to be annoyed that so many on mn seem to begrudge pensioners?

[Slartybartfast]

for mainly being too rich
so many of you seem to think that those who have retired at 65 and are likely enough to have a good pension have somehow cheated

My understanding of national insurance is that the people paying in are covering the people who currently need support rather than it working in the same way as a private equity scheme?

Palliative care is funded by the NHS, we're not talking about that. There is one disease which isn't funded fr people with a certain amount f money and that one disease is dementia.

While current pensions are funded by current tax payers, there is a qualifying number of NI contributions for a full pension. And, if you have other income over the personal allowance, you pay tax on it. Very wealthy pensioners could pay enough tax to completely offset their state pensions.

Yes ~ the working population are paying for the NHS, the State Pension, Unemployment benefit, Sickness and disability allowances. So the longer you have worked the more you have contributed.

However ~ it is a system for all, not a system just meant for those ‘in need’. Imagine a UK Health System just for the poor? Imagine maternity benefits just for the poor. Maybe no maternity benefits at all as not everybody needs them. Maybe doctors appointments on a pay-as-you-go system? Daily charges for being in hospital.

Once we take the ‘universal’ out of our benefits system we play into Tory hands ~ and have a privatised system under which the poor and needy will suffer the most.

(But there seems to be various definitions of what poor/needy or struggling actually means on this thread).

It isn't about depriving anyone or suggesting it isn't deserved. But it isn't economically viable to say the current system can be continued for countless generations to come either. The next generations will be just as deserving but won't get it, even with changes.

Nobody's tax and n.i. works like a private saving scheme. It wouldn't be sensible or fair to say that if I need medical treatment I should get a private room, nurse and consultant because I arrived at the hospital first and have contributed to the system enough to cover that one visit. Only for the next 9 people to arrive at hospital and crowd into a corridor with an auxiliary to operate on all, despite them also contributing as I did. And even of you do think that's fair, it doesn't allow for the other 10 who have contributed just as much, but aren't blessed with the same health and regularly take out. Or the next 10 who haven't contributed through no fault of their own. Or the 1 who represents the mail stereotype.

It simply wouldn't be fair for me to arrive first and expect so much better treatment just because in an ideal world we all deserve it. And if I then say the rest in the now packed corridor should have planned better like I did, it won't prove I'm more entitled or deserving than the 31 behind me.

desperately yes it does.

tap Working tax credits and child tax are limited to low income, as is housing benefit. As in its possible to be left with below breadline income and still not get help with housing. Child benefit is also capped, admittedly not at a low income. I'd suggest the latter is how I'd want state pension to work, not at breadline. Obviously I'd ditch the inequality of a couple being entitled on double the income to a single person.

So a couple pay in double and get out half? Another disincentive to raise a family as a couple?

Why not look at all the ways government are wasting money that generates nothing positive for the country ~ nuclear weapons, the House of Lords, the royal family and their hangers on ~ just for starters. Setting citizens against each other and blaming them for government mismanagement is playing right into their hands and letting them off the hook. Look at the money the Tory government just found to hand over to the DUP to keep themselves in power! Now where did that windfall come from?

What you're missng here, despite it being repeatedly pointed out, is that the state pension is the only payment for which you have to qualify via your NI contributions. I paid mine for 44 years, my husband will have paid for 48 years. I'm tired of saying this and also that we continue to be tax payers in our retirement, like thousands of other pensioners.

We pay for other people's child benefit and child care. I don't mind this at all but I am sick and tired of the recipients of that money telling me how unfair it is for me to have the pension I paid for all those years.

tap that isn't what I said. With child benefit you are entitled up to £50k. After that you start to lose it, I believe on a scale up to 60k where all entitlement ends. But a couple could both earn 49k and still receive it.

So eg I wouldn't want someone with for arguments sake a private pension of 10k and still paying housing costs to not be entitled to state pension, but a couple who both have 9k private pensions, large savings, property etc to get the state pension when the former pensioner isn't. Although tbh I was thinking more like the cb cap, an income that still allows for a good quality of life.

You also ignore that they have also taken out double, and their living costs are not double.

Solve all the wasted money and tax avoidance, and it still won't be economically viable to suggest every generation can expect decades of retirement with expensive medical care and social care. There's a whole load of other things that money needs to be spent on too. Those of us who do contribute aren't just covering our own present or possible future costs, we're covering those who can't contribute too. We can't therefore expect to get out the same as we put in.

However I'm unlikely to have many opinions in common with someone who thinks lone parents have just been disincincentivised to raise a family as a couple. Along with other changes, don't forget that it's the older generations who often had to stay in abusive marriages, or enforced adoptions for unmarried mothers. We don't have those delightful incentives anymore.

