Retirement age for ladies - why so upset? R2 debate

[AiryFairyUnicornRainbow]

Listening to R2 today - a lot of ladies (who have picketed for equality all their lives, presumably) are now up in arms, that their retirement age has moved in line with mens

So before, women could retire at 60 and men 65 - but womens age was 60.

What exactly are pple upset about?

Have ladies been requesting equality since the dawn of time?

Why do you feel hard done by, when my Generation (your sons and daughters) will have to work long past your retirement age?

I have a relative, who is completely up in arms about this, but has only worked probably 15 years in her working life - as was the done thing stayed at home with kids way beyond school age. No private pension, nothing. Yet is a massive womens libber.

These days, women are felt rushed back into work the minute they give birth, and are literally worked to death. SAHM's are frowned upon by the working mothers

I thought it was just because women traditionally married older men?

Helen I don't hate any demographic, but waspi women are doing themselves no favours with spreading misinformation.

waspi women are doing themselves no favours with spreading misinformation

@nickiredcar

You are misinformed.

Nope. Heard them myself and have pasted the fullfact.org link that shows they are lying, several times.

@nickiredcar

You posted:

did have all the time and notice to prepare

Incorrect, so you are lying.

The government didn’t write to any woman affected by the rise in the pension ages for nearly 14 years after the law was passed in 1995. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) started sending out letters from April 2009 onwards. Responding to a Freedom of Information request, the DWP revealed that some women did not find out until they were 59 that their SPA of 60 had been delayed.

Yes I'm aware the waspi women are claiming ignorance over the wildly known changes.

It's up to them to keep up to date with the pension changed, it's was common knowledge when they were changed. If they ignored it at the time it's their fault.

You said you're in your 30s @nickiredcar. When you're older you might be wiser and a bit more tolerant. As it is, I'm struggling to understand your bitterness towards women of retirement age.

Nicki i think the WASPI women would be even better off ignoring you!

@CraftyGin
Are you for real?
The state pension is a safety net, not a way to maintain your lifestyle.
Do you think we all pay NI for the fun of it?? It isn't a benefit for the poor. It's a pension. Private pensions weren't regulated 20 years ago. Educate yourself on the many private pension providers who screwed people over.

Back at you, Diana. Look up the history of the state pension.

Hello older. It is our money. We paid our NI on the earlier understanding. I know pensions are paid from receipts. We didnt design the system. We didnt have an option to remove our pension contributions and invest on our own behalf. We paid as required. We are owed

Sorry, but that is incorrect. National insurance is a form of taxation. Once paid, it ceases to be "our money" in the same way as income tax and VAT do.

There was never any "contract" for a state pension. NI contributions don't accumulate on behalf of the person paying them, they are spent in the year they're received.

In paying NI, nobody is building up a pension fund. What they are doing is accumulating a record of payments in order to build a state pension entitlement. That entitlement is determined by the number of years of contributions - and the number of years required in order to be entitled to a full state pension is subject to change, according to any changes in the law that may be deemed necessary by the government at the time.

It used to be the case (up until about 10 years ago, if my memory serves me correctly) that you needed 39 qualifying years of NI contributions in order to receive the full state pension. Back in 2005, I paid about £5k in NI top-ups, to cover a few incomplete years in my record when I hadn't earned enough to pay NI.

A few years later, the rules were changed and you only needed 30 qualifying years! I was miffed, having forked out for missing years that I then didn't need after all, but that's life as they say.

A few years after that, however, the goal posts moved yet again and the number of qualifying years went up to 35, where it still remains.

This is the nature of things that are state controlled: rules can be changed with very short notice. I'm not saying that is a good thing; it's just the way things are and have always been.

I could have sworn the DWP wrote to me before 2009 Ho. Are you sure of your facts?

from the link posted upthread by @Quizshowaddict

in 1935 the National Spinsters' Pensions Association was formed to demand state pensions for unmarried women at 55. They argued that, in addition to their other disadvantages, women were often forced into involuntary retirement at earlier ages than men, for various reasons: women's poorer health; discrimination by employers against post-menopausal women; and the fact that many unmarried women gave up work in middle life to care for ageing parents and could not, thereafter, find employment.

A government enquiry found substance in these arguments: rates of unemployment among 'spinsters' over 45 were higher than among men of the same age, and they found it harder to re-enter employment; women showed a marked deterioration in health from age 55. The committee expressed concern about the numbers of women left in poverty after caring for elderly relatives. In 1940 the state pensionable age for all women was reduced to 60.

I wonder if solid research showed that these differences have been all eliminated now meaning that the equality in retirement age is now reasonable?

