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.

No hindsight is required, the state pension was terribly low in the 60s, 70s and 80s, we all knew that and most planned an additional form of income for their retirement.

Anyone who deliberately chose to not to do so, only have themselves to blame.

Those with genuinely low income with their pension will continue to get support in other benefits as I understand it.

It is only right in the current economic climate that wealthier households aren't receiving benefits like extra heating allowances when they for the most part have an income exceeding the average working person.

Your family sound as if they are in a relatively good position financially. Unfortunately, their circumstances do not mirror vast swathes of the working population.

Esther McVey banging on about the government being out of touch with the people. Laughable from her.

FFS. What a heap of Tory drivel.

People born after that date in 1958 won't get the pensioners winter fuel allowance because, surprise surprise, THEY ARE NOT PENSIONERS and don't qualify for a state pension yet.

I'm 50. So older, but not old.

My first house was £29,000 in 1995. It was 3.5 times my apprenticeship salary.

That same house is now on the market for £180k. 9 times the salary for the same job

So older generations have had the best of the housing market. That is a simple fact.

My mother in law never really worked. The kids spent a lot of time being looked after by grandparents. Has holidayed abroad every year. And is now complaining that they're taking away her winter fuel payment that pays for her pool cleaner. She's not rich (but far from my working class upbringing), but comfortable, and doesn't see why she should use her savings to live on! And she could only afford 3 holidays abroad last year and so is disgusted at having her winter fuel allowance removed. The winter fuel allowance was only bought in in 2007 during a period of Austerity. It was never designed to be a permanent fixture.

Job seekers allowance is £90 a week. So £360 a month. And that is after paying NI and tax for 35 years. Try managing on that pensioners.

If i see ONE MORE PERSON try and use that whole "we don't get it if born after 1958" crap once more my computer is going out the window. The idiots who are falling for it beggar belief, they really do.

The sad fact is that the pensioners I know who are complaining the loudest are all comfortably off with good public sector or private pensions. I've not heard one word of concern from them about pensioners near the threshold, or children living in poverty.

Well the phenomenom of pensioners thinking they are worse off than they actually are have been discussed a lot on here.

My old downstairs neighbour was one. She only had the state pension and uasd to sit in her kitchen in winter wrapped in a blanket wirh the hob in, I used to worry about her a lot. She never used her heating and always worried about paying her rent (even thlugh it was under an old style renr control tenancy).

When she went in to hospital once she asked me to feed her cat and pay her rent fromm cash she had in her bedroom drawer (she had an old style rent book and we shared the same landlord)

That drawer was stuffed with thousands of pounds of cash and more over tens of thousands of poinds of share dividend cheques from British Gas she never cashed (her late husband had worked for British Gas and clearly had got some shares when it was privatised).

When I gently suggeated she should pay them in and use the cash she said she was "keeping them until she needed them" 🤯

Ok you don't know me but I promise you I have been banging on about just that one here and everywhere else. Why why why didn't the government use the tax figures they already hold to means test the WFA? I would still lose it but that's right and fair. And they can poke the £10: Christmas bonus too.

I want an NHS that will fix the damage they did to me in a reasonable time frame, with competent surgeons. I want the police force to have decent numbers, and police stations reopened. I want education properly funded and be able to pay their heating bills without having to lose more staff.

Funny how barely anyone complained when the sick and disabled lost access to the Warm Home Discount.

The Warm Home Discount was gamed by the big energy suppliers and used largely for their benefit.
IMVHO, the state pension should be £20k, £12k payable in cash and the balance in credits, usable (only in the UK) by the recipient only for things like council tax, energy, travel, dentistry and prescriptions.

That's not all that uncommon. A friend worked for Citizens advice and was asked to do a home visit by a carer to an elderly lady to ensure she was getting the help she was entitled to. She became quite indignent when after they went through all her finances, she was entitled to nothing as on paper she had over £500k in shares and isa's. She couldn't understand why she should use those savings when the government gives money out.

Another elderly gentleman would come to my work and pay for his work out of a massive wad of notes he walked round with, as he didn't trust the banks. The rest was hidden at home. I actually contacted the police about him to arrange a welfare visit, out of concern he gave this information to somebody who may use it.