We don't need incentives anyway, studies don't show any detrimental outcome for dc raised by single parents compared to couples, apart from those related to poverty.

blue incorrect. There are contribution based versions of jsa and esa. With very different criteria to means tested.

I bet if someone had raised the issue of raising retirement age slightly with the generation below you they would have responded in the same manner you are. Instead your age group took the full hit. But you seem to think it's ok to do the same to another generation.

I don't mind contributing to other people's healthcare, state education, pensions, social care, welfare or anything else. But I do object to the idea I should cheerfully accept I won't get anything when I need it in turn.

You also ignore that they have also taken out double, and their living costs are not double
I don’t ignore this fact any more than you are ignoring the fact that they have put double in! Last time I shopped I found it cost me double to feed 2 adults than to feed 1 ~ yet you think they should share one pension despite paying in to two?
I also think you are stretching a point about ‘disincentives’ to bang a drum about single parenting I wasn’t even referring to. I was talking about couple feeling they would be better off single if there was to be a financial penalty for staying together.

So you propose taking it away from current pensioners instead. Nice one.

I find that running a home for one costs the same as it does for 2 adults bar food and clothes. Utility bills don't go down and council tax isn't half that of a couple. It's the same for single pensioners.

And nobody has mentioned sharing one pension afaik, certainly not me. Or financial penalties for staying together. Just my belief that if state pension was means tested on household income, we should apply that cap at the same amount for all.

So household A should not be told they don't qualify because they have a household income of £10k and one person.

Household B with 2 people told they don't qualify because their total household income is £15k, with 11k coming from one and 4k from the other.

Household C, with a total of £19,998 are told they qualify, because it comprises of 2 people who each get £9,999 each.

All things equal, household C already have the largest disposable income, so it would be unfair they are the only household entitled if the cap is 10k.

The only way the above is fair is if you want to penalise single pensioners and those with unbalanced partners, whilst rewarding some couples. Which is how child benefit works at present, and exactly the opposite of what I think would be fair with state pensions.

I'm unsure how you concluded I was suggesting couples should share pensions. Hence my response about single parents, because I assumed you were referring to that given nothing I said mentioned penalising couples.

blue no, I suggested sharing the unfairness out a bit. Not any one group taking the whole hit.

As I've said, my generation know we are fucked when it comes to state pension. We have nothing to lose either way. But those who are currently late 40's/ very early 50's are imo the group that the inevitable large changes will hit, and so no, I don't think they should face drastically reduced circumstances compared to those 15 or 20 years older. Better to share that across several decades.

My teachers pension (30 years service) is £638 a month. I also get OAP. It’s not a fortune , dh gets a similar amount, but we are comfortable. We have no mortgage, a newish small car, one decent holiday a year and a couple of weekends away.
All our dc are in their 40s now. All are married, all home owners, two in easy commute of London. We gave none of them deposits just a couple of thousand as a house warming. Dh is in his 80s and I am a little younger. We are baby boomers but we are not rich.

I agree hog by the time I get to old age there won’t be a pension to speak of (I have my own but expect to work well into my 70s), the NHS won’t be free at point of use (it’s practically broken now).
My grandfather has been retired longer than he ever worked (retired at 55) on a £1600 a month state and police pension.
It’s disneguous for the young generation to say it’s fine and we don’t mind the grow unfairness.

We will just to say how it all works out.I am single so will be singly living on my £140 a week or whatever it will be (less than usual for various reasons) when I turn 67 although I hope to carry on working too. My council tax is £3200 so about half my pension income will go on council tax to start with.
State pension is all I will get for the NI paid over 46 years as not had things like maternity pay or sick pay and am self employed and worked continuously for 35 years and counting with no breaks ever other than at most 2 weeks of holiday.

As someone said above currently we have a system which is not just a safety net for the very poor but instead universal free health care, education, disability and other benefits and state pensions. We could certainly move away from that and I would support that as long as my taxes halved and we had much much less state provision, only there for those very badly off.

I’m not particularly ‘enjoying’ living on my pension. When I started work 48 years ago I elected to pay full NI stamp at a time when you could pay the cheaper married woman’s stamp. Most people didn’t have a private pension unless you were in a very well
paid job. We were led to believe that after paying into the state pension for all those years you’d get a good pension. So I subsidised all the University students who got full grants and didn’t have to have loans, and the NHS so everybody could have good healthcare, and good free dental care etc. When the time came to draw my state pension the money I and others of my generation had paid in had been spent; not put into a pension fund to provide me with a pension I could live on. So now I live (exist) on my pension plus benefits. Not something I ever envisaged.

