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.

A Group particularly hard hit are those women who gave up work to care for a severely disabled child
DId they know about the changes?
Many would not have been paying attention to their own future welfare. Working 24/7 chronically sleep deprived and socially isolated they would have been concentrating on keeping their child safe and alive with no spare capacity to focus on their own needs
IF they had known, could they have taken the responsibility to plan financially for the change?
Well no they could not. Their only option would be to place their vulnerable child in an institution and seek work. THe cost to the state would far far outweigh any payment of future pension to the Carer

I think a special case should be made for women and men who have given up employment to care for relatives. THere should be an additional pension added to the state pension for those who have been in receipt of Carers Allowance in recognition of the fact that they have been unable to join a private pension and have saved the NHS and the State billions.

For about the 20th time, it’s not about me. For me it’s an inconvenience but there are many women it’s put in real hardship. Are some of you so lacking in empathy that you can’t see that?

I kindly posted a link showing only about 17% of people are forecast to repay their student loans but I’m the one ignoring anything that doesn’t fit my narrative? OK.

only about 17% of people are forecast to repay their student loans

That a forecast for those paying IN FULL. The vast majority will pay some, and most will pay a larger proportion.

But how is that fair either? Why should it be written off after 30 years? Why should someone be able to choose to work part time for the first 30 years to avoid it and then do full time after that?

Nothing in life is fair. You're dealt the cards and you have to do the best you can with them.

@alsohuman The article about student loans - if you did beyond the headline- says that the majority of students will pay a good percentage of their loans. The 17% is, as PP said, about repaying the full loan.

You seem to own an odd moral compass.

The women who are in hardship brought in on themselves. They had from 2011 to plan. They- by and large- chose not to.

At that point some were not working anyway. (I would love to see the stats showing how many of these waspi women were working in 2011) and had stopped work years earlier through choice, on the basis that they would get a SP at 60.

If you want to feel outraged at 'injustices' there are many more causes where you can direct your energy.

I wouldn’t dream of criticising your moral compass @JinglingHellsBells so I have no idea why you think you’re entitled to criticise mine. I’ll feel outraged where I perceive injustice, not where someone else thinks appropriate.

@alsohuman Did you bother to read the article on student loans? Or google and paste having only looked at one sentence? For a start, the figure at the top of it was given 'off the cuff' by John Prescott and secondly the article says this:

Both of these estimates are uncertain and affected by things like future interest rates and changes in the jobs market.

Oh but you are criticising it all the time here @Alsohuman. I am entitled to disagree with you as much as I like and as it's a moral issue I don't see how you can object.

You have still never answered the Qs about what YOU would do (after a non-boozy lunch), or how to address the issue of men bringing an unfairness case to court.

The point is this generation of women were discriminated against in the workplace, they didn't have the same opportunities as men and wages were lower, even for the same jobs. It was difficult to work after having children and many had long career breaks. They were not in a position to save for retirement. One thing we felt we could rely on was we would get our state pension at 60. So even though our works pension was lower at age 60 than our male peers at least we would get our state pension at 60 and so maybe able to retire as many of our male peers did on a works pension.

I think I was in my 50s when I learnt I would not get it at 60, think it was going to be 62, then later now it's 66. Thst was too late for me to make any meaningful extra contributions to my work pension.
I have no problem with men and women getting pensions at the same age but we didn't have a level playing field to start of with

Perhaps you could provide some evidence of my criticism of your moral compass @JinglingHellsBells, because I most definitely haven’t. I simply disagree with you.

A simple solution to the transition could have been to look at the median age of that cohort of women in full years and made their pension date the birthday they reached that age. It would be a lot fairer than variables ranging from 62 to 67.

And I don’t care about men, they rule the bloody world, they can look after themselves.

I’m only a wee bit older than the waspi women. I’m sick of the exaggeration that it was so hard for women to work, or to save or to pay into a pension. Yes it was more difficult in some ways - I was back at work with a 12 week old baby, had to ring the local council to find a childminder (pre public access to www.) No paternity leave either. None of us are pretending life was a bed of Roses but the fact is, these women were starting their careers in the 70s and 80s not the dark ages. Bottom line is- you can put people in the same circumstances with the same opportunities and they won’t all make the same choices. Some women chose not to work, or to work part time for decades, or to stop working in their 50s or early 60s on the basis that they had ‘worked enough’. That’s very clear from this thread. They’re now expecting sympathy when they had as much opportunity as everyone else born in this era to make different choices

It’s not a matter of sympathy. It’s a matter of injustice and inconsistency.

@Nonnymum, I don’t understand your argument.

You would have liked to get your state pension at 60 and thought you could retire comfortably on it even though some male colleagues might have had higher pension entitlement through your occupational scheme (so I assume you must have had some entitlement, but less than if you had continuously worked full time).

You are unhappy that your state pension age has moved to 66 - fair enough, although I don’t agree with you - but you also say that you are unhappy that you were not given enough time to make extra contributions to your occupational scheme.

This is where I am confused. If you were, in your 50s, satisfied that you could retire comfortably on the state pension at 60 or 62, why do you need to make extra contributions to your workplace scheme?

