Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

All I will say is Equitable Life: people were questioned by MPs, Investigations were had and reports written see link below for summary. There was some compensation for some people.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2021-0012/
All of that and I still lost a third of my pension fund.

 

@pete, I have nothing against equal retirement age, though they should have sorted out the gender pay gap first. And it should be borne in mind, women still do most of the housework and child rearing on top of paid employment. But those are separate, if related, issues. By moving the pension age for women a whole 6 yrs at very short notice, many did not have time to plan for this. Factor in women in their late 50s are often juggling care for an elderly person and can only work part-time, and the problem was compounded.

 

It's not bringing women's retirement age in line with men's that's the problem, that's fair and let's face it, no government was ever going to bring men's retirement age down to match women's or even meet in the middle. It's that they somehow didn't manage to get the information out to everyone who would be affected.

I do remember it being all over the news when the 60 to 65 phased increase was first announced in 1995, 15 years before the first affected people would retire in 2010, and discussing it with friends and colleagues. That ought to have been plenty of notice if the government of the time (Tories under John Major I think) had got their act together and sent out the letters there and then instead of relying on the media to do their job for them, and on people to take notice. There must have been a lot of people who didn't watch TV or read a newspaper, or who just switched off or turned the page when it comes to anything that might loosely be regarded as politics.

When I first started work my state retirement age would have been 60 so they've added 7 years (the extra two, 65 to 67, apply to everyone my age) and there's still time for it to get pushed back further. Do I feel annoyed? Yes of course I do. Do I think I should be compensated? Of course not, I think I had plenty of notice despite not having received an individual letter addressed to me personally. Do I plan on working until I'm 67 (nearly 10 more years)? No chance, at some point I will pack it in, live on the proceeds of my financial frugality and organise it so I pay as little income tax as I can legally manage.

 

I've got a feeling that someone is dumping Squirrals, last month i got rid of 6 and was free of them, today 5 more have turned up

 

Any one know how to plan for the furture as i don't now so many change's

 

If Labour isn’t there to improve life for ordinary people, then there is no point to it existing and it may as well disband itself.

 

Dead or alive?

I don’t think there’s a reliable “planning for the future” formula these days. Back in the 70s, it was easier to know where you stood - study hard at school, secure a job with prospects, work your way up, get onto the housing ladder, and pay into a pension. Now these things are either very hard to do or the goalposts move unexpectedly.

 

It was never about the fact that they changed the eligible age. They neglected to tell women that it had changed. Which devastated the lives of many who had planned according to what they believed that age to be. A cock-up or a cover-up, it has been acknowledged by the Ombudsman and his recommendations should have been followed.

 

I can understand the frustration, but was suddenly every women's retirement age moved from 60 to 65 and then 66, or was there a few years between 2010 and 2020 when it rose to say 63?
I found out that my pension age had risen by looking at the government website.

Probably a bit naive of me but did it not mean you had 5 more years to pay into a private pension, if you had one, so increasing your final pension.

We all know that paying into the state one after 35 yrs is a rip off, but again that is the system and how it works, its not fair.

 

Alive

 

I remember the pension age increase being all over the news, but I suppose it seemed such a long way off (15 years minimum) that some people ignored it, or perhaps didn't pay much attention.

Is it reasonable to expect individual personalised letters to everyone affected, or is it reasonable to expect people to inform themselves via news, proactively getting a state pension forecast as part of your routine financial planning, etc? The government in 1995 was Conservative under John Major I think, and we all know the Tory view is everyone for themselves, so I guess they took the latter position. Or just left it for a future government to deal with.

 

It's phased State Pension age timetable

Yes that is extra time to pay into a personal pension and/or to save more, assuming you are able to do that, and know when you'll get your state pension. The argument is that lots of people didn't know or didn't understand that it would affect them, for whatever reasons.

Here's the first year or so, so for example someone born on 1st May 1950 would only have had to wait an extra few days, whereas someone born 1st May 1951 would have had to wait an extra year or so, and so on up to people born late 1953 having to wait 5 years.

 

Unfortunately, there's nothing new about State Pension or NI issues. In the 70's, despite having paid full contributions, when I became unemployed I was told I could not claim Unemployment Benefit because I was married. No doubt that has changed since then but the 70's weren't the good old days for many of us.
Expectations change too and some people refuse to accept responsibility for their own lives.
As for this govt. I don't know why they persist in calling themselves Labour - they are no more socially inclined than Tony Blair's lot were.
Help those in real need rather than the social climbers.

 

What really annoyed me and seriously upset my wife was that we expected to retire 6 months apart at the time men retired at 65 and women at 60. We would then have time to enjoy our free time whilst still fit and comparatively health. The changes meant my wife had to work to age 66 which meant I was then 71. 6 years of 'freedom to travel or whatever' taken away at the stroke of a Government pen.