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.

And still we wait !!

They gor you fighting each other so you don't start fighting them about their expenses and subsidies ....I mean who here thinks Angela should be able to expense back her energy bills on her second home? Who here thinks she earn enough she shouldn't be getting lunch subsidies and all other expenses and subsidies MPs get? Too busy fighting amongst yourselves you turn a blind eye to the MPs who are hypocrites of the highest order! Should be out there demanding and making noise that they too shoulder the bloody burden they want to impose on people

Most women ( assume most of us here are ) can multitask.
We are perfectly capable of thinking about more than one thing at any given time and MPs wages etc is nothing to do with taking away winter fuel payments and everything to do with attacking elderly people who traditionally don’t vote Labour

Lets face it we knew this would happen
Labour are evil to anyone who has anything and clearly anyone who is too old to work as well.

Thousands of elderly people dying every winter because of the cold. Maybe that’s the plan. More will die so the pensions bill will reduce and there’s more for those who may vote Labour in the next election.

🙄

just a point on private pensions. What was common before is not available now apart from maybe the public sector.

In 96 I started a defined contribution pension because the company I worked at decided to try it . I was salary sacrificing £475 a month into it and the contribution was to grow by 5% a year.

My forecasts of what I would get was about 2/3 of my yearly salary. in 1997 when Brown removed the ACT, I was still getting pretty good forecasts for what my pension may be but now at a lower rate.
The 1997 tax changes took £5.4B a year from private pensions between 1999 to 2020.

In 2002 to 2009 it was a disaster for my pension fund, was getting almost no growth at all and was only growing by what I put in it minus the management fund.

By 2005 I couldn't keep salary sacrificing money and loosing it almost immediately. so looked at making family life easier etc and reducing my pension payments.

Today a reasonable forecast is for every £100K in the defined contribution pension fund you may get between £3K to £4.5K per year. I understand the average pot is now about £170K and that might give you £5K a year private pension.

Now my FIL had a £20K per year private defined benefit pension plus state pension of approx. £8K.
His wife had £18K private defined benefit pension and £8K state pension.

Both are dead now. so that sort of private defined benefit pension is disappearing pretty quickly.
So FIL's household income was £54K in 2017. In the next 10 years or so a pension of the income will be the exception.

My wife worked for the CS , police and local government (EO). The longest job of those was just under 8 years. She has a defined benefit pension from each of about 300 per month.
So she is getting about £9.8K per year from her private pension and will get about £10K state pension due to missing NI credits etc.

I will get £11.5K state pension and about £5K private pension.

My household income when we are both retired may be around £36K in 10 years time.

There's going to be a huge shock coming to a lot of folk, that thinking they have prepared for retirement to find out its not enough.

Politicians need to stop messing with pensions, otherwise you can look forward to a pretty grim retirement.

But in all sincerity who did you think was going to pay for your retirement? Where did you think the money was going to come from? Did you genuinely just expect the state to swoop in and provide an amazing retirement for you?

i am genuinely seeking to understand the mindset here?

Forcing employers to offer and pay into pension schemes is fairly new thing. Within the last 10 ish years I believe. Prior to that company schemes were at the companies discretion. You could of made the choice to invest your own pension contributions into any number of schemes offered by banks and building societies.

Nobody other than you is responsible if your pension plan wasn't suitable.

What area of the country is this?
The bungalows around here are twice the price of houses. There's many cities up north were the houses don't have equity.

In the 90's care workers got £2.50 an hour, cleaners less. There wasn't the factory jobs, such as Ford's, for the women that the men had with pensions attached. Women would be let go when pregnant etc. Childcare wasn't regulated and there were deaths of babies and children. I was leaving school as Thatcher's Liverpool was happening. The opportunities wasn't there. We all couldn't get on our bikes. But enough of us did, which is why property down south is priced out of reach. It did used to annoy me that pensioners were on double what a family was when there was genuinely no work about.
@Moier claim your pension and donate it to charity or treat your friends.

I think she should be able to expense back the heating on her second home.