All the older people I know who can afford to, have helped children to buy houses. I know there are those who could easily afford to but won't. Especially anywhere in London/SE I don't understand them - you'd have to be wilfully ignorant not to know how much more relarively expensive houses are now. Maybe they're just very selfish, but anyone who thinks it's just a question of giving up iPhones and being more frugal is deluding themselves.
Unless you're on a very high salary, buying the sort of house many of our generation were able to buy a few decades ago, is just not possible now without help, no matter how frugal you were prepared to be.

As for bus passes, I know there are plenty of people who never use them, because their local public transport is rubbish, but around here where it's very good, plenty of oldies who are certainly not poor do use buses. One thing to be said for bus passes is that they do keep a lot of cars off the road and out of the car parks, not to mention keeping some of the pollution out of the air.

There is not much chance state pension will go. It will simply keep being given out to those who are older and older rather than younger "old" people. My father paid 40% tax on his state pension by the way and worked full time until he died (paying 40% tax on most of his earnings)

(..full time until 2 years before he died I should say.....he got dementia in the end and used all of his life savings and pensions to pay for his day and night at home care)

I think it's a shame that so many people bash the boomers for being too well off. We should be finding ways for everyone to have a good and comfortable retirement rather than pouring bile over those who have that already. Yes it is totally unfair that the young have to struggle so much, are at the mercy of landlords etc, but nothing will change if you don't get out there and vote and lobby and protest.

Beware of thinking abolishing free bus passes, winter fuel payments etc is a good thing. One you begin removing them from some people, that will continue until they no longer exist.

@llangennith exactly, the UK state pension is one of the meanest in Europe isn't it? It's sad that people here are calling for it to be even meaner.

llang which is exactly why it should be means tested. I don't see why someone like you should be given the same state pension as somebody who has more than enough private pension and assets to live very comfortably. Whether your generation, the oldest in society or my dd's generation, it seems ridiculous to have such inequality.

It's beyond me why Mrs Smith should get the £120/£150 they really don't need and is only used as additional luxury fund. Ditto fuel payment. Bus passes used for a jolly after parking somewhere convenient.

Whilst many of the Mrs Jones locally, who have worked just as hard, are choosing between heat and eat. Or one days food from the local shop versus several arduous journeys on foot and the crappy local bus to buy a weeks worth at aldi.

it’s a recipe for ‘blowing it all’ or hiding assets before retirement if the years of saving, going without, planning ahead get rewarded by a reduced or no state pension at all. Who in their right mind would pay into a private pension (let alone a state pension) if they were to be punished for it.

Just been discussing this ‘debate’ in the pub with two men this lunchtime. One works every overtime he can get to build up a fund to feel his future is secure. His wife works full time. He has two kids and says ‘no more’ as they can’t afford it. He says he is exhausted, but that he’s doing the right thing.
His pal laughed and says, ‘live for the moment’. He has 4 kids, does no overtime. His wife works two days a week. They are exhausted too, but with the kids, not work. His view was he’d worry about the future when it came. Right now he had other priorities.
I suggested some were of the view that ‘mr overtime’ should be given less pension because of his savings as ‘he wouldn’t need extra financial support’.
I’m happy to say both men thought that was unfair.

There are poor and needy people who through no life choices of their own need support. They need it and should get it.

However, not all people are better off because they had things fall in their laps. Not all less well off people are deserving of more support.
Some choices you make in life will affect your future and you cannot expect others who might have made wiser choices, worked harder, lived more frugally or saved for their old age to be penalised for their efforts.

Thehog , but that's difficult. I've given the children my pension (and HMRC) and have no savings so would I be treated as not entitled to my state pension later?

Nobody would be put off saving for a private pension unless either you capped state entitlement too low, or if you made it ludicrously generous.

Done how tax credits are, where many are just over the threshold but not actually any better off than someone on nmw with top ups, I quite agree it could be an issue.

As to assets, deliberate deprivation results in refusal for housing benefits or universal credit etc. And they are reasonably good at discovering it, so wouldn't be an issue.

Those 15yrs off retirement might have time to hide assets and qualify on that count, but realistically signing over your life savings to your kids will be pretty risky, given few will have dc they can be positive will remain solvent for decades to come.

Property again pretty simple. Live in a million pound house you bought for peanuts years ago, it doesn't count as an asset for state pension unless you move to a less valuable property. Sell your family home for £300k long after dc move out and buy another family home outright for £500k and it's fairly obvious you're hiding money.

I do think houses should only be considered assets after death, and only to cover any social care.

zb depends on circumstances and what you're living on now. If I choose to give dd and hmrc my salary to improve her quality of life, I don't think the state owes me an alternative. If out of desperation I give her my salary to fund eg life changing nhs treatment the nhs won't provide, on the understanding a partner will provide for me and then circumstances change, it's entirely different. I don't see why pension should be any different.