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?

Especially grating when 1 in 4 British Pensioners are millionaires.
Those who aren't a large number get pension credit on top of the state pension.

www.telegraph.co.uk/pensions-retirement/news/number-millionaire-pensioners-quadruples/

I think it's hard to survive on that as a single person and these are the ones that struggle. For a couple then £1600 a month especially if you have no mortgage and one of you likely to have some kind of private pension is do-able.

Yep I agree! Our kids will be paying for this as in so many other ways . It should absolutely be means testing. Many Gen x’ers benefited from the property boom too. They’re the wealthiest generation and don’t all need a state pension. Means testing is the way.

Which is potentially an argument for replacing all benefits, including pensions, with UBI. I'm not convinced it's workable though.

It doesn't seem particularly generous to me. Where I live it is higher, and is available for everyone at 65, whether you are a millionaire or have never done a day's work in your life.

Why advocate a race to the bottom for every category?

I have paid double the amount of NI and income tax as my DH. We will still get the same State Pension though. If I die the day before I’m eligible to claim it, I wont get a penny back.

I guess this is the benchmark that shows the pandemic is over......back to bashing pensioners now instead of using them as emotional blackmail to get other groups to obey Covid rules and restrictions

👏👏👏👏

Instead of questioning what pensioners are getting in comparison with other groups, why not ask more fundamental questions as to why a wealthy country like ours has so much wealth concentrated in the hands of so few while the rest of us (if we go down your path) squabble over the crumbs from the table.

How about considering a Universal Basic Income? How about thinking about Annual Ground Rent as a fairer form of taxation which could help finance a Universal Basic Income? Quite a bit of thinking about this has been done in Scotland annualgroundrent.scot/ and I don't see why it couldn't also work elsewhere in the UK.

Don't fall for the "divide and rule" tactic. Let's aspire to something better for all of us (except the top 1%, obviously, although they could lose a lot and still do very well).

I agree. It was shit when they buggered about with child benefit. It just undermines the principle of paying in so everyone gets out.

Depends if they got SERPs or S2P, so some on the old pension get more than people on the new pension. (Me!!)

But you might get two people earning roughly the same throughout their lives, but one spends all her money on holidays, a nice house, nice cars, and the other might save and barely spend their money. At retirement one would have no savings because they enjoyed spending their money, whilst the other has a stack of money in the bank. How can you then judge one person is more entitled than the other to get a state pension if it was implemented to your way of thinking?

Those millionaires have also paid their taxes so they should be entitled to something from the citizens , not sure you realise that most of the citizens cost more money to the country than what they produce and only a few people are less costly.

You have to have paid full NIC contributions for 30 years to receive the full pension. Or of course you haven’t worked al all and get benefits instead of pension. I know which one I would prefer people get!

This exactly. It’s excellent that our cleaner will get the same state pension as me. It matters not that I’ve paid in far more.

We have a very low state pension compared to most European countries.
The answer is not to means test and level down but ensure everyone has a comfortable retirement once they’ve reached state retirement age.

Couldn't agree more!

If you read my posts throughout it's hopefully clear I am definitely NOT advocating a race to the bottom.

I've read a lot about UBI, current pilots etc, and agree with you.

I’ve paid into the system all my working life, I’ve taken the minimum of maternity leave so that I never interrupted my service, never took time off, never travelled and intend to work until retirement age.

I’ve also contributed to private pensions when I could.

So I don’t deserve to have a state pension? Where was my option to not pay NI?

I don't think many if any high earners will rely on state pension. It's very low.

Yep "Call me stupid (fair) but I've just realised how much the state pension is. £800 odd a month (£185.15pw)." Then add on the winter fuel allowance and various other bits and bobs that pensioners get. No mortgage to pay and if they rent can claim usual housing benefit etc. Then pension credit and pension savings credit for some.

Can also claim AA for being old. Yet many too tight to spend it on what it is for - care related costs.

Pensions are paid by current taxpayers. The existing generation of pensioners have not paid anything like enough for their pensions due to longer life expectancy

Correct, Haffiana, but it doesn't matter how often it's pointed out; people will go right on insisting that "I've paid for my pension all these years" because it's what they want to believe

However with so much (deliberate?) misunderstanding it's easy to see why governments resist making changes - a different subject I know, but you only have to look at what happened to Theresa May when she tried being honest about pensioners' care costs

Ohh...gen x are making the hated list next to those pesky boomers. Gen z and Alpha will be cursing the Millennials next for seemingly having more.

"I pointed out that the £800 per person state pension is double what an adult my age would get to live off on UC,"

You're not counting the housing benefit part there are you?
It's true that the last time I was on benefits was before UC had been rolled out everywhere, but my unemployment benefit of £70 a week was topped up with housing benefit taking it to more than 400 in all. I also got a reduction on my council tax.

Yeah that’s not what I asked though. The Netherlands pension is more sustainable (because contributions are higher and are saved to some degree) but the actual basic amount isn’t much more than the uK state pension. And contributions are much less.

basically there is a huge wealth transfer to pensioners in the uK.

Brilliantly put!