If she wasn’t an MP she’d be have a house that she lived in with her partner and they paid utilities etc between them. When she’s an MP she has to have 2 houses - one in the constituency and on at Westminster (assuming they’re not in commuting distance). It costs no less to heat the constituency house when she’s not there - heating it for her partner costs the same as heating it for both of them - and yet she now has this extra cost of heating her Westminster place when she’s in Westminster. It’s an extra cost of doing her job and fine to expense.

My dad is bugging over this too, he worked all his life has a private pension (small) but the fuel payment was a little boost.

There were hundreds of thousands who saved for over 20 years in a workplace pension only to have it stolen from them. The compensation they received leaves them a few £ over the pc limit.

The same could be said for having children.
Who did you think was going to pay to feed and cloth them?
Why didn't you save before having children, knowing that childcare was going to cost so much?
You should have made provision for them

Any of these outline some of the benefits Boomers have enjoyed and can be fact checked.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/03/27/british-boomers-are-losing-out-for-the-first-time?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=18156330227&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw_4S3BhAAEiwA_64YhvTiIDYtFAgEit7lwl7d7bcvTjeLVgqOWBUZfGM6mQ5z4RtT0XjNQxoCSCMQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/six-reasons-why-boomers-have-better-millennials/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_psc_ppc_google_money_generic_broad_dsa_content_MoneyCore&rm_id=RM_News_UK_Search_Ads_MoneyHub_Pot_DSA_Generic_MoneyCore&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw_4S3BhAAEiwA_64YhnbJNfml7upmejQuwXSA2R89TpqDFddZZOrtSeLc7xjlKJJiLrOanhoCmrgQAvD_BwE

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/the-system-has-worked-for-boomers-at-every-stage-of-their-lives/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/14/war-millennials-baby-boomers

Nobody other than you is responsible if your pension plan wasn't suitable.

How were the working poor supposed to be able to afford saving into a pension? There was no NMW for most of my working life - so if all the low paid workers in care, retail, cleaning, agriculture, construction, etc said they were too poor and need a better job to fund their pensions, what would have happened to the population without the work they did?

It’s Victorian thinking that the poor brought their poverty on themselves, because they didn’t work hard enough - when they may not have had the education and resources to better themselves, and without recognising all the advantages the middle and upper classes enjoyed from birth?

I’ve got plenty of provision for my kids thanks. I get zero state assistance for them. Absolutely fuck all.

Lots of people do say that. In fact, most people feel like that, and as a result they are having fewer children. That's not working out very well. Investing in children is an investment in the future, they are the future taxpayers and workers, so it is in all of our interests to make sure they get a good start.

Minimum wage started in 1998. That means those retiring today had over quarter of a century to make arrangements.

Starting a pension isn't a middle class thing. I started mine at 19 while working below what became minimum wage in hospitality.

But pensioners are surplus to requirements now that they've worked and paid a & Ni for 50 years. Let's just throw them away!!!

That isn't true though is it?

I didn't say that, but if we don't support the new generation coming through, who is going to support them? No children now=No taxpayers in a few years=No money, for pensioners or anyone else.

As for childcare, if childcare is more than the average wage, one parent will stay home and stats show they are unlikely to go back. That's another chunk of income tax, + the economic boost provided by a family with higher income lost. Childcare isn't subsidised as a nice favour for people with children, it's subsidised because it makes economic sense to do so.

@MichaelandKirk "Pay rises for public sector."
Have you any idea how little civil servants get paid, compared with the private sector?! Plus if there's no inflationary pay rise, our income reduces year on year.

But it is true. I don’t get child benefit or any other form of state assistance.

Is all your child's education and healthcare private?

You said

The same could be said for having children.
Who did you think was going to pay to feed and cloth them? I feed and clothe them with zero support from the state because my husband and I work.
Why didn't you save before having children, knowing that childcare was going to cost so much? I did save which has allowed me to take 13 months maternity leave with both my children. I also get zero state support for nursery with my eldest
You should have made provision for them
i made plenty of fucking provision.

You really don’t want to go down the healthcare route considering how much taxation im paying and how much healthcare my children use VS pensioners