The state pension won’t suddenly stop, will it?

[TeapotCollection]

I’m 51. We were talking about pensions at work and someone who’s about to retire said there’d probably be no state pension when I retire

This can’t happen can it? I can imagine the government saying in a few years that anyone born after <date> won’t get it but surely it can’t suddenly stop?

I was working from mid to late 80’s onwards. I never heard about it either.

I expect it to become law eventually that the minimum work pension contribution is 10% from employer and 10% from employee.

They may well do, but then that will again have a big impact on the poorest and disabled people, especially those in the lowest-paid jobs and/or have to work part-time owing to physical/mental capacity and caring commitments.

They will have the double whammy of having to survive on very low income minus 10% now, and then, in retirement, having to live on much less than people who were able to save 10% of much higher incomes. They will then be told that the government did find a way for them, but they will nevertheless still be blamed for being poor now.

They will be told that they should have realised that 10% of a low amount was never going to amount to much, so they should have increased it to 20% or 30% - probably by people who've never known what it's like to have to live on a low income.

THEY WEREN’T TOLD.

My mother is unbelievably shrewd. She just doesn’t read Hansard regularly.

IT WAS IN ALL THE PAPERS AND ON THE NEWS

But their own individual state pension forecast wasn't adjusted until after they had made (irrevocable) decisions about their workplace pension provisions. Nobody wrote to them to say what their new position was.

Nope never received any letters.

If work was easy you wouldn't get paid for it.

All jobs are difficult, in different ways.

And lol at the idea of HGV driver being an easy job.

Ffs.

I'm due to retire in a couple of years- I never got a letter. I had realized that the age was going up, I remember reading about it in the early 2000's. It was to 63, which was ok.
It wasn't until I turned 60 I found out it would be 66.

I'm one of the youngest of the "Waspi" women- so although it would have been nice to be retired by now, it's not too bad.
It's the women born in the early 50's who are most affected. Many absolutely were not told, did not know and lost £1000's.

Women of that generation (who married in the 70's) were led to believe that they would be able to get a pension on the basis of their husband's contributions- many took up the offer of reduced contributions (better the money now to raise the children than the possibility of a pension in the future). Without access to childcare, and the expectation that married women became sahm, building a pension was difficult.

User's patronizing answer was exactly what you would expect from someone who has never done physical hard graft. My DH did what many skilled tradesmen do- employed younger fit blokes to do the heavy lifting.

What are the suggestions for the scaffolders, the unskilled labourers and the like? Most left school at 16 without much in the way of education. Rough diamonds they may be (I've felt with many in the last 40 years in the building business) but customer relations isn't their strong point.

"Go and work in Wickes/ B&Q" ffs.

Dealt! Not felt! Wouldn't want to touch most of that hairy arsed lot😂

But so is a lot of other crap that isn't true, and much of these lies are distressing, along with all the murders, rapes and wars reported on, hence not bothering with these sources in the rare moments I had time.

Like the person who told me the state pension age was now 69 and apparently it isn't. That's another source of info I'll pay no attention to in future.

Why is it so hard to understand that not everyone has/had time to read/watch about all this shite, then go research (where?! before the internet was mainstream in homes) to find out if it's true? So much of what's in the news is trying to get us frothing about what "may" happen and trying to upset/divide society so it turns on itself. I've got enough crap that is happening to worry about and deal with, never mind the stuff that someone somewhere in officialdom is "thinking" about as a possibility.

Haha 😂

But yeah not everyone can do retail. It's a specific skillset, requires customer service, knowledge, a fair degree of literacy, and changing shift patterns. A lot of older people would struggle with those demands, full time, with no previous experience of such.

As for HGV driving - really not the job for someone with compromised physical health especially musculoskeletal problems. You don't want a pensioner with sciatica racing down the motorway with a 7.5 tonne wagon full of industrial materials.

NI contributions are paying for the pension of current pensioners. There is no money sitting in a pot with your contributions.

I would hope there would be refunds if they suddenly scrap it for those who have paid in for x years, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

I can certainly see them means-testing the state benefit at a very high level, similar to the way they've means tested child benefit for those with incomes over £50k. Perhaps means test the state pension for those with incomes over £100k to start with (means test it based on tax returns like child benefit) - that would impact a tiny proportion of pensioners but it has to start somewhere. Then lower the threshold or use fiscal drag to bring more people into it as the years/decades pass.

@Badbadbunny exactly this. That 50,000 in 2013 would be more than 70,000 now. Those of us affected kind of accepted we were highly paid but 50k isn't the high salary it was especially for single parents.

Read it all now! Police in the 80s would retire super earlier, 55 wasn't it, on fantastic pensions, even now its 60 ! way earlier than a nurse etc.

Yet we have that same person telling us we can all work longer and harder, for a pathetic DC pension.... retrain? to do what?

Ridiculous to expect employers to invest in e.g a 63yo who will quite probably pack in work within a couple of years and/or cannot easily pick up the vagaries of Excel spreadsheets and Word formatting.

It's stupid that younger people (fitter and healthier) are almost being forced into "degree level" office jobs that aren't physically demanding, but that older people are having to leave their "harder physical" jobs because their bodies aren't up to it anymore. The older people need education, training, etc., so they can leave their physically demanding jobs and move into less physical jobs. The younger ones should be doing the physical work, not sitting staring at screens!

Have you ever done an office job? Many are can be mentally demanding, which takes a toll on you just as much as physically demanding work. What you have said is very offensive to people doing office jobs.

I really don't think the answer is to have everyone, Humanities and Arts graduates and all, become plumbers (what they going to do? Sonnet a faulty waste pipe into submission?) /roofers etc and then take up second careers as HGV drivers/administrators once they get to 60.

Have you ever done an office job? Many are can be mentally demanding, which takes a toll on you just as much as physically demanding work. What you have said is very offensive to people doing office jobs.

Nobody is saying that (most) office jobs are not demanding, but it's far, far more likely that the average person in their 60s and 70s (and even 80s, as long as dementia is not a factor) will still have their mental faculties intact rather than their previous top physical capacity.

Do you think Rupert Murdoch would have just stepped down from his role at 92 if he were doing a physical job? Would Bernie Ecclestone still be able to change tyres himself in the pit stops?

There's a reason why you still see a lot of elderly contestants on Countdown but very, very few on Ninja Warrior.

Christ on fire on his cross. Just because one's mental faculties are ok (although actually they decline from 30 onwards) doesn't mean one can master a whole new load of skills at 60 or 70. As for 80 (???!) Cognitive decline is an actual thing. You can't base public policy on who goes on bloody countdown.

Who said anything about them basing public policy on it?

I was just stating that people in more sedentary and/or mentally-taxing jobs tend to be able to continue to a later age than those who work in very tough physical jobs, should they want or need to.

I wasn't aware that was such a controversial statement to make ...

...I also wasn't suggesting that people should still have to be working in their 80s, unless they specifically want to continue.

And I wasn't even necessarily talking about people who re-skill in later life, but people who have been doing that particular job their whole working life.

Nobody is decrying the difficulty or importance of your job; just conveying fairly standard accepted facts.

Did you expect the Chancellor to knock on your door to tell you?

It was all over the media, year after year, it was mentioned in leaflets etc that were sent by tax offices and the DWP, it was in leaflets freely available in libraries, health centres, GP surgeries, etc.

There was no "cover up" or attempts to keep it under wraps. Not sure what more the government could have done really.

This. Anyone with the remotest idea about current affairs knew it was happening. Or have discussed it with their peers. No one of normal intelligence didn’t know it was happening.