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

the cliff-edge and the short notice certainly should have been avoided.

however there's a lot of hyperbole on this thread.

the state pension is currently £168.60 per week.

if someone was expecting to retire in a year or two and now has an extra 5 years before they can get that amount - well that's only 21.5 hours of work at minimum wage.

now I know that £168.60 per week isn't much to live on, obviously, but 21.5 hours work a week isn't overwhelming for a 60-66yo and many women whose hourly earning power is better than minimum wage can make that in maybe 10-15 hours work.

it's not a retirement age, its just the age for the state pension. private pensions, occupational pension schemes etc can't unilaterally change the existing contract so a lot of people can still more-than-semi-retire for the 5-6 year difference.

it was never sustainable to have vast numbers of healthy, active people getting a retirement that in many cases was not much shorter than a working lifetime. the outrage was only that instead of keeping it realistic but keeping changes gradual, decades worth of retirees have had their full helping unchallenged then there's this brick wall for an unlucky few.

The state cannot afford to support you just because you planned to stop work at 60. No, but it should have the decency to warn you in enough time to make your own provisions. And that is what people are complaining about.

To those saying men should get their pension earlier because they don't live as long - there's very little difference in healthy life expectancy. The extra years of life that women have are lived in ill-health.

if someone was expecting to retire in a year or two and now has an extra 5 years before they can get that amount - well that's only 21.5 hours of work at minimum wage.

There's all sorts of reasons why it's difficult to work to make up the pension shortfall - maybe you are simply worn out in your job, maybe you moved when your husband retired to a smaller house in a cheaper area, confident you could cope for the couple of years till your state pension kicked in.. And it's not easy for a 60 year old woman to find a job.

Pouty are you sure you got that right. I was born in 1953, i couldn’t get my state pension till i was 62

Just checked with DH. His mum was born in 1952, not 54. She retired (from doing fuck all!) and claimed her full state pension just before she was 62. I lost 2 years somewhere!

Still, my mum, who worked in public service her whole working life, can’t claim her state pension for another 2 years. It stinks.

Err. Women born in 1953 may have had mother's who were SAHM but the way I remember it we were encouraged to stay in education and get qualifications, and the Equal Pay Act came into force when I as in the 6th Form. However only about 10% of the entire population of our age went to university. On my course in 1973 we were 51% female.
I can't argue that I didn't know that my pension age was changed in the 1990s to 62y 8 m as I still have the letter notifying me of the change, but it was the 65 overnight in 2010 that annoyed me. By the time I stopped working last year, physically and mentally exhausted, before qualifying for state pension I had contributed for 42 years- well over maximum required contributions to get a full pension.
It is the cliff edge for those of us born in 1953 that is annoying. If I had been 2 hours older I would have had my pension 5 months earlier. One of my cousins, her SIL and me were born within 5 months of each other. Our pension ages were years apart.

I am confused at those who gave up work when they married and got a full pension. Admittedly you got pension credits while claiming child benfit but that plus a short working life would not give a full state pension.

Also for me, when I started paying NI the agreement I had with the Government was I worked and contributed and they paid a pension when I as 60. They changed the rules twice-who else could change the contract without both parties agreeing?

From the tone of your posts it is clear you have your mind made up already and are just spoiling for an argument.. BUT anyone who has any education in personal finance will tell you that the women of the affected generation are at a financial disadvantage to men in every way, (NI contributions, private pension, career progression due to maternity breaks, part-time penalty) and EQUALITY is about ensuring everyone is afforded the same opportunities.

Crafty,

So you would sit down and just take it on the chin would you?

The government sending you NO notice(me) and you finding out in newspapers/tv the your not retiring now At 60 it’s 66 and they’ve down you out of about 40k that I worked from the age off 16 got my 35 years in to qualify for it and now be told NO not now in 6 years
It’s not a benefit

i feel so sorry for women that are going to have to work till they’re 67, men too. I’m now 65 and full of aches and pains, i’d hate to have to go out working at this age. I know so many women now in their late fifties, early sixties that are physically worn out. Life is one big struggle, especially if they are on their own with no other income.

There is unfairness to both sexes.

Women were massively denied the working opportunities that men were, were paid far less if they could work (and often weren't allowed to join private pension schemes) and all of the childcare responsibilities automatically fell to them alone.

Many men had to work in gruelling, physically demanding jobs that left them absolutely worn out in their older age and often with debilitating illnesses - plenty actually dying before pension age as a direct result - from long before health and safety was even a thing.

I'm not surprised that huge numbers of both men and women feel completely knackered and genuinely unable to keep going until 67.

One thing I've noticed is that it seems mainly to be the people - of both sexes - who've had the much physically easier jobs, who tend to have been in a much better position (better pay and health, for a start) to make provision for their retirement at an earlier age.

