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.

Of course it matters. We had workplace pensions - not the same as funding a private pension as well. I don’t know anyone of that era amongst our friends and relatives who could afford a mortgage, and save as well. Not talking about saving for a pension, l’m talking about money in the bank. It was years before we could afford to do that.

Older boomers have basically been a blip - they did terrifically well out of state and workplace pensions, house price rises and so many other things.

The “golden years” that generation, or perhaps only the older half of that generation, and mostly only those who are / were in married couples, enjoyed were never enjoyed by previous generations and never will be again.

Which is why we look at averages. House prices have always been area dependent. But using your five times salary description, go and try find a habitable house in London for £150k in todays money. It's the past twenty years that house prices far outstripped wages.

I'll have a look at the form again, but it seems to require a mental or physical illness rather than "just" being frail or weak so we didn't pursue it.

There will likely be an underlying illness causing frailty or weakness. First to come to mind would be arthritis in what you describe.

I think it’s foolish not to means test the fuel allowance. Some OAPs will manage without it just fine, others need it to pay for heating and that is important.

So you’re 66 and you’ve never paid into a private pension or bought a house? Really?

@ATenShun yes her hands have become a bit twisted quite recently.
Thank you for this... I'll definitely look at the form with her again

£30billion+ of NHS England funding comes from National Insurance.

Please read all my posts.
This isn't about me.
No l never paid into a private pension.. because l was in a coma and couldn't work.
Yes l have an house now.
Mortgage free.
My neighbour died of hyperthermia..in those days most were SAHM.. loads on widow pensions.
Plus one in the Canaries.
Anyhow least this thread has taken off the abuse of the poor lady who had to resort to shop lifting for baby milk.

@ATenShun Now we dont receive that much in state pension - few older couples do for a variety of reasons. But as I've said we dont need the WFA, poor pensioners do.

My children and grandchildren will do just fine, they had a good education, work hard and have/will be taught how to manage money. My child is far better off than we were at that age and while their mortgage is large they own more of their home than we did. We had none of the handouts available now, no inheritance - we worked and saved for anything we got.

Lockdown was not to "protect the elderly" - sending people with covid to care homes was to kill them off. Lockdown was when Boris realised that actually if old people got covid they'd be blocking beds needed for middle aged men. Lockdown protected those who had to go out, whether because in essential work or because they chose to do so. The working population often had furlough.

Your bitterness will poison your life.

Agree! My grandad who retired in the 70s had a workplace pension ! He was born in 1912!

Yes, we've heard, it sounds horrible and I'm sure we're all sorry that you had such a traumatic experience and are very glad you've had some compensation, although it doesn't make up for it.

However, your post isn't about that. You've explicitly referred to pensioners living in private rented accommodation on state pension only. The people you're arguing with are saying that they should have made hay whilst the sun shone and whilst no-one wants to see people starve, they cannot expect now to have "golden hours" or years. Golden hours are earned by the people who spent their adult life preparing for them.

The current pensioner generation has been in the best ever place to generate wealth and security for themselves.

The current pensioner generation has been in the best ever place to generate wealth and security for themselves
This is true @MrsSunshine2b but you are saying it with the benefit of hindsight. The current pensioner generation were not in a position to foresee how things would pan out. They had every reason to think that they would always be more working age adults than people in retirement.

Did they not notice that they weren't having as many kids as their parents?

Things have panned out pretty much exactly as anybody could have foreseen: people who never made any workplace or private pension provision assuming they’d rely on the state pension will still get the state pension, on the same terms which have always been made clear well in advance of anyone reaching pension age. A bit of tinkering around the edges of a few pounds a week because of things like WFP being removed isn’t making or breaking anyone’s retirement plans.

People retiring this year or next were born in the late 1950s and began their working lives in the late 1970s / early 1980s. Yes, life was somewhat different at the start of their adulthoods - but the writing has been on the wall for decades. My parents and grandparents were drilling it into me right from when I was in my teens, over 20 years ago how important it was to make best use of any workplace pension offering I could.

The 'demographic time bomb' has only been in the public consciousness in very recent years, perhaps you've been in a coma and didn't notice?

I think you'd have had to have been in a coma to not notice that people were having fewer children. Even as the pill became more widely available? Even during the sexual revolution? Even as more and more women moved into more powerful careers and the discourse grew around the supposedly detrimental impact of early childhood childcare as opposed to SAHMs? I wasn't there, I admit, but I would say it must have been pretty obvious to everyone that Boomers were having fewer children than the Silent Generation and Greatest Generation.

I am here now to see how resistant Boomers are to caring for their grandchildren in comparison to their parents, which is their prerogative but isn't doing much to increase the number of working age adults likely to be available in 20 years.

The current pensioner generation has been in the best ever place to generate wealth and security for themselves

What all of them? every single one? Rubbish.

No, not every single one, that's not how statistics work. As a generation, Boomers in particular, as the biggest and most influential generation, have voted for policies that benefited them in the present and then voted against those policies when they no longer benefit them. This has made them, as a whole, not every individual one, the richest generation ever, and predicted to take 25% more from the public purse than they put in over the course of their lifetimes. This is well documented.

Some are in poverty or close to it, for some this might be because of circumstances out of their control and for others they have made some irresponsible choices but either way we need to support those people and make sure they can survive, but handing out a blanket benefit to all pensioners when 82% are not in poverty, whilst 32% of children in this country live in poverty, doesn't make sense.

The data provided by the Trust for London shows that it's not pensioners who are most in need of targeted support.

trustforlondon.org.uk/data/poverty-by-age-group/

I’m waiting for 30 October before taking anything for granted. There has been much talk of means testing state pension in various ways, as well as disability benefits. Looking at the blunt instrument used to means test the WFP I’m not ruling out anything.

Unbelievable the amount of hypocrisy from Tory MPs, one banging on about how "millions will now suffer ill health" and she goes on to state a long list of conditions they will all get from COPD to Pneumonia to Strokes.

How fucking much electricity does she think £200 will buy?
what do the elderly less well do for the other 6months of the year after they spent that £200 during the first cold month?

All from the party that refused to give tenants minimum accommodation standards.

I think you'd have had to have been in a coma to not notice that people were having fewer children. Even as the pill became more widely available? Even during the sexual revolution? Even as more and more women moved into more powerful careers and the discourse grew around the supposedly detrimental impact of early childhood childcare as opposed to SAHMs? I wasn't there, I admit, but I would say it must have been pretty obvious to everyone that Boomers were having fewer children than the Silent Generation and Greatest Generation
@MrsSunshine2b you are spouting spurious gobshiite

@MrsSunshine2b
All that you have said is obvious in hindsight only, no one was thinking these things or thinking in those terms at the time.