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?

If it makes you feel better those that get more due to private pensions pay tax on it so they are in effect paying for their own state pension

You pay for a pension all the years you work though paying national insurance

Everyone who gets the full pension has to work for it and had paid tax?

Oh dear, not this again; actually workers pay N.I. to fund pensions for those already receiving them, just as the next generation will pay to fund theirs if they still exist by then

It all falls into place if you consider what happened when the first pensions were paid - obviously those pensioners hadn't contributed towards them via N.I., so the money had to come from those still working and so it's continued

No, you’re right, but practically, I don’t see the difference? Broadly, people pay money in taxes, and when they’re eligible, receive some money back. It doesn’t have to be a ‘pot’. In the same way as children aren’t charged for their schooling. Well, they are, just not at the time.

They will rise the retirement age to 80 before long so don’t worry about it.

What's their level of taxation though?

Surely that depends on the private pension. DH is retired and has a private pension but it wouldn't be enough to live on on its own and nor would the state pension if that's was all he had. Also why shouldn't people get a state pension when they've paid in all their working lives?

No, everyone does not get £185.15 a week.

My state pension is £156.70 a week. I don't qualify for any additional benefits because I have other income.

I paid in for that all the time I was working. For a number of years I was a stay at home mother and it was also calculated from my exh income.

People who have never worked get topped up by pension credit to the same as state pension so someone who has never paid still gets the same ! Plus all rent and council tax paid if in receipt of pension credit. Sometimes wonder why I've spent 35 years working in a shitty job that has wrecked my physical health to be honest.

If they are millionaires they do not need welfare benefits.

state pensions are over half our welfare budget. Pensioners are the wealthiest demographic and we don’t pay benefits to any other wealthy people. I think they should be means tested.

Seriously, are you taking the piss?

What? WHAT? Those who have worked and paid taxes all their lives get nothing?! Are you actually insane

It'll be available through Google.

The UK is not particularly generous on anything benefit-wise, in general.

Thirty years! I should coco, think more like 40+ for most people.

Because pensions, NI and the NHS is part of the social contract which is the welfare state.

Change it for future people before they get to the age where they start paying NI, but it would be wrong to change it now for people who have already been paying for decades and expect their state pension entitlement.

When I started paying NI, my retirement age was expected to be 60, it is now 67. That shouldnt have changed for people like me that had already started paying with a different agreement.

This. Another elderly bashing thread.

Oh, I also pay tax on that because it's lump in my other earning so it's not actually even as much as £156.70 after I've paid tax.

Don’t worry OP once this generation of pensioners die off then everyone will be in the same boat of having f all and having to work until we are 70 for it.

But EVERYONE has contributed to it.

My pension won't be the full amount because I contracted out as many others did who had private pensions

No it isn't like that. It's based entirely on the number of years of NI contributions, not the amount paid. It's an entitlement, yes, but it is a benefit nonetheless.

Yes for people receiving just a small amount of private pension, they do not receive pension credit and still don't have the benefit of all those extras that people on pension credit get like free dental care, extra cost of living payments, free TV license etc. These are the ones that miss out where a small private pension takes them just over the limit for pension credit.

Well isn't the difference that you're not entitled to get out what you paid in. You will receive what the next generation are able to afford.

You'll destroy the social contract around NI if you do this. Before you know it the state pension will reduce and reduce and those with private pensions will lobby to reduce NI.

Nothing has improved since the government started cutting benefits.

It will cost a fortune to administer.

Nailed it.

Exactly. I really worry what the future is going to be like for my kids, there's going to be nothing left. the current level of spending on pensions I feel is unsustainable in the longer term. Life expectancy will start to go down.