The state pension is HOW MUCH???

[BeatieBourke]

Call me stupid (fair) but I've just realised how much the state pension is. £800 odd a month (£185.15pw).

As a non-means tested benefit. For EVERYONE.

I'm generally of the opinion that benefits are too low and too punitive. I usually advocate for universalism. I understand that people have worked their whole lives and paid in, and deserve a retirement. And that having pensioners in poverty does no favours to the economy or other welfare services.

But £800 a month / £9k a year for EVERYONE?? So a widower in rented accommodation with no other income or savings, £800pm. A wealthy 68 year old who's earned a 6 figure salary, has a huge property portfolio and investments coming out of their ears that pay a fortune out in dividends, £800pm. Seriously?

I understand that no party, least of all the Tories (because tory voters as a population are older) will ever go after pensions because it would be unpopular (and older people vote more generally). But in a time when the country is supposedly facing a financial "black hole" and everything else has already been cut to the bone for the last 12 years, why the hell are we paying out state benefits to millionaires?

Maybe if pensions were means tested (with a fairly high and tapering threshold) there'd be enough to pay pensions for women at 65, and more for people who haven't built up huge assets, can't afford to live, heat their homes or eat a hot meal every day in their later years. I can see the (cynical) political sense in it, but no economic sense whatsoever.

AIBU?

Well I paid into a pension for years.
It was deducted from my salary and I couldn’t opt out.

Went to look for it and apparently it is no more. Company went under and pension fund probably went on paying debts.

Dh had a good pension pot till cancer and the NHS saying they wouldn’t treat him meant we had to pay for his cancer treatment and the 20 months he was off work took its toll on our finances. Then lockdowns happened and we are well and truly screwed.

Dh has just got his state pension and that is pretty much all he has as income.
It doesn’t go anywhere.

I am in my 60s and trying to hold everything together working 3 jobs.

I never believed that pension money would materialise back into my hands.
If I could find the accounts manager I could collect on a bet I made with him 40 years ago.

I'm sorry to hear about your dad, ethelred.

Do check out the private scheme for survivor's pensions. There should be a beneficiary element.

www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/pensions-and-retirement/pension-problems/pensions-after-death

Some people don’t claim? So you think we should keep state pensions universal despite them being unaffordable be otherwise some people might not claim?

why then is universal credit not universal too? Why is it income dependent? Why is it ok for kids living on a tiny fraction of the average pensioners household to be subject to means testing but not pensioners?

times are hard. It’s inexcusable to be paying £800 à mon to some very wealthy people when we can’t afford to fix things or education or many of the other things desperate for money.

i would likely lose out on means testing pensions. But I recognize it’s the right thing to do.

If the population carries on the way it is at the moment the state pension will become completely unaffordable as a universal benefit. There are too many pensioners living for too many years compared to the numbers of working population who are paying the pensions. It’s just a Ponzi scheme. People always talk about paying into the pot, there is no pot.

It was ok when people just lived a few years after retirement, but now so many will live for decades. At some point something will have to be done.

Interesting thread.

OP, I’d be careful… if those high earners that you are currently begrudging their pension took their contributions and and invested them they’d earn a much higher rate of return. Those are the same people propping up the pension system.

You do realize even at the amounts they currently receive they are losing money and their wealth is being distributed to those who either didn’t contribute overall or contributed much less.

Honestly, I would love to not have to contribute to a national retirement fund. Even with the ups and downs in the market I would come out ahead of invested privately. But I’ve philosophically accepted this is another way to support others who for whatever reason haven’t been able to acquire retirement income.

In other words maybe you should thank those high earners who have and will continue to prop up the these benefits instead of bitching that they get a fraction of what they contributed and are still contributing via taxes.

@VestaTilley The pensioners before 1997 were not boomers that’s the issue. My poor grandparents had no social care, none. They just died in discomfort in their early 60’s.

This lot have assets, income, if they wsnt to be kept alive in comfort for 40 years after they become economically inactive they need to chip in.

