To be angry with people who describe the old age pension as a "benefit"?

[FlubandSlub]

When I started my working life, aged 16, I entered into an agreement with the government for them to save my pension money for me. It was stated that it would be until I turned 60 which would be when I could starting drawing my old age pension. Even though I made my FULL pension payment contributions by the time I turned 51 the government has decided it will not abide by the original agreement and that it is going to keep MY money until I am 67. Probably hoping I will die before then.

Consider this, not only did I contribute to my pension, my employer did too. It totalled 15% of my income before taxes. If you averaged only £15 000 p a. over your working life, that's close to £220,500. Read that again. Did you see anywhere that the Government paid in one single penny?

We are talking about the money that I and my employer put in a Government bank to ensure that I would have a retirement pension. It was not money that the Government had any right to spend on other things! Upon reaching the age to take it back they've started to call the money we paid in a "benefit" !

If you calculate the future invested value of £2500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (that's less than what the govtpays on the money that it borrows from overseas), after 49 years of working you'd have
£892,919.98.

This money was supposed to be in a securely locked box, not to be used as part of the Government's general funds.
Successive governments borrowed the money to spend on other things but that doesn't make my pension some kind of charity or handout!! If a private pension company did this we would sue them. Unfortunately the Government can legally rob us blind and get away with it

IT'S MY MONEY! IT IS NOT A BENEFIT!!

This has been copied and pasted so many times on Facebook and the like.
State pensions ARE a benefit like it or not. Based on your contributions made during your working age years.
I’ll be a week off 69 when I get mine, if they don't raise the pension age.
Working age people are paying for the current pensioners. It’s not a savings account that you withdraw from.

Why?

I don’t feel that my daughter’s grandmother who has never worked by choice has any more right to her benefit(pension) than my daughter has to her’s for her severe MH managed by a team when she very much wants to and plans to work.

Read your original benefits package. Your investment in your retirement should have accrued fair interest monthly or per annum. The invested principle is your earned money investment, the interest on investment is from the government using that money for investment that earn them income and a small percentage payed to you for using your money. If there is no benefit to investing in a government retirement plan, everyone should stop paying in to that plan immediately and put that money in a bank where they can buy AAA rated CDs or annuities when they save enough money.

Changing the retirement age should not affect the ppl who previously retired under that previous law or agreement. It should only affect ppl from that date forward. New laws cannot go back in time and affect pple who did business with them under prior laws.

Everyone affected should file a class action suite against the government for stealing their interest, for screwing with their rightful access to their own money, that was promised under the law, in previous years.

I am angry at them for their leeching, bloodsucking ways to hardworking citizens, that pay too many taxes already!

I wish her the very best in her endeavours.
I am tired of seeing people talk about mental health issues as though they're all the same and suggest that people with severe and enduring mental health conditions have them by choice.

Well it’s your choice to apply the word ‘handout’ to benefit recipients, so the fact that you’re insulted by the fact that the state pension is defined as a benefit, is down to your own prejudices in how you see benefit claimants.

When the state pays you any kind of benefit it does so from the national insurance fund, which is where state pension is paid from. Anyone who has worked at any time has paid into the fund at some point and if they fall into unemployment or become ill or disabled the state honours the contract under which they paid in - just as with the state pension - and they are paid the appropriate benefit. Those who have never worked are paid means tested benefits not requiring NI contributions, from that same fund, and again, according to the same social contract which guarantees a minimum safety net for everyone.

So l don’t see the problem, unless it’s that you don’t want to be associated with benefit claimants because you consider them to be feckless scroungers - which your use of the words ‘handout’ and ‘insult’ in this context seems to imply.

Was this quite a while ago? I was cut off by some jobsworth from the Pension Service because I refused to refer to my pension a benefit - he rather snottily said thst he wouldn't engage with me again until I accepted it was a benefit. I wouldn't so there wasn't any point ringing them back. I can still remember how angry I felt being spoken to as though I was some schoolgirl (even though I was being a tad childish).

@Livelovebehappy But unfortunately atm, younger generations are looking for someone to blame for the current situation the country is in in respect of finance shortfall. As there are an increasing amount of people claiming disability and other benefits, they’re not going to bite the hand that feeds them, so they’ve nominated pensioners and ‘boomers’ as their scapegoats.

People claiming benefits due to disabilities is a tiny fraction of government spending.

It was indeed boomers who decided to appropriate housing (of all things) as an 'investment'.

I do understand how the state pension works, and I do understand the benefits from it are variable and the age you can claim it is also variable. Finally I understand that our NI doesn't cover all of the things it should , like a proper social insurance scheme.

However, I also understand the spirit of what the OP is saying. People have paid in with the expectation that they would get something out, there is an implicit deal there. In fact all of our public services are based on that- pay in when you don't need it, and it'll be there for you if you do. If the state pension is scrapped I think people would have a right to be pissed off.

But they get more than what they paid in, way more.

Whereas you are right in general, using that example doesn't help, as what the poster copied does give the right answers in this case.

The net contributors don't. Hence they should receive it.

4 million people of working age are claiming disability currently. Why else do you think Starmer was trying to get a review in place?

This. It’s happened quite a few times on this thread. People have absolutely no idea of how severe mental health conditions have to be in order to qualify for disability benefits. And in the absence of that knowledge they parrot government rhetoric from politicians who, since coming to government, have demonstrated repeatedly that they have no idea how difficult it is to qualify for disability benefits either, and who will trot out any old crap to justify cutting them.

Your daughter’s grandmother, if she never worked, will not be entitled to a state pension you’ll be pleased to know. If you don’t pay in, then you don’t get a state pension. Simple as that.

She probably will if she was claiming unemployment benefits though, as I and PP have said upthread. It's not as "simple as that".

@E11i0ttD Yes I understand that, but that's the hope with any pension isn't it? If you just got back what you paid in, very few people would ever retire, even those with private or invested pensions.

Nope! £549,638, assuming compound interest paid once at the end of each year.

You are if you’ve been in receipt 10 years of child benefit and then it’s topped with pension credit so you’re better off as you’re eligible for other benefits.

I’m would imagine that if she made the decision to never work til retirement that she had a husband or partner supporting her financially. I can’t imagine she spent her entire life at working age (40+ years) claiming unemployment benefit.

That’s not correct. Four million people are currently claiming disability benefits or incapacity benefits. There is a difference between the two. You can claim disability benefits and still work - just under 20% of PIP claimants work. Incapacity benefits from recipients do not work except in very limited circumstances where a small amount of ‘permitted work’ is considered therapeutic.

Have you fact checked each point to check if each one is indeed accurate? Genuine question: the results often “look” plausible but do not always stand up to scrutiny. So, should be taken with a pinch of salt and not relied upon

She probably will: pension credits etc

10 years of child benefit makes you eligible.

Have you fact checked each point? Or are you an expert on the subject?

But that means, as I said, that she wouldn’t receive state pension. Pension credit is a benefit paid to people who don’t qualify for state benefit. Pension credit isn’t the state pension. She may be entitled to other benefits, but if she has never paid in, then she is not entitled to the state pension.