Is it so that you could still retire at 62, but with a bigger occupational pension to replace the state pension you wouldn’t be getting until you are 66?

In which case, isn’t the obvious answer to keep working?

Show us the maths for your median age-based transitional arrangements then. Median age as at when? Today?

At the time the transition arrangements were calculated. Sigh.

And drop the aggression, it’s not necessary.

It was difficult to work after having children and many had long career breaks. They were not in a position to save for retirement

Most women I know of had around 5-6 years out of work, if that.

Will you please stop generalising? Some posters here are talking about women and careers as if this was pre-war! Not the mid-late 1970s! We had a woman PM at that time too!

My peers went into teaching, law, science, and a whole range of professions. I can name two of my peers who became headteachers. Yes, childcare was harder, but we managed.

The other thing some posters are missing is that years spent bringing up a family count as years towards pension entitlement. So there are women getting their FULL pension due to NI credits who did not work very much at all, and have the same pension as women who worked with no breaks. That could be deemed as unfair!

I think I was in my 50s when I learnt I would not get it at 60, think it was going to be 62, then later now it's 66. Thst was too late for me to make any meaningful extra contributions to my work pension.

So why are the 4 years (between 62 and 66) so critical? Why can't you carry on working if you need the money? (As all men have had to do for decades.)

In your 50s, surely you could have saved the something or even started a private pension plan that would have given you some savings?

I think what gets me about all of this is that women feel they ought to be able to retire at 60 for some unknown reason but they are quite happy for men to work away till they are 65.

Some men can afford to retire at 60 but most can't and if they are on a final pension scheme the last few years make a huge difference, proportionally, to the final pension.

I'm 63, and the only one of my old schoolfriends working at all, and I'm still full time. The main route to financial security for my friends was to marry a well off man or to be fortunate enough to have very well off parents who (not so fortunately) died young. Not many people I know seem to want to work beyond late 50's, male or female.

THere should be an additional pension added to the state pension for those who have been in receipt of Carers Allowance in recognition of the fact that they have been unable to join a private pension and have saved the NHS and the State billions.
This I agree with 100%.

@Alsohuman whilst I have never won a Fields medal I can see some flaws in your ‘median age’ plan.

(Incidentally, your sighing in your post really makes me respect your debating skills)

Your proposal is:

look at the median age of that cohort of women in full years and [make] their pension date the birthday they reached that age.

I asked you to clarify the date at which the median age would be measured. You said, sighing, ‘at the time the transition arrangements were calculated’. So 2011 then.

The WASPI women were born between April 1951 and April 1953. In 2011, post April, they would have been aged between 48 and 50. Let’s say that the median age was 49. You are suggesting that the state pension date should be the birthday date on which they reached 49.

If you are looking for the median birthday date for this group, can you see that it doesn’t matter when you measure it, hence the question? Your birthday is the same day of the year irrespective of how old you are. You’ll just have 300,000 birthdays covering two years. Around 820 per day of the year, on average.

You are suggesting that on the day you turn 66 you should qualify for state pension. In other words you are suggesting that there are 365 separate ‘lines’, not just one.

I don’t intend to model the financial impact of this, that’s why I asked you to show us your maths, but don’t you think that the treasury thought of this when proposing the change? Or maybe they forgot, after that boozy lunch. Anyway, I have no doubt that it would be much more expensive. Advantageous to you though, eh? Don’t tell us, again, that you have no skin in the game and you are a freedom fighter for wronged women.

THere should be an additional pension added to the state pension for those who have been in receipt of Carers Allowance in recognition of the fact that they have been unable to join a private pension and have saved the NHS and the State billions.

No. There are millions of people who are not carers who have not got an occupational pension including the vast majority of young people now working. What about them? Most people who are carers have not been in that position for all their working lives.

I take issue too with the idea they have saved the NHS billions. The opposite is more the truth that by not working and paying taxes they are taking out having not paid in.

Just where is the money coming from for this? Have you any idea of the amount of tax that would be needed to pay for it?

And furthermore, if someone is on a low income in retirement ( less than £168 a week) they can apply for pension credit which tops it up.

The WASPI women were born between April 1951 and April 1953.

It's actually 1950-1955.

Am I not a WASPI, born in 1956 and expecting to retire at 60? The age was put up twice and is now 66. My MP thinks I am and I go to his WASPI group. Why has someone said WASPIs end at 1953 dob.?

will you please stop generalising
Of course there were professional women in the 70s, and high earning women who had great careers but they were the exception rather than the rule. When I was at school there was domestic science, typing and needlework for girls and technical drawing. Metalwork and woodwork for boys. Expectations were lower for girls, we were taught how to iron shirts, clean hair brushes and look cook diner. We even had a mock flat in the domestic science block where we had to pretend to be housewives. This was in the early 70s, and on the whole women did earn less than men when they started work.
I know if you claim child benefit you get pension credits but that goes towards your state pension which kicks in at 66. l know many men who have retired at 60 with very generous employer pensions. So can easily wait until 66 for their state pension. But fewer women who have been able to because of breaks in ther emoyment, and generally lower salaries

I got the 1951-1953 thing from an article in the i (Independent for those of us with short attention spans). Happy to be corrected, but the point about median birthday dates and the cost of having 365 lines stands.