End of Pensioner "Perks"

[Mick F]

........................................... It must have cost us 40K

Yes.
This is what the unaffected people do not understand or appreciate.

It was the suddenness and the lack of clarity of it and leading to the inability to plan finances that has upset us all.

[pete75]

........................................... It must have cost us 40K

Yes.
This is what the unaffected people do not understand or appreciate.

It was the suddenness and the lack of clarity of it and leading to the inability to plan finances that has upset us all.

My wife is certainly affected by it but she made plans to boost her private pension in case she did want to retire before 65 or 66. She started planning for it well over twenty years ago by putting fairly large sums into her pension each year.

The irony is that the discrimination case which led to equalisation of state pension age was brought by a woman who didn't want to be forced to retire at 60 but carry on until she was 65 like men could.

[pete75]

Check out Waspi.

Women Against State Pension Age Inequality.
https://www.waspi.co.uk

No-one is complaining about the changes at all.

The way it was done and how quickly it was done and how there was no notice about it for the ladies born in the mid 1950s is the issue.

As I said it was announced when Ken Clarke was chancellor getting on for 25 years ago - how much notice did they want?

Did Ken state exactly how it was going to be phased in 25yrs ago?
In the case of my WASPI wife they moved the goal post at least three times for her birth date 01-05-54.
I can’t remember the exact details but it went something like retirement age from 60 to 63 then 65 then 67 then final letter stating this will be it 65 and 6 mths. With very few years to go we certainly weren’t in any position to alter lifelong retirement plans to our advantage. We’ve got by on one pension so much so I haven't paid tax for 5 yrs. Don’t know what we’ll do with our new found wealth in November but We certainly won’t forget this age group was singled out for punishment due to government shortfalls and mismanagement. It must have cost us 40K

If they've been singled out for punishment then so has very woman born after them who won't get a pensions at 60 either.
I don't know how Ken said it would be phased in - I just knew it was happening because my wife told me about it. She never moaned about it or even mentioned it again other than to say she's increased her pensions payments.

How has it cost you £40K? I'd have thought if the women affected had to keep working rather than retiring they'd have more money, most wages being higher than the state pension.

[Paulatic]

[]

If they've been singled out for punishment then so has very woman born after them who won't get a pensions at 60 either.
I don't know how Ken said it would be phased in - I just knew it was happening because my wife told me about it. She never moaned about it or even mentioned it again other than to say she's increased her pensions payments.

How has it cost you £40K? I'd have thought if the women affected had to keep working rather than retiring they'd have more money, most wages being higher than the state pension.

No doubt when you were younger you thought you were going to retire at 65 and when you married you thought your OH was going to retire at 60. A sweeping generalisation I know but that’s what we based our future on. So in my 30s I took out a private pension ( in employment with no pension schemes back then) to give me income aged 60 Which we hoped coupled with her state pension would allow us to finally take some leisure time.
So aged 60 I stopped knocking my pan out upto 60 hrs a week, left full time work and took on 12 hrs a week as the money was needed. My OH carried on working a couple of years more but when she reached 60 we decided enough is enough. I’m not going to sit around here another 3 yrs waiting for some serious illness to come along and thwart plans further.
Five yrs at 8K is how I arrived at 40K.
Your wife sounds very fortunate, probably working full time on a reasonable wage? Try getting that in SW Scotland. Also probably not married to someone who had a hard physical outdoor job all their working life. Putting extra into her pension was her decision and I hope she feels it worthwhile. As my OH didn’t have a woks pension until later in life we decided to try and alleviate the position by putting further sums into my pension. All I can say is what a waste of money that was. Now if we had known her retirement date before 1998 what a different story that might have been. My own contributions were guaranteed at 10% up until that date.

[Mick F]

For all our married life .............. and we knew we would stay married forever .............. I was going to be 65 in 2017 and she 60 in 2016.

Up until recently, she wouldn't get a pension at 60 but we would get a married persons pension calculated at 160% (I think) of the pension I would have got as a single person.

That went out of the window some years ago, and each person now has to achieve their own individual pension married or not.
Then, the announced that the retirement ages for men and women would be the same - 65.
This move alone put the two of us out of pocket.

Then, they extended the pension ages to 66, and no doubt in the next few years it will go up to 70 and beyond.
We are now even further out of pocket.

Fair enough maybe?
It's the WAY it has all been done that gets up my nose, and at no point has anyone written to us to tell us of the changes. They left it all to the media.

There are countless thousands of women and married couples who have been affected, and 40grand seems to me to be the norm.

[pete75]

[]

If they've been singled out for punishment then so has very woman born after them who won't get a pensions at 60 either.
I don't know how Ken said it would be phased in - I just knew it was happening because my wife told me about it. She never moaned about it or even mentioned it again other than to say she's increased her pensions payments.

How has it cost you £40K? I'd have thought if the women affected had to keep working rather than retiring they'd have more money, most wages being higher than the state pension.

No doubt when you were younger you thought you were going to retire at 65 and when you married you thought your OH was going to retire at 60. A sweeping generalisation I know but that’s what we based our future on. So in my 30s I took out a private pension ( in employment with no pension schemes back then) to give me income aged 60 Which we hoped coupled with her state pension would allow us to finally take some leisure time.
So aged 60 I stopped knocking my pan out upto 60 hrs a week, left full time work and took on 12 hrs a week as the money was needed. My OH carried on working a couple of years more but when she reached 60 we decided enough is enough. I’m not going to sit around here another 3 yrs waiting for some serious illness to come along and thwart plans further.
Five yrs at 8K is how I arrived at 40K.
Your wife sounds very fortunate, probably working full time on a reasonable wage? Try getting that in SW Scotland. Also probably not married to someone who had a hard physical outdoor job all their working life. Putting extra into her pension was her decision and I hope she feels it worthwhile. As my OH didn’t have a woks pension until later in life we decided to try and alleviate the position by putting further sums into my pension. All I can say is what a waste of money that was. Now if we had known her retirement date before 1998 what a different story that might have been. My own contributions were guaranteed at 10% up until that date.

