Women and pensions

[Gin96]

AIBU to think women are short changed when it comes to pensions? The amount of women I speak to who don’t have a private pension. A lady I work with is 67, she only has a state pension and can’t afford to retire. Ladies in there 40’s with no pension at all, they don’t think it’s a problem as the state will provide for them. Why are we not taught in school about finances and pensions? As I get nearer to retirement age I am suddenly taking an interest and it is a mind field trying to work it out.

DDs not adds

My pension scheme (career average) is the main factor that keeps me working FT. I could afford to be PT now but my future self cannot afford it, so FT it is. My company helpfully provides free annual training sessions on finance matters (provided by an actuarial firm). I’ve found them really helpful, and my investment strategy has changed to take into account what I’ve learnt.

I’m already paying into pensions for both DC. I hope they’ll appreciate my foresight one day. I’m happy to explain financial matters to them, they’re definitely more informed than I was at their age.

I have friends that have stayed at home or worked sporadically since having children and they were not aware that since 2016 you need 35 years of NI contributions to get a full state pension. Once your youngest child is 12, you need to make NI contributions for 12 months a year or you will have gaps.
www.gov.uk/new-state-pension/how-its-calculated

I am mid 30s, I'm a sahm and I don't have a private pension and have never paid into one.

I was never taught anything like that at school, college, uni. My parents have never given me any financial guidance or advice.

My husband has recently started to pay into the work place pension but prior to that he had nothing either. Tbh we don't even know anything about private pensions, don't know how they work etc. We are very naive.
As pps have said, you either can't imagine getting older or don't want to get older.

I will/should inherit some property from my parents and I plan on using that for money in my old age

The elephant in the room is for low and moderate earners, even staying in work FT isn't going to build up much of a pension. MN rightly tends to mention pension provision to posters thinking about whether to give up work or not. But a contribution based pension for a modest earner, since the final salary ones are inaccessible for virtually everyone young or youngish, is just not likely to provide anything like what some of the older ones do. I'm not saying don't do it, but also don't fall into the trap of overstating the significance.

‘I could afford to be PT now but my future self cannot afford it’

Wise words from Oubliette

Of course, living in the moment matters too. But I think too many people think only about the here and now and bury their heads in the sands about the future.

I’m a teacher and ironically have had 2 colleagues mention to me recently how ‘lucky’ I am to have a decent pension. I say ironically because one is another teacher, my age (50s) who has worked 0.5 ever since having her children twenty or so years ago, and is now wondering why her pension will be less than half of a full one. The other is also my age, graduate, who has worked as a part time LSA for years. I did point out to them that it’s not just ‘luck’... either of them could have done what I’ve done, worked full time and taken on promotions to increase my salary and pension contributions.

Yes there is some degree of luck in everyone’s life, and any of us could get sick/ have an accident etc but I do think a lot of people, and it’s mainly women, don’t recognise the agency that they do have over their own lives

and it is a mind field trying to work it out.

FYI , it's a minefield.

I do wonder how the changes to many women's working lives are going to work out for their later lives. Are we going to see a change in life expectancy as people work on later? Can women who have worked all their adult lives to the age of 67 and had children expect to have long healthy retirements?

It is an actuarial question I suppose. What will be the impact on length of retirement of working those extra 7 years?

Gnome I think work, so long as it's not too manual, keeps you young. i have no intention of retiring completely.

I pay into a pension and have done all my working life. I currently pay in £100 per month.

Unfortunately exh attacked me and I could really do with £100 per month in my account. Cause kids need feeding and housing and stuff like that.

I am stuck between being totally skint now or being poor in my old age and working till I die. Theres no win for me. People dont pay in for all sorts of reasons.

My mum always worked enough to cover her state pension luckily dad has a very good pension and always paid extra into. He was in the police so also got a limp sum to pay off the mortgage. They are also both heavily insured. Dads worst nightmare is that he dies and leaves mum poor.

People dont pay in for all sorts of reasons. I am trying to stay in it, because I get an amazing death in service benefit. So if I die while working, my kids would get about 150k between them. Plus the house, which isnt worth much. The house will be paid off with my life insurance though.

