What do you think will happen to the state pension in the future?

[Darkling1]

I’ve heard people say that it may be means tested in the future. I’m in my late 20s and wonder what the state pension will look like years from now.

I’ve recently started to invest a small amount into a SIPP each month. I can’t help but worry about the state pension, especially as the age keeps rising.

I think the age of state pension will continue to rise over time. I can see it being pushed to 75 by the time I’m eligible to claim.

What do you think will happen to it?

Those people are unlikely to be working for Goldman Sachs, but they can still hold down a job that's valued by their community.

They do. They’re just not jobs that pay very well. You might have gone to the supermarket, I did too but the shelves didn’t stack themselves and the groceries were delivered to the shops by human beings. We all still had our bins emptied. Care home workers aren’t paid much but they’re valued.

''@Tryingtokeepgoing · Yesterday 16:25
Someone on minimum wage is paying, what, £3k or so in NI and income tax a year, but I imagine is also a relatively heavy user of the roads (paid for on the whole by the taxpayer), public transport (subsidised), education and training, I suspect use proportionally more police resources as a cohort than 60 year olds, probably draw on Local Authority resources for housing at a similar level to the elderly, and use more local authority subsised sports facilities and parks. Can that all be covered by less than £3k... I'd guess not :)''

What is your point?

The economy and society could not function without people on low/minimum wage.

Or don't you realise with need carers, hospital porters, supermarket staff, cleaners, teaching assistant, nursery workers, delivery drivers, hospitality, agriculture and leisure workers...

Hasn't Covid bought you anything? when times got tough we did not need another hedge fund manager or another accountants, we relied on all the essential workers that kept us all going.

Their value goes beyond the amount of tax they pay.

I understand net contributor has its uses. I get that at any given point of time you can say this financial year person x used more or less services than they paid for in tax. I understand that we use services indirectly too.

But it is also very simplistic financial flow on one individual to tax isn't it. If I am doing childcare and am not a 'net contributor' but the people whose child i am looking after are, how does that work. I enabled their tax contribution. How much tax do you think you'd pay if you had no food as noone picked the vegetables that year. Would a lot of business owners be able to earn as much as they did, without a group of non net contributors working for them.

FFS. 🙄You got this far in the thread making reasoned comments (which isn't to say I agree with everything you've expressed, not by a long chalk, but at least it's been mostly constructive) and then you descend into Daily Mail commenter territory with this reply. I suspect that's because you know there isn't a good answer to my question.

For your so-called logic to work, the country would need better paid jobs, a lower cost of living, or both. There are a whole ton of people out there working hard and striving to 'do better for themselves', your reply seems to be insinuating they just aren't working hard enough/aren't ambitious enough which is deeply insulting to a lot of ordinary hard-working people. There simply aren't enough jobs that pay well enough, especially in this economy, for people to just decide to 'do better', and people's skills, aptitudes and strengths vary, not everyone has, or can acquire, a skillset that's suited to the so-called 'top jobs'. Many hard-working people are stuck languishing in low-paid work simply because so many jobs pay barely enough to live on, and if you're not aware of that you must live in an ivory tower.

BTW I'm not even going waste keystrokes on 'not the obese or the wimpy', but you need to be careful with terms like 'intellectually disabled'. Just saying.

Out of what, if they're left with nothing (or less than nothing) once the bills have been paid and food bought? Honestly you're coming across as criminally naive in some of these replies.

You will either need to be on a very good private pension or be on benefits for this that or the other. Anyone in the middle will struggle.

And isn't that unfortunate, given that many are in the middle through no fault of their own.

I don’t agree @Viviennemary, you forgot about public sector pensions. A private pension is the only one of these that carries risk - risk the stock market will tank and you’ll loose a lot of money that you may never recover. Those in the middle are basically stuffed, no wonder so many youngsters are just living off benefits, they can see that work doesn’t pay.

I don't expect to get any meaningful state pension at all. My financial projections are all based on receiving nothing

No, they don’t.

Why not?

The state pension is not supposed to be generous. It is supposed to be a minimum. If you want a decent retirement you will have to make your own provision.

I think it will just continue to incrementally increase age wise.

Well no, not if you have enough of a cash buffer and can cut expenditure for a few years while it recovers. Really not impossible but you need to start early.

Decent and generous are different things.

The state pension isn’t supposed to be decent.

Hope that clarifies.

In your opinion. And you’re wrong. It’s supposed to be enough to live on.

A basic lifestyle only though. No winter cruises or prosecco nights.

That is hands down one of the most vile things I’ve ever read on MN, and I’ve been on here a long time.

To clarify, you are literally saying that those without the resources/ability to improve their lot intrinsically deserve less than those who are better equipped to advance themselves?

Just wow.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

They deserve a basic liveable pension. If they want more than this then it comes from making your own provisions. This is precisely what the state pension is ment to be. Extraordinary you consider such a basic social agreement to be so unacceptable!

A loaf of bread and a pint of milk costs the same regardless of your weekly wage. However, if you are on a low wage this simple purchase takes a much bigger percentage of your wage than for a higher paid person. That makes it a lot more difficult to find hundreds of pounds a month for a private pension whereas a richer person would hardly notice it.
I can't believe the narrow bigoted comments from those who are commenting that these low paid workers who have been working all their lives "should have made more provision."
I thought it was supposed to be part of our " British Values" that we look after the elderly and keep it them fed?
There is such a gap between the " haves and have nots" in this country now. There are lots of people who have worked important but low paid jobs all their lives who rely on state pension. You can't just remove this provision and say they should have been better prepared. That's morally bankrupt.

There are a diminishing number of economically productive workers who support vast swathes of society with huge tax contributions. Remember the top 10% pay over 60% of all income tax collected, and the top 1% almost 30% alone!

The combination of working age work shy, combined with 13million pensioners, means our economy is hurting. And the situation is deteriorating rapidly. Increased taxes are pushing anyone who can leave. Labour are incapable of delivering even the most minor of benefit cuts. The debt levels are rising.

The entitlement of wanting generous support both during a working life AND retirement, funded by others, is extraordinary. And so many feel they deserve this, and others should pay. “Those with the broadest shoulders…”

We are heading for a situation where the Government will not be able to cover it’s debt. It will turn to the IMF for help. They will do so. But in return there will be savage cuts to working and pension benefits. Where only the truly and most needy will get anything.

Debate over triple locks and PIP payments is dinner chatter in the Titanic dining room.

The pension has never made financial sense for a country. It makes moral sense perhaps.

I don’t, FFS. What I find unacceptable (and extraordinary, come to that) is your complete failure to acknowledge that a) the state pension is not enough to live on and b) some people cannot afford to make their own provisions. How is that so difficult for you to understand?