BristolUK

Only partly true. And it's not 'extra' years but missing ones.

It may well be that the gain from buying missing years more than outweighs the loss of uprating. But in order to make up for that loss, one needs to have missing years to make good and be able to buy them.

It's little use to anyone who already paid the full cost or close to it. They lose both ways.

And, of course, British retirees in the US who do get the uprating can also buy missing years. Double gain.

I'm not sure that someone paying the full whack in the UK and then seeing it devalued. considers someone else getting it for peanuts and getting annual uprating to maintain the value considers the unfairness cancelled.

bats

You can only buy missing years if you're working so if you retire early then you're stuck. We did have enough years fro a full pension but then they changed it so we were both a few years short. Husband was able to buy a couple of years, I wasn't.

The government have also ****ed up the pensions of women born in the 1950s. Complicated story that's easily searchable but the details aren't relevant here, what is relevant is that there's an outcry when someone mismanages or embezzles a private pension scheme but nothing when the government is the perpetrator. And as usual its the vulnerable that suffer.

There's not a hope in hell of getting anything changed, the pension age will be raised again and will continue to be raised. It's a grim outlook for younger people,.

Almost Canadian

The increase for the retirement age for women has been on the statute books for a very long time (I first learned of it in the mid 1990s during one of my first law classes) so should not have come as a surprise for anyone. There is also the argument that the fact that women were able to obtain it prior to men was sexist.

The pension age being raised again and again is a refection of the fact that people are living longer, healthier lives.

I don't know why you would believe that younger people today have a worse outlook than those in the past. If one wishes to make sacrifices now, one can still have a more affluent retirement than if one lives only for today and doesn't provide for tomorrow.

BristolUK

Maybe open your eyes and read about people in jobs like Primary School teachers relying on hot water bottles to help meet their heating costs; the store manager and his difficulties with petrol increases; the guy off work sick for whom price variations wouldn't mean much to many but do to him; the cabinetmaker whose material costs have doubled but loses jobs if he tries to pass that cost on, so works for less to keep his customer base; Since when did a teacher have difficulty on a teacher's pension? Maybe since food prices went up 30% and energy costs doubled.

Nurses struggling to pay for accommodation.
Teachers having difficulty in America too according to Time magazine.

What kind of sacrifices should these people make "today" for a better tomorrow?

I suppose there's always OnlyFans

Almost Canadian

I honestly don't know why a 39 year old primary school teacher wouldn't be able to afford to purchase a property in Reading. The first place I lived when I left home was Reading.

My mother was able to raise 3 children under the age of 9 after my father died, 2 years after purchasing their first house, working minimum wage jobs. I was able to purchase a house in Worcester, earning 10,000 pounds a year while I was attending law classes in the evenings. 2 of our children were born during that time and a third was born a year into my 2 year part time legal practice course (the UK equivalent of North America's bar exam). I say this to point out that we were able to do this before I became a lawyer (as I anticipate that I will be hit with the usual "you are a wealthy lawyer, what do you know?").

We drove shitty cars, panicked when they needed repairs, ate basic foods and wore cheap clothes. We lived within our means and, as our income increased, so did our spending but we never spent more than we earned and we were able to put something away for retirement even then.

I thought we were talking about pensions. Put simply, anyone that takes vacations to foreign lands now, drives a nice car, purchases the latest Iphone at the expense of putting something away for retirement is taking a gamble with not being able to live comfortably in retirement. I genuinely belive that there are very few people that are not able to have a comfortable retirement unless they elect to retire too early. I appreciate that one's finances can take a battering by events that life throws at them (divorce can be particularly devastating).

I accept that it is not easy, but it is not impossible either.

Mordko

Its the same issue as with anti-vaxx people.

Stats tell a clear story: every next generation is better off than the one before and the trend has been the same for decades. Median pension incomes are higher in real terms than at any point in the past.

And yet you can always Google for someone who wasn’t protected by vaccination or can’t cope financially. Heck, 30-year olds (!) are set on retiring within a few years (the “FIRE” movement) while complaining about their terrible lot and low salaries.

With regards to the British pension, part of the problem is that its a pure benefit, funded via ongoing taxation. Governments decide how to tax and pay such benefits. CPP is a better system in that its more of a proper pension, which is funded by individual’s contributions which are then invested and payed out at pensionable age. Much harder to differentiate between recipients based on residency. British state pension is more like OAS in that respect and OAS is also vulnerable to government’s whims and is residency dependent.

BristolUK

Oh look, there go those goalposts again.

Here we go, wait for it, just waiting for the wheels to move them.

When was that? Not today
Nope, that doesn't sound very recent either.

