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.

Common knowledge to whom? People who have pensions and investments and read the financial section of the newspaper every day?

Different lifestyles exist. A state pension or lack of one hadn’t even crossed my mind until I was in my early 30s.

I have NEVER had a job with a pension attached. 17 was the age I was supporting myself - being paid by the hour and at a significantly lower rate than others doing the same job, scraping by for rent and food. Naive, yes indeed, I was, I’d suggest most young people are.

Who is teaching teenagers and young people about pensions? Where does the information come from to be able to say you were forward thinking and affluent enough at 17 to go and set up a private pension and pay into it when scraping around for housing and food?

Right, so how easy is that going to be then? To hit, say, 58, feel too knackered to carry on being a window cleaner and land on a new career that doesn't require any other training, skills, and does require someone to give a 58 year old a chance.

DH is retiring from the RAF when he's 56. He will have to find another job, he has got skills and is working towards getting more skills. He has no choice but to get another job because we can't live on fresh air.

I have empathy for people of all ages that are suffering. But the goalposts weren't suddenly changed. It changed in 1995 and they had a reasonable time to prepare.

Of course 60 was too young.

It isn’t going to change now, and the New State Pension is a better deal (when we eventually get it!).

My only gripe is that I could have opted to pay the much lower Married Women’s NI for a few years when I started work. As with so much in life, if I knew then what I know now........

Not to mention the younger generation will be further disadvantaged if noone can retire and they can't move up due to pensioners having their 'second career'.

I’m 59 , and am really struggling in my work now

I’m self employed and have never had the spare money to pay into a pension plan ( all spare cash was reinvested in business )

I’m selling up , so I can retire and enjoy travelling before I’m too old ( or dead , as my Mum was only 61 when she died from cancer )

Not everyone lives for years claiming a state pension

They weren't suddenly told. They had decades.

Incorrect. This very specific group of women were suddenly told, with only a few years notice.

Their argument has never been that pension ages shouldn't be equalised. It's been about how that equalisation happened. The vast majority of people did have decades of notice. A small number didn't. This redresses that.

Common knowledge to whom? People who have pensions and investments and read the financial section of the newspaper every day?

No it was headlines on the main news. People should take some reasonability to keep themselves informed about things like state pension changes. But it certainly wasnt burried away.

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

This is a wild generalisation.

As is your generalisation about Millennials.

I agree it is very very hard starting out now, but I also see people in their 30s and 30s with incomes and savings that I could never have hoped for. I am astounded by some of the threads on here.

But I thought that pensions were achieved for that cohort by acquiring pension stamps and that women were required to pay more than men for each stamp to adjust for the earlier pension age and, if I am correct, and I might not be so will defer to anyone with more knowledge on the matter, it seems a breach of contract to fuck around with their pensionable age.

I dispute it's not affordable. We could choose to make it affordable. Most countries do. But as we're ruled by a class of cunts who don't need a pension, we'll be fucked over and they'll claim they just can't do it, while spending millions on Brexit information campaigns and the line.

Incorrect. This very specific group of women were suddenly told, with only a few years notice.

Not really, the 2010 coalition government just accelerated it. Lots of others were hit with austerity along with this.

Pensioners as a group are the richest segment of society. That's a fact. Obviously that doesn't mean every single pensioner is rich and everyone under 30 is poor

I struggle to hear this argument.

Waspies were not given ‘decades’.

Moreover, they are a generation who have been hit by a number of other contributory issues. There was no Home Responsibilities Protection until 1978 meaning many have quite large gaps at the start of their contribution record. Few were offered Workplace pensions until much later and then as a final hit the Goverment removed Widows protection several years ago.

In a worst case scenario there are cases where women have incomplete contribution records with no ability to pay to cover their early year deficits, minimal Employer pensions and have lost the ability to protect their pensions through their inherited rights.

Add a move from a pension at 60, to the interim scheme of a pension somewhere between 60 and 65, and then latterly another scheme introduced with minimal notice where the pension kicks in at 66 and it is little wonder so many are in a mess financially.

Compared to millennials waspi people have been far more fortunate. Where's the call to equalise everything further down the pyramid?

Really? so the waspi women who stayed at home to bring up the children should have carried on working utilising the free childcare that they would have got - oh hang on...

There are FAR more perks for the millenials than there were for the waspis - no works pension, no childcare, no year long maternity leave, no adoption leave, no paternal leave shall I go on? Don't try to say pensioners are grabby when their taxes have paid for you to have all the above.

Pensioners as a group are the richest segment of society. That's a fact.

Can you post a link to that fact? Thanks.

Women who are 60 have spent all of their working lives with the equal pay act and sex discrimination legislation, unlike my mum who is 20 years older.

