It was in a number of newspaper reports. I believe one commentator was reported in both the Guardian and Telegraph, certainly somebody said much the same in the Independent and Huff Post UK I think. It was recently but whether last week or the week before? Certainly not this week though. Sorry, can't do better. I only picked it up when looking at the outrage about pre-2016 pensioners being excluded from the new universal (they dare to use that word) standard state pension.
It is a well stated argument Donna. What is very right here is the fact that people come from many different nations, thus carry with them different understanding of pension. Even in this family. I receive already. I take my state pension quarterly, it gives me a bit under €2000 every quarter. My wife being Swiss has an understanding probably closer to yours of how pensions work since although there is a kind of state pension it is very basic and actually only works if people invest in a private scheme, so in reality it is over 90% private only. However, not just in the UK but in several countries, pensions are being given gender parity which I imagine most people agree is fine, especially given the number of years women tend to live more than men at present. Also, each individual having their own pension rather than the old style 'widows' pensions' and the like is far more equitable.
As is being said several times over but I shall gently repeat is the way it is being done. Pensionable ages are being increased. Some countries had as low as 60 for men and 58 for women, others had 65 and 60, plus a few variants in between. In the UK way back parity was announced so that a phased in levelling of ages would be the final stage. At that time men receive state pension at 65, there were exceptions such as early retirement from the civil service or career military personnel, but they were not getting the standard state pension which is the main topic here. That was 65 and 60. However, the phased in 60 up to 65 that would be more than a decade was suddenly changed because actual pensionable ages were being raised step by step with the women's' pension still needing to reach parity, so to meet the shortened timetable the announced/forecast ages were raised. I believe some women on here, but I certainly do know of some, have had a forecast for their 'full' pension at 60 because they had already paid in 30 years contributions, but then the age was put up followed by 35 years contributing for a full pension, so a new forecast, however during the last parliament a second change came in so that a third forecast arrived. The age and number of years contributing was naturally going up for men too. However, for women it was now less than the decade until the first age increase, plus an extra five years contributing to begin with then again. Of course the government does inform us that if we have not paid 30 (in my case) or 35 years we will only receive basic state pension unless we 'pay back' (I still have the letter - I consider the way it is expressed insulting) the difference which can be a fairly large amount of money that many of us cannot afford. Anyway, why risk it when we might not live long enough to receive the benefit?
Do not confuse any of this with the civil service (ex-public service generally actually) pensions, they are not brilliant but also not bad either. This all certainly has nothing to do with private pensions which in theory one can buy with a lump sum aged 25 and then begin to draw aged 26, but in reality is usually set over a period of investment of 20 to 30 years and taken from 55 upward as a rule. The same or similar is happening in several countries. It is not that women are actually being hard done by, it is that the UK and a couple of other governments have moved the 'goalposts' under women's feet unreasonably fast. It has also been made very clear that the target pension age is 70 in the near future. In the case of the UK a new standard rate pension known imaginatively as the 'New State Pension' begins in June or July next year. Everybody will get a forecast £155 (roughly €220) a week however everybody is a deception. Firstly, it applies only to those who begin to receive pensions after it begins, secondly there number of years contributing and conditions are so strict that initially only a predicted approximate 45% of people will receive that payment. So, many of us already receiving will get what we get and people getting the new pension may only get a certain percentage of it. As it is, those of us outside the UK are expecting our 'cost of living' rise every year to be frozen in the foreseeable future and there has been some discussion of in the long term no longer giving pensions at all to people who left with 10 or more working age years to go anywhere in the world.
Donna, this is all part and parcel of the dismantling of a welfare system that was once heralded as the most benevolent and advanced in the world and on which numerous countries based their own. However, since the topic was originally about women, it should be noted that within the welfare system the biggest number of changes have affected women and the recent pension changes are the icing on the cake. I know there are similar things happening in other countries so if anything I hope that what women (in fact men too) can learn from this is how not to take what is effectively unjust governance sitting down and saying nothing, merely muttering under their breath as if they were the only ones hit. So Donna, no disrespect intended and knowing your own country is hardly giving it citizen's a smooth, easy ride either, full explanation A to Z may help clarify what looks like a very narrow issue. As far as I am concerned it should be a lesson for all men and women and in just about every country on how citizens begin adult life with promises or even firm commitments that are simply swept from under their feet with no real consultation, little consideration for subtlety and simply by what is more or less diktat by sending out letters that tell people their expectations have been dashed without as much as full explanation, apology or any other sympathetic tones. For UK citizens there is also the arrogance of government of all political colours giving the impression UK citizens are so lucky, so privileged, when they get among the lowest state pensions of all EU or indeed western nations. It is as if they say; "What a lucky, privileged lot you are, therefore we have decided to pull the rug from under your feet to show you who decides how privileged we decide you will be".