Things are different today. People could do things on single incomes back then that are difficult to do on double incomes now.

Partially discharged

All good points. It takes some sacrifices and the willingness to accept that you can't spend more than you earn and the writing has been on the wall for years and years now that pensions are not what they used to be. I've never worked anywhere with a pension (33 years working full time) and have managed to put away more than enough for a 'rainy day' with investments and stocks/shares etc that will make retirement comfortable for my wife and I. She has a pension due in a few years but we don't rely on that.

Reckless spending and lifestyle choices in your early years can result in long term pain.

bats

Equalizing the pension age isnt being questioned but the method is.

The Pensions Act in 1995 did equalise the retirement age, it was staggered and my pension age was increased to 62 which was fine and I received notification of this.
Further changes were made in 2011 which resulted in changes to the age that the 1950s women would receive their pension. Mine was changed from age 62 to a couple of months before my 66th birthday. So in 2011 i was planning for retirement in 2016 to discover i wouldn't receive my pension until 2020. I say discovered because the only notification I had was because I applied for a pension forecast. I, like many other women were not informed and were not given enough notice to plan for this. Many weren't sent any notification at all and only found out when they went to claim their pension. I'm lucky that I was able to work round this and retired as planned, many others couldn't. I've a friend who was laid off in her 60s, it's very hard to get employment as an older woman so she's had to sell up and move to a cheaper area to release funds to live on until she can collect the pension.

You mention sexism in the age difference. Women's income is still lower than men's. Many women were not allowed to join work pension schemes, or they lost income when pregnant or raising kids, working part time.

Almost Canadian

I agree with everything you say.

Almost Canadian

Once again, you are the one moving the goalposts, not me.

I made a reference to sacrifices made now, in order to live better later.

On the issue of things being different today, and that my mother, and me, had it easier as times were easier then. My daughters moved into a property in Calgary on Friday of last week. They are 18 and 22 and are both attending university full time. I didn't provide any form of funding for them. They have both worked since they were able to and one of them (the 18 year old) was able to save in excess of $20,000 for her share of the down payment. They did this by working while they were studying, working as many hours as they could over the summer and spending as little as possible on personal items.

I accept that they didn't have to pay rent while living at home, but both of them moved out of my house in March of last year, so that they could experience the cost of living on their own.

No doubt, some that know them will believe that their parents provided them with "financial help." I anticipate that those people were provided with exactly the same financial help that I provided to them.

It is possible in these times.

Almost Canadian

All valid points.

I don't advocate that anyone should only rely upon the state pension for a happy retirement.

I am somewhat fortunate in that I get to see the assets, liabilities and incomes of a very wide range of people on a daily basis. From what I see, it doesn't appear to matter whether one has a fantastic income, a middle level income or a minimum wage type of income. The vast majority of people have lots of debt (usually proportionate to their income), have minimal savings but spend huge amounts on vacations and gadgets. That, of course, is entirely a matter for them. But they shouldn't be surprised if, in light of what they have chosen to put their income into, they may struggle in retirement.

It appears to me that you can spend it now, or you can spend it later. Outside of government workers, very few people are able to do both.

dbd33

One of my daughters bought a house this week. No parental assistance so it took a while to raise the deposit. The sums involved seem frightening but then the same was true when I first bought a house and, no doubt, when my parents bought a house. It is possible now but, I believe, harder than it once was.

What I can't see is how divorced people retire. One would need massive savings to be able to live and make support payments without working.

Tirytory

Just curious, but are you paying their university fees?

Almost Canadian

Maybe. The amount of my daughters' mortgage is actually less than they amount they were paying in rent. We struggled to make our first mortgage payments. I know that my mother did after my father died (she had been a stay at home mum up to that point in time). I am sure that most are in the same boat, whenever they make that first purchase. I accept that property hotspots cause issues too.

Divorced couples usually take a large hit simply from the division of assets too. However, as I have explained to you before, on the issue of spousal support and a reduction of income, the Courts are willing to reduce the obligation of the payor if one's income reduces.

If spousal support has been paid for a long time, it is normal for the Court to expect the other spouse to become self-sufficient at some time so if, for example, one party has been paying the other $5,000 for 10 years, the Court will want to know why the other party continues to require spousal support.

The intention of spousal support is to assist one party deal with the financial consequences of the breakdown of the marriage. It is not designed to allow one spouse (A) to lie on a bed working on their tan, while the other continues to work to enable A to do so. If couples split at a later age and after a long marriage, in theory, the period of spousal support may be indefinite, but the amount of spousal support will almost certainly be reduced once the payor reaches retirement.