State Pension

[JollyPollysjolly]

my Husband is sure that by the time we reach state pension age (me 45, him 49) that it will no longer exist - or maybe when we reach 100 ha! Anyone with any knowledge that can add to this idea so I can argue back?

Hey, the 1950's women had up to 6 years pension snatched away, quite legally, and it's feasible to suppose that ANY future administration could seriously consider sweeping away the entire State Pension structure and just say "well, the government can't afford it so you're on your own......."

Meanwhile, we carry on observing the gulf between the greedy have's and the under-the-breadline have-nots getting wider and wider.

Well, if they make it so I can’t claim it, I will want a refund of all my voluntary NICs + compound interest at the treasury rate that I have paid from abroad.

NI is not a tax if you are making voluntary contributions.

If they remove it or raise it higher, they’re still going to have to support those too sick or disabled to work in their 60’s and 70’s. And l think this would be quite a high figure.

I think the writing was on the wall when they introduced auto enrolment. There will probably be a gradual phasing out of the state pension via means testing just like child benefit.

I wouldn't fancy trying to live on state pension alone.

We pay into a pension for our children now as we don't believe there will be much of a state pension by the time we come to retire. We are both fortunate enough to be in defined benefit pension schemes and to have accumulated years of final salary pension before the scheme closed. We intend to retire well before the state pension age.

Yes, and our taxes go to pay for people to have children and other benefits. Stop the bashing of old people and their pension, just because they are low-hanging fruit.

More than likely the age will increase to 70 for those under 30.

Even more likely a systems of means testing - bit like student loan system

We are being weened off state pension and into a world of private pensions

They won't get rid of it, but keep raising the age. I'm 34 and don't expect to get it until I am 70+.

I remember one of my aunts predicting that there’d soon be no pensions when I was a child. I’ll be 71 in August. I can’t see it personally. Spending on pensions will peak over the next decade and then fall off again because we boomers are such a big generation. No political party will ever get rid of them, it would be political suicide.

The obvious problem with this is that people pay towards their state and private pensions throughout their working life, when their financial situation might be very different from when they retire. If you then said ‘oh, you can only have your SP if you’re poor enough’ there should, quite rightly, be uproar.

⬆️ this!

It’s almost as if you think pensioners should live on buttons and be grateful!

It will exist in some form. It has to or else we will have a lot of elderly people with literally no income starving to death.

I don’t think they will means test it, but will get rid of the triple lock so that the real value erodes over time. Then pension credit to the very poorest, and the rest will be expected to supplement with private pensions.
I suspect they may increase state pension age further too, but that doesn’t solve the problem of many being unfit for work before they hit it.

You either pay a state pension or you pay benefits to match, many people in work now are paying a minimal amount into a work pension, i don't think people realise quite how much you have to have in a pension pot to get 10k p.a index linked.

A huge problem with raising pension age is people simply cannot do many jobs for 45/50 years, so are off sick & claiming benefits.

So the SP will continue but i think taxes will have to increase, the idea of scrapping NI is bollox, other taxes will just have to go up.

Plus as said by pp, its electoral suicide to scrap it or means test it.

Better question is why can other countries afford a higher SP/lower pension age but we cannot?

I think some form of pension will exist for a long time. I think the age will rise to 70.

I think the value will be eroded by removing the triple lock and then people with less of their own provision will get a different benefit that reduces with the more personal pension you have.

I think the personal pensions will be harder to opt out of and both the employee and employer minimum contribution will rise.

This will be slow. As like others my first jobs didnt even offer pension schemes for the me. And even now i work in several part time jobs and still didnt auto enrol. The oringinal pensions were very much sold to top up a state pension.

Why do you want to argue with him?
Surely the discourse you should be having is what his reasoning is and more importantly - what he wants to do in his / your household financial planning terms as a result?

No-one on here can give you a killer line so you can win an argument. No-one here knows.

In my opinion, the strongest “protection” of a SP is our ageing population and therefore the power of that segment of the electorate.
But that hasn’t stopped the age being increased. The trick is to give enough notice of that, that it impacts just below the age of your party’s particular majority. So that might be people in their 50s who have an eye on an actual date to retire selling out those in their 40s and justifying it to themselves about having more notice.

I think the triple lock will be removed and the value of the pension will degrade.

My response to your husband wouldn’t be to try to outsmart him when you don’t even have a developed opinion yourself. Instead, check what he wants to do about it. Is he just throwing out dramatic buzz phrases? Or is he actually concerned?

My personal plan is to assume zero state pension and then happy days if I get one - I’ll be much better off. So I’m saving a lot to a personal pension (lucky to be able to). But I also made decisions a decade ago like choosing a smaller house than I could have gone for, and a decade before that, not returning part time at work after a baby.

It'll be like everything else. The poor will get it from the government. The rich will have private pensions. Then there will be a skint group in the middle with small private pensions, entitled to no help.

I retired early and manage ATM on my Teachers Pension. I'm 62 but I'll get a full state pension at 67. I've always worked full time and I've got 39 years of NICS. If I didn't I'd just be given Pension Credit which is only slightly lower than a full pension. If people are going to be given almost as much for not paying in all those years where's the motivation for future generations to pay in if you think you'll be given almost as much not paying in anything?

I agree with this. They did it for a reason.

I do think there will come a point where it's means tested. I think a couple with good private pensions don't necessarily "need" the state pension. So I'm not entirely against it. Issue is we all know the threshold will be low and it's the middle income people that will suffer. Not well off enough to have a decent retirement but not "poor" enough to get any help.

Eh? People just entering state pension age now contributed the same % of their earnings as tax as younger generations.

And they and the generation above supported pensioners who retired on state pension at 60 /65.

Without any free childcare hours.

And only a minority % went to Uni so only a small % got free higher education.

In other countries people challenge the state and the government. Here we blame ‘boomers’, ‘benefit claimants’, ‘single parents’ etc. while the Gvt (any gvt) uses the infighting to slide through the latest inefficiency / devastating blow to our economy caused by bad management.

Well that’s a helpful contribution 😭

The numbers who don't need the SP are very small, the new SP is over 11.5k and freezing thresholds means anyone with a small private pension will now be paying tax!!

So this is how it will be "affordable" just claw it back with the tax system.

You’d like to exist on only pension credit?

And have spent the vast majority of your life without an income but on benefits instead?