Mixed feelings about WASPI victory

[Fauxflowersnoflowers]

Early 40s here, so this doesn't as such directly affect me, but I've been intrigued by the story about the WASPI campaign and done a bit of reading around it and I'm still confused.

The changes apparently were in the public sphere since as early as 1995 and could have been known about. Many women were aware and did take financial steps to address the changes. The current case seems to centre around whether they should have been personally informed, not was the change fair.

WASPI just said on Women's Hour that they don't object to the equalisation of the pension age, but then callers were objecting to having to work longer and not getting a good retirement, so the two arguments seem to contradiction each other

Also, it seems misunderstood that a compensation payment would be a full reinbursement of the "lost" pension, from my reading it's more likely to be a fixed amount to recognise the fact they should have received a letter. Although again, it appears many did, just not everyone, so who gets the compensation? All of them or just some?

I suppose the other question is how do we pay this? Public services are already stretched badly, childcare costs are crippling and there is a bit of a worry for me that the funds to pay this are going to come out of other areas that will just make the loves of younger women harder and push their pension ages even further back, maybe into their 70s.

Feel really conflicted about it. On one hand kudos to the women for getting this far, but in the other it feels like a really clear example of the importance of properly understanding your own finances and educating yourself about your pension planning.

They brought forward the implementation by 2 years.

When labour announced it in 1995, the announcement was that pension age for women would rise to 65 by 2010.

The conservatives accelerated it without adequate consultation or communication. The pension age was 65 in 2008.

I’m very happy with this verdict for the women involved. My mum was born in 1954 and worked for years longer in a physical job that has wrecked her body, the same goes for her colleagues. The government and DWP have been found to be at fault, there is so much bitterness it reminds me of the NHS equal pay claim.

For all those saying there is no money for compensation, maybe the government could sue the likes of Michelle Mone who got rich off the back of the pandemic.

I don't think I have ever read such utterly offensive shit.

Sorry, this isn’t a benefit, it is a right! These women have been paying tax and NI for years, and have supported generations before them. And as they are retiring, they are still paying tax on pensions. If we aren’t going to get a pension what are we paying in for? It’s is NOT a benefit it is absolutely a right! You pay your tax, NI, you expect to get certain things back out of the money going in!

My mother (and her sisters) were all very aware as it had come up in conversation previously when they were dissing the WASPI lot for not knowing as 'everybody' knew - but suddenly, as the potential for a payout has materialised, they have rewritten history and are telling all and sundry that they were totally blindsided and robbed of the chance to make better pension provisions.

They were all of a twitter this morning thinking they were going to get a nice £10K each and discussing holiday locations.

Agree. Get Michelle Mone to give them back the millions she has squandered and pay these people what they are entitled to.

I have female friends born in the 50s who are around 70 now. All retired, but I count among them an IT specialist, 2 teachers, a nursing sister, a doctor and a change management specialist. It isn't true to say that women of this age didn't have equal employment opportunities. They absolutely weren't all downtrodden housewives dependent on their husbands.

The main issue is that however much you were on the ball with retirement planning, the 2011 Act extended the retirement age for some women while at the same time giving them very few years to make effective new plans. Changing a 25 year plan to cover 28 years is one thing, but changing a 2 year plan to cover 5 years is quite another.

Imagine you knew that you'd need to stop work at, say, 60, and you had investments in place that would cover the gap between reaching 60 and drawing a pension at, say, 63. Suddenly the 2011 Act extends your pension age by another 3 years. You still need to stop work at 60 but now you have 3 more years of no income to cover. There isn't a pension plan in the world that could cover that in the few years you have left to pay into it.

(The figures I've used are just illustrations of the principle involved, they aren't meant to be exact.)

I've experienced this today too! I don't grudge them the payout but I recognise the sudden rewriting of history!

I'm a bit embarrassed to say I don't really get it. I knew it was to do with the raising of the pension age but when I googled it to get a better understanding it said that it was to compensate for it being equalised with men without enough notice, so a lot of women's plans were messed up.

