No payout for WASPI women

[ErrolTheDragon]

Fury as women hit by pension age rise denied payouts www.bbc.com/news/articles/czr36842nd6o

Wow... it hadn't occurred to me that the ombudsman report on this would just be ignored.

My state pension age moved three years in 2011. My 1996 retirement date was 2014, it moved to 2017.

Are you suggesting that women who are in their 60s and early 70s are incapable of handling their own finances?

I'm only slightly younger than this group of women and I find it hard to believe that women who are less than 10 years older than me need a man to deal with money for them.

Although I agree that some women aren't very good at handling finances. Liz Truss for example.

They had done all this. The 2011 changes scuppered their plans. Neither could carry on working to cover the time interval between when they would originally have received the SP and when they actually did.
Mine was delayed by about a year, but I was able to carry on working, so was OK.

This is the government document I was using for information. Is it incorrect?

State Pension age timetable - GOV.UK

According to this document you would have had a retirement date of 2014 under the 1995 Pensions Act if you were born between 6 February and 5 August 1952. This date wasn't changed by the 2011 Act.

Also according to this document you would have had a retirement date of 2017 if you were born between 6 June and 5 September 1953. Your original retirement date under the 1995 Pensions Act would have been sometime in 2016, since those born between 6 February and 5 April 1953 had a retirement date of 2016.

This document doesn't give the original retirement dates according to the 1995 Act for women born after April 1953. I've assumed that the ones on this document are the original dates but I haven't managed to find a document pre-2011 which states these. If you have a link could you please post it? Are you saying that those born in 1953 were given a retirement date in 2014 according to the 1995 Act?

I don't understand this. According to the document I just posted, women affected by the changes of the 2011 Act were not due to receive their pension until 2016 at the earliest. Had they already decided to retire in 2011 even though they knew they wouldn't get their pension until at least 5 years later?

The obvious place to look for the original state pension age changes in the 1995 Pensions Act is the Act itself (I'm not sure why I didn't do that earlier). Here it is with the same dates as in the other government document I posted.

Pensions Act 1995

So I am now sure that women with a 2014 retirement date according to the 1995 Act didn't have their retirement age changed by the 2011 Act.

What no one seems to appreciate is that not everyone is told of every change.

I had a letter saying the retirement age was rising from 60 to 65 but after that nothing.

It has taken me to actually search on the internet to find out that first it was 66 then 67 and now 68years old before I get any pension.

Only just worked out how to find out what I am going to get as a pension as I haven’t paid enough in NI. Not going to be able to afford to make up the amount needed so doesn’t look like I am going to get a state pension and will be working until I drop

Moving abroad as I cannot take the cold weather and feel like my life is limited stuck indoors or going to work then home again for 8 months of the year.

Typo pension age moved to 63 not 65

I wonder if you understand the difference in what a woman could or could not do between your age and someone who is 10 years older

The difference is vast

I belong to the older group and firstly we weren’t allowed credit cards unless a man signed to say we could. We couldn’t do a lot of jobs as they were considered men’s jobs
Mortgages I was told at 18 I needed a man to apply with me (I worked for a bank at the time)

The Equal Pay act might have started to level the differences in pay however even today we have court cases where a woman is paid less than a man to do the same job

I tried to talk to our mortgage company (1990s) and they refused to entertain me. Handed the phone to dh who asked the exact same question I had asked and they couldn’t answer him fast enough.

If you are a woman of a certain age you learned very quickly when dealing with companies, you couldn’t do anything unless a man did it for you

I don't really think this would have been a good use of state money either. People in poetry after retirement will need help but this isn't a responsible or effective way to accomplish that.

As far as not knowing - I think there are people all the time who know little about what benefits and rules apply to them. Many people are not good at this stuff and the systems and rules we have for administering public funds and supports are really complicated. Maybe too complicated, tbh.

I really don't think it's because in the 90s (or even 80s) women as a whole were so naive compared to men. I suspect the people who have struggled around this are the same sort of people who will be struggling 30 years from now.

There is an element where Labour as the party out of power have the role of bringing these questions up,and their role as being in government now is differernt. But sometimes their discernment in supporting the underdog is not great - it's like they aren't thinking about the wider consequences of what they are asking for.

Have to say, all of the above applies to me to a large extent. I had my children very young...and have had a stop/start and varied working life; and am just not that clued up at all on financial stuff. I'll be claiming my small teaching pension next year....and tbh I've not looked at my teaching record/ details for years.

I'm not making excuses; I'm making an observation. You don't need to be "appalled". But it is true that many women have often left most of this stuff to their husbands - especially if they married young and had children young.

i have a friend who is similar......and having to deal with this sort of stuff came as a nightmare to her after she split with her husband of 30 years. She's no simpering wallflower, by any means, nor am I, but she's tended to leave financial planning and so on to those who know what they are doing with it, or who feel comfortable with it.

I've no particular horse in this race, as I was born in the 1960s, not 50's and I know i won't be able to claim my much reduced state pension until I'm 67. It will not be a full state pension as I've not paid stamps for long enough.

In the two cases I mentioned there were caring responsibilities and long term poor health. Yes, they had made arrangements years beforehand - as one does when planning for retirement, especially in difficult circumstances.
They were not aware of the delays that came about as the result of the 2011 Act until it was too late. As a result, both endured over a year of greatly reduced income, having thought they would be eligible for the state pension in 2016 but having to wait until 2017.
In my own case, I planned to retire from full time work in 2013 and work part time until 2016, when I would have received the SP. I realised at some point before 2013 - as I said, by accident - that this would not be the case, but was able to keep working. They a) did not realise until later and b) were not in a position to work.