Perhaps they should have worked instead of staying at home with children. My mum always did and is a generation above these women.

I was affected. I've only recently heard about the campaign and am also a bit bemused.

As I understand it in 1995 it was made law that the pension age for women would rise from 60 to 65+, so someone like me (born 1958) expecting to retire in 2018 at the age of 60 found themselves having to work on for an extra 6 years until 2024.

In 1995 men worked from 18 till 65 with a life expectancy of 75, so had 47 working years to contribute to a pension expected to last for 10 years = one year's pension saved for nearly every 5 years worked.

The change in women's pensions meant that any woman wanting to retire at 60 had 23 years to save enough extra to cover that extra 6 years on top of what they were already saving for their pension. I believe that the argument is that this was an unfairly steep additional contribution.

There is also an argument that the announcements about the change were very poor and that many women were not informed directly of the change or the consequences for them of the change.

As someone who was there at the time and is directly affected:

• I think it is completely fair that women and men have the same retirement age
• I don't think the timing was too short: I had 23 years to get myself sorted
• I do think the information given at the time and since then has been abysmal by modern standards, from both the Department of Work and Pensions and from pension companies. This was driven home to me when I was tracked down by a tiny old pension fund I had no idea existed a few weeks before my 60th birthday and told I'd start receiving a pension then. That fund could have tracked me down via my NI number any time in the previous 23 years but didn't bother until 6 months before I started receiving the pension at 60 years old, and it took the tax office 5 months to send the information on to me. Ridiculous.
• I don't think I'm entitled to any compensation from anyone though, I'm a grownup and had 23 years to get my act together

It's the fact they changed the goal posts without saying anything, it was to be staggered, I think mine was 62.5, then it goes to 66 with no notification.
I am in this cohort too.

How are the millennials going to get jobs if they are taken by older people? How will they pay for their private pensions then? Who will look after their children so they can go back to work? Not their parents or grandparents, obviously, because they'll still be at work. Not to mention all the voluntary roles taken on by fit retired people at the moment. I volunteer for an organisation working with children that wouldn't be able to operate at all without retired people volunteering.

I wonder if a better solution would have been to make the state pension taxable at the maximum rate, and increase the age of payment more gradually?
People for whom the state pension was their only source of income would therefore receive the whole amount untaxed, whereas the rich, with private or occupational pensions and investments, would be paying most of their state pension back in income tax.
It is a fact that pensioners as a class are now the richest generation in Britain, with more disposable wealth than youngsters who struggle with large mortgages or rents, student loan repayments and childcare costs.

I stand by waspi are far less disadvantaged than millennials today who will pay for people's pensions but are unlikely to ever receive it.

I agree with this. When I first started my pension retirement age was 60. Now it is (at least) going to be 67. It is what it is.

suddenly have that moved by seven years is outrageous

They changed it in an act of Parliament in 1995. To start to increase in 2016. That’s hardly “suddenly”

Here's a wealth graph:
www.ft.com/content/c69b49de-1368-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e

I am a Waspi and I was not warned. I worked from age 16 for over 40 years non stop, most of that with multiple sclerosis. I was prevented from applying for promotion at work in the civil service based on my sex, it was only for the men. Women were told to get a husband, we were viewed as greedy for trying to take the men's jobs. I always knew the guy sitting next to me got paid 20% more for the same job, just because he had xy chromosomes and I had xx...

By the time equality in the work place happened our careers were 15 years behind, even more if you had children (I didnt), for those with children it wad almost impossible to pick up their careers again. I am lucky to have a small private pension, many of my friends are in a dire situation.

@AudacityOfHope yes, many countries manage to. but a) hardly ever at 60 (my parents are 10 years retired now, both at 65 - earlier not an option), and pensions are often (not always, but most countries i know the details of) a percentage of your previous income. so housewifes get - nothing (well, universal credit equivalent). i know s 76 year old cleaner. she was a housewife from 25, so get absolutely no pension

Where is the cut-off for who should get 'back to 60' and who should not?

It should be dated from about 10 years after the sex discrimination act. If you started education after 1986 then yes have an equal retirement age, but before that you should be able to retire at 60.

If you entered the workforce before 1976 then you were legally paid less than a man doing the same job. May have to stop work if you married or had a baby.

It took a long while for things to become fairer and they still are not fair.

In the 1980s I was at a girls' school, there were some subjects just not taught that sill impacts on me in my 50s.

In the 1980s it was still common to pay men more,oneplace I worked had men work 8.30 - 5.30 and the women 9-5 and we were not allowed to discuss our salaries.

I'm in my 40s and don't expect to ever get a state pension. I've been contributing to my private pension ever since I worked to support myself.

And you benefit from being able to do that. Not being forced out of your job or made redundant because 'a man needs to support his family'.