State Pension
I recently applied for my state pension. Because of my date of birth, my start date is 06 May 2015. Today I received notice, which told me when to expect my first payment. I noticed that the payment date was 05 June - four weeks after 09 May. That meant that I had lost 3 days' payment. I rang them for an explanation and they told me that they have set pay days each week and will only pay from that date, no matter when my actual start date was. It turns out that the intervening days are completely lost. I have lost about £60+ because of this. When I questioned this, the clerk on the phone just laughed and said that it is the same for everyone. That means that they are pocketing a huge amount of money if they can take up to six days' payment off everyone who is just starting getting their state pension. Does anyone else think this is wrong?
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The day of week when state pension is paid is determined by the last 2 digits of your national insurance number and it's only paid for complete weeks, so yes, for most people there will be a few days gap.
When they decided to increase the pension age for women from 60 to 66, they effectively nicked £35-40k off me and thousands of others. It wouldn't have been so bad if I'd known about it earlier, but I was already 50-ish when they did it and had made career and pension decisions based on getting my pension at 60. It was too late for me to make alternative provision.
Totally agree. Wouldn't be surprised if it changes again before/if I reach 66.
Fiscal responsibility - the government has heard of it
I think you missed my point. How many people start their pensions every year? My loss was only £60, whereas the loss for some could be up to six days' worth, which is almost the whole week's money. The total must come to rather a lot of money being hoovered up by the Govt. I have already had to wait 2 1/2 years extra for my pension (although I do appreciate that others after me will have to wait even longer). When you are told the date your pension starts and then it is pushed back I admit it do feel quite resentful. I can see I just have to suck it up but I can't see that it would be that hard to add the extra days onto the first payment. Oh and by the way, they are not giving me the money for the rest of my life, I have worked all my life to earn this money.
Oh dear. Are we starting to begrudge people their State Pensions now?
Hopefully all on here will be able to get to an age to claim this but there will always be people begrudging Pensioners, maybe they know they won't be able to get theirs?
All I did was point out how the system works and the dangerous fallacy of assuming that if you work hard you will get a pension or that money paid in taxes is somehow 'put aside' to pay for a pension.
Sadly we don't always get what we are entitled to.
Yep, what the hell is going to happen when all those 1960's baby boomers reach pension age ?
Paying the pension at 60 for women and 65 for men was blatant sex discrimination. Surely you cannot be in favour of discrimation for women. It had to end so that both sexes were treated the same.
I wouldn't either, like you and the previous poster, many women have been put in the position of having their state pension age shifted three times over the last few years.
This is me too. I got my pension forecast a couple of years back and it looked ok, even if I couldn't get it until 66 but that's come down now with the recent changes.
I am peed off about it, especially as my parents died at 60 and 67 so if I take after them it's doubtful I will even get to retirement.
I have a couple of private pensions but they won't give me enough to retire on at 60.
I'm not holding my breath for mine as, at 60 , my health is poor. Ironic to think that my OH and partner of over 40 years and 5 years older than me believed for so many years that we would be retiring together but now he is collecting his pension and I have to wait another 6 years
I don't think many will disagree with equality but the way it has been introduced has been shabby and has adversely affected a group of women who started their working life in the early 70's, paying full stamp and expecting to retire at 60.
I regard myself as a moderate feminist and socialist and have never begrudged paying tax ( even when it was 33%! ) and NI but, having taken very little from the state ( no kids, no benefits ) I really feel this is a kick in the teeth.
It'll be OK probably until about 2030, but by that time, more and more people will be reaching 67, and claiming full state pension. Just look at the live births in England on the link below. There was a very steep but relatively short lived rise post WW2, then the birth rate fell right back in the early to mid 1950's. After 1955 it embarks on a long slow rise, reaching a peak in 1965, before another spectacular descent.
link
I'll be astonished if the state pension age doesn't rise to 70 for those born from about 1962 onwards.
Interestingly, France has a state pension age of 60 for both men and women, and it's a better pension than ours.
The international state pension comparison in the link below is an eye opener - although the average earnings quoted look a bit suspect to me.
link
Trade unions in France are very much stronger than they are in the UK. I'm sure that any attempt to increase the pension age in France would be met with a general strike and trouble on the streets. It will probably have to be done eventually because the cost of funding decent pensions for up to 40 years must be huge.
I absolutely agree with the equalisation of the pension age, but for older women it was brought in with so little warning that we had no way of making alternative provision in the event of ill-health.
At 45, I took the option of switching to a less demanding but lower paid career for health reasons. At the time, my state pension age was 60 and I was pretty sure I could manage to keep working until then. I'm now a few months away from my 60th birthday, riddled with arthritis, and I really doubt that I'll be able to continue working for another 6 years. My small local government pension won't be enough to live on.
Had I known the retirement age was going to change so soon, I would have stayed where I was and paid AVCs into my local government pension. I may well have made my health worse by doing so, but that wouldn't have had a grave financial impact, even if I'd had to retire before state pension age, because I'd have had a far bigger occupational pension, and that is still payable at 60, or earlier if it's an ill-health retirement.
Hopefully, I'll be able to reduce my working hours and my pension will make up the difference, and I'll be able to last another 6 years. If I can't, I'll be stuffed as my partner works and so I wouldn't be entitled to any benefits after the first year.
It's the timing that's unfair, not the principle.
Really? I'd better get another one, in case mine has too. That's a worry.
We have reluctantly decided that we're going to have to join the ranks of the evil BTL landlords. I hate the idea, but it's the only way we're going to have any hope of a decent income in retirement. We're saving hard, and are going to cash in 2 other small pensions I have (when I say small, I mean really small - total fund value less than £10k), plus my main pension lump sum, to pay a biggish deposit on a cheap flat to rent out. We'll need a small mortgage, but should be able to pay that off fairly quickly.
In my bleakest moments, I start to think that we'll never have much of a retirement. Mr Lakie is 5 years younger than me, so may be caught when they next raise the retirement age for everyone. He'll probably still be working when |I pop my clogs.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/pensions/article-2262134/Flat-rate-state-pension-changes-explained-Winners-losers.html
I'm now 57, so less than nine years away from claiming my pension at age 66 under the present rules and I understand the next review is expected to be in 2017, so on that basis I reckon I'll probably escape any further upward revision in retirement age - but you never know!
It was about £10 a week if I remember rightly. I am going to check again.
My OH is 9 years younger than me and I don't expect us to have any retirement together now.
I'm going to have a good look at my finances this year and see if I can work part-time and take my private pensions to plug the gap (I will be 55 in April). I still have a mortgage to pay as I was late into buying a house but that should be gone before I hit 60.