but I'm another who fell into the pension gap, being one of the women who were in the age group where the new age limits were being phased in (if you can call it that!).

Having worked all my life from leaving school at 18, I expected to get my pension when I was 60 (now 63). It was only when I was 58 and was made redundant from my then full time role, did I realise I wasn't getting it til I am 65 and 4 months old. OK ...I get all the arguments about equality and don't have any issue with them. But had I know earlier that this gap was going to open up, I would have made entirely different choices about jobs, training, personal savings and investments and a host of other things.

As it is, my DH (he's 70 and gets a full state pension as well as having a decent occupational pension) is pretty much keeping us, I can't find work in my former sector and we're worse off than we had planned to be. I have looked for other types of work such as shop work etc to no avail and am now making a bit of pin money by turning my hobby (photography) into a bit of an earner, which is helping. Ticking off the next year and 10 months and let's see how it goes.

[makeourfuture]

Basic income.

[OhTheRoses]

I started a second career at 43. I am 57. I have just reached a senior mgmt position. I don't think this would have been possible with a mandatory retirement age of 60.

FIL started work at 15 took a v. Generous redundancy and early pension at 55.

DH started work at 23 and will retire at about 65 although will probs carry on until 70+.

[LakieLady]

I think you're right, DrunkOnEther. Because so many things that used to kill people are now treatable or operable, people are more likely to develop degenerative diseases.

My late father died at 76 from a lung disease (although he also had dementia). He'd started getting symptoms before he retired at 63 and by the time he was 68, he was quite unwell. There's no way he could have carried on working past 66. My mother had dementia and got increasingly odd from 60 onwards.

I have osteoarthritis in my spine and loads of other joints, and I'm very aware that I'm not as mentally sharp as I was in my 40s and 50s. My memory is getting very poor and I really struggle to learn new processes etc. A friend who is only 55 has COPD, osteoarthritis and is almost stone deaf. She can't work, and lives on income from a lodger and carer's allowance for looking after her mother. Another friend had a stroke at 56 which has left her with difficulties with short-term memory and language, she is on ESA and PIP.

We'll really struggle if I get too unwell to work before I get my pension as DP's income isn't enough to support us both.

I think a lot more people are going to find themselves in similar situations as the retirement age rises, especially those in physical jobs like nursing.

[pringlecat]

I'll probably end up working until I die.

I feel sorry for everyone who feels like they have to keep working past 60, male or female. A lot of older people can keep working (depends on the nature of the job, really!) and they enjoy it, and I don't think they should be forced to retire. But if people feel like they have to, because they can't afford to stop - yeah, they have my sympathy.

I'll be one of them one day...

Ideally, I'd like to retire at 40, but let's face it, realistically, I'll still be working in my 70s if I'm not dead by then!

[RedPeppers]

The reality is that more than half of people over 60yo have some sort of illness.
It's not an issue of whether it's fair or what's or whatever.
The reality is that quite a ot of people will NOT be able to do it.

I also suspect that a good part of those who end up still working more than they should (as your friends) will be more likely to end up ill and /or die early (Illness will cost more .... so the 'you have to work until you are 70yo' might well not save that much money!)

[Joffmognum]

I'm 19. I've calculated I'll need to put away £300/month (adjust for inflation when applicable) for the next 40 years in order to save about £140k which would last me 20 years on £7.2k/year. Assuming i retire at 60 and die at 80. This will be more in an interest savings account but I don't like risk so it won't be much. It'll go up to £10.8k/year if I retire at 65 and die at 80.

But if course I might live til 90 so if I account for that but retire at 60 i could only spend about 4.6k/year in retirement

I hope my income goes up more before then so I could save more. I'll probably end up selling my house and living with my children if state pension doesn't exist like it does now

[WhatsitallaboutAlfie1]

Realistically, what employers want women over 60 working for them? Or even over 55? They want the cheapest workers, and that leaves millions of 50+ women in a total mess financially.

[TalkinPeece]

My state retirement age is 68

there are a lot less school leavers each year than old people

[80sMum]

I am surprised that there are so many people who didn't know about the equalisation of state pension ages until very recently. It's not as if it hasn't been reported on and discussed ad infinitum since 1995. I found out in 1995, when it was announced that the law had changed and from 2010 to 2020 women's state pension age would increase from 60 to 65.

It really was all over the news at the time, in the papers, on TV, everywhere - and a major topic of discussion at work among the female employees - and there must have been countless media discussions and articles since 1995. You would have to have been living with no newspapers, no radio and no TV to have missed it!

[mossflox]

Lucisky makes some good points about life not being a bed of roses in the 1970s. The Equal Pay Act didn't even come into force until 1975, ditto loans or credit for women in their own name.

I'm in my early 50s and having to deal with the menopause, teenage children, an increasingly frail, elderly parent as well as work part-time. It's a fairly common scenario and it's mentally and physically tiring - and plenty of people have it much harder than me.

[morningtoncrescent62]

I don't feel sorrier for women than I do for men, and I don't feel sorrier for today's men and women in their 60s than I do for future generations. But I do still feel that until you are in your late 50s and early 60s doing a full time job, you can't really say how you will feel.

This. I don't want to see the SPA raised to the late 60s and beyond, though I'd like it equalised for men and women, maybe to 63 or thereabouts.

The WASPI arguments irritate me - the implication is that if only women born in the 1950s had been properly informed that the SPA was going up, they would have saved more. Sorry, but the people (women and men) born in the 50s and ever since who I'm concerned about are those on low wages who wouldn't have been able to/still can't save, no matter what they thought their retirement age would be. Those who are spending their working lives living hand-to-mouth. And that's what gets me with the raising of the SPA - the poor have been shafted yet again. Those who can afford to save, who are in jobs with pension schemes, who buy or inherit sufficient cash to buy homes, will all be OK - they'll be able to choose to retire earlier. It's the poor who won't have those choices, who in any case are more likely to be in manual jobs, and who are statistically likely to die earlier.

[FormerlyFrikadela01]

Lucisky makes some good points about life not being a bed of roses in the 1970s. The Equal Pay Act didn't even come into force until 1975, ditto loans or credit for women in their own name.

Yet people still managed to get mortgages on just the man's income and only what 2 maybe 3 times his annual income. Couples on average incomes now are looking at 5 times their annual income to get a mortgage, that's assuming they can afford the deposit. Yes it must have been hard with high tax and high interest rates but let's not pretend that there's a lot of people who benefited in a way no one of today's generation will.

[malificent7]

Well in my last job I couldn't afford to pay into a pension so I am going to have to retrain in a career that offers more than short term contracts. Working in education has become a complete nightmare with very few permanent contracts.
There is also no way that I could teach until the age of 65. It's exhausting enough at 35!

I do think it's harder for mothers to succeed in the workplace tbh.

[mossflox]

Homeowners vs renters was approximately 50/50 in the 1970s according to ONS.

It's not related to the state pension, it's a bit more complex than that.

[BrexitSucks]

My mom (born 1940) died age 63, working FT, so never got to "enjoy" her pension.
But she never intended to. She joked but was serious, that of course she would work until she dropped.
She died suddenly at 63 due to bad lifestyle choices... not from overwork.

I can't help but think when I read this thread that people don't only have one choice (to work a very physically demanding job until they drop). If you work from age 16-70+ then you will probably have a variety of types of jobs, not all FT either. And not just women like that. More & more men have patchwork careers, too.