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.

I would strongly disagree about university education. I was most definitely not (and still am not) middle class. I was nevertheless able to go to university because I/my family did not have to pay fees; and I even got a grant.

Had I been born (iirc) two years later, university would most probably not have been an affordable option for me; and I'm presuming that a lot of working-class people of university age nowadays will be similarly denied - just because they didn't have the same government-provided privileges that we older people enjoyed.

They were denied this valuable opportunity that previous generations (those who qualified academically for uni) had enjoyed as a matter of course - and the vast majority of those in parliament who moved these goalposts and deliberately closed university education to many, many people from poorer backgrounds had themselves enjoyed free uni tuition.

I don't remember exactly how much notice of this change was given (and again, no young people approaching university age were sent letters informing them of this change), but it most certainly was nowhere near as long as the number of years that the coming changes to the pension age were in the public sphere.

The 1995 plan was for women's pension age to rise gradually over ten years, 2010 - 2020.

I would hit 60 in 2015, so expected that my pension age would rise to 62/63 at that point. With nearly twenty years' notice, this didn't seem too bad. I don't even know when the rise was brought forward and compressed. I do remember finding out about it from a small article in a newspaper, some time in the mid-noughties. I requested a forecast, was gutted to find out I'd have to wait until I was 65 in 2020.

In 2011, I got the letter telling me it had been pushed back another year, to age 66 in 2021. So, in short, my retirement age increased by six years. I was fucked around in various ways over that later period - the company I was working for in 2003 made everyone aged 40 - 60 redundant, nobody was hiring middle-aged people, I lost out in my divorce, I ended up with a chronic illness. It's been a bugger for me, and a heck of a lot worse for many more. Women with children and no well-paid husband often couldn't shore up their finances at all.

Here's the chart of increases for women and men.

As the govt benefitted from saving the money that would have been paid out to the tune of billions, some of that could be used as compensation. As women our rights are being removed little by little and look the other way and you will lose them too. A little more solidarity in fighting all injustice would be good to see. The information at the time was confusing and just plain wrong and on the website for years it said women would retire at 60, and you needed 30 years for a full pension. We were misled at every turn. Why is my pension now around £90 less than my friend’s I wonder? When we signed up to the scheme it did seem like a contract… ultimately worth nothing . And what about the employers contributions?

@MaybeRevisitYourWipingT3chnique Fees were introduced in 1998 because more people were going to university. You were in that cohort where more working class people were going to university. The government said as numbers of young people going to university were rising they could not afford to provide it free anymore.
When I left school at 16, very few working class people went to university, Most young people did not stay on to school until 18. Most of us went into full time work at 16. In the nineties you had many people go to university who were the first in their wider family to go to university.

For those women thinking we are all equal now, the IFS did a report on the pension gap between women and men - it's got nothing to do with my generation, it's about today's workers.
https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-03/IFS-REPORT-R250-The-gender-gap-in-pension-saving.pdf

Thats what the report has called for but campaigners say its not enough and want £10k +

So it's only women born between 1950 and 53 affected? I thought it was all 50's women?

OK, fair enough, I apologise for misconstruing what you were saying - but even so, I think it's still largely semantics.

Different benefits will require different qualifying periods and/or personal circumstances - they're still benefits that are paid out according to determined entitlement/need and not necessarily related to tax/NI payments. If they were truly related, your NI payments would be a specified amount of pounds each week/month - the same for everybody wanting to eventually receive the full state pension - and not a percentage of your income; or indeed zero if you don't earn much/anything but otherwise qualify for NI payment qualifying periods to be credited to you regardless.

You will never find a private pension scheme that will guarantee you a certain weekly/monthly 'standard' defined payout level, the same as everybody else in the scheme, based on having only charged you what they deemed you could afford to pay (if anything) for 30+ years. Nobody with a private pension would pay regular double contributions for no extra eventual gain, just because they were earning well and thought it might be a generous thing to do.

Yes - there were a couple of the WASPI women quoted by the BBC in their online headlines as actually claiming that they had had tens of thousands of pounds 'stolen' from them - and they wanted it to be 'returned'.

Whatever your viewpoint, I think it's necessary to keep a realistic sense of perspective on the matter. If they genuinely believe that the money they may have missed out on was 'stolen', surely they would report this crime to the police?

It is all 50s women

Seems clear to me that several mysoginists have infiltrated this thread. Another case of men bullying their way into women's space - because (just as with domedtic abuse) they can do it.