DWP started to write to women affected from 2009 onwards:
• Between April 2009 and March 2011, it wrote to women born between 6 April 1950 and 5 April 1953, informing them of their SPA under the Pensions Act 1995.
• Following the 2011 changes, it wrote to all individuals directly affected to inform them of the change to their state pension age. Sending mail to those individuals, who are due to reach SPA between 2016 and 2026, was completed between January 2012 and November 2013.
Source: researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7405/CBP-7405.pdf#page19

We will never know how many women did not know, or could not be reasonably expected to know, that their state pension age was increasing. What is apparent with hindsight is that previous governments could have done a lot better in communicating the changes. Well into this decade far too many affected women were unaware of the equalisation of state pension age at 65 legislated for in 1995. While the last and current Governments have done more to communicate state pension age changes than their predecessors, this has been too little too late for many women, especially given increases in the state pension age have been accelerated at relatively short notice. Many thousands of women justifiably feel aggrieved.
Source: researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7405/CBP-7405.pdf#page19

@iLevictoiChete

I wonder if solid research showed that these differences have been all eliminated now meaning that the equality in retirement age is now reasonable?

Interesting quote. I suspect research has not been done because they won't like the answers. Anecdotally atleast, amongst my relatives/acquaintances, it's still women who provide the most care to elderly relatives.

I'm in my 30s and I'm building a private pension through work (no idea if it will be worthwhile when I retire), but my mum received her state pension at 60 and it was great to see her have financial freedom.

On 16 November 2018, UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston said in his report on poverty in the UK:
As was made clear to me in a number of submissions and through
powerful personal testimony, a group of women born in the
1950s have been particularly impacted by an abrupt and poorly
phased in change in the state pension age from 60 to 66. The
impact of the changes to pensionable age is such as to severely
penalize those who happen to be on the cusp of retirement and
who had well-founded expectations of entering the next phase of
their lives, rather than being plunged back into a workforce for
which many of them were ill-prepared and to which they could
not reasonably have been expected to adjust with no notice.

Don't criticise women who are unhappy about the changes until you can show me good senior job opportunities for women of 60+.

BTW, I knew about the changes in 1995, but they would not have affected me as I was expecting to have retired by the time they came into force. I only found out in 2009 that I would now be retiring nearly 6 years later than expected. Even though it was then 5 years before I was expecting to retire, it was too late to make major changes to plans.

Anyway, all those younger women, be careful what you wish for - don't complain when you need free childcare from your mother or mother-in-law, you find they all have to work to 66/67/70 and after that they are too tired and worn out to look after young children!

Also, if women aged 60 - 70 are working, and are not available to care for disabled or elderly relatives, the state pension is going to look like a bargain; compared to paying for domicilary care; and then for them to be cared for in a residential or nursing home instead! (Seeing as women carers save the state £77 billion)

I think this is a lesson to all of us about the news information we seek out and absorb.

I have been aware of this change for about 15-16 years. Not sure how or where, but I found out about somewhere. How did so many women miss this news? Not now, but 15 years ago when they could have changed their working patterns or made additional contributions. Yes, it was the DWP's job to write to people, but surely it is also everyone's responsibility to stay at least slightly abreast of what is going on in the world. It reminds me of someone on my social media complaining about being fined by HMRC for continuing to claim child benefit despite not being eligible! Or did reporting on the pension issue not penetrate the areas of the media that women tend to read?

I am no better than anyone else and the lesson I will take away from this is: 'Also read the dull stuff as it might matter'. I must read the financial pages even if it doesn't immediately interest me. And keep an eye on the horizon, in case the next big thing coming over it is coming in my direction!

So a woman born 6 April 1953 or later might not find out until Nov 2013 that her retirement date had been delayed - in my case by 6 years. It certainly seems possible that some women had very little notice or even none at all.

As it happens I saw it on the News sometime in 1995 but if I hadn't been watching that particular day, I might well not have known. It was pre internet, it wasn't a topic in magazines, and I didn't read financial pages as a rule. My actual letter finally arrived in August 2013, 4 years before I was 60.

Good post Maybe, totally with you. Like you I knew well before 2009 and received at least a couple of letters before then. Don't know what planet you're living on Sand .....

Hildegard, and I don't know what planet you are living on where post never goes astray.

Quite a lot of woman say they never received any letters and I am pretty sure they are not all lying.

When did 100% of mail all get delivered correctly? I am having my post redirected at present and so far, in 6 months, have received 4 letters that were not for me or DH (totally different surname) that have been redirected and 2 of them were not even for the address we lived at.

I'm glad that at least some women had some sort of notification. Like @Sandinyourshoes I received absolutely nothing until a few years before I was 60. I still had (carefully preserved) the previous letter I had received decades ago telling me my official pension age was changing from 60 to 62 and a few months. In that case, I was fully informed with more than enough notice, and obviously I had absolutely no difficulties planning for the change.

Saltpans, although I agree with the gist of your comment about care, it is parents that need childcare, not just mothers.