To not have realised that my pension age has gone up?

[IIdentifyAsInnocent]

I'm 45, 46 this year. Checked online 2 years ago and my state pension age was 67, which I thought was bad enough, for some reason checked again today and it's gone up to 68!!

I knew that the govt were thinking of doing this but I have no recollection of being told it had actually happened. This affects my work pension which I now can't take until 68 too as it aligns to state pension age.

Annoyingly, my brother who is 2 years older can still retire at 67!
Have I missed some huge public announcement?

No, you just haven’t paid attention to your retirement properly.

Unfortunately, ignorance isn’t an excuse. It’s been in the news since the mid 90s it was changing.

Welcome to the world of WASPIs. The Government (Civil Service really) is absolutely crap at calculating or informing people of pensions changes. Mine went from 60 to 66 without me being informed; my 3 month older DH retired younger than I did!

I can’t comprehend working at 67. I am
42 and it’s solid destroying.

I am in no way qualified in social policy or economics, however, I can’t help but think that is short sighted - the government see this is a way to save money. People
work longer, they continue to pay taxes/NI, they aren’t accessing their pension for as many years.

However, in reality if people work longer surely it means less jobs for younger people, less women in work because grandparents can’t help with childcare and childcare costs are too high?

Maybe I should sell my house, live on the money and then get my kids to put me in a care home at 70 which will need to be state funded!!

In the nicest way, where have you been? I'm not even 40 and I know what's happening with all this

Easy to say when the 'news' was different depending on where you read it. Not to mention the rules are specific to the exact date you were born or that it kept changing.

That is the life expectancy for someone aged 65 in the UK today. To break it down, for a man aged 65 their life expectancy is 83.3, for a woman it is 85.8. This has fallen a little in the last few years due to the pandemic.

Don't you worry, pension age may not be relevant anymore if they got rid of state pension by the the time we are 67....

Most people will struggle to do the jobs they do now in their 60s. I am in my mid 50s and already struggling mentally with my office based role, I struggle to keep up with fast paced IT developments, the hours, and the stress of project deadlines and it is already impacting my performance/ability to do my job. I have no idea what this job will look like in 10 years time, but it is pretty obvious I won't be able to hack it.

It is something we will all need to think about and prepare for, moving to less demanding, perhaps completely different jobs as we age. I am in denial at the moment......

Don't worry, no-one will employ you once you reach 50 or so. At least that's my experience.

Following the WASPI cases, I'm pretty sure that the Government will start communicating better - since press and TV coverage on pension ages clearly don't stick in people's minds. But yes, you did miss the announcement earlier this year.

I feel the same... I am 49...

@Lovethistimeofyear

However, in reality if people work longer surely it means less jobs for younger people

The country has a shortage of workers, not a shortage of jobs.

We need people to be working longer and working more hours.

I didn't say I didn't know. I knew as I was working for a government department, let alone it being in the news. I said we were told one thing and another will eventually transpire.

Things change. That's why it's important for people to keep up to date themselves.

Of course I knew. My point is we were told something which is no longer true. For a government to rely on people picking this important information by listening to the news or reading the papers isn't good enough these days, or even when it equalised at 65.

Things change all the time! We were once told the earth was flat

But things change. What people were told x number of years ago isn't always going to remain the same. No one could realistically expect that things will never change.

Otherwise there'd never be any new laws in any area of life. You may once have been "told" there were no drink driving laws or speed limits, or even further back, you may have been told you didn't need a driving licence to drive a car! But things change, and none of that is the case these days!

I understand the backlash regarding the WASPI debacle from younger women who are frankly getting a rough deal of their own but there are things that younger women take for granted now that were not available to women of previous generations. Nurseries were unheard of where I came from up north, maybe they were more accessible in large cities but literally no child I knew in the 70s attended a nursery. Therefore most women had to work school hours only. Similarly to nurseries old people’s homes were not a thing. Guess who looked after ageing parents?
Not only were your work hours curtailed due to childcare but you likely earned a lot less than your male colleagues for doing the same job.
Wanted to be an engineer or work in male dominated career? Forget it. They were closed shops and even those who had the courage and balls to go for it would have been knocked back because of above reasons.
Wanted to carry on working through your menopause or get support while pregnant. If you couldn’t cope then you had to leave your role because employee support didn’t exist. HRT needs to be fought for now, imagine what it was like back then!
Whether women knew about the changed pension is not really the point. At the last minute they were expected to make up a shortfall when they had been at a huge disadvantage in regard to their earning potential.
There are problems across all generations and undoubtedly older generations had some advantages that todays young women don’t enjoy but believe me if you think they had anything like the earning potential that you do now you are way off the mark.
Stop bashing older women, many of whom fought for the rights you take for granted.
Let’s have a go at the government instead 😌

Personally, I've always thought that the money saved from paying the State Pension 6/7/8 years later is just going to be spent on statutory sick pay. Surely, working people in their 60s are going to have more time off sick - more hip/knee replacements, sight and hearing related conditions, arthritis etc. Also, it simply takes longer to fight off bugs and infections when you get older.

It will be interesting to see how it all pans out in the next few decades

The government doesn't pay SSP, so the costs of sick pay will be borne wholly by the employer. So basically transferring the cost/liability from the taxpayer to the employer if more staff end up on statutory sick pay.

Of course, the glitch in that cunning plan is where the taxpayer IS the employer, i.e. within the public sector, quangos, etc! Where the taxpayer will still end up footing the bill (well, the next generation of course, as short term, the bill will be paid by even more borrowing as the national debt just continues to get bigger and bigger!).

From the gov website, currently 68 for those born after 6/4/78, but likely to increase to 68 for those up to 8 years younger (me included). So, the way I read it is that it's currently law that it's 68 for those born after 6/4/78, but they would need to change the law to bring that forward. I don't know when the current law came into force.

The proposals
Under the current law, the State Pension age is due to increase to 68 between 2044 and 2046.
Following a recent review, the government has announced plans to bring this timetable forward. The State Pension age would therefore increase to 68 between 2037 and 2039.
Your date of birth How the proposals affect you
On or before 5 April 1970 No change
Between 6 April 1970 and 5 April 1978 Your State Pension age is currently 67. It would increase to between 67 years and 1 month, and 68 years, depending on your date of birth
After 6 April 1978 No change. Your State Pension age remains 68

These proposed changes would have to be approved by Parliament before they are agreed.

This is exactly what I'm seeing in my colleagues. We're physically no more able than 60 year olds were twenty years ago in fact I suspect less so in many cases. We are a test generation for this policy and I really hope younger people are watching and planning accordingly.

I think when the state pension first came in, this was the general idea.