It’s enough to live on, my house is my own…the thing is, entitlement doesn’t exist out of context. What about the people who want absolutely everything run privately. I don’t think they would agree that I’m entitled…
Yes, I forgot
. But my life is about as minimal as it can get, so I don’t think I’m giving much money to France…
If you are feeling guilty about receiving the OAP and you don’t really need the money, then you could always consider making regular charitable donations with some of it.
Personally I feel that the OAP is, as others have also said, your right and is certainly not a charitable hand-out. Take every penny you can get, and then you can decide how to disburse it. Leave it with the Gov’t and they’ll just spend it on more flashy ministerial cars.
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If you’ve been working in France since 1995/96 you will probably be entitled to a French pension as well. In fact France should be administering your whole pension. You know, the one that as an OAP you are perfectly entitled to.
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Exactly. You paid the UK government a lot of tax and NI contributions that they took account of in order that you would be entitled to a state pension.
As for families looking after their elderly relatives, in my family, as one of 6, it would be the same family members as usual giving the help and support.
The state pension is not a free hand out but a calculated income to enable older people to live their life with dignity ( although it is barely enough). It’s a mark of a civilised society. Don’t feel too spoiled, if you were Irish you’d be getting €260 per week!
Perhaps you have been fortunate enough to keep on working and supporting yourself but who knows what will happen in the next 5 years, or even tomorrow.
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As David has said the French and UK NI contributions should have been combined and the pension administered by France, perhaps Jeanette could confirm where her pension comes from.
My comment above was of course said in jest, she should not feel guilty at all especially if at 75 she still works and pays social charges.
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So…I went back to the friend who presented the reasonable (as I see it)… protest against “entitlement” of the OAP kind, and he replied, again, with respect and attention to detail, with special regard to my questions about.interest, and payments into the system…Have I, has any pensioner in receipt of the same Brit funds, any real entitlement, at all? I think perhaps not. His argument is…"You can easily find a compound interest calculator on the internet but that would be pointless. It is not about the ABSOLUTE result (and don’t forget the interest rate would have varied and a compound interest calculator only does one rate unless you plug it into the historic rate and I can’t be arsed. That itself misses the point though. When Simon (a wealthy friend) nearly lost his house at 15% interest, the pensioners who were paying in tuppance ha’penny for a pension to retire in Spain at 50 were laughing their heads-off at Simon paying for everything.
The joke is that a certain generation paid in a tenner a week to retire at will.
I am not cross with the pensioners. I get cross if they are smug and certainly a large number should pay for the TV licence and Bus pass as they are more wealthy than some struggling youngsters who share a bedsit.
I can’t be cross with the pensioners because they are and were in a contract with the state. I don’t believe in breaking contracts even if the contract turns out to be manifestly unfair because the whole thing is predicated on GROWTH and ever-expanding prosperity. i.e. the next generation can afford to pay for the previous.
But that turns out not to be true for all manner of reasons; not least longevity. Proper planning would have increased the retirement age gradually but no one had the political balls to do it (old people vote Tory). So instead of retiring at 65 and doing 5 years in the potting-shed and then dying, everyone clings on - often with a pointless existence, to tell it like it is - and requires devastating sums in care since we are not into looking after our own families. Worse, they all start whingeing about how their parents retired at 65 so, “why can’t we?” BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT DYING!!! To state the completely obvious.
It is such a childish and naive exercise to get to your compound interest calculator that I urge you not to bother as you will be sure to omit g’zillions of other expenses and factors and treat it like a baby-sum upon which you will declare vindicated genius. It is not a case of simply saying, “what’s the payback for what I could have stuffed into a high-interest account.” It depends on which ones aggregated over variable interest over the years whilst acknowledging your debt to the state for your child’s education and the street lights. Not to mention that some of those funds could and did go bust but the state takes the buffered, flattened average of those highs and lows for you so you don’t totally lose. You could have put all your dosh in those days, into the wrong place at the wrong time and got sweet fuck all…or more, but the state shielded you.
Here is the baby-sum. https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/finance/calculators/compoundinterestcalculator.php
So you could start with ZERO and pay £50 a month (did you?) for 35 years (that is the typical requisite National Insurance span for a qualifying pension, I THINK)
This results in
Now, you may think that is enough to cover the liabilities of a retiree because as you said, you can eat weeds. However, this is completely wiped out by a couple of years of care and a hip-replacement before we even start paying out a monthly cash sum. An overnight stay in an NHS hospital is £1000 so you can see it is pretty soon devoured.
Now, let’s say someone retires at 65 and lives to 85.
20 years * 12 months * 400 quid = £96,000.
57,041 minus 96,000 = NEGATIVE £38,959 MULTIPLIED by a g’zillinon death-defying pensioners funded by youngsters who are going to be in even deeper shit 40 years on.
I am somewhat dramatising that and I’m sure you will forget to point that out when you paste it in to ArseBook. (My friend thinks I am pasting to FaceBook)
Like I said, this maths is so simplistic and ignorant of so many factors, but I am sure you can begin to see the scale of the problem. And let’s not forget, a huge number do not even pay in £50 quid because they are relying on others to do it for them. They BELIEVE that National Insurance is their pension but do not even pay that through work and thus no tax. The problem is colossal and, lest you forget…much, much worse in France."[quote=“Jeanette_Leuers, post:1, topic:24014, full:true”]
I’ve Googled different topics on the mandatory Brit. Old Age Pension, (mine, self employed… and lacking a few years payments, currently stands at around 450 euros per 4 weeks)…without much success so far.
