To find my elderly relative’s attitude to money very wearing

[definitelybothered]

I help an elderly relative (late 80s) with various admin tasks, paying bills, ordering shopping, etc. It can be time consuming but she is virtually blind and can no longer do this herself.

But I find it really hard to bite my tongue as she is constantly complaining that she doesn’t have enough money, can’t afford to put the heating on in the winter and is one of those people who says young people today have more money than she ever did but they spend it all on holidays, coffee and concerts etc. She honestly believes it was harder financially in her day and young people today are just spoilt.

When I try and disagree with her she shouts me down. But what really irritates is she pleads poverty but it’s rubbish, she has an income of £4.5k every month (after tax) and barely spends a grand of it. She has an eye watering amount in savings too. Her latest grumble is she doesn’t think she should be in the higher tax band (she’s just been taxed 40% on something) but I said she must be based on the maths but she won’t listen.

Exactly! £1.5k a month is only to be dreamed about!

I don’t think I said £1500 a month, it’s just under £1,200 , I’ve seen the statement, it goes directly into his savings account and there are no other credits into the account. His police pension goes into a completely different bank. He never worked anywhere else, it’s definitely his state pension and it is that high.

Could it be a combination of his and half his partners?

I found the same with my DM (similar vintage) and MiL (late 20s born) - their state pension was a lot less than the current state pension. DM was in full time work at 14 and didn’t retire fully from paid work until her late 60s so had decades more NI than needed. MiL worked all her life except for when she was sacked for being pregnant.

There used to be a thing called the “married woman’s stamp” - I remember her complaining about the fact that as a married woman she didn’t get the full benefits of the NI stamp. My grandmothers both made the same complaint (also in full time work from 13/14). I can’t remember the details but it was part of a tax system which treated married women as the financial responsibility of their husbands even if they worked and paid taxes. It was the same mindset which excluded so many women from access to pension schemes and sacked them for pregnancy or even marriage.

A great many women in the current pensionable groups are still affected by job and pension exclusion.

I’m also struggling with a 4.5k monthly pension from lower mid level public sector jobs for a 90 year old woman.

My mum also had a teacher's pension. She will have taught for about 30 years. I can't remember how much her TP was, but nowhere near £1,000. As I recall, her state pension, teachers pension and half of my late dad's pension came to a fair bit less than £2k

Wasn't the married woman's stamp optional, though? My MIL (aged 78) said that she was offered the opportunity (may actually have been encouraged/default) to pay a lot less - but she realised the implications for her pension, especially as she always earned more than my FIL, so she made sure she always paid the full stamp.

You've got this wrong. The married woman's stamp was an optional scheme for married women. They could opt to pay less tax and rely on their husband. It was not compulsory. I know this from a much older friend in her 80s who took advantage of the lower stamp option but later found herself with a lower state pension when she divorced.
In any case, this thread isn't about the fact that there are some poor pensioners but about one very unpleasant, well off pensioner.

That's right. Your MIL was sensible.

You have misread my post.

I did not say that the married woman’s stamp was compulsory, simply that "as a married woman she didn’t get the full benefits of the NI stamp” which was then the case.

The point is that whether she opted to pay the lower married woman’s stamp or the full stamp she was still treated as a subsidiary of her husband. My paternal grandmother always paid the full stamp thinking she would get her own pension - she didn’t she only received the chattel version because she was a married woman. My other grandmother was a widow but received no widow’s pension, only the pension she had earned in her own right (having been in full time work from 13 until 70 odd). She had to fight for it as she had no death certificate, her DH having been killed abroad and having lost her own documentation when bombed out during the war. DWP of the day insisted she must have a husband somewhere, despite her being recorded as a widow in other government systems.

When DM looked into paying the full stamp for her own pension she was advised (by the pensions department) to pay the married stamp because she would get nothing extra as a married woman.

No, I haven't misread your post. You have said that your mother and grandmother complained about this when it was, infact, an optional scheme, a choice that they made. I think we all know that married women were previously seen as the responsibility of their husbands and that men were previously seen as the head of the household. Many women were happy with this situation. Obviously, generations later, things have changed.
None of this has any bearing on this particular thread though.

People really do struggle to stay on topics on threads like this. Everyone has a great aunt twice removed who did X, Y, Z. It still does not explain how it is okay for this particular woman to begrudge paying a proportionate rate of tax towards a system that has supported her for her entire life. Always pulling up the ladder behind them.

Married women’s stamp was optional. My mum paid it and has very little time for people who didn’t. She was working class in a low level admin job. As someone who left school at 15 with no qualifications she knew it was money now vs pension

I remember having the choice but was advised not to take it. There's a chance for some though to reclaim some money.

"Women who paid ‘married women’s stamp’ could be owed thousands in basic state pension - AroundTown Magazine" https://www.aroundtownmagazine.co.uk/women-who-paid-married-womens-stamp-could-be-owed-thousands-in-basic-state-pension/

I totally agree!

No, her state pension goes into a different account. It’s definitely his.

Does the deposit have DWP in the amount? I’m still totally bamboozled how someone born 1935 could accrue this amount.

I’m not sure, I last looked at it over a year ago, but as his police pension is credited into a separate account monthly (in a different bank), the monthly £1190 into his savings account can’t be anything else. I’m confused by the amount as well.

It’s probably a SERPS pension.

You can (or used to be able to?) increase your state pension by delaying taking it beyond retirement age, perhaps this is what he has done, given that he also has a police pension, so might not have needed the money? And even with contracting out, you can still get a full state pension, if you pay more NI years than the minimum.

On the £4500 for the OPs relative, I can believe that - she has state pension, £1k pm, widow's pension from her DHs pension and her own.

I'm only 52 and have 20 years contributions in an old public sector scheme, which on it's own, at current prices, will pay me £1700 pm from age 60. This is from working roughly equivalent to 4 years at AO, 4 years at HEO and 12 years at SEO civil service grades. So that's £2700 before you consider a whole career in the civil service, and the widow's pension.

Just an update on my PIL high state pensions that some were saying couldn’t be accurate, I’ve just checked their state pension accounts, my FIL (91)
received £1113.52 today and my 90 year old MIL who only ever worked part time received £557.52. Their occupational pensions which are an additional £2,400 go into a different bank.

Probably SERPS.

I don’t understand why people refer to the elderly as having lived through the war and rationing being the reason they are penny pinching.

My mother is 88, was born in 1938 so was seven when the war ended. She does remember bombs dropping and rationing but she didn’t sleepwalk through all the intervening decades. She married in the sixties, had me at 30 and was 52 when I graduated uni in 1990 - younger than I am now. She had a career and used computers and her and her friends were always going abroad and to concerts etc. She was fun and vivacious (if at the same time stubborn and selfish). She has dementia now and I would hate to think people just think of her as a “war baby” who likes Vera Lynn as it’s a whole different generation to those who lived through the war and many women really flourished.

My mum was this era wore mini skirts, Mary Quant, biba clothing. was on the pill. Drove a car. Worked.

People get very confused that if you were born in the 30s. You were never part of the music, fashion, freedom.

Dad was also born in 1938 and I can only think that the war and rationing affected him as it was his formative years.
We were brought up with very much the eat what your given, make do and mend mentality.

My dad was the same year and he went the opposite way. There was always food in the fridge, he had a weight problem all of his life and loved to indulge.
He was great with money and budgeting and never owed money but he did love his food.
But it was a mindset of lack that I saw in many others.
Because of it my mother was never a big eater she just got used to not eating a lot and never changed that. Weighed the same all her adult life.