Not sure if i should leave the house to them. Seems like a pain for them. I might leave it to do so he has somewhere to live if I die. He doesn't need to deal with all that shit and be homeless.

Kids should end up with about 100k each.

Its fucking shit, that I am worth more dead than alive. I could sort secure dps and my kids futures if I dropped dead.

I dont think everything is the schools responsibility. I get some parents are crap are dint teach their kids this stuff. But it should be the parents that are doing this. We keep trying to palm stuff off on schools, that parents should be doing. Theres only so much schools can teach, but they seem to be expected to pick up the slack for poor parenting

It is worth noting that if you are in receipt of benefits, you also get national insurance credits which count towards the 35 years of NI needed to get the full state pension

Also remember if you don’t claim child benifit and you’re a stay at home Mum your NI won’t be paid

Just ensure that you weren't 'contracted out' during any of those 35 years -teachers,local government,health services etc- or your NI contributions will not fully cover you. You'll need to pay extra years contributions to get a full state pension. Something the government doesn't shout about.

My OH has a great pension and I have been a sahm for 15 years and just going back into work in the early 40s. No pension yet. I have PTSD and find it impossible to plan that far ahead. All my energy is getting through the day. If I get one through work then great but I cant worry about it.

I think the biggest issue with women’s pensions at the moment is the generation of women who spent their life beliving the would get their state pension at 60 and planning as such only to then be told a few years before no it’s going to be 66 now

I'm one of those women, and I'm livid about it.

If I'd known I was going to have to wait until I was 66, I would have hung on to my old job for grim death, in the hope of being retired early on ill-health grounds. Instead, I did the decent thing and jacked it in, taking a big drop in salary thinking I'd be able to manage on that for the 14 years before I got my state pension.

That 14 years turned out to be 20. I still have to work, but have also had to reduce my hours because my arthritis is now so bad. I have another 2 years to go before I'll be able to stop working, and my standard of living has been drastically reduced.

It would be far worse if we still had a mortgage, but thankfully we overpaid so are now mortgage-free.

We will have to sell up here (expensive SE) when I retire and move to somewhere cheaper where we can get somewhere with an annexe we can rent out to increase our income.

At today's rates, the pension I've lost comes to over £50k.

This website is quite helpful

www.pensionbee.com/blog/2017/june/how-stay-at-home-mums-can-build-a-pension

Friend in her early 60s will have only state pension. She was never expected to live this long, but medical treatment had evolved, so she probably will retire now.

I paid into a pension from 21, but have become disabled and now only earn enough money to get by.
Things happen. We can't all plan for everything.

Because people don't have them, it doesn't mean they don't know about them, they simply chose not to invest or thought they could rely on a dh's (and in my case dh becomes exh)

If you were married are you not entitled to a percentage of your DH pension?

If you were married are you not entitled to a percentage of your DH pension?

Every divorce is different and it depends on so many small details. Often you are. But as judges prefer clean breaks, thatvusually taken care by getting a bigger portion of assets.

If people have a low state pension they get topped up by pension credit and housing benefit etc. It's not just women that don't have pensions, plenty of men don't either.

Lakielady - I was chatting to one of these women today in the course of my work. She thought she would retire at 60 so retired from her job at 55 with a small occupational pension, only to find her state retirement age has now been put back. She said she never would have retired at 55 had she known.

Although I have always paid in minimum into a work pension I had just never really thought about it properly.

Then my work organised a session with a pension expert. It was a 1 hour presentation explaining pensions, how much to put in ideally, how they grow over time, explained the terminology etc and then a q&a, free to attend but no real personal advice of course. But it completely opened my eyes! This was a few years back and since then I really understand the importance and engage with it properly.

Maybe if any of you are in a position to do so suggest to your work they organise something like this? It might help others, it definitely helped make my financial future better.

Yes, YABU to think that women are shotchanged. With the exception of those close to (or having retired) expecting to be able to access their pensions at 60 and had that suddenly changed, men and women have the same knowledge and responsibility as each other. I'm close enough to be thinking about retirement, and have always paid into pension schemes. Of course there are {far to many} people who haven't made any provision, but that applies to men and to women. Sometimes people have to engage with news stories and conversation with other people, and not blame others all the time for not prioritising something that chose not to engage with.