To say the £35k winter fuel threshold is way too high!

[chocolateismyweakness4]

The threshold needed to be raised, but £35k?! I wish I earned that and I have a mortgage and commuting costs. It also doesn’t take into account savings (so they could have millions in the bank) or household income.

We all know it’s a bribe, but they still won’t get pensioners to vote for them.

I didn’t don’t say it was impossible but that it was impossible without family help. 100% mortgages were not available and depended on much lower ratios. Houses were priced according to the market and on several occasions the market boomed then went bust leaving people in negative equity or homeless.
It wasn’t as rosy as you paint.

This occurred to me at a motorway services a little while ago. Do buses stop at them? If not, how on earth do minimum wagers get to night shifts? They certainly won’t be able to run a car.

Whilst I agree it’s too high, I’m pleased there is at least a cap. Giving it to those with millions in the bank and hefty pensions was a nonsense so at least this way some of those wealthy pensioners are excluded. Be interested to know how they came up with figure.

Has any of that really changed though over the years.
Apreciate there wasn’t Sunday opening but there were still night shifts.
We didn’t have a car, my mum cycled to her night shift, there were no buses

Ever heard of managed decline?

Nope Course you havent

£200 a month on food??? What world are you living in? £50 a week lol, I wish

We paid a bloody fortune, less maternity leave, no free hours, no tax allowance worth a couple of grand and it was crippling. Thanks for your concern.

Just throwing this in : Age UK's last report ( 2022) and statistics on poverty in later life in the UK. Worth a read : Age UK 'Poverty in later life' report
The material deprivation stats are particularly sobering.

I sense there are too many people here ignoring the fact that they'll grow old one day and they might need subsidies to survive then they'll know that young people believe they're too rich and should die to free up whetever they have for them to grab with glee.

But you’re forgetting the age to get state pension and the various benefits is rising. Today a 66 year old can get these things, but for my generation the age is currently 68 and we all know it’s likely to go into the 70s.

The difference is the majority of younger people will have worked and worked and have fuck all to show for it.

Channel 4 did a programme nearly ten years ago called How To Get A Council House I remember a woman being allocated a place miles away To get to work (i think it was a supermarket job) she had to start a two to three hour walk at 4am.

That's why you should prepare for your old age instead of waiting for subsidies. You've time to find out what you must do to live a comfortable life when you become old.
There is the whole internet and specialists giving free advices to people who want to have a nice retirement.
There is also the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement which you need to go into and and learn.
No excuses to wait for old age to do anything. Do things now.
There's also no need to hate older people while waiting to grab what they have.

The vast majority of people in this country couldn't hope to have that as a retirement income.

But it was practical in the past so what’s changed? Bus fares are currently capped at £3, it seems very cheap to me.

I think RR is annoyed at having to do this U Turn and it is being forced on her and as others have said - it’s just to appease the old vote - but makes Labour look v. weak.

RR is so annoyed she must be like “screw it then if you all demand WFA and the general public genuinely think/support/believe that all these boomers are skint - then I’ll try to highlight to them how wealthy many pensioners are by saying they can have it on income of 35K” as it’s got people talking again and maybe some will rethink how poor all these “war veteran pensioners” are. It’s causing a stir again.

But how can we prepare for old age when we need to concentrate on surviving today. I have a fairly good pension scheme but it’s linked with state pension age so there are penalties for taking it earlier. And the age will keep rising of course.

So you are preparing for old age. 🤷‍♀️

Changing a policy because either you realise it’s very unpopular with the electorate and it doesn’t give much benefit anyway or because your financial situation changes and there’s more headroom isn’t weakness. I want my politicians to be flexible rather than dogmatically sticking to policies regardless of situations.

It won’t be enough though will it? And the age getting higher means more and more is needed to prepare.

Not sure child benefit was around for boomers, we certainly didn't get any, the NHS was just starting and was very basic, schools were over crowded because of the boomers and there was post war hardship all round.

When child benefit (or then was called 'Family Allowance') was first introduced it wasn't payable for the first child. I have a cousin aged 79 who was an only child & her parents didn't get anything for her. She couldn't have children & feels rather resentful at everyone who had allowances made because they had children. She felt that not having children was thrown in her face because she couldn't have leave during school holidays etc because those with children took preference. This made her inability to conceive even more painful to her. But when her father's war wounds gave him a stroke & she was helping her mother care for him no allowances were made for her. We talking in the 1970's-1980's times were different.

If they’ve got millions in the bank they’ll be getting interest. Millions would take them over the £35000 level.

It's ridiculous. About time the lower levels of PIP and attendance allowance were means tested. People are raking it in so fast they can't spend it while others struggle along working and paying tax to keep the whole sorry system afloat. The whole system is a total farce.

Why won’t it be enough? If you contribute to a good pension scheme throughout your working life you’ll have enough to live on. After all a pp thinks the tax free lump sum from a pension is enough to buy a flat outright. And the rise in qualifying age gives you more time to prepare.

Seems to me the threshold has been set to deliberately encourage a fuss. I dont know anyone who was pushing for the level to be £35k, except reform. it was the ones just about pension credit who were the concern and that's under £12k.