How are these examples of greed? They could equally well be examples of retirement planning. At the time, investment in property was widely seen as a sensible way to spread risk.

Many on here are blaming women for failing to plan, and now others are blaming them for planning according to accepted best practices at the time.

Exactly. No sympathy either when I'll be working until I'm 70 having worked full time for years upon end.....
Glad they have more money to throw at pensioners paid for from working people who have a poor quality of life.

I still don't get what's so special about the women born in the 50s that they require compensation. They had about 30 years or so to plan for the original pension age increase. Which only brought them into line with men's pensions anyway and then the further age raise - while crap for them - is only the same as what happened for men born at the same time isn't it? Am I missing something? Were men sent a letter than women didn't get? Because if not and the tax payer pays compensation to all women born in the 50s aren't men going to also put in a claim for the same? So could the tax payer them end up having to find compensation for every single person born within a 10 year period??

This woman wants £45k. It was “stolen” from her. I was sympathetic but the more I read, the less I am. If I retire at 71 I’ll have worked 50 years full time, I also worked part time from 14-21. Not a “woe is me” because everyone else my age (45) will have to work the same (unless rich). I’m “lucky” that I have a pension but it’s TPS so I can’t claim it until state pension age. It’s actually quite a worry!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68610680

@MrsMurphyIWish exactly. I was reading the BBC article as well
Perfect examples of greed and jumping on the bandwagon.

This is exactly the same as me and I'm 59.

That was exactly my thought…. What planning! Men had to work until 65 (then 67) so why shouldn’t women. Selective feminism doesn’t help the cause of women, and especially young women who will have to pay for this. I don’t have much sympathy.

They’re saying to the generation below them that their hard work and taxes (and it is the current working generation’s taxes… the idea the “stamp” actually fully funded WASPI women’s pension is completely wrong) must pay for their “right” to receive state pension 7-8 years earlier than the generation paying for their pensions will be able to. It’s the older generation sticking two fingers up at the younger generation and they can fuck off as far as I’m concerned!

@MrsMurphyIWish I am a 50s woman and I disagree with others who say they have had anything stolen from them the pension age went up thorough legislation not maladministration and we shouldn't get anything for that trouble is these women get themselves in the paper with their unreasonable demands and everyone thinks we are all the same and call us entitled and greedy, in actual fact I did know my pension age was rising a lot did.

As for your 50 years I too paid NI for 50 years leaving school at 15 (national insurance did was not deducted until 15 and 9 months) and reaching pension age at 66, at 45 you would have been born in1979 so your pension age is 68 not 71, that means the most you will pay in is 52 years and that will include the dates when you worked part time after age 16 as even if you do not earn enough to have NI deducted those years are still part of your qualifying years.

“If they were truly related, your NI payments would be a specified amount of pounds each week/month - the same for everybody wanting to eventually receive the full state pension - and not a percentage of your income;”

Yes, some people seem to be under the misapprehension that NI is like a contributory pension scheme, that you get out what you put in. You don’t - not even close… it’s just another tax with a vague historical connection back to the state pension when it was introduced in 1911.

@Oldsu state pension age is currently 68 for me but the recommendations are to move it to 71, and the recommendations made before did increase the pension age. In my lifetime state pension age has moved 3 times - I’ve no doubt these recommendations will be followed.

https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/will-the-state-pension-age-rise-to-71-aqU8Q1T9xUiv

I did know both about the original increase announced in 1995 and the second in 2011 because I read a newspaper and have an interest in politics, but I certainly spoke to women who genuinely did not know about the 2011 increase.

The way the increase in age for women was calculated from 2011 was particularly unfair and, although I accepted the need to equalise the pension age for men and women, I found this very hard. I was born in July 1954 which put me among the very worst affected women whose pension age increased by the greatest amount in the shortest time. My best friend is a few months older than me (although we were in the same year at school) and those few months meant she was eligible to receive her state pension when she was 12 months younger than me. As someone who had been left with no savings and no property following a divorce from an alcoholic who had run up massive debts, I found that a very bitter pill to swallow.
I loved my job and I was lucky that I was able to continue working until I was nearly 68 to boost my pathetically small occupational pension, but by then I was suffering from unexpected health issues and it was tough.

With NI you don’t “pay in” in any meaningful sense. If that were the case someone paying twice the NI contributions because of they earned more should be due double to state pension!

Same as what happens if you can’t get a job at any age 🤷

A bigger scandal than the Post Office scandal?!! That’s insane! In what world can equalisation of the pension age and less than great communication about it be worse than the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of hundreds?!