To think the back to 60 campaign is grabby

[Neaoll]

It's been known about for a long time that state pension ages would be equalised.

State pension is just unsustainable, it was never supposed to be something people claim for 20-30 years. Was for people that had a hard time so they didn't starve to death in their last few years. Now it's a top-up to the richest part of society. It should have been linked with life expectancy a long time ago.

I'm in my 40s and dont expect to ever get a state pension. I've been contributing to my private pension ever since I worked to support myself.

I happen to have known about the change but spent a good deal of my working life explaining to women why, having paid only the married women's half stamp,they wouldn't get any pension in their own name. These women were supposed to have been told when they opted into the reduced stamp that it meant no pension but they didn't understand.

But are these women really part of the waspi group? That sounds more like our mothers' generation.

Certainly ILEA, for those of you who remember, gave 100% mortgages to teachers in the early 70s to persuade women to stay in teaching (and to nurses too I think). I think ILEA also pioneered Maternity Leave to stop the drain from women leaving to have babies. There was a lot of effort in the early seventies to recruit and retain female teachers and nurses.

Ha ha ha ha. Where are all these second careers that are willing to employ older people.

I love to know

I dont think it’s grabby.

I would be pretty pissed if a pension id paid into for many many years was snatched away from me at the final hurdle.

Yrb vv u

But are these women really part of the waspi group? That sounds more like our mothers' generation.

Many won't be, but quite a lot are. The Married Woman's Stamp was abolished in 1977 but women already paying it could carry on paying the lower rate. So anyone married and starting work before April 5th 1978 could be affected by it. The WASPI women most badly affected by the pension age changes were born between December 1953 and October 1954. They would have been 23 or 24 when the Married Woman's Stamp stopped being available. Given that people tended to start work younger and marry in their early 20s, then yes, the Married Woman's Stamp definitely applied to large numbers of WASPI women.

Certainly ILEA, for those of you who remember, gave 100% mortgages to teachers in the early 70s to persuade women to stay in teaching (and to nurses too I think). I think ILEA also pioneered Maternity Leave to stop the drain from women leaving to have babies. There was a lot of effort in the early seventies to recruit and retain female teachers and nurses.

In Inner London maybe, less so elsewhere.

Keep on smugly paying your private pension. When your pension company says to you, we're keeping £40k of your pension and you'll have to work an extra 7 years to get your hands on what's left, see how it feels then.

Second career at 50, considering some haven't worked for 30 years, get real
I've started writing and currently researching for a project I hope to gain funding for, but I'm under no illusions it will earn me a decent salary. It will probably equate to about £10k per year.
I'm not sure whether to just not pay my NI anymore, it hardly seems worth it.

Not 7 years? Please tell my sister, she will be 67 before she receives a penny.

Pay the NI drabarni, things can change, do not abandon it.

You're missing the point about non-contributory pensions! These were offered IN LIEU of more pay. While everyone has access to pension advice today, no-one did in the 70s and 80s.

Keep on smugly paying your private pension. When your pension company says to you, we're keeping £40k of your pension and you'll have to work an extra 7 years to get your hands on what's left, see how it feels then.
That's it really.

A friend of mine got a mortgage in 1973 but had to get her father to stand as guarantor. It wasn't that easy for single women to get one. Even for a married couple the wife's income was not taken to be permanent as she was assumed to be giving up work soon.

Totally @CaptainMyCaptain my mum's salary wasn't taken into account when my parents applied for a mortgage; my dad was just an apprentice and they only accepted his salary!

Not 7 years? Please tell my sister, she will be 67 before she receives a penny.

Then your sister would have been a young woman of 34 when the women's state pension was raised from 60 to 65. So she will have to wait an extra 2 years.

Even for a married couple the wife's income was not taken to be permanent as she was assumed to be giving up work soon.

I was the sole breadwinner in the 70s and STILL had to get DH's signature on my tax return!

