Pensions… again

[GoodnightAdeline]

https://amp.theguardian.com/money/2024/apr/08/uk-state-pensions-benefits-changes-april-triple-lock-rise

Another pension increase we can’t afford when working people are grappling with the cost of the country.

What will be the endgame in all this? Where will we be in 20 years?

What has your particular good fortune got to do with the state pension increase?

I don’t have free childcare. I paid the full rate - subsidising those who get it for free - for 3 years. £1200 per month. For the final year I got my ‘free hours’ which aren’t actually free because you’ve paid over the rate for the 3 years beforehand to keep the system going.

Me receiving ‘30 free hours that aren’t free’ and working FT is infinitely better for the economy than somebody who doesn’t work at all, or doesn’t work and uses their free hours.

Fully agreed!

When society wants to keep their elderly in poverty then we really are stuffed.

Why would they be in poverty?

You can manage on 12k a year OP? I lifetimes working and paying everything asked of them for less than the minimum wage?

Shame on you

OP presumably if you're not keen on the state pension rising with inflation, you're taking action to ensure your own private pension arrangements are adequate as you don't want to be relying on the state when you're a pensioner? Assuming the state pension is £11k a year, the equivalent you'd need in a pot in today's money is around £275k to match that.

This quote takes the biscuit. OP is obviously not a member of MENSA. Just an unpleasant person trying to get a rise out of people.

My generation can only vote for who stands in the GE. So out of interest who should we have voted for because the only choices for years and years were Conservative, Labour or Lib Dems? If we voted that was our only choice.

I didn’t say free child care. I said tax free childcare. Which is a funded childcare savings scheme topped up by the government.

Anyone getting free hours and not working is probably infinitely worse off than you due to things such as illness - do you have something against those people too?
And what would be even better for the economy is if you worked full time and waited to have children until you can actually afford to pay for them yourself without government funded top ups.

Ffs it's £11500 per adult per year.
Any less than this and you are simply paying other benefits, which pensioners have historically not claimed and lived in poverty.
There are increases, to the living wage and UC etc.
It's not a race to bottom.

I do afford them. I house, feed and clothe them myself and don’t claim child benefit. Or any other benefits.

1. I'm talking about your generation as a whole, not you specifically.

2. Labour governments of the past don't cover themselves in glory on this front either.

The bottom line is that, socially, economically and environmentally, we're in hole and I don't think it's right that my generation and below should be the ones thrown under the bus to solve it. Especially when the generations to cause all these issues are still about, still in power and, again in general, still refuse to make any sacrifices themselves.

Why would they be? Firstly pensioners as a group are much better off than working people, the vast majority have no housing expenses which is the biggest expense. Those in hardship receive pension credit, and affiliated concessions and usually other benefits. Very few pensioners live solely on 11k a year, with housing expenses to pay.

If you don’t support pension increases now, good luck living with a state pension with 1/4th the buying power it has now in twenty years!

Pensions have to be inflation protected otherwise it is future generations that will lose the most.

You do realise they were once working people themselves, struggling with bills, mortgages etc. and they don't pay housing costs cos they've paid their mortgage for years.

So now you want to punish them and make them live like paupers for doing the right thing and working?

You can’t afford their childcare without a tax free contribution from the government apparently. Or else why would you be using it?

This isn’t true. There haven’t been any good projections published by your media, only projections that look at two solutions- increase individual taxes or increase retirement age. Projections based on reforming IHT, wealth tax, corporation tax, employer tax, and so on are never published.

It’s over 2 million pensioners who privately rent now, that isn’t “very few”. More are paying rent on social/sheltered housing. It’s a growing crisis.

Im similar to you. I worked full time from 16 until I reduced my hours slightly at 65, but am still working for around 27 hours per week at 66, and still paying tax. I had six years off work when my daughter was young but other than that I've had no breaks from work and have over the 40 years of national insurance contributions that I needed to finally get my pension. When I started work at 16, it was on the understanding that I would retire at 60 and whilst I don't have an issue with the equalisation of the retirement age, I do have a problem with how it was done and the lack of communication when the implementation of the later retirement date was brought forward, which gave me and thousands of other women no chance to make further provision for our retirement. My pension is now going up by the princely sum of £17.35 per week. Are the people who are opposed to the increase in the state pension similarly outraged by the extension of free childcare? Unfortunately I can't do anything to stop myself from ageing and getting to pension age, but the taxes I pay are still being used to fund childcare for people who are complaining about the pension increase.

Which will need to be £1.1m in FMV in twenty years to match the buying power of £11,500 per annum for life. Is OP’s pension pot on track to hit £1m by 2033?

Apart from, of course, for a lot of the pensioners of the baby boomer generation the NI contributions fund was exactly that when they started working. A contributory fund that they were required to pay in to for a period of time to fund their state pension. There was a contributions card they filled in, with a special Stamp from the PO to prove they had made their required payments, which is why some will still refer to having ‘paid their stamp’. And it still has a time limit of 35 years contributions on it unlike any other tax. Hardly the their fault if they were misled and the goalposts were changed.

Where did you get that figure? The National Housing federation says 800,000 people over 55 rent. And obviously they’re not all pensioners.

https://www.housing.org.uk/resources/older-people-in-the-private-rented-sector/

I had six years off work when my daughter was young but other than that I've had no breaks from work

6 years is one hell of a break to be fair…

They can’t be blamed for voting for governments that then went on to break fiscal promises. Does the £350m extra per week for the NHS ring a bell? Millions voted for Brexit due to that promise. What makes you think politicians were honest back then? That people were voting for irresponsibility?