Wonder if this is a BE'er? She certainly seems to be in a bind...surely it would be better to return to Blighty, get full pension wack, and possibly some social housing...

https://www.theguardian.com/money/20...rozen-pensions

She wouldn't qualify for social housing at least to begin.

She's 93 and "might live for another 2 decades". Now that's some goal

From the linked OP

"The frozen pension means Puckridge gets just £75.50 a week of her full UK pension of £155.65 a week"

"When the 93-year-old second world war veteran and lecturer moved to Canada in 2001, she expected to live in modest comfort on her UK pension. What she hadn’t realised, however, was that pension would be frozen at the amount it was worth at the time she moved to North America at the age of 76."

few missing pieces in the linked OP that the old dear is likely not disclosing

Yes, she has a frozen UK pension that will automatically get to current rates of