It's not about " needing a man" so much as that is the way their domestic and family arrangments have panned out. It's like with older people who have no experience of using computers, and who find the whole business intimidating and overwhelming.

When I first bought my Mac I had to have one to one sessions with a very understanding teacher at the apple store. It took me a while to find her. Most of the staff just assumed you understood the basics and the lingo and couldn't get on your level in order to help you. It was like learning to drive. Not an intellectual exercise, but a matter of steady learning through copying and repetition.

Children, such as my granddaughter have grown up with technology and use it fluently and with ease. It is second nature. Not so much for many older people.

I'm a bit confused about how old you are and how old you assume I am. I'm in my early 60s.

You're right that someone 10 years older than me couldn't do all those things at 18 that I could, since I turned 18 after the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. Women born in the early 50s would have had to wait until their mid-20s to get a credit card or mortgage without a male guarantor. And up until 1975 companies could legally say jobs were for men only.

But you said in another post
I had a letter saying the retirement age was rising from 60 to 65 but after that nothing.
It has taken me to actually search on the internet to find out that first it was 66 then 67 and now 68years old before I get any pension.

If your pension age was rising to 65 under the 1995 Act, you must have been born in 1955 or later. If your pension age rose to 65 under the 2011 Act, you must have been born in 1953 or later.

If your pension age is going to be 68, you must have been born in the late 70s or later.

So you're either in your late 60s (and got your pension at 65 or 66) or under 50 (will get your pension at age 68).

I tried to talk to our mortgage company (1990s) and they refused to entertain me. Handed the phone to dh who asked the exact same question I had asked and they couldn’t answer him fast enough.
If you are a woman of a certain age you learned very quickly when dealing with companies, you couldn’t do anything unless a man did it for you

In the 1990s there was no more excuse for this behaviour from the mortgage company than there is now. But sexism unfortunately exists. I'd have made a complaint about the sexist arsehole.

Edit: I just saw that you corrected your pension date under the 1995 Act to 63. So you were born in 1953 or 1954 and have been eligible to claim your pension since the age of 65 or 66 under the 2011 rules. Not 68 unless you chose to defer your pension or failed to claim it.

Same old. Happy to work, part-time or not work at all and rely on a man for financial support. Till push comes to shove and it all goes pear shaped, yYou see it here nearly every day. Sahm or low paid women. Relies on 6 figure plus salary man. Then screwed over. Moral - dont rely on a man. Sorry I have no sympathy.

‘Tis clearly the season of goodwill on here 🎄

Strange how some are expecting to be compensated by tax payers who have to work until they are 68 to retire.

Come on, if you're making plans for your retirement, you're very obviously nowhere near being a child who needs to have their hand held and everything given to them on a plate.

Why is it such an unspeakably unacceptable thing to be expected to look online to find out important info that you need to know and/or proactively make a phone call or send a letter?

People on here are complaining about 'losing' tens of thousands of pounds; yet finding out about the pensions awaiting them, to last for the rest of their lives, were also apparently not worth an hour or two at most of their time, to go online or make a phone call?!

I read the story of one woman who did exactly that: a working class woman who was unaware of the pension age changes & so assumed that hers would be 60 as it had been for decades (I'd never heard of a pension age change until my own). She resigned & retired - as she thought - aged 60, only to find she'd got no state pension & she had no other pension. She then couldn't get back into her old job.

In that case, maybe these women should be pursuing their husbands for compensation, rather than the government!

Even in the horrendously sexist old days when women had to go through their husbands for all manner of financial stuff, were they not still able to actually discuss these matters with their husbands and make sure that they did what they needed to on behalf of them both?

Whether intentional or not, I'm just hearing a lot of excuses here about how women were too simple-minded and unable to think about or understand very basic life matters, needing a husband to hold their hands and do everything for them as though they were little children.

I just refuse to accept that so many adult women were summarily incapable of understanding adult life matters; it's a load of offensive, sexist rubbish to claim that women were so thick and incapable, whilst all the men were big, clever and properly able to conduct life as an adult.

You can refuse to accept all you like. Women weren’t thick and incapable, they were simply treated that way. I really don’t know why those of us who fought battles for women’s rights bothered when subsequent generations “refuse to accept” that those battles were necessary.

What a shame that she was so deliverately inactive and so very uninterested in her own future wellbeing that she didn't even bother to make a simple phone call to double-check.

Presumably, there must have also been a lot of similarly foolhardy men who assumed they would retire at 65, as had been the case for decades, and handed in their resignations at work, only to suddenly discover that they now would get no state pension at all until 66.

I wonder why I haven't heard the faintest mention or complaint about this from any of these men?

That isn’t what I said. It was trying to find out anything was a major hassle when no one would actually speak to you and the information that was supposed to be sent to you just wasn’t.

Men were able to conduct their life without having to defer to someone else just to get a company/Government department to speak to you.

You were talking about this happening in the 1990s. You had good grounds for complaint back then. As you do now if it's still happening to you.

I think this is akin to those women who wrongly assume they have financial protection through ‘common law marriage’, only to discover the hard way that no such thing exists. At some point personal responsibility has to prevail, even if the outcome seems unfair. Future taxpayers can’t be expected to pay for every unfortunate outcome.