To give you the pensioners facts

[Moier]

So many threads about pensioners being well off.
I've just had my forecast.
I turn 66 in November .
Those born after September 23rd 1958 will not get the winter fuel allowance no matter what credits you are on.
Esa etc etc.
My forecast us £221 per week.
Also pensioners still have to pay rent.
Council house tenants will still pay bedroom tax.
Pensioners won't get council tax reduction.
Unless you have paid into a private pension .. pensioners will be the poorest they have ever been.
And we waited an extra 6 years for bugger all.
Stammer is the theif that has stolen all our golden hours.

Did you know that three quarters of people in their 70s & 80s in the uk own their own home outright?

Its far higher than younger people.

Then factor in that some will:
Own a home with a younger partner still paying a mortgage
Live with family rent free
Live in social housing at low rent or receiving housing benefit

Only a tiny, tiny number are paying rent with no assistance.

Pensioners are, on the whole, better off than younger working people in the uk.

Anybody can start a private pension.

That's like saying, "Why aren't you a millionaire? More fool you for not working hard enough."

My mum doesn't have a private pension because after she divorced my dad she could only get minimum wage work, she then became disabled. But not disabled enough for PIP apparently.

My stepdad had his private pension stolen by a con artist (as did everyone else who worked in the small company). So now he has to work until he dies so he and my mum can pay the rent on their privately rented flat!

I agree. I know one person vaguely the same age as me who has a final salary pension. He joined Ford at 16 and has 40+ years' service.
There was a big fear in the '90s (when I started my career) that the state pension wouldn't exist so many of us started a private pension as early as possible, paying in tiny amounts (my first graduate salary was £13.5k).
OP, you seem to be personally outraged for something that doesn't even apply to you. I am baffled. Society is rarely fair.

It's not a pensioner fact because we are all different. I won't be paying rent and I have a private pension ( or three). I definitely would have liked to have cut my hours over the years and been a stay at home mum but I knew it would impact me financially. We make choices don't we?

Are you under the impression the NHS pension payments come out of NHS funding?

No, the NHS pension is entirely separate and self funding. So literally no one is affected by a "doctors huge pension".

I put 9% every month into my NHS pension, so yes, I really hope it gives me a vaguely decent pension at the end.

@JusteanBiscuits surely NHS pensions are funded by employers and employees and as such are paid for by the govt from current net receipts from tax payers?

I mean I know that investments fund them,
but the source of these investments is govt and this is who has to pay if there is a shortfall?

Retired NHS staff’s pensions are funded by today’s NHS workers.

And all of that money is money of the state.

And it’s unaffordable - which is why today’s workers will get less generous pensions than those they are funding.

Yes, it is funded by employer / employee contributions.

But someone earning a £50k a year pension isn't, taking that £50k a year out of the NHS budget. They will have paid in a significant contribution too.

And since the final salary pension has been removed it's much less attractive than it used to be. Obviously better than nothing, but hardly golden handshake territory.

Not where I came from they weren't.
How did you find out about them?

I'll be sure to mention that to my 88 year old mum. Stupid old woman freezing her tits off.

Luckily my sister and I will be paying her heating bills. We suggested she burns her settee but she doesn't have a fireplace.

And so they should be better off, although many aren't by the way.

Life is hard enough as it is. Many of those pensioners struggled with mortgages/rent bringing up children, having to take more than one job to make ends meet, worrying about bills, in fact the same as many younger people today.

I'd like to think that no one would begrudge an elderly person in their twilight years being able to keep warm and being able to afford a few luxuries. I think we all deserve that.

People on low earnings, who live in poverty have to rely soley on the state pension. HTH

surely the point is that £200 should be reduced by the companies making enormous profits from all of us??? if they reduce their prices it won’t be such a problem. This is what the govt should focus on. It’s immoral to profit in the way they have

Facts? Distortion more like. I am also a pensioner.

Just when you think this thread couldn’t get any worse, now Covid is the fault of pensioners !!

I know somebody who had a little vanity project for a family member. A pamper place for kids, a " business". Millionaires but still took the furlow money. No pensioners were involved in this rip off.

A contribution of 9% of salary each year wouldn't cover anywhere close to the cost of providing the NHS pension. The contribution needed would be closer to 30% I would guess based on my industry experience. Certainly the teacher's pension contribution required from schools in addition to what the teacher themselves pays is c27% I believe. So yes, you contribute to it but you're a long way off covering the full cost of it; the balance falls on the NHS and hence ultimately the taxpayer.

Given that they worked all their lives, bought their homes and saved, why is this a surprise to you ?

At a time when house prices were approximately three times an average salary. Todays average salary is circa £30k. Not many houses out there at £90k.

Saving-as previously disussed gave an average 9% return over the past 50 years. Current rate is 5% but for a number of previous years it was hovering around zero. So no incentive to save.

Private, as in workplace or private as in personally funded ?

Well considering the work they do and the shortage of staff, it might be a mistake to reduce it, its already gone from 1/54 to 1/60 and your 30% would be without any employer contribution.

Whats bonkers is if a AHP leaves the NHS to work for a private healthcare provider working within the NHS, that private company doesn't have to pay a single penny into the nhs scheme, the NHS still does.

Effectively the state subsidises the profits of the private company.

We make choices don't we?

What choices do you think carers have? To care or not to care - the cost to the state of that would be £119 billion plus. It would dwarf the savings on WFA?

DPs had children young so they could enjoy their middle age, when we were grown up. Not long after we left home, DM’s mother was widowed in considerable bad health herself. DM spent the next 10 years caring for her every day.

Does it matter where they got the pension from? Anyone paying into a non old age pension paid it out of their wages one way or another. Either part of the renumeration or privately.

My first house cost £15000 - a very small two up, two down semi. Combined wages of myself and partner were around £3000 a year at the time. House cost five times our combined salaries. We had to scrimp for the deposit and moved in with next to nothing. Everything is relative.