To think 71 is too old for state pension age?

[winterwonder1]

This isn't just for people who are 21 now - that's for people born after 1970 - so 55 now. I can't imagine being fit enough to do my job at 71.
DWP State Pension age will have to rise to 71 says report | News Shopper

The idea of the Conservatives being the party of landed gentry is laughable, they increased taxes massively on the wealthiest, slashed capital gains allowance to the bone.

And still Sunak’s effective tax rate in the last tax year was 23%. Poor little rich boy, how shocking to have to pay a lower rate of tax than a nurse or teacher.

Me and DH are mid 30s and although we should be mortgage free by mid 50s/early 60s (hopefully the earlier end but you never know) we both "joke" that out generation won't retire... We'll just work at desks until we drop and then a mechanical arm will sweep us into the bin and pop another ageing soul into our seat before it's cold.

Ha! I was thinking of an interview I listened to with John Major. Who might talk like one of the Eton lot but isn’t at all. A very thoughtful man who you can respect even if you don’t agree with him. Unlike every Conservative leader and certainly PM since!

@GutsyShark I liked Major. One of the good guys I think even though I didn't share his politics. I processed his loan for a conservatory years ago.

Same. He was my constituency MP and was utterly brilliant. He sorted a child benefit issue for me at the speed of light. I was gutted that his politics meant I couldn’t vote for him.

This is terrible advice. Sorry but it is. The tax relief on pensions is worth 25 or 40% alone - not seen any saving accounts paying that much. I fully advocate also having a stocks and shares ISA which can be accessed whenever you need the funds but a savings account should only be for emergency funds.
I say this fully appreciating that some people do not have the spare income to save at all. But if you can save, a SIPP invested in a Global all share fund is the best option.

I agree that financial literacy is the absolute key, and starting it early. It's all very well bleating "it should be taught in schools" but teachers have enough to teach as it is - also, I used to be a teacher years ago and had less than bugger all clue about pensions. But at least teaching the nature of compound interest would be useful.

I have a couple of young employees now (early 20s) who are not interested in paying into a pension. I have impressed on them the benefits, but they have still opted out. I can't force them.

Even in my thirties I had no clue and I was so busy trying to make ends meet, I had other priorities. It's only now I'm late forties that I'm trying my damndest to try and make up for lost time - I'm lucky to be able to, but it's hard.

I can claim my Final Salary pension from 65, then my current work one from 67. I will start investing my bonus into my pension sooner rather than later.

I refuse to work in to my 70s.

They do pay NI on their wages if they are over 60 and still working. They stop paying NI on their salary if they are still working when they reach state pension age.

It wasn’t when the 55yo started working. Work pension didn’t even exist in all companies.

I'm 51. When I started working after graduation, there was a whole lot of media about starting a private pension. Companies didn't contribute but they were obliged to provide a financial advisor, it was at the time of opting out. Everyone was encouraged to partially opt out and start a private pension. Along with that they were encouraged to make contributions from their salary, I did about 3%. Workplace pensions absolutely did exist, the only change now is that it is mandatory and companies make their own contributions.

The option was there, and it was easy to do. If people chose not to, it wasn't because they didn't know they should. 50 years ago wasn't exactly the dark ages.

If you earn minimum wage you’re not able to save.

Are there a whole load of people who stay on minimum wage all their working life?

@TheAmusedQuail 5-10 years of retirement IS leisurely. When state pension was created the expectation was that it would see through the last year or two of your life when you were no longer able to work. The whole notion of retirement as a third era of your life where you can relax and take it easy without having to work is a very modern invention, and one that was only sustainable when we had a growing population and shorter lifespans. The numbers just don’t balance, so yes many people will be working until they die if they don’t save for their own retirement.

as for how feasible it is to amass a private pension on a low salary, you are just making excuses for your own lack of planning. It is very much feasible, but only if you start early and private pension contributions should be mandatory in my opinion. I have a pension pot that I started at 20 while on a low wage, contributed the minimum in to get employer match (plus government bonus), and then forgot about when I moved to another job in my late 20s. I can’t remember exactly how much I put in, but that pot is now six figures on its own after 25 years of compound interest.

In my job I very regularly see women in their mid nineties who have been receiving SRP for 35 years. many of them barely worked so heavily topped up with pension credit etc and all the freebies that brings. Great that they are living this long but so many who have barely paid into the system.

To be fair, most women in their 90s who "barely paid into the system" were encouraged to leave the workplace when they were pregnant and not return until their kids were grown. As a nation we have a duty to provide for those women.

Of course there are. People who work in retail and social care for a start.

You are among the number who clearly have no understanding of how life is for the poor. My mother was on minimum wage her whole life.

I wasn't and started a private pension. But due to divorce, bearing the brunt of single parenthood, CSA unable to force my ex to pay, a stint on top up benefits, I haven't had the ability to pay into my pension for years now. The working poor are held down by the system. Wages too low to sustain a family requiring benefit. Full-time work should be a living wage but isn't anymore.

Rents in my area are on average £800-1000. Limited social housing with waits of up to 10 years to amass enough points.

You can naysay all you like. It doesn't change the reality of lack of affordability for the poor. And until it's affordable, nothing will change. So carry on in denial, blaming the undeserving poor, but when we have to choose between eating and saving, bread, milk and basics come first. And pretending otherwise isn't a solution.

Who do you think works in your supermarket, call centres, and care homes?

Millions of people work in minimum wage jobs all their lives because they have no choice. I'm one of them.

My parents were poor, my dad was abusive, I needed to work from 16 to eat so no option to get a higher education. I'm 38 now and luckily have my own home (mortgaged) but can't retrain to better myself because who will then pay my bills whilst I'm at university? Being poor it a trap most people never get out of.

Exactly. I don’t know where some people think the term “poverty trap” comes from.

I have a pretty intimate familiarity with poverty, but I also know that most working people, even those on low wage, are perfectly able to save for their own retirement IF they start early. for those that are truly unable there is a system of benefits that will keep you fed and housed.

What isn’t reasonable or sustainable is to expect the state to pay for a decade or more of retirement for everyone regardless of their ability to work.

The number of people on here who are unable to comprehend that some people do not earn enough to save for retirement is breathtaking. I suppose these slackers should all just be more ambitious and get better paid jobs from among this supposed wealth of great jobs that are just out there for the taking, eh? Then they too could be I'm-all-right-Jackers and make smug proclamations about how people should have saved and have only themselves to blame and end up wondering why there's no one to wipe their arse in the care home.

Such tunnel vision and judgemental naivety.

I have a pretty intimate familiarity with poverty, but I also know that most working people, even those on low wage, are perfectly able to save for their own retirement IF they start early.

@Labraradabrador are you able to show us the figures you're basing this claim on?

Old age for us is survival of the richest. We will be working till we drop dead in the care homes we have to work in (still for minimum wage), wiping the arses of the rich.

If we all had a level playing field at the start of adulthood, the argument would be there that people have been unwise to not save for retirement. But we don't all have a level playing field.

A £45k a year job would allow me to pay my bills and save for retirement as well as having a life today. It's not an eye watering salary. But with just GCSEs and my current industry qualification, I won't get anywhere near that.

Someone upthread did so -rtft.

care to show me you calculations for sustaining the state pension as is in light of demographic changes?

The state pension was sold as saving for your old age. You pay national insurance and you get a state pension.

Lots of good part time online options not necessarily degrees but in demand skills. What would you like to retrain in?

This is very true as pension credit is a gateway benefit to lots of other benefits it is unfair...they can end up with more than those that have paid in