A final note is that of course many of us should have private pensions to avert this situation. Plenty of us did. When the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapse and crisis that followed happened in 2008 by 2010 many people's pension schemes were either bankrupted or badly affected. Mine was one of the former, an ancient and once infallible company went to the wall. In the fullness of time we should all get compensation of a kind. Some people have already, mine is due in about three years. It is less than paid in over many years, being paid out as though we are are committing 'mendacity' - criminal begging - if we live to receive our payment. So, not quite the simple picture it may appear all round, the consequence may well be to put people at high risk of poverty with no real relief, UK citizens at the top of that list.
Donna,
I think what annoys us most about the UK pension situation as it relates to the female half of the population, is'n't so much that the pension qualifying dates are now being equalised between men & women (and of course, these things have to be reviewed in the light of people's longevity, health and the economic situation), but it's the way that the changes have been brought in, that we really have a problem with.
Nothing should have been changed for anyone, I feel, within 15 years of (the original), State retirement date. Less than that, then responsible & concientious people, such as myself, have already started to make plans and put arrangements in place for their futures (like releasing equity to buy a property),are being penalised because these things are irreversable, or at least to have to do this would incurr a substantial financial loss.
I very much agree, we are living in troubled times and there are people worse off than those of us who have had good careers and earned well, but not fighting undesirable &unfair decisions, will not stop the world 'going to hell'....Quite the reverse, I would have thought....
As for people not paying the right amont of tax on their assets, they may well 'come a cropper' as techniques have /are evolving to tighten up all these loopholes...It's now only the seriously rich who can sleep easily in their beds, knowing that the accountants have everything 'sewn up' and who the powers that be, don't dare 'take on', because of their own entanglements and vested interests..
Excuse me for butting in to this conversation among (former?) UK residents, but as you know, Survive France has members who come from many different countries and living here here, so there are many of us reading these comments with varying degrees of interest. As an outsider, from a country whose retirement age is 65 (and which will probably be changed to 70 soon), and with all the economic uncertainty that has been around for years, I never assumed I would get, or was entitled to, some comfortable government pension at a given date. With people living longer and being more healthy, and fewer of us having worked in the coal mines as of age 15 and counting on an "early" pension, that's the way it goes. I mentioned in an earlier comment that I know many people working well into their 60s and even 70, to supplement their paltry government pension. I lecture my French students daily about their misplaced sense of "entitlement" - which here in France, includes both Generation Y and my older students, who have been turfed out of their management jobs after 30 years and refuse to take a job that is beneath the level they had previously. My question is: did you really think it would last forever? The world is going to hell. I work twice as many hours to earn what I earned in the 1980s. No job security. No pension. What some people quoted on this site as a not acceptable, or barely acceptable pension, is what I earn here, and I manage to live on it. Just to give you a reality check. I have British friends who are whinging about their pensions, but they own multiple properties and don't pay tax on all the income they earn from renting out their properties. Just spend a few minutes thinking about that. I doubt that most "outsiders" to this particular situation will comment, but I'm sitting at the same dinner table, so to speak, so I do feel entitled to comment. Honestly, some of the figures I heard for a pension sound quite comfortable. Just to show you that there is a different perspective that you may want to take into consideration.
Brian,
Can you tell me the links to the reports of 45% of people will be eligable to receive the estimateD £155 ?
I hope the goal posts haven't been moved again, in terms of the necessary contributions....
Yes Sue, an injustice has definitely been done. We don't have a problem with the age rising but this has badly effected women of a particular age group and we all have friends just a year younger whose experience is completely different. We will keep fighting for some sort of redress as I believe there is strength in numbers. Try to share the petition with any one of our age group if you are able. Thank you.