Im looking for opinions, analysis, concerning its status as a charity hand out? or … rightful fully paid up basic pension, entitlement…
Am I, as someone pointed out yesterday, being subsidised by the nation’s earners, in a way that cannot be justified and accepting money… called a pension …that should not be an entitlement at all?
If …instead of making contributions for this pension, I had saved the money and invested it in some other interest paying enterprise, is there any possibility that after 40years compound interest, it might have payed me the 400+ I get now? Thank you for thinking about it!!
[/quote]
The big space in the middle is the compound interest information which is an image that hasn’t come up…
Jeanette… sadly you have lost me…
I cannot understand why you are prolonging the agony… of deciding which way to jump.
Either you feel content to accept the Pension… or you do not… all this mulling over figures and projections IMO simply muddies the water.
As has been said… if you want to make a difference… accept the money and give it away to whatever good cause is flavour of the month…
You may well put yourself into a Taxable position, by accepting the Pension as you are still working and earning money… but that is something you will take on the chin I am sure… (and it might not come to that anyway).
If you are hoping to change the way the UK Govt works… I fear you will find that a hard nut to crack.
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77 …not 75, but I don’t want to get into any kind of results based in prejudices, that may be one serious error…If taxes and social services work WELL…then it’s kind of self destructive, in that health, longevity, needs, expand at a tremendous rate… Isn’t the bottom line some kind of recognition of an ongoing responsibility, to pay up as much as you can, into a “common good”, for as long as you can…hence my thought…maybe expand output…
I can’t ever remember reading such a confusing argument about anything. If is quite likely that you are actually receiving far less than you are entitled to based on your lifetime of contributions so enjoy what you have while you can.
No civilised country expects its citizens to be working at 77 years old.
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Bet your bottom dollar they would still take a state pension. Can you imagine Osborne, Rees-Mogg etc with all their money not taking the state pension? Not many altruistic people left.
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“the mandatory Brit. Old Age Pension”. I’ve actually lost the plot of this thread but would just comment that the UK state retirement pension is not mandatory or paid automatically, a claim has to be made and then if entitled it will be paid.
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My analogy of the posters conundrum is of the old dear that takes to doing flowers in church every week in the hope that she will be greeted with open arms at the pearly gates. If at age 77 you develop pangs of gilt on receiving what you are entitled too you should go out more- and then you can spend more, sorted 
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In March 1943 …I was one year old… Winston Churchill in a broadcast entitled " After the War " committed the government to a system of “national compulsory insurance for all classes for all purposes from the cradle to the grave.” I don’t know how the scheme is implemented, now, but to the best of my knowledge, it continues in much the same way, as it began, to this day… And yes…I do feel that the idea was a very good one that any society might benefit from.
I do not think that I or anyone else should think of it as an entitlement unless seriously taking part in “community” society?..concerns.
‘Smwsplr…’
I left the UK …in 1995/6… then as now, self employed, but at the time, when art business around the world, was still doing ok, and I could sell lots of paintings sans probs, I didn’t think about any kind of essential insurance, having paid up the required sums/stamps? It was quite a pleasant surprise a few years later to discover I had an old age pension. I don’t remember how I found out. It was about 35 or 40£ then, I used the medical system in France as a kind of private service, for a while, although I think the agreements were already in place at that time UK/France health/insurance care. I was very pleased to discover that joint system, and got a Carte Vitale. I might live for a couple of decades or more, I’m sure I never contributed enough to support me for so much time… …clearly, I can claim money and services, indefinitely, as the system is set up. If it doesn’t collapse, under the weight of so many more old people, living so much longer… I suppose I feel rather concerned about that, and wonder what can be done. Maybe the answer is in becoming much more socially involved, be helpful, take part, I don’t know, I have always been a loner, so I’m probably third rate and quite useless. Don’t know. Thinking …what’s to be done…
Oh haha! I sort of…just wrote something rather similar, but I don’t have any hopes of pearly gates. It’s an interesting idea, as you have suggested that it …is consciousness of some kind of reward and punishment system, beyond any “own” sense of what is good behaviour…but I haven’t got the paradise/hell visions stacked in any corners of my brain to inspire me to do the flower arranging. Instead…I’m thinking of me as a slob, consuming and using stuff I haven’t paid for, simply as an unattractive idea, with or without any second opinion… There are many more people to tell me that I have a right/entitlement to take all I can get, than there are people to remind me that someone else’s need must be considerably greater than mine. I could… randomly or selectively hand out payments instead, that’s one option, or maybe stop taking good care of myself, and fade away, thereby saving government funds. Don’t know yet… 
Jeannette…
Asking for advice and arguing against said advice… or totally ignoring the advice even… is a trait found in many, many people… even me, on occasions.
I suggest you simply do… what you want to do… no more discussions needed… deep down inside your brain, the answer will come to you, if it has not already.
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I always do what I want to do, but I think that discussion with other humans is, quite often, useful. Agreeing or accepting advice being second in usefulness, to just ‘hearing’… “different” points of view. So I’m very glad to have read those posts from you and others who contributed, since, yes, I absolutely agree with everyone who suggested my point of view sounded confused. I am a lot less confused now! I think Macron has suggested a plan to get everyone thinking about putting something back into the community, not only taking all they need…which sounded like a reasonable idea to me, one that could be intrinsic education for all, since dependence on one society or another appears to be a built-in need for humans, beyond family and friends.
Ideally, I suppose complete autonomy/self sufficiency…is the best goal for everyone?
*Just read your post, my tablet makes it quite easy to miss replies…l will write some more…