State Pension Increase

Well the notification has just arrived. It's going up by 3%.

They'll tell us it's in line with inflation.

But when you look at the increases you're paying in insurances, utilities and council tax, it's funny that they are all so much higher. So how do they get a 3% figure?

Apparently, we're bottom of the league when it comes to the value of our state pension.

 

Your lucky.... my entitlement to the state pension has been moved back by two years to 67..... So don’t feel so hard done by at least you have it..

 

Where did I say I felt hard done by? All pensions are being eroded, because so many "big bills" we all have to pay are receiving much higher percentage increases.

Yes I have it and it cost me a lot. N.I. is graduated and I used to pay in a shed load.
I paid it continuously from the age of fifteen, when I had a Saturday job whilst still at school, until long after I retired. In those days you had to pay a full stamp which equated to half my meagre earnings.

 

Perhaps a bad choice of words on my part I do not seek to offend..

My point is that I too have worked since 15 years of age. Paid in an absolute kings randsom in both NI and tax often at 40? Yet the thieving swines that are the government in one strike took the equivalent of 15.000 quid by altering the pensionable age...

So you do have something fortunate in your favour.

Let’s face it in any other walk of life the decision makers would be prosecuted. Imagine for instance Prudential announcing such a move ??

Robbed royaly and no mistake.

 

My pension age has also been upped to 66, so another loser.
Not that my pension will be much due to successive governments chopping and changing pension rules, over the past years.
Up until recently I've never had a job that offered a pension scheme, so must have started at least half a dozen private pensions over the years only having to stop them and start new ones due to government meddling.

How the government works out the inflation rate is very dodgy IMO, I dont think it has any real connection with what is really going on.

 

I`m lucky.....been getting my pension for years....and years....and ..

 

I was very fortunate, had the classic 40/60ths pension, though I only had 26 years of contributions. So I banged the maximum permitted into AVCs to boost it up. Your total pension contributions must not exceed 15% of your salary. I had to take the AVCs as an annuity. The "pot" had accrued considerably.Taking early retirement at 57, back then it was set at 10% of the accumulated fund. I've had out now, twice the value of the accumulated "pot" and way more than I paid in. If I'd retired two years later, when the bottom had fallen out of the pension business, I'd have only got 6%.

Back in the day, by projecting forwards the inflation effect on your pay, even if you only got cost of living increases, arriving at a guess at your minimum final salary and applying the "60ths" of that amount and doing the same for your AVCs, you could work out what your pension would be.

I remember having a conversation on the phone with a work colleague. I asked him what he'd been doing.

"Well, I was feeling a bit naffed off, so I worked out my pension again."

I replied, "Yeah! I do that sometimes, it always works out at the same, but we always feel better for doing it, don't we?"
I feel quite sorry for young people now. The government urge them to pay into a pension fund, but they earn naff-all now. My kids put their money into property, they've holiday homes which will become their homes when they retire and the houses they presently live in, will either be rented out or sold to provide their pension income.

 

As I always say, "each to their own," but I'm amazed at the sort of credit card debts some young people are prepared to run up. Credit card companies charge an extortionate rate of interest. I think Barclaycard is 18%.

I had a mortgage and when I was younger a couple of car loans through our building society, but I've an aversion to paying interest. I guess it's down to how my parents lived, if they couldn't afford it, they didn't have it. Things like insurances which you could pay monthly I always pay annually and I clear my credit card balance every month whatever it is.

As a comment on today's attitudes of some young people, what was it Peter Kay said, in time He'd say to his kids? "When we were your age, we had it tough, yer mum and I only had one phone and one car each."

 

We that is my wife and I both have private pensions. Not big ones but they go some way.

My wife is disabled now but she claims nothing. I am in effect her full time carer as she cannot function for many things alone it’s just not possible. Again I claim nothing.

As some have said the state pension is low but it would top up our income to a level a wee bit less stressful but hey ho it’s another six years before I qualify..

I will be honest here I do feel bitter at the postponement of my pension eligibility.

 

I'm not. It is nothing in comparison to the "debt" they run up just obtaining a higher education. What message does *that* send out to them: "debt is the way in life"?

 

Your wife may be entitled to disability benefit, but there's an assessment which can be quite stressful.
If you're a "full time carer," you are entitled to some money. It's not a lot. But worth having.
If you've six years to go before your pension, then that's how long you can claim it. It ceases when you receive your state pension as the rules say you can't have two government funded benefits.