So you're 66, therefore you have had 48 to 50 years to plan your retirement and arrange a private pension.
If you rely solely on state pension then that's on you, not KS

Exactly my long deceased grandparents had a workplace pension, they’ve been around for years.

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

Absolute,unadulterated nonsense.

For those of you who are delusional enough to think all pensioners of today have had plenty of time to plan for a retirement you haven’t got a clue about what life and money was like in the past

1. If you worked in the private sector there was no expectation an employer would pay into a private pension and the Government didn’t force employers to put money in so most didn’t
2. In time employers did put money in because they had to. But You had to use their pension provider and they only put enough in to pay the management fees. So you had to pay loads in just to get any predicted benefit.
3. So now You move jobs and your new employer won’t take on board the pension from your old practice, you have to use their pension provider. So now you have your second office paying the management fees for your second pension but no one paying the management fees for your first pension and not enough of a salary to pay into two pensions including management fees for the first pension and neither can you move the first pension to the second pension as you couldn’t do that with many providers in those days.
4. So working through many recessions where my profession is hit first and suffers the longest I have had to move practice because of redundancy many times and because no one wants a pregnant women ( try fighting against that in those days 🤣🤣 )…. In the end I had 5 private pensions. Three no longer exist. Lost over the years through management fees and one just about struggling when I was finally able to move it to the fifth pension.
5. I have lost many many years of private pension because we didn’t have the safeguards that are in place now and worked many many years without my employer paying a penny in to a pension for me.
6. Let’s also not forget many people now pensioners did not get any help with childcare what so ever. Not a penny. So many working families didn’t have anything left to pay into pensions. When my twins were born my childcare costs for three, inc the two babies, was more than my salary buy hundreds of pounds.

So please
For those on here who think we all lived the life and privileges of those that can afford a private pension today.
Think again
We were not protected in the past
There was no universal private pension expectation given when you applied for a job
There were no safeguards to support you when you moved work
There was nothing left over if you needed childcare and most women gave up work whilst bringing up a family because even if they had the money to pay for childcare there was no such thing as after school or breakfast clubs etc etc.

I was born in 1966
Im an architect
I didn’t get a pension through work until the Government forced practices to do it.
Well into my career

Ps
My parents born in 1930 and 1932 didn’t have any employer that paid a penny for them either.
They worked all their lives.

I can find sources if you need them, or you could just look it up yourself. It's not opinion, it's fact.

Pensioners are the wealthiest generation that has ever lived.
That is a fiscal and statistical platinum-plated fact.

The reason for this was the rebuilding of the planet after the two world wars.
We are now in the maintenance phase of society. Maintenance is always more costly than building from scratch.

Ok sure, would appreciate some sources.

https://www.thepensionervote.com/list-of-shame/

I don't think it was sold as the state pension would be suffice for retirement. It was never equivalent to a working wage.

My Granny was born in 1906. She worked most of her adult life after leaving school at 14.
To people that age the pension was to stop you going into the 'work house'! She said it was for the extras in life.
She was happy to get free prescriptions and her bus pass as a perk of being a senior. She put it to good use!

Her jobs were never particularly well paid . She had 4 children and brought up two neices. My Grandfather became disabled and died before pension age.

She believed in the power of education and guided her children into better jobs than she had. She lived in a council house. It was spotless. She knew how to cook, ate well and could make excellent meals out of leftovers.
She worked past her pension age as she said that the pension was the back up to her savings.

She had always lived within her means and saved for her old age.

What I am trying to say is she and many others born in the early 1900s saw the pension as a bonus not as a lifestyle.

She worked and saved from the age of 14. Her house was always warm and she ate well. She lived at home until she was 98.

I remember she took me to the bank to open my savings account telling me to be independent and save for a rainy day.

She was minister for the disabled under the Cameron/Clegg coalition government. She was also my local MP. I was a disability outreach worker at the time and had numerous discussions with her about how the switch from DLA to PIP would affect disabled people. She had no clue about how it would work and no interest in the people she was supposed to be representing. She lost all credibility when she was caught out telling outright lies about the reduction in the walking test for PIP from 50m to 20m. Tried to say that many disability charities in the consultation had recommended it. They didn’t. She lost her seat at the next election. Rightly so, she was useless.