That's irrelevant CecilyP, theft is theft. If your pocket is picked on your way home would it matter less to you when you were 20 than if you were 40? Contributions remained the same I believe. 60 retirement age when her contributions began. Currently 67 retirement age and still paying.

w it's a top-up to the richest part of society.

I've been contributing to my private pension ever since I worked to support myself.

And you don't see the irony in this?

It was still the late 80's that married women were allowed their own tax records, they were attached to their husband's in the same way a part time job was, these are the same women that are now being affected by the increase in state pension age.

Yeah, I paid off the mortgage after40 years (still had a bank loan, though, as the last proprties have been unmodernised ie NO central heating till 2000) the last holiday we had was 10 years ago, and I dont spend money on "crap" I dont need. I do have 2 sons on disability benefits, that I sometimes need to help out financially. h, I do go out for a coffee once a week with a friend.

No one is saying people born in the early 1950s had it "uniquely hard". In some ways they eere a very fortunate generation. It is just being pointed out that they had their own challenges to face, mostly in that they had fewer rights. Men were considered the head of the household and the whole benefits system was based on the model of a male wage earner with a stay at home wife. It was envisaged that the husband would eventually get a married man's pension incorporating an allowance for them and that mainly single women would qualify for a pension in their own right. I don't agree with the back to 60 campaign but I deplore the stereptype of a lazy, entitled middle class housewife sitting on her arse. You would be grabby if you were an unemployed divorced woman aged 63 who couldn' afford the basics. Women with any form of caring responsibility got no help at all before 1980

Jinglinghellsbellls, I don’t recall getting a letter like that. I’m hoping to get a few years of Ni credited by claiming for grandparents childcare ( not advertised well by gov at all! They certainly don’t want us to catch up easily do they!)

I really wish some posters would stop telling us all that "we had plenty of warning". We may have done for the first change but we bloody well didn't for the second. I never even received a letter.

The changes should have been brought in more slowly. Why should someone born in 1953 get their pension at 63 and someone born in 1954 have to wait until they are 2 months short of 66?

I left school and started work at 16. Never stopped working as I have no children. Worked full time, paid full stamp from 16 until I was 59 then part time until 63. So 43 years full time and 4 years part time - 47 years.

I had to stop working at 63 because of ill health but apparently not bad enough ill health according to the powers that be as I am not entitled to any benefits.

My DH is a few years younger than me. He had a stroke in 2014 and was told to take it easy but is back to working full time as his wage is the only money we have coming in.

A poster earlier on asked if any of the woman affected actually needed the money to pay bills/buy food. Well I do. We struggle a lot and I worry about DH's health.

I am literally counting down the days until I get my pension next year

@lynsey9 yes the discrepancy between being born in 1953 or 1954 is ludicrous.

The intolerance on here is breathtaking.

I'm a waspi victim and a hated baby boomer.

The point is, we were to be staggered in from 60 to 65, which changed I think by Osbourne and Cameron, we weren't informed the staggered date had been cancelled and moved to 66.

True university was free when we were young but hardly any of us could take advantage of it, our parents simply needed us to work when we left school.

True we've made vast amounts of money on property but I personally have never cashed out, sold houses and put the entire sum into the next house, we paid extortionate interest rates.

I have fully supported my Generation Y child, paid university fees and everything else involved. Absolutely no need for him to get a student loan, I was providing living expenses, but choose to take the loan and piss it up a wall and now moans it is being deducted from his salary, I'm sure he'd like me to pay it off, but I won't.

He will benefit in full when I go, as will many of you from your parents, so give us break, we loved and cared for you and did our absolute best.

I agree dotti - I’m somewhere in the middle between the waspis and millennials but I can see both have a point.

Sadly, and I know this will annoy some posters, this thread shows that a lot of women aren't money-savvy, have no motivation to try to re-train, don't know the basics about paying NI and their pension predictions, and yet expect the younger generation to support them.

There is no getting away from the fact that some women are professionals and others have a lower income from unskilled work.

Most people ignore pensions until they are too old to invest.