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!!

Sorry OP, this isn’t right.

You paid NICs which paid towards the pensions of those currently retired. Workers today like me pay NICs to cover your pension.

Govt today add tax relief at a huge cost to HM Treasury to worker’s private defined contribution pensions. There’s not some grand conspiracy to rob your money. People are living far longer than they used to and the state simply can’t afford to pay pensions out for 30 years plus.

She is if she’s had 10 years of child benefit.

And I didn’t say that people on disability don’t work. I’m aware that some do, as in claiming PIP, you can still work. I was saying that 4 million people claim for disability.

You can login to the government gateway and check how many years you have qualifying towards the state pension.

www.gov.uk/check-state-pension

If you claim certain benefits you can also claim credits towards the state pension. I would ask your local citizens advice bureau for advice.

Glad to see the OP back here and justifying their stance, and not just posting something hugely inflammatory and then fucking off

You may get a State Pension even if you've never worked, provided you've claimed Child Benefit for a child under 12, as this grants you National Insurance (NI) credits. You'll need at least 10 qualifying years of contributions or credits to be eligible for any State Pension. You can check your National Insurance record to see how many qualifying years you have.

Which is why the many families who lost child benefit (which pensioners always enjoyed) need to make sure they still claim child benefit and pay it back via tax returns.

You have to have paid in for 35 years to get a full state pension. Child benefit qualifies you for a very small state pension, because she will have made 10 years contribution, but you didn’t include that info in your first post.

I think the OP was complaining about the pension age being increased, rather than scrapped. They had expected to retire at 60 and considered it a breach of contract.

But people are living longer today compared to when the pension was first introduced, so the retired, non-working population is higher. That’s a difficulty for the government to make it all work from a cost point of view. Also, people in the UK don’t want to pay more taxes, they are marching against immigrants and fertility has dropped as well. Given that current workers fund existing pensioners and the tax base is now declining compared to the older, retired population, it makes sense to increase the pension age and have people paying tax on wages longer.

I make it £525k after 49 years assuming compounded annually and contribution remained at £2500 PA.

So you think people pay too much tax but you want current taxpayers to pay your pension?

Which is then topped up by pension credits making you better off.

You may as well say that whenever you pay tax you're entering into an "agreement with the government" that you'll get UC if you're unemployed or whatever. I do get tired of old people sneering at people on "benefits" (I'm not but I have been, and it's not fun) when the biggest slice of the benefits bill is pensions. Doesn't count though, apparently, because, er, reasons.

@ScholesPandapresumably then, I as a 26 year old, should be able to opt out on the basis I won’t be getting anything back?

All the ‘that’s not how it works’ aside, you are absolutely right to be offended that the state pension is wrongly referred to as a benefit.

Based on your age and what you have said regarding employer contributions, it sounds like you contracted out of SERPS whilst in a private workplace pension. Your employer has not contributed towards your state pension. If your workplace pension is contracted out, they will pay you a contracted out pension equivalent (COPE) within your private pension. This broadly equates to the ‘missing’ element of the state pension you would have received, had you not joined the private workplace contracted out pension scheme. I.e. you are receiving the COPE within your private pension and not being penalised. You should ask your workplace pension to provide further details of the COPE if you are unsure how it works.

OK, but she would if she had (or claimed child benefit etc). That would entitle her to state pension, probably with pension credit on top.

The point is, your statement that "If you don’t pay in, then you don’t get a state pension. Simple as that" is incorrect. You don't need to pay a penny - you just need the requisite NI record (which for most people involves paying NI contributions, but not necessarily).

Or import people.

Why offended ? And it’s not wrong. This has been done to death. The state pension as we know it now was brought into being by the national insurance act of 1946. It was legally defined as a contributory benefit to bring it within the confines if the national insurance fund which pays it along with other state benefits as well as providing some NHS funding. It’s literally enshrined in law.

You would also be opting out of receiving other state benefits conditional on NI contributions.

Its one of those things that seems to be a 'thing' though, my DGP certainly referred to the state pension as their pension pot. DGF didn't see the need for a private pension as he was already 'paying in' to his pension.
So where did the impression that they were paying into a government run pension scheme rather than an additional tax that entitled to a 'benefit' after retirement age come from.

That's the point I'm making. There isn't an option to opt out so people expect something in return, even if in reality they may only be paying for today's pensioners.

Which is still not correct. Disability benefit is different to incapacity (sickness) benefit and the figure of 4 million comprises both.

Possibly from the fact that people didn’t have information at their fingertips as they do now, so it was the simplest way to view state pension in the absence of more detail. Google has probably increased awareness of how it actually works.

Yes, disability is indeed more common than you think. Do you think disabled and unwell people just don't exist, or what?

Exactly. I’ve always been happy that my NI contributions did something useful by paying current OAPs’ pensions, rather than being squirrelled away in a bank. That is of course with the expectation that the next generation does the same for me.