I'm kind of conflicted as I can defo see how this would mess up retirement plans but on the other hand it seems odd to be compensated for what was essentially a privilege in the first place (unless I'm misunderstanding it). But if it wasn't a privilege then why would they change it in line with men?

Maybe both sexes need compensation. 😂

If they did I would prefer it to go to people living in poverty. I appreciate some of those pensioners effected by this might be but that should be addressed via other mechanisms rather than giving a whole group compensation for not being in as good a position as women older than them.

I agree with this. There have been a lot of inequalities over the years, but they ALL need to be eliminated, whether they work(ed) in your favour or not.

They didn't phase in equal pay for equal work legislation over 30 years or however long some people want as a notice period, so as to give employers a lot more warning that they could no longer exploit women by paying them 'pin money', and to make men aware that their balance of purchasing power would proportionately go down greatly once women were paid the same as them.

They saved 180 billion by making a lot of these women have to work longer with a poor experience of retirement. They find money at the drop of a hat when it suits them and their cronies. There is money.

This might be a delightful political football for the Tories to faithfully promise that they will pay the £35bn in full - but it will just take until after the next election a little time to finalise and complete the process...

For gods sake! Obviously there are lots of women unlike your mother who have HAD to keep working because they have not received their pension when they were expecting it!!
also this gov have squandered millions on ppe, rishi sunak pays proportionally less tax than a nurse, ministers all have shares in companies that the gov decide to work with suck as good old rishi’s wife and the childcare providers!
lastly let’s not forget the cost of living has gone up, utilities… everything and the government receive a tax on all of this….

I think people need to be more specific. The women I know in this group didn’t have to work ‘years’ extra, it was a year/18 months and they had more like 6/7/8 years to plan. What is the worst case scenario? If you were retiring through ill health couldn’t you have got disability benefits whilst still of working age? Had anyone really not heard this was happening because certainly the increase to equalise between the sexes was well known. Are men now going in raise legal action to get some compensation for being discriminated against??? Many women accrued NI through protection with child benefits and low income rather than through actually paying into the system..

But men were going to have to keep working either way despite having a lower life expectancy. And often they've already done several more decades of full time work than their wife. I think we can't only ask for equality when it suits.

For goodness sake, a state pension is a benefit. There's no argument to be had here.

You're an example of why people think compensation is being paid out for ignorance.

Right?! But so many posters want to paint WASPI's as cosy, grabby, selfish old women stealing money out of young women's hands. Honestly this is a really depressing thread and is exactly what the establishment want. We are weaker when we are fighting with each other.

BlondiesHaveMoreFun · Today 11:59

I'm 54. I had been already working and paying in for 32 years when they changed the age (in 2018). So instead of getting my pension in 6 years, I have to wait 11 years. That's a loss over £60k, and I won't get any compensation. That's not what I signed up for. I'm too young to be a WASPI. How is that remotely fair?

Are you sure that you will qualify for a pension in 11 years?

State pension age rose to 66 a few years ago and is due to rise again to 67 in two years' time. This is likely to rise again to at least 68 years (if not more) for those currently under 55.

At this stage, anyone under 50 will be lucky to qualify for a pension before their 70th birthday.

I feel that the extra year from 65 to 66 when my age group already had 5 extra years of work which many of us didn’t know about was criminal. In fact the government said that there should be a minimum of 10 years notice in future and there wasn’t in this instance. And yes people who were just a few years younger than me were able to retire at 60.

Were those women not working when they were at home raising the future generation then? 🙄 Women's unpaid labour contributes billions to the economy each year.

You won't get your pension in 11 years if you are 54. I'm 59 and won't get mine until I'm 67.

We managed to know what was going on in the world before the internet. The number of people citing no internet as a reason they knew nothing about their pension is really surprising particularly since they are a generation who were least reliant on the internet for anything. I requested a pension estimate by post (snail mail) twice in the years running up to my retirement. It wasn't the dark ages.

I knew about the first increase and planned accordingly. The second increase made me change my plans and keep working for longer. I was lucky I could do that. A friend whose health was deteriorating, and another who had hoped to give up work to care full time for her elderly parents, were not so fortunate.