so will i be working until i'm 80 then?

[southeastastra]

wouldn't be surprised

Ponders, the postwar baby boomers are only just starting to get their pensions (those of them that didn't take early retirement in their 50s, the last generation I suspect who will get that option). They're likely to be drawing them for a good while.

People born in 1945 are only 65 this year (including my dad which is why this is in my mind) and I think the baby boom went well into the 50s didn't it?

Exactly re early retirement, SuziK

The Civil Service was very generous with its early retirement options - esp for anyone with a bit of a medical condition - hence my post. A lot of teachers got early retirement too the same way in the 80s & 90s.

I would be interested to see figures...

This is being discussed on Question Tme right now.

Ed Balls made a totally unrealstic answer that it should be increased to 66 for people who are now in their 30s. Labour consistenty dodged this issue which is why it is a crisis now.

Vince Cable is well over retirement age and he has pointed out he likes working and making a contribution still.

Nice for Vince.

there are jobs it's fine to continue with past 65 (eg being an MP ) & jobs where you would really benefit from a rest (eg most blue-collar jobs - not that that there are many of those any more )

Not sure if my downstairs neighbour who worked 2 cleaning jobs until she was 60 and then finally retired, absolutely worn out - literally - would have liked to emulate him.

Her jobs were boring, menial, she looked forward to retiring for the whole time I knew her. She dropped dead about a month after she reached that milestone. Hey, saved the country some pennies though.

why is Ed Balls's answer unrealistic?

It's ridiculously unrealistic to suddenly inform people in their late 50s, now, that they'll have to work a few extra years beyond what they were expecting - at least people in their 30s will have a few decades to get used to the idea!

Being asked to work an extra 2 years if you are 55 now is not unrealsitic. Many people want to work longer.

My FIL works part time and he is 75.

Here's an interesting table which looks at Life Expectancy compared to Healthy Life Expectancy, and further down Disability Free Life Expectancy. They're very different things.

They can fuck off in my opinion. My a dropped dead at 63 last year, after retiring with ill health at 61. He got his pension that he paid for all his life for less than 18 months (at a very reduced rate). My mum is very fit and healthy at 63, but wasn't able for her health carer job as there was too much lifting. My husband is a fork lift driver/builder, it keeps him fit, but no way will he be able to work until 70.Its fine to say work until 70 if you are in a nice white collar job that you enjoy, until you die. But most people aren't in that position, and I have no intention of working until I drop dead. I am paying into my pension as much as I can, and am working towards a low spend lifestyle, but I'm 40 and have worked since I was 13, so no way am I waiting until 70 to retire.

That's fine if it's his choice - lots of people will choose to work longer, no problem.

But to suddenly inform people pushing 60 that oops, sorry, although they've been expecting & planning & looking forward to their pension on X date, they've now got to work an extra Y years before getting it - that sucks.

And if they're saying age 66 in 2016, that's men born in 1950 who are already 60

I think that we are in for a very, very unpleasant couple of decades with ugly inter-generational angst.

The current generation of baby boomers, many (though not all - we should not forget that!) of whom are retiring - or, let's face it, retired about 10 years ago (like my stepmother and my father) on good pensions, look set to live into their 80s, if not longer.

While they live well, several generations of "new" pensioners will retire on worse terms, at the same time as conditions for the younger workforce are reduced.

When the boomers die (as someone has already observed) everyone will be in as bad a state as everyone else (barring the rich, of course, who have always been protected), and things will simmer down.

The irony is, of course, that the wealth of the boomers is, I imagine, unlikely to be passed down wholesale, as much of it will go (rightly) to fund their care when infirm (e.g. my dad will sell up his house, etc., to pay for care, should he need it).

History will therefore record the prosperity of the boomers as an anomaly, rather than a new stage of cultural history in the UK.

They moved the pension age for women from 60 to 65 in one fell swoop a few years ago, now increasing it for men to 66 then going to up it for women soon. No-one protests they just get away with it, WHY!

I'm shocked at how quickly they think they can get away with it. If they said it was for 20 year olds now who were affected I can understand them sneaking it in but it's for men who are only 7 years away from retirement, so wrong!

God, what a pompous git I sound in that last post. Just try to imagine it being said in slightly slurred tones over a pint of Guinness. That's about the level I was trying to hit. You know, pub speculation on things wordly.

Wordly? Worldly.

Sheesh.

Penthesileia - no you are absolutley right about intergenerational conflict with the boomers.

Problem is that they are voters and there are a lot of them and they do usually vote. It will not be them that suffer the cuts. Politicians will not dare to upset them. It is the people coming behind them that will face the cuts and later retirement to keep the boomers in the style to which they have become accustomed all their lives.

No one is takng an axe to the benefits/pensions the boomers are already claiming. It is the younger generations who are facing cuts in this budget. The real drain is the public sector boomers who are already retired in the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s on pensions that my generation will only dream of.

So, all you who say everyone is entitled to retire at 60 are willing to pay for people to that via higher taxes and NI?

Average life exepctancy is 89.

If you start work at 16 and retire at 65 then you have 49 years in which to save enough money to live on for 24 years. That is always going to be tough.

So to get an income equal to your AVERAGE earnings over your working life, and assuming good rates of return on invetments etc. someone (you, the state, your employer) is going to need to save between a third and half your income every year.

expatinscotland, there won't be any jobs for them past 65. Should we cut their benefits also? I don't believe it is beyond the wit of our much vaunted financial whizzkids to create a safe investment that could cover much of the cost if it was properly regulated. Not paying taxes for the old is just the first step in not paying taxes for the sick and poor. What kind of socialism do you believe in, New Labour's brand?

Well, claig, there aren't enough jobs for anyone right now.

That's something that needs addressed.

Especially because age discrimination is a serious problem here.

Laws against it are not enforced properly and retirements are also forced on people, too.

The paradigm has to shift. The entire thing.

And our leaders need to do their part in making that so, too.

but expat it won't shift, they don't give two hoots. This is happening worldwide that's why the French are marching. It is coordinated, the elites don't want to look after old people, they will impoverish us all

Well, tbh, claig, that's why I'm a member of Exit International.

the sad thing is that people are fooled by Labour. They think that they will protect them. They won't, they are the biggest globalisation, internationalisation, international capital merchants of the whole lot. Iain Duncan Smith is only continuing with their policies, but speeding them up, and eventually he will hand the baton back to them and they will do the same thing.

TheCoalition - you succinctly set out the mathematical basis of the entire problem.

Those older people who justify their pension by saying I worked all my life and paid taxes and NI will quite simply need telling that they did not pay enough into the pot to cover what they are taking out and it needs to be cut.

They paid in too little tax and NI and then went and spent the majority of their income on buying a house. If taxes had been 60% and most of that put into a properly funded public pension pot we would never have seen the runaway house price boom.

Now the boomers have cornered almost all the housing wealth and also handed a big unfunded pension liability and public debts to the younger generation.

I read something the other day that said younger generations would emigrate away from countries that had high public sector deficits. In effect refuse to pay for the upkeep of the older generation and the debts they built up. I think it is already happening in places like Ireland and Iceland and will accelerate in countries like Italy, Spain, France, Portugal and the UK in the coming decade as austerity measures begin to bite.