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.

How very self serving of you. Let's hope that the crumbling public services which you will no doubt rely on more and more as you age (namely the NHS), aren't completely decimated within the next decade. Extremely narrow minded.

That’s quite interesting. Using your examples, A quick google search shows that monthly repayments for £40,000 mortgage at 14% over 25 years would be £1,076.67. The total amount repaid would be £207,690, meaning you would repay £167,690 in interest. By comparison the monthly repayments on a
£400,000 mortgage at a 4% interest rate over 35 years would be approximately £1,390, according to HSBC's calculator. Over the life of the mortgage, you would pay a total of £166,874 in interest.

The example I gave of mortgage interest rates reaching 18% at their height in the early 1980s, and then remaining at 14-16% for a long time, was at a time when the average gross salary was around £6-8000 per year. People regularly talk on Mumsnet of finding it difficult to manage with a net income of £6,000 per month, while paying very similar monthly mortgage repayments as 40 years ago, using your examples.

Yes I do. I feel for the younger generation who will be working well into their 70s. 😞

The waspi women's "notice" that they like to complain about that we're so lucky as younger women to have had. What difference exactly would that have made for the average woman?Exactly what would she have done differently with more notice? Oh yes, saved money rather than spend it. Really I don't think -" I decided to spend my money rather than save it which I would have done had I had more notice" which obviously suggests they could have afforded to but choice not to, or else what difference would "notice" have made? Is much of a reason for the rest of us to have to pay compensation is it? The selfish waspi whiners can do one.

Point taken. Although a quick Google search informs me that, in fact, the average price of a home in the UK, in the 80s was just under £20k, rising sharply from £4000, in the 70s. My number was off, but the principle remains.

Some of them might have made longer-term career plans if they'd known retirement was further off? Gone for promotion instead of just ticking over? I was able to continue working for an extra 3 years and deferred claiming my pension, while saving the NI I no longer had to pay. (Deferring it added over 10% a year to my state pension).

It depends which end of the 80s. We bought our house in the middle of the 80s for about £100k. The flat we sold then went for about £60k. This was just before really high mortgage rates.

That was expensive. I bought a 2 bed flat in London in 92 for. £35k
My mum bought a 3 bed house in Kent for £17.5 k in 1986

I am a pensioner. I have a small private pension (around £200 per month) on top of my state pension. Total income just over £13k per anum. The wfa means a lot to me and I have definitely missed it this year.

30k would mean a luxury lifestyle for me. 15 or 20k would be a reasonable cut off point imo

Agree
We didn’t have a penny help with childcare and places were extremely scarce as there wasn’t Govn help so proportionally more expensive. As an architect,more than my entire salary for two. If I didn’t keep working though i would lose my job.
No one wanted a mother as an employee and I’m sure many of us remember removing wedding rings and lying about kids ( or deflecting the question ) at interviews.

People have many benefits now because women of the past complained and shouted about it.

Agree it was pricey
Dh Bought a 2 bed flat in a Victorian terrace conversion in Tottenham off Green lanes in 1988 for £57k
Going rate at the time in a lot of places

It's depressing. £70k household income with no dependents. Many have no mortgage. And no NI.

Even if you do have rent or mortgage that's £2.5k per person, so a couple could have £5k a month, just for them.

We have nowhere near that liquidity after monthly expenses with 3 kids, a mortgage, bills etc.

Removing the WFA from all but the poorest I thought was actually literally the only sensible thing Labour has done. Now they've backtracked even on that and the rest of us will pick up the shortfall.

It's not their fault but really makes me resent pensioners.

My MIL has £1m assets, worked only five years her whole life yet banks (and doesn’t spend) over £400 per month AA. Means test this next please!

I don’t get this , many working people are on less than £35k so why are only pensioners getting it , unless it’s because they stay at home in the day so heating on for longer . Seems high threshold to me whatever the reason.

Wow, what do you heat for £500, a warehouse?

And people in that category should absolutely get it. But there’s a big difference between an income of £13k and £35k.

A couple of points.
We have been retired for 7 years. In that short time we have lost the free TV license worth £175, and the WFP £300 at 80. So that is £475 off our future pensions. Neither bothers us as we have both worked and saved all our lives, since 16, so 50 years each, and have enough savings to get by.
DH is in a Rotary Club of 45 members. Of those 45 only 2 of the families have has a single wage earner, one a dentist, the other had his own insurance brokers. So thus fallacy that we have had wealth dropped in our laps is nonsense.
We know it us tough for younger generations, but these pensioners benefits will one day be the benefits you get after a lifetime of working and paying taxes.
I think the problem with the wfp was the way it was communicated. Virtually the first thing that was announced in this Parliament. If she had waited till the budget, and combined the news with the news that they were able to maintain the triple lock, which would give an increase above inflation, it would have come over as a carefully considered choice, instead of a blunt budget punishing the group more likely not to have voted for Labour. Very naive of her.

You should go and sit in my in-laws house, its like a bloody sauna!!

They don't sit around all day either but they feel the cold a heck of lot more than you or i do.

Labour now seem tto have turned a crisis into a drama, the original decision was v v stupid but a threshold of 35k now makes Labour look even more ridiculous.

..and the denial that it is a u-turn, is hilarious, just fucking apologise, say it was a mistake and move on... all this squirming around "fiscal responsibility" nonsense is comical.

my dm, i imagine like many, is on her own, with her own meagre pension, just over the previous limit
she will now get her winter fuel which is great.
i doubt she will forgive rachel reeves for the uturn

Totally agree. Went back to work in mid-80s at the council after 2 children and was asked at interview what childcare arrangements I had in place for when they were sick. I was also told that I was ineligible to join their pension scheme (I'd had brain surgery 4 years prior but was totally recovered). Disgusting but we accepted it as second-class citizens.

It's outrageous that it's been set significantly higher than the minimum wage. It means workers who almost always have higher living costs than pensioners are funding pensioners who have a higher income and more freebies already as well as paying a lower tax rate (no NI). I can't actually get my head around how Labour thought this was a good idea.

Apart from until last year, was payable to ALL pensioners including the over 2.5m pensioners who are higher rate tax payers - 50k pls per year - and do not pay NI either...

All ok and no outrage last year then???

Massive, massive assumption here that pensioners don't have a mortgage or pay rent. In 2022 25% of pensioners still paid a mortgage or rent. I can't find the most up to date figure for rentals but 25% of pensioners still have a mortgage. You might not know them but they certainly exist.

Did you tag the wrong person? My point was about childcare not the triple lock.

But as you have tagged me in, my generation will not have anywhere near the pension you have now. With an aging population it will be cut to the minimum.

Had it crossed your mind that the working age range people can improve their lives, working more hours, kids need less care etc but pensioners find it much more difficult because of ageing and ill health?