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

They do.

They did pay in by bringing up families, by spending money. NI is not the only source of income for paying state pensions and work that is unpaid is as valid as work that is. No freebies - we all pay.

Yes I’m in two of them & my DB pensions will be over 45k at retirement.

@lazyarse123 yes depending upon your age it may be 60, 66 etc but I don't understand why people"you reach your state pension age but no NI if you continue to work" but younger people can work and pay if for longer.

Retired pensions consultant here. The pensions industry and the actuarial profession have been pushing for a State pension age of 70, or even 72, since the early 1980s.

The premise on which the old age pension was based when it was reformed in the 1940s was that it would be payable for around 15 years, for a man and 20 for a woman. However, lncreasing lifespan has made a retirement age in the mid-60 unsustainable.

No government, or either party, has had the political or moral courage to put this to the electorate, until now when the system is approaching crisis point.

For what it's worth, a State pension age of 70 is simply returning to what it originally was when the State Old Age Pension was first set up in the early 1900s.

The is still an aging population and the birth rate is too low to support this. We also seem to be raising more people with health conditions and the number of younger people out of work is also worrying. Older people are needed to actually maintain a workforce.

That’s really shit. I am already worried about working til 68!

A lot of us Gen X women are in much worse health than our mothers were at our age due to working a double working day - full time paid work, home and kids.

We don’t tend to stay at home like previous generations (who did more so) or have then more enlightened Millenial men - we’ve got and often divorced Gen X men who didn’t get the memo!

@Mainoo72 I'm confused by your response. Are you saying you are average? Are you saying DB schemes haven't become less generous? Are you saying DB schemes in the private sector haven't reduced?

Possibly - but the fact is that was the deal when a lot of us started work and now the goal posts are regularly being moved. When I started teaching in 2000, the deal was I could go at 55 with a decent lump sum and a nice pension, and when I left teaching in 2014 it had moved to 67 with greatly reduced amounts. NOBODY in that time consulted me or asked if I even minded, the government just did it. And here we are now going to 71. My mum died at 78, my dad at 72 so genetics are not on my side for longevity!

I think this is a breach of the social contract. We have paid NI contributions towards the state pension for a very long time. If they want to increase the state pension age then it needs to be for people who don't yet pay NI and it needs to be with public consent. I'd say it is referendum territory.

No freebies - we all pay.

Evidently not

I’m a couple of decades younger and anticipating it being nearer 75 when I get there, though it’ll more likely have been abolished or made means tested by then.

YANBU. My parents both retired at 55 and given their parents’ long lives, may well both receive SP for longer than they worked. Something my generation can only dream of!

Chatting about this with my DC at the weekend and I honestly think that it's time the younger taxpayer was told that there possibly won't be a state pension for them in future years.

Based on that they should no longer be made to make contributions under the pretense that it will receive one.

I think this is a breach of the social contract.

Young people already feel like this though. I work with them & some are pretty pissed off.

Thats a ridiculous idea, means testing would cost a fortune and all have contributed towards their state pension. It also disincentivises anybody taking out private pensions.

I think Reform is growing more popular amongst the young because traditional parties aren't serving them.

You pay NI until your state pension age

I’m aware of DB pensions because I have 2 of them. They’re still very generous. Most of my colleagues will be retiring on very good pensions, apart from those who opted out of course.

Not everyone can afford a private pension unfortunately, all my money goes on bills and i work in a physically demanding job, no one will hire me at that age so i suppose the answer is to die early

Most people won't have a pension at the level you expect. My income as a pensioner is about £19,000pa. I live very comfortably. I have no mortgage or rent to pay. I no longer get the fuel allowance but I can pay my bills without worrying.
I'm on the older state pension which is slightly less than the new one.
I think people are going to have to decide whether they would prefer a state pension that offers a comfortable standard of living at a later age or a more modest pension earlier.
I know I say that as someone who got the state pension at 63 but there is a problem brewing.
People are living more and more with debilitating health conditions. There are more people with both physical and mental health problems who are finding it difficult to work at all ages and particularly as they get older. With a smaller working population how can we best support them?

Some think tank somewhere said it should be raised to 75 back in 2019 I think.

Depends what you mean. State pension age was set at 65 because that was the average life expectancy at that time. So half the population wasn’t expected to ever receive their state pension and those that did were only expected to claim for a handful of years. And it only applied to men.

Aviva’s pension calculator estimates my life expectancy at 93. That’s 25 years of claiming state pension from age 68. It’s just not sustainable for it to pay out for that long. Mathematically that’s the brutal reality. It needs to increase.

But lots of people think they have “paid in” through NI (they haven’t but that’s the perception) so it’s politically very difficult to increase it to a sustainable level.

It also depends on the nature of your job - I do a desk job so could continue until that age if I had to but if you have a physical job then maybe it’s not possible.

This is why I think the government should massively encourage pensions and investing and it should be taught in schools. But instead they’ve decided to tax pensions by removing the IHT exemption.

I also think the way pensions are talked about is so unhelpful, you need say £500k pension pot for £20k pension income. I think lots of people will see that and think there’s no way they’ll ever save half a million pounds so there’s no point worrying. When actually it is very achievable for lots of people over a long enough period (decades rather than years).

So who would be paying for all the other things NI goes towards like the health service?

Lucky you. Not all of us are that well off. I've been paying into a pension since my early 20s and no way am I going to have that much to live off.

I agree 100%.

Why do you think the government is no insisting on workplace pensions? If people pay in from when they start work to a relatively decent find then they can still retire at 65, they just won’t get the state pension until whatever age it is at that time