Yes I did think that but many things in life aren't constant and change is bound to happen in forty years. The point is that national demographics have changed an din particular the ratio between the numbers of working age people and those of pensionable age. The pension system as it was forty years ago would place an unfair financial burden on people of working age and that's why the system had to change.

My own view is that as if a woman's retirement age is to be different to a man's it should be higher because of increased life expectancy. It certainly shouldn't be lower.

My wife isn't fortunate at all and what she's achieved workwise has been due to her own efforts not by luck. She just worked hard and went without much of an income in her younger days to qualify in a profession.She's been self employed since about 1990 so has made her own income. One of the disadvantages of that is that you have to fund a pension entirely by yourself.
Why has putting money into your pension been a waste of money - has the fund collapsed?

[thirdcrank]

... They left it all to the media. ... ...

That's what I was hinting at above.

This didn't affect us personally but I was certainly aware of the general thrust of what was happening, even though I couldn't have given any details. But that's because I don't restrict my sources of info to people agreeing with me in pubs.

It's pretty harsh. Years ago, I remember listening to something on the radio when the late Barbara Castle was explaining how the state pension was originally devised. Obviously, it assumed a male breadwinner with a housewife who either didn't work outside the household or didn't do much. The different retirement ages were based on the then statistical mode, so that if a woman did have paid employment, she could retire at the same time as her husband. The theme of the programme was that those assumptions did not take account of social changes.

In defence of those who - with hindsight - got it wrong in the early post-war years, they were replacing the Poor Law provision for the majority of the working class: if you didn't die in harness, have a stay-at-home daughter to look after you in old age or face the workhouse.

[pete75]

In defence of those who - with hindsight - got it wrong in the early post-war years, they were replacing the Poor Law provision for the majority of the working class: if you didn't die in harness, have a stay-at-home daughter to look after you in old age or face the workhouse.

But did they get it wrong? It matched the demographics and work patterns of the time and worked well for many years. The basic system we have today is what they designed but with a few tweeks. The main problem is increasing longevity and the changing working age/retired age ratio.

I wonder if you got people complaining back then - Oh we'd made plans to go into the workhouse* when we retired but they've changed the system and didn't bother to write and tell us.

* I think thy'd been renamed public assistance institutions sometime in the 1930s but people still called them that.

[Ben@Forest]

In defence of those who - with hindsight - got it wrong in the early post-war years, they were replacing the Poor Law provision for the majority of the working class: if you didn't die in harness, have a stay-at-home daughter to look after you in old age or face the workhouse.

It was ever thus; Nye Bevan genuinely believed that the NHS budget would not increase substantially, and may even go down, because of the preventative medicine that would be implemented (inoculations, free milk etc).

In fact and overall the NHS budget has increased by 4% every year over and above inflation. But l don't think you can blame Bevan for not foreseeing the increase in longevity, the treatments available and the scope for issues such as bariatric or transgender surgery (or counselling for either too).

[thirdcrank]

... * I think thy'd been renamed public assistance institutions sometime in the 1930s but people still called them that.

You are, of course right that the former workhouses were renamed, but they remained in all but name. Here's a pic of the site of one in Leeds. There are a couple of comments from former residents, one from the bungalow which replaced it, one from somebody who lived there as a child. It was certainly standing and in use in 1967 when I worked at Dewsbury Road Police Station. If I can find it, I'll link to a pic of the original building.
http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL

[pete75]

... * I think thy'd been renamed public assistance institutions sometime in the 1930s but people still called them that.

You are, of course right that the former workhouses were renamed, but they remained in all but name. Here's a pic of the site of one in Leeds. There are a couple of comments from former residents, one from the bungalow which replaced it, one from somebody who lived there as a child. It was certainly standing and in use in 1967 when I worked at Dewsbury Road Police Station. If I can find it, I'll link to a pic of the original building.
http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... SPLAY=FULL

Southwell Workhouse - built in 1829 and a prototype for 19th century workhouses. The first and also one of the last. Renamed Greet house it was used to accommodate single mothers and their children until the early nineties. Now the most depressing National Trust property I've ever visited.

[merseymouth]

Hi again, Bear in mind that when the State Pension was introduced the actuarial expectancy was that the recipient would live for about 2 and a half years, leave the stafts at 65, turn one's toes up before reaching 70 . TTFN MM

[thirdcrank]

Here's a picture of South Lodge which mentioned above. It's obviously been taken through the gate to emphasise the grimness, but it was in use right up to demolition. I'm pretty sure that the main reason for demolition was clearance for the construction of the M621.

Holbeck Union Workhouse South Lodge

South Lodge.jpg (27.37 KiB) Viewed 402 times

[bigjim]

North Manchester General hospital was a huge workhouse. Much of the original building still stands and is in constant use to this day.

[thirdcrank]

North Manchester General hospital was a huge workhouse. Much of the original building still stands and is in constant use to this day.

That applies to almost all the "legacy" buildings owned by the NHS. The Thackray Medical Museum at Jimmy's in Leeds is housed in the former workhouse, which was used until fairly recently as a part of the NHS hospital. The system of concentrating patients in big hospitals is a fairly modern one. An exception to that was the isolation hospitals in out-of-town locations, often kept mothballed to be used in an epidemic.

https://www.thackraymedicalmuseum.co.uk/