@MsPincher my bad - I should have said mandatory, not exist.

Pensions above certain level are already taxed.

Comparing UC to pensions is invidious.

When you remove their state pension, you will remove their support for the principle of NI. Then the rate of NI will come down.

You are encouraging a spiral of decline.

Are you an IEA-esque right wing extreme type or a 'squeeze the pips' left wing extreme type? They are the two groups who want to do away with universal benefits, usually.

Yes, that's the "basic state pension", which was phased out in April 2016. Anyone reaching state pension age after 2016 is eligible for the "new state pension", which currently is £185 per week.
Not everyone will receive the full amount. The amount you get depends on the number of years of full NI contributions and whether or not you were contracted out of SERPS and/or S2P during your working life.

Tbf if that did happen there are better protections on private pensions now. But at least you have the state pension and if it were means tested you might get more. Instead we are paying out benefits to some very rich people while the nhs is in bits.

You will get pension credit if you are below £185 a week (the post 2016 level) so that is the de facto level).

You missed the post clarify that pension credits were stopped in the summer of 2019. The only benefit that can be claimed now is Universal Credit and really, even if entitled, should someone have to live on that in old age after working all their lives? Pensioners don’t want to be demeaned in their old age. Many won’t and don’t, claim benefits 😔

Most of us won’t live to be 106 so we certainly won’t be collecting our pension for anything like 40 years. We do chip in, most of us pay tax and I paid NI for 44 years - nine years over the number needed to qualify for my pension.

You only get full amount if you have never had a private pension or are young. Anyone who paid into a private pension will not get that.
This is what annoys me, they change things all the time.

Are you an IEA-esque right wing extreme type or a 'squeeze the pips' left wing extreme type? They are the two groups who want to do away with universal benefits, usually.

Judging by MsPincher's repeated references to Tory voting pensioners, the latter, I assume. Tiresome. I have no idea what the statistics are but plenty of older people continue to vote for other parties as they have all their lives.

Where’s my assets, where’s my income?

Everyone keeps telling me I am wealthy and am comfortably off in my mortgage paid off home.

Can people either stop saying this about my generation or tell me where this house is that I supposedly own and where all my income is and my assets are because I haven’t a clue where they are. But everyone is certain I have them

Are you an IEA-esque right wing extreme type or a 'squeeze the pips' left wing extreme type? They are the two groups who want to do away with universal benefits, usually.

Judging by MsPincher's repeated references to Tory voting pensioners, the latter, I assume. Tiresome. I have no idea what the statistics are but plenty of older people continue to vote for other parties as they have all their lives.

I think the whole system of NI contributions in order to qualify for state pension should be swept away. It causes greater inequality for women and also has us all arguing over something that's not really the problem. Just in the same way that income taxes on salaries aren't the real problem (no-one I have met who has salaried income is that well off in the grand scheme of things). It ensures that as lower or middle income earners we're all nicely distracted arguing over marginal amounts of money while the properly rich folk get away with stashing away their millions. A mark of a civilised society is to look at how they deal with their most vulnerable people. Tax wealth and use it to guarantee a certain minimum basic income for anyone deemed too old to work.

Tbf if that did happen there are better protections on private pensions now. But at least you have the state pension and if it were means tested you might get more. Instead we are paying out benefits to some very rich people while the nhs is in bits

Oh dear. You really think that means testing the SP will do this? No. It will remain it's familiar shit self, while the richer will get nothing.

By the way, wealthy pensioners already pay income tax on their pensions, both private and stage.

One of my relatives has been retired almost as long as they worked and in exceptional health.

Im a « we can’t afford to give rich people loads of money when our public services are wrecked and people are starving and freezing » type.

i think ni should be merged with income tax. It is the same thing after all. We can still keep some short term contributory based benefits if we like based on income tax.

I will have paid NI for 51 years by the time I get the state pension. Young people tend to start full time work later than those in our fifties did.

Yeah, I don't get this one. No UK pensioner I know personally votes Tory. Far from it.