To be fed up with the WASPIs' renewed campaign?

[Jane379]

I sympathise with people who genuinely did not know but hiw many was this? And how would we know who to compensate even if the money were available?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/waspi-latest-compensation-legal-challenge-pension-b2976014.html

Given the way pensions are funded, your £300k is a red herring, introduced purely to obfuscate. A DC fund gives you a 25% tax free lump sum. There’s absolutely no comparison.

I was born 16 months after the cut off date to be a waspi women ( born mid 1961 )
I of course will not receive my state pension until age 67 . I grew up like these women being told I would be able to retire at 60 on state pension even during my early working years it was 60 . Some of my friends a few years older than me received pension at 65 and some at 66 but now it is 67 . So in reality the early 1960s born women are losing out the most but do not qualify if compensation ever happens .

So in reality the early 1960s born women are losing out the most

They didn’t. Women born in 1953/54 were the worse affected because of the short notice. You had 17 years notice after 2011, some early 1950s women barely got 17 months notice.

It is refreshing to hear from the women who paid attention to government policies and made informed choices accordingly. In the media the waspi women are paraded as if all older women were incapable of understanding legislative changes.

@blossomtoes I said it wasn't a perfect analogy of course (yes you can take a tax free lump sum from a DC pension pot but it will impact the annuity/draw down you can get later on.

My overall point is the "I paid in all my life" pensioners have often paid no where near enough tax to cover their state pension, they are in fact relying on current tax payers to fund them. And the problem with that is these days there are far fewer of us and far more of them.

Exactly! They can’t expect people who know they will be worse off them to pay for this.

But it’s not about older women and their understanding! They -we - were not older women at the time the changes happened. This started in 1995, when the women would’ve been around 45. I’m a few years younger but I definitely remember because I remember the huge disappointment that I was going to have to work longer. Having said that, as things turned out, I needed the extra earning years to get myself a reasonable standard of living. Nevertheless, I was fully aware. There was a lot of talk about it. It was on the radio, in newspapers and probably on television.

People still think that they’ve spent their working lives paying into some government pension pot for themselves, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the welfare system.

I think you're being unfair with your comments about iPhones and back pats

I started full-time work at 15 so yes we could stand on our own two feet as there were jobs to be had at the time. Seems unbelievable now that at 15/16 you could get a clerical job in a high street bank, shipping office, construction company, whatever, right out of school!

Younger people will never have the security we had with the ability and ease to buy our own property. In 1978, aged 24, we paid £20,000 for a 2-bedroom flat in Chiswick!

No matter how high interest rates were at times it was always do-able, unless you'd been reckless in over-borrowing or were made redundant etc. Younger people have plenty to squawk about

Yep. I honestly don’t know how women who have in total worked for about 20 full time years expect to use public services all their lives, draw a pension for 25 years from the age of 60 and argue for that by saying they’ve ‘paid their stamp’

Me too. Baffled. I knew and it's honestly something I don't pay much attention to.

Nail on the head.

Each generation could find things they feel are ‘unfair’! Is it fair that as a woman I got 12 weeks mat leave when if id been born a few years later, I’d have got 6 months? Or later again and I’d have got a year? And what about those of us who paid full childcare fees? We don’t get compensated just because now people get 30 hours a week free, funded by tax payers (and I’m still one!) I’m fully paid with NI contributions - but I still have to pay out because I still work. And what about my dh - is it fair that he had to go back to work the day after each of our babies were born, when now he’d get paid time off?

where there were clear, systemic injustices (such as women not earning the same as men for the same job) there is rightly legislation which addressed that. But the different challenges which face each generation are just part of life.

The WASPI women are being ridiculous. The thinly veiled excuse that they ‘didn’t know’ information which was widely publicised is disingenuous - the reality is that they just wanted to get state pension at 60. In many cases, they’d already had years out of the workplace, or were only working part time, often funded by husbands working full time who were never going to get their pension until 65 anyway! The irony!

and no, I don’t believe Mumsnet ‘hates women.’ The reality is that many of us don’t see women as helpless and incapable of working, taking financial responsibility or keeping ourselves informed about important issues.

I’m not a WASPI woman. My pension age is 67. I started full time work (post degree) in 1986. Pension age was 60 then as the increase was announced in 1995. By your argument I should have been able to get mine at 60 too. It didn’t actually start to change until much later either - 2010 if I recall correctly. I knew all about it and while not delighted, it was clear it needed to happen. The increase to 67 happened in the mid noughties, so I’d been working a good long time - almost 10 years expecting to get it at 60 and then another almost 10 expecting 65. But you contend the government shouldn’t have been able to change it?

