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.

They would have to be very, very ignorant to genuinely think younger people today get a better deal.

The Pension Credit threshold was too low, and £35K is much too high. I thought the right balance would have been around the NMW level (assuming a 35-40 hour week) so about £25k.

It is a vote bribe, pure and simple. We have an income of just under £35k and yes we get Child Benefit for one child but that is it. The government say our income is too high to get anymore help, why does that not apply to pensioners?

Single people on NMW often get no help and they are on much less than 35k.

The trouble with ISAs is the rates are usually lower than the non-ISA rate, so you don't pay tax but you get less interest anyway. If you are into 40% tax or higher they are worth it, if you are just in standard rate it is often pretty marginal.

In thst case HMRC will adjust your tax code to take account of interest you earn if it’s over the £1000 limit. Whether you’re self employed, retired, or PAYE, you will be taxed on any interest from savings over the limit.

Well what they need is to make voting compulsory. The only reason all the parties are scared of losing the pensioners votes is because they're the group that DOES vote. If they made it so you vote or get a £1,000 fine (for example) then the young folk would vote too and the country would be a lot less skewed in favour of pensioners.

Where do you live OP? For those of us in the SE, £35k isn’t loads. It’s not a pittance, but it certainly doesn’t cover luxuries or extras.

And if you think something has been missed you are obliged to inform HMRC.

I am in the south east… and most people I know earn less than £35k. Outside of London it’s hard to get jobs that earn over that amount unless you are a professional with experience.

They won't be the ones with a million in the bank though will they?

I'm in the SE. Income of 16k. Not struggling

Many young people can’t afford to have kids, or have less than they would like, or have them later due to finances. Many can’t afford the drop in salary and/or the cost of childcare. Look at current birth rates, people are having less kids and finance is a big reason.

This country is a joke. We're a care home with nuclear weapons and nothing more.

What is this a race to the bottom? It's not a lot to live on whether you are old or young, but if you got an extra £200 a year would it really change anything? It's a token gesture at best.

75% of over 65s own outright, sbout 4% with a mortgage, about 6% private rent and rest social housing (ONS, I just looked it up, but can’t remember exact figures, data from 2017 so will have shifted slightly since).

The mortgage figure falls significantly as they get to 70/75. I have plenty of colleagues in their late 60s, and with low interest rates until recently they have had mortgage plus savings. I’ve also known several people in their 60s with an interest only mortgage (often post divorce) and no plan to pay it off, who then switched to equity release (not sure what figure they come under).

But those who are older and in private rental are already amongst the lowest incomes (generally), so they won’t be highly represented in £35k-and-renting, But I can see why they set it high to avoid being seen to cause those who are renting / paying mortgage to go without heating (and subsequent headlines).

I expect these limits won’t change with inflation so over time will be less generous.

Have to congratulate yet another one of the many successive governments that have brought about policies designed to pit generation against generation, so they happily blame each other for their problems and stop looking for who is really responsible.

Absolutely with you on this one. That's £35 AFTER TAX as well. Extremely generous and highly unecessary in my humble opinion.

I agree. I think the threshold is too high and means that many people who don't really need help are benefitting. Labour have made a right mess of this, first by annoying nearly all pensioners and now this.

Labour are idiots!

And the pensioners aren’t fools!

Can I ask how much your rent / mortgage is? I assume you rent as it would be very hard (maybe impossible?) to get a mortgage with a household income of 16k now unless you had a huge cash deposit that covered most of a property’s value.

If £200 doesn’t change anything, why was there so much uproar about it being taken away?

You do if you have interest over a certain level. Interest of over £1000 and under that threshold (I can’t remember what it is sorry) goes through PAYE.

In what universe is a grand a month free??? That’s for a full time place with the maximum 30 funded hours. As if older generations paid anywhere near that much!!

How strange, people on this site earning 100k usually moan about not being entitled to 25 pound a week child benefit and a threshold of 60k is apparently "too low".

Do y'all just not like old people?