Clutching at straws again today - pension policy

[leafybrew]

So Rishi now is talking of a Pension Triple Lock Plus - ie cutting taxes for pensioners.

Well that's a great plan Rishi - but it doesn't change the fact that I'm 60 and I'm not getting a state pension until I'm 67! Therefore - I for one, am so not bothered about your stupid tax cuts.

Appealing to the older demographic with this carrot might not wash - as what about taxes for public services??? Perhaps quite a few older people might want a functioning health service. Aim at getting the billions owed in tax by the seriously rich.

Exactly. This is exactly who it’s aimed at.

Then it isn’t working. 🤷‍♀️

Yep it’s all one big cringe and oh so predictable, especially the demographics they are targeting. Annoyingly we still have weeks and weeks left of this nonsense. They might start talking about bringing back National service before you know it 🤣

Sorry you’ve lost me. How can it not be working if it’s not implemented yet?

Agree, much like the idea to charge VAT on private schooling, so much frothing over something not even confirmed.

Or like the suggestion that the vote should be extended to 16 and 17 year olds?

Because it’s a blatant bribe to attract the 65+ vote. Sadly for Sunak the latest polls show Labour 7% ahead in that age group. It’ll be interesting to see what he comes up with next - solid gold zimmer frames, a free two week cruise every year, a government funded 10% discount on care home fees?

I see what you mean now. I think it is the sort of thing that poorer swing vote pensioners would potentially go for though. If for no other reason than they won’t have to deal with HMRC.

The problem isn't that the state pension will rise above the personal allowance but that the personal allowance is frozen. This is completely a problem of their own making so it doesn't behove them to crow about their solution.

Really? What about the boomers that so many on here openly despise?

I think the word you want is envy rather than despise @Hedgeoffressian . If you are 30-45 in age, with a young family and trying to sort out a comfortable family home, and work full time, life is very very tough uphill climbing. But some of the problem has come about thanks to a decade of very low interest rates after the GFC and Covid which accelerated an asset boom on steroids. When I was 30, I didn't own anything. I bought my one bed flat in a dodgy area of London with a 5% deposit (earned overseas) on an interest only mortgage as a single person in 1987 and interest rates took flight; they were about 9% when I exchanged contracts and hit 16% 18 months later. The mortgage that cost me £450 the first month I paid it escalated to £750pm (plus the endowment cost on top) a few months later, but salaries didn't rise unless you were promoted or changed job. The numbers sound really trivial now, and easily affordable. Like everyone now, we were into our overdrafts at the end of the month, and we didn't have mobile phone contracts or Netflix subs then. In all honesty, it probably wasn't much better or much worse, just different. But the shock of that experience was uncomfortable enough to make most of my generation very wary of debt that changed price weekly.

As one of the boomers so much despised here, for reasons I have explained above, I am not devoted to the Tories. I understand that there's an inbuilt instinct to claim your good choices as one's own and put the failures down to political whims. But it isn't. It all comes down to informed choices and knowledge.

I was very fortunate to take a project for work in 1998 that opened my eyes to the existence of the self invested personal pension. As both DH and I were self employed then, and have been SE ever since, so no cushy DB pension for either of us, we took that route. I have spent a significant proportion of my work time ever since administering it. Sometimes it ran very smoothly, but we also have had periods when it was another nightmare problem that needed to be dealt with, during which money ran out fast. Pensions are meant to accumulate money not lose it.

So, to explain my position on taxes and earnings and pensions and boomers, please acknowledge that if you are trying to stay the legal side of the tax man and also create a personal pension that gives you a retirement income roughly equivalent to those your friends have via big company employment or public service jobs, while you have risked the roof over your head to establish a business and thought several times that your goose was cooked while meeting the payroll every month to keep your employees families going, then yes, actually at nearly 70, I can see the attraction of a lower stress existence.

And I do see the attraction of the retirement options available around the world. Paying 10% tax on my income instead of 40% is a no-brainer.

Exactly that.

On balance, I shall stay because I like the UK. I like the climate (mostly... a bit more sun would be nice) and the mostly moderate politics, and the people.

Same here.

I'm 60+ now, still have many years to wait for a state pension, and even when I do get it my priorities will still be:

Making younger people's lives affordable
Having a functioning NHS
The environment