They need to stop buying avocados.

Youth today.

Personal Pensions were introduced to the U.K. in 1987. There were so many high profile stories about pensions in the following years, I find it hard to believe anyone was unaware that it was possible to start a personal pension.

The pensions act in 1995 gave an advisory that companies should provide access to a group personal pension to all employees and this was made mandatory in 2001 with a minimum employer contribution of 3%. A person on the average salary would have a pension pot of 50k over that 20 year period, which would give a monthly pension payout similar to around half the state pension. If that person also contributed the same amount, they’d match the state pension. 3% isn’t much in a month for someone on the average wage.

It isn’t that women couldn’t build up a pension, it’s that they didn’t. That’s on them.

It's only a discussion nothing more than that. Why be rude to another poster?
The workers that are working now are paying your pension now just as you were paying into pensions for pensioners when you were working. I'm paying into the system gor yours and others pensions, my kids will be paying mine.
It's quite straight forward.

Where did I defend it?

If you want your particular case addressed, take your ex employer to court. Better still, get a whole bunch of women and start a class action. The point is, you have a very good chance of winning now there is case law to support it. Compensation is being paid out. Were you a member of a union? Are you active in the WASPI campaign?

Or, more likely you won’t do anything other than moan about it on the Internet, stamp your feet about what you are entitled to and expect the government to cough up compensation which you would no doubt gladly accept.

I think people don't realise how short the notice of the second change was for some. I was born in 1953 so yes the notice was short. I'm not asking for compensation and I feel like it's ancient history now but I do think the short notice of the second change was hard on some, I was lucky as I was fit and healthy with a job I enjoyed but I realise it was tough for some. However, it was years ago and we need to move on.

You don’t see the men demanding compensation - the ones who had to work five more years than their wives or female colleagues before getting the state pension! That was always an injustice.

i think maybe the WASPI women should concentrate on the rise from 65 to 66 years in pension age. They may stand more of a chance of winning. This rise from 65 to 66 was brought in in less than 10 years notice. It is now a Bernie t rile that everyone should have at least 10 years notice of any rise in the pension age to give them chance to save up.

I understand your logic and reasoning but I also think that you’re being a little emotionally unfair. For people who were earning not very much, it was a completely different financial landscape even in the mid 90s. Although, incidentally, I am sure that the changes to the pension age had been talked about for sometime before then.

Anyway, come back to the point: it just wasn’t within the usual practice of most working people, earning the average salary or less, to think about making financial provision for themselves as we do now. Remember that ISAs were introduced a few years later and it did take time for them to catch on. For many years a basic pension had been just about enough to live on and that was the idea of it. It was enough to give you subsistence.

Today there’s a much bigger financial market than there was and it’s much easier to find financial advice and there are High Street products you can get. Finance planning is a far more normal part of everyday life.

In my view, the biggest change came in --was it 2008? - when employers had to introduce an occupational pension. That was a very good idea and it made a huge difference.

So, whilst I do think women knew of the change to the age at which they could draw state pension, and it was very well advertised, your average person who earned enough to get by would not at that time have considered buying a financial product, wouldn’t have had a clue how to and would probably have felt quite out of place in trying to do that. Having said that, I accept that the gas privatisation in the 80s and the “tell Sid” and the “tell said he owns it already” campaigns did bring shareholding into everyday conversation.

You didn't pay for your pension, you paid for your parents. The change was announced for years in advance.

Actually, I correct myself. Before ISAs there were TESSAs and I never understood what was wrong with Tessa’s and why they had to be replaced.

I’m a 1954 WASPI and I and all my friends knew exactly what was going to happen and when. Can’t say I liked it, but the women who say they weren’t notified are just embarrassing themselves by their ignorance.

Don't forget about the multiple endowment and pension selling scandals and company pension losses though. Many feared that paying into a pension was a high risk strategy. It is only over the past 20 or so years that the pensions industry has managed to build more trust. I think most today trust that their private or company pension contributions will not disappear but that was not the case for people with earlier working lives.
https://citywire.com/funds-insider/news/10-pensions-scandals-the-ghosts-of-past-present-and-future/a457227
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/jun/21/financial-advisers-scandals
https://www.nestinsight.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pension-Reforms-in-the-UK-1997-to-2015.pdf