A not insignificant number of people from these times (by no means all) will have come from families who could afford to send them to university (and yes, men definitely had the advantage across the board with support to do this - from the parents who could afford it but still wouldn't have seen the point in paying for their sisters to go and from society in general), which would often have been a prerequisite for most of the 'nicer' jobs. Ergo the jobs which took the lowest physical toll tended to be the ones which people could retire from earlier.

The pension age did need to be equalised and couldn't stay as it was forever. 60 or 63 for everybody would have been nice, but we all know that was never ever going to happen - and the plan to do so has indeed been public knowledge for 25 years or more.

However, the greatest unfairness has to be women born in the same year having pension ages differing by sometimes several years. The fairest way all round would have been to given a firm, promised, immutable pension age to everybody, with at least 15 years' notice, and for this to be staggered rather than nominating precipice birth dates. Born before, say, the end of March 1950 = 60 years; born before the end of April 1950 = 60 years and 1 month etc. Then everybody born from March 1956 onwards would all know they wouldn't get a pension until 67 - still not what they'd have grown up expecting - but had they been informed of this in 1995, they would have been well aware of the situation before they were 40.

Oh come on, Airy.

Seriously, how old are you pretending to be? And a woman, too, yes?

I’ve never heard anyone of my generation or younger describe another woman as a “women’s libber”. Feminist- is that what you mean?

Everyone else has explained for the hard of thinking who “don’t get it” based on their 1 relative who’s apparently never contributed to society at all. I’m sure you’ll catch up if you read the posts properly.

I was born in the late 50s. There wasn't the same childcare payments etc when my children were young so the only jobs l could do realistically were lower paid bar jobs etc whilst they were growing up so my exh could work full time.
I have seen friends born in '53 retire at 63 and friends born nine years before me retire at 60.
Its just not been done on a fair sliding scale, ending up in one group of women i e those born over the late 50s early sixties losing much more by far than any other group.
My DH is same age as me and we will both retire at 66"but he always expected to retire at 65 so has only 'lost' a year's pension. I have lost a full six. My friends born five six or seven years before me have 'only' lost three years or less.
I don't think anyone still of working age who has always been told they would get their pension at 60 and l was around 40 when this happened should have so many years taken off them. They should have capped it so no one individual of working age lost more than say three years.

The steepness of the change for women born in 1953 and 1954 is severe and maybe a case for retrospective re-evaluation, but I really wish the campaigners would stop going on about 'having no notice' because the start of these changes were announced in 1995, which is nearly 25 years ago.

Ignorance is no defence as they say. It's like the changes to child benefit for high earners. That came in 6 years ago and you still get posts on here of the 'i had no idea about this' variety despite the changes being widely publicised.
Time to start taking notice of things like this that can seriously affect your plans.

It's women not ladies.

the state pension is currently £168.60 per week.

I thought it was £164.35?

I was born early 60's my pension age is now 67. I do 12 hour shifts in a physical job, no way I can do that till 67.
At school my careers advice from a man was, no need to do too much, go to the local tech and have a go at hairdressing you'll be married with children by 20 anyway.
Most firends stopped work after marriage, or right after the first baby. The men controlled just aboout everything.

It's a massive problem for women that age.

These women grew up at a time when there wasn't much equality. Much harder for women to get a good job and carve a successful career, and if they did then getting paid less than men for the same role was the norm.

If they had children there was much more pressure to give up work or work part time.

All this has a knock on effect on pensions. Women on average have far less in their pension than men by retirement age.

They have made plans for retirement, possibly winding down their career, and with very little notice all the goalposts have changed.

This isn't equality. This is yet another way that women are screwed financially.

Great post.

I thought it was phased in?

All the information you need is in this post Alfie.

perhaps Op has limited financial experience

I think its probably this

So I can see that it was phased in and there has been plenty of notice.

I was having the pension chat with two friends yesterday

None of us has a pension

A third friend has a massive pension...huge, she is planning to retire at 55

It was phased in from 60 -63. The jump to 66 was rapid, not phased.

Another one who feels screwed over, in that I paid national insurance contributions for many years which was meant to be a contract with the state to provide for sick pay and a state pension at 60. It's a fundamental breach of contract and abuse, in my opinion. I am lucky that DH has a private pension, so have been able to retire, but otherwise it would have been a struggle.

OP do you have a mortgage? When are you due to pay it off?

How would you feel if you'd spent 20 years planning to have it paid off in the year 2022, then in the year 2020 your lender suddenly said 'Oh you need to keep making those repayments until 2028.'

Do you get it now?

But we're all feeling screwed over. I will have been working mostly full time for over 50 years (17 to 68) by the time I get my state pension and the ‘final salary’ pension I started when I was 19 and was supposed to pay out when I will be 60 was changed over a few years ago, so while I will still get some pension at 60, I will have to wait until I am 68 to get the rest of it.

Just hope I live long enough for it to be all worthwhile, as it’s cost a fucking fortune – hundreds of pounds a month for nearly 50 years.