Hi, it is all very depressing but even if you fear defeat it is always best to fight injustice I think. I hope you will sign the petition anyway - there is strength in numbers. If you read about the WASPI campaign you will see that we are not opposed in principle to the pension age rising, just in the draconian way in which is has been achieved and how we have been particularly hard hit. I agree that we need the Lords to protect us because this government won't. Joan Bakewell is going to ask a question in the Lords on our behalf and there is a group of sympathetic MPs on board with WASPI in the commons. It will be a long hall but I for one will not give up - after all I have an extra 6 years to wait so might as well try everything. It's the only hope I have of some sort of happy retirement.
My sister is 1954 like you. Because she has a small business but her husband was becoming unable to work for health reasons, she was advised to defer retirement although receive pension and continue to work until she is 68 and he would then be 70! So they resolved it by getting divorced so that he could go into sheltered accommodation with support! That is how low it is forcing people to go to get any kind of cover and be able to actually retire. As for the new flat rate pension as of next year, reading about that it appears that only 45% of people who qualify will actually receive the estimated £155 a week when it starts. It is insulting for everybody. They are always running the rest of everywhere down but how do they compare with, for instance, the projection for £186 minimum pension in 2016 in the EU's poorest per capita country Bulgaria where both men and women get pensions at 65?
Hello Sue,
Yes, I am a 1954 babe too and like you, I was/am particularly annoyed that I my qualifying pension age changed twice !...Initially when the changes were 1st announced, I would have received it at age 62 yrs 10 months...then later on it switched to 65yrs 10 months....Even more galling to discover, that had I been born a year earlier I would have kept to the original schedule... I did a lot of 'Googling' to try to discover how this came about, (apparently one group of people complained about the schedule and were listened to (unfortunately).....could find nothing helpful, but I did locate the transcript of the Parliamentary debate (on Hansard and easily accessed), which was interesting.
I am not (nor have ever been) a Labour voter, but I have to say I was impressed by Rachel Reeves' valiant attempt to redress the balance, pointing out that around 22,000 women will/are being unjustly treated.....and annoyed by the male Conservative MP, who just kept saying with a shrug of his shoulders that 'somebody has to pay in order to help reduce the deficit'....There are pages of it on Hansard, and I don't think that we will have a 'Cat in Hell's chance' to get this changed, unless it goes to The House of Lords....
The other down side to this, is that the flat rate pension comes in I think in 2016.....If we get the pension now it will be the old one, which is less generous and more contribution dependent...so it might be a better option to 'bite the bullet' and wait....although, I agree, we might all be dead by then....merde !
I am surprised that so many people were unaware of the changes for the state pension for women being phased in from 2010 to bring them in line with the men. This was first announced in the nineties. I was born in November 1953 and was aware for several years that I would have to work until I was 63 years and 8 months. I even had a retirement date of 6th July 2017. So I find it interesting that so many women were unaware of this. Because it was so long ago I am struggling to remember how I knew, but I did so it must have been in the public domain. Having said that, my state pension age was changed again (2011) and my retirement date moved to the 6th November 2018 two weeks shy of my 65th birthday after I had geared all my finances to the 2017 date. So I, like many others, feel somewhat aggrieved at the 'double whammy' I have had (the latest with only 6 years notice) and have signed the petition. I agree the changes needed to be made, but the financial impact on a group of women who just happen to have the wrong birthdate is totally unacceptable.
Thanks. You have to fight injustice even if you are really up against it.
I think a lot of people will be struggling in their old age in the future - it's a sad state of affairs. Thank you for supporting us and I hope your sons do get to enjoy their retirement
I once had a private pension but worked out that at the higher projected growth figure I would have to collect the offered return for 12 years simply to get back what I would have paid in by retirement age ! so I transferred it's value to a British Coal scheme that I had from many years before. that scheme had a massive surplus and paid extra bonuses 2 or 3 times, which were government guaranteed but as time moved on, and deficits appeared, these were reduced and altered, even frozen. The conclusion I made was that whatever you choose or think you will be entitled to, it will change massively before you receive it. To be honest no pension scheme can ever pay out more than it receives or earns (after the massive expert fees are deducted). Perhaps the best scheme is to save it or to buy property in London, the micro climate of growth there seems to offer great returns, foreign investors reportedly buy apartment blocks or parts of them, off plan, and never even let them out. Earning 10% per year is enough for them. Good luck in changing this governments mind, because they are manipulating everything, to do as they please.
I found out about this around 2002, when I took early retirement aged 50. I had plenty of warning and referred to an online government site which told me I would get my state pension aged 62. This didn't change and the pension commenced as scheduled. I'm not sure if all women born in 1952 and later were made aware of it as early as I was (it was mentioned during redundancy preparations). I was pleasantly surprised to receive the full state pension as I took decades off full-time work to be with my children, much of which was credited to the pension while they were in education.
I gather the rollout of postponed pensions for women was then accelerated, however. Women younger than me may not have been fully aware of this, particularly if they referred to the web site well in advance of their 60th birthdays. Having worked, planned and budgeted to retire aged 60, to learn that you will in fact be 66 before you get your pension must have been disappointing to many. I feel very sorry for women like Sue Young and Sue Heasman who have to wait not the two years by which my pension was delayed but five or six. This seems very unfair. WASPI here I come.
I looked up the pension dates of my sons: the elder, born 1976 will get his pension aged 67, the younger, born 1980, will be 68. Phil and I retired to France with company pensions paid from 58 and 55, he had his main company pension from 60 and the state pension was an addition to, rather than being our main income. He is now 66 and we both agree that there is no way we would be able to face our former jobs now on a full-time basis. I feel very sorry for our sons whose company pensions (not defined benefit ones) will pay out relatively little and who may in fact be depending upon state pensions to survive by the time they receive them: both are diabetic so may have very short retirements if indeed they survive that long.
I feel successive governments left important decisions far too late. They only had to look at the accounts for free school milk in the 1950s to predict how many of us would be retiring around now. I suspect the care budget for us in 15 years time will come as a complete shock to them, too.
I have signed. I have been very angry since the government refused to intervene when some private pensions went bust a few years back, mine included. What got me was that because for many years I was receiving government funding rather than any kind of salary and that was shared with the institution I was co-attached to in Germany I was advised that I had no need to worry about pensions and such things. I was nonetheless persuaded to buy into a private pension by friends who were in a similar position. So, way down the line I had suddenly no private pension, the 'compensation' which I should receive in roughly four years will be less than I paid in. the government employed advisers had told me wrong and not having 30 years under my belt had a potential bill of X thousand pounds deficit I would pay in order to get about £28 more a week, which I refused not knowing the private one was about to go sour. Then along came the Winter Fuel Allowance disabuse from the DWP and IDS being a barefaced liar for the reasons. I happen to believe that anybody with a conscience should be angry, what they are doing to women is discriminatory on top of being morally reprehensible given how they have gone about it. So yes, any pension issue be it a petition or whatever and I sign or give my support in other ways. The promising welfare society created just before I came to be is being systematically taken apart and creating a new echelon on impoverished elderly. It may be on the late side for me but there is no good reason why others must be treated so badly. What I would see as reasonable would be same age and same amount pensions for men and women irrespective of their status, given a woman who has been a 'housewife' rather than having had a career has also worked. But then I don't actually know women who disagree with parity as long as it is done decently, with fair warning and not pushing the age up to 70 with indecent haste as would appear to be the present case.
Sounds like a plan Brian
So galling! I have friends slightly older than me so know how you feel. That is our beef in a nutshell - I think everyone would have accepted a move of one or even 2 years but 4, in your case and 6, in mine is too much. Have you signed the petition yet?
There are so many of us in the same boat. I am hoping that if we stick together we may be able to change things. You have to hope.
Thanks Karen I hope you will keep an eye on the WASPI campaign and try to share it with others - some of the people commenting on here seem to have forgotten that we didn't all just arrive in the UK, we are British people who have paid into the system for decades and just want what we are owed!
Hi Elaine, still jealous - if I had to choose between waiting 3 months for my pension or 6 years I know which I would take. Your fight is about not getting the new pension - and I'm sure there are petitions out there about that too!