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?

I am absolutely sick of this country.
What are we becoming?

100% this ! I think we should be more progressive and reward people higher state pensions proportionately if they have paid in more over years. Now that will be an unpopular idea 😁

Apologies for getting the wrong end of the stick. This thread is a aggravating nightmare with all the pensioner haters 🤷‍♀️

In context in London £750k might be a 2 bedroom flat today. That means lots of pensioners in London may be asset rich (by your threshold) if they live in their own home but cash poor - surely you are not advocating they all have to sell their homes to pay for themselves ?

Hey, some of us pensioners are also “snivelling socialists” 🙄

Good pension comparison with some EU countries. https://fullfact.org/europe/pensioners-eu-uk/

YABU OP.

pensioners have lost workplace pensions thanks to the reduction in workplace representation. Employees don’t have anyone to fight their corner.

£800/month is fuck all to live off. And if everyone claims it (which they don’t), so what? I think they’ve changed it now anyway with means testing so your opening premise is wrong as I’m sure has been pointed out.

We are indeed. And have been all our lives.

What exactly does that even mean?

You appear to have committed the act of word salad.

You mean money wasted because a government won’t introduce safe routes and is so SLOW at processing, that they have to put people up in hotels while they wait months/years?

they’re not illegal - they may end up being so if they are rejected but they aren’t even at that stage yet.

Employers providing private pensions has been the law for a while now - employees can opt out, or request smaller contributions, but this could be short sighted. The employer's contribution is bigger than the employee's. Self employed don't get employer contributions.

Most private pensions accumulate a pot of money which you can access from 55. How much is in the pot will fluctuate according to how it is invested. In the last year my pension pot has gone down by 10%. In earlier years it rose 10%. Swings and roundabouts. Current circumstances have me braced for a bigger fall in my pension pot's value.

If anyone wants to seethe about private pensions, check out government pensions (civil servants and MPs) which are mostly 'gold-plated' in that they are not based on the value of contributions (as private pensions are, and can fluctuate) but a defined income according to years of service, rising with inflation.

Spot on. 👍

By the time I get it I will have been paying into it for 50 years. I don't think single people get as much as a married couple? Wait until you are eligible for your then see how you feel.

I haven't read every post, only the OP's, so apologies if this has come up already. Pensioners pay tax on everything over the annual personal allowance, the same as other taxpayers:

www.gov.uk/tax-on-pension

It's not a tax free non means tested benefit unless you are on a very low income.

I do agree that the system is not ideal because it was designed at a time when most people only drew a pension for a few years because of lower life expectancy but it would be very hard to imagine any political party advocating a change.

You no longer get Guaranteed Pension Credit. They stopped it a few years ago. It is only paid to people who started claiming before the cut-off point. People who claim now and have no other income, get the basic State Pension plus any extras they may have accrued, such as delaying it for a couple of years etc and then they have to claim separately for other benefits such as Local Housing Allowance and Council Tax Benefit.

Pensions are not 'benefits'. They are the result of a person having paid into the system their entire working life.

I've paid for 39 years of NI contribitions, and still paying. Years away from a pension.

I think of it now as having to buy tickets for a raffle that will be held some unspecified time in the future by the world's worst PTA, with undetermined prizes.

God, this government and the right wing media really have done a number on some people. If it's not one group being scapegoated it's another. Albanians are the scapegoats du jour. Not long ago it was Romanians.

Hope you didn't vote Brexit, as that has a big part to play in the mess our immigration system is in.

It came in a few years ago which creates a massive gap for those who didn’t have one. Employees may ask for lower or no contributions because they can’t afford to live otherwise. Easy to say that when you’re on a salary with a cushion, less so if you’ve got bills to pay.

I don't think it's snivelling socialists who would like to means test pensions and would like to point out, as have others, that not all pensioners vote Conservative, some have been Socialists all their lives. There are as many varieties of political opinion as in any other age group.

Ireland for one

There you go …

Yeah graft all your life, and contribute the most via NI, to have (suggested) that it should be taken away from you by being means tested, by some snivelling socialist.

Erm…if it was not for the taxpayers people on benefits would not even have a pension. The higher rate taxpayers are extremely deserving as they worked for it. The same way they worked for their wealth.

The MPs pensions are actually funded as I understand - it’s a funded scheme. So not as you describe.

Same as local authority pensions.

Civil service pensions are funded by tax revenues. Would you prefer that civil servants didn’t get a pension? You are aware that they also pay contributions?