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.

Many people still struggle to earn enough to pay into a pension and pension schemes are much less generous than in the past. However no one can claim to be a “full time mother” for their entire working life.

Also WASPI women were not deprived of their pensions. Rather the state pension age was moved (due to increased longevity and cost). For everyone not just them.

DH was told by his employer in the 1970s that he HAD to pay into a workplace pension or NO JOB.

No wonder people cant wait for the pensioners to die off Makes rewriting history a lot easier!!!!

If you leave out a lot of the facts with a bit of melodrama, you can always sway an argument in your favour. Luckily other posters have added a lot of relevant information missing from the OP.

Stammer is the theif that has stolen all our golden hours

Are you for real?

it wasn’t Starmer who raised our pension age from 60 to 68 (in my case) it was the tories. All he’s done is make the Winter fuel payment means tested.

a post on here a few days ago about SEN transport several users moaned that it was bankrupting councils. The tories have left the country practically bankrupt. In my view they purposefully left the country in a state that left any incoming government an impossible task.

almost every age group and economic status group is going to suffer, nobody will be excluded from cuts and I don’t really see an alternative.

So this: Stammer is the thief that has stolen all our golden hours. was just you role-playing some dramatic fantasy on some imagined pensioner's behalf. Your story sounds dramatic enough not to need to do that. Really weird all round.

You talk out of your rear end.
Workplace pensions haven't always been available, especially to women working less than full time hours.
I, and many others lost most of our pensions when equitable life went belly up.
Do you really think that people working for minimum wage and bringing a family up can afford to pay into a pension?
People who are pensioners now we're sold the lie that their state pension would suffice for retirement.
There are lots of reasons why some people don't have private pensions

That is just for this year as it is a rolling date and that is the cut off date for getting it this year. . I didn’t get it the first year I got my pension as I was after the cut off date but people on pension credit will qualify with the new rolling date and thereafter, as long as it is still being given out

If someones child died and then had to pay this straight away i suspect there would be no problem with calling it the bedroom tax

It’s very difficult isn’t it, but I think winter fuel allowance needed to be means tested just like child benefit is. It’s unfair to apply different standards and reflects how pensioners have been prioritised as vote winners for far too long. I think the threshold is probably too low though and have a lot of sympathy for pensioners who earn just too much to qualify who are still very poor.

I can’t imagine anyone facing retirement with absolutely nothing to their name - no savings and no income other than the bare minimum state pension - can possibly be looking forward to their “golden years” though. They will always have known they’d be incredibly tough so to suggest that other than the winter fuel allowance they would have been “golden” is naive.

If you're 66, you were one of the best placed generations ever in a position to purchase a home and accumulate a private pension. If you've got to 66 and not made ANY provisions for your old age, as you imply here, no savings, no private pension, no home owned, then what on earth did you expect? You will not be left to starve but you will be poor. You've also got your facts wrong, pensioners in receipt of pension credit will still get WFA.

Starmer hasn't "stolen your golden hours" by withdrawing a £200 annual payment. It sounds like you already had your golden hours whilst everyone else was working to pay their mortgage off and accrue a decent pension.

You should have planned ahead a little better and saved for your "Golden Hours"
Assuming you live until 80, had you saved just £2800 extra over your entire working life, you'd have all of your WFA up front.

I doubt you were so dramatic when tuition fees went £9250 per year, maintenance grant removed and term increased from 30 years to 40 were you?
that never affected you, so you didn't care, now you expect the whole world and his dog to be supporting you, entitled springs to mind.

It is simply not true to say that most pensioners nowadays have big fat company pensions. Some do, yes, but not most. Woman particularly did not have the opportunity to build pensions that many men did. There are many wealthy pensioners but there are also many who are living on less than minimum wage. Generational wealth is flowing down to future generations, many pensioners I know grew up in social housing and were the first generation in their families to buy property. They inherited nothing.

The resentment and hatred towards older people on Mumsnet is awful. If we are fortunate we will all live to be old. I'm nearly 60 and I recognise that physically work is getting harder and also that the time I have left to save for retirement is getting less. I'm saving as much as possible and know I'm lucky to be able to do so but it's still a worry.

People need to be kinder towards others, of all ages.

Is it callous tho’? I’m 56 and don’t, for a minute think I’ll be able to retire in 10/12 years. The best I can hope for is to reduce my hours to part time. My dh doesn’t anticipate retiring until 70 or older. We often “joke” that we’ll not be able to.

I actually think it was originally Tony Blair’s government who raised the pension age. The tories did accelerate the change at one point and increase it further.

To be fair due to increased life expectancy it did need to be moved. State pensions alone are about 10% of ALL government expenditure (and that’s with the age increased).

For those under the age of 80, WFP works out as less than £4 a week. Whilst I’m sure it was a nice to have for many pensioners, it isn’t making or breaking anyone’s ability to get by, and anyone actually desperately relying on having it certainly wasn’t going to be having many “golden hours” on £15 a month.

Those born after September 23rd 1958 will not get the winter fuel allowance no matter what credits you are on

So people aged 66 and under won't be entitled to the PENSIONERS winter fuel allowance - because the vast majority won't be pensioners surely? There'll only be a few in this bracket that would be able to claim pensions?

Surely everyone pays into a private pension though. Anyone expecting to live off just the state pension is going to have a very miserable retirement.

But that image is only for this year to show that only people who can get it are those who have reached retirement age.

You will get it next year if you are on pension credit.

It’s not being “unkind” to state economic facts. Pensioners as a whole are the wealthiest demographic. Of course within that demographic there are richer and poorer same as every group in society. But wealth is concentrated in the elderly.

I’m pushing 50 and from a poor background. I will need to save more to retire. That’s just life. I don’t expect others to subsidize me

No the 1995 pension act set the stage for the increase in women's pension age from 60 to 65.

Had the Tories won the election, Iain Duncan Smith proposed increasing the SPA to 72, not that really would be stealing our golden years.

I was barred from mine as only directors and senior management were allowed ( all men) in 1988

Yes that happened to my Mum, so she took out 2 private pensions in the 80s, she also worked until 65 to increase the amount she received, though tbh, she'd have been better off having slightly less but earlier.

I hope you stay in good health so you can continue to work. Lots of people don’t.

If you genuinely believe that, I'm astounded. Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone was lucky enough to have the safety net of a private pension in retirement.

There are millions who don't own a home and also cannot build up large private pensions. It's easy to sya well it's on to build your own provisions but if you are renting right now, no hope of being able to save for your own home so renting for life there often isn't much left over to put into a private pension.

For example I know a friend renting in zone4 London at £1400pcm. Imagine still having to pay that if you were retired. On state pension alone you couldn't.

If you are mortgage free then sure £221pw seems like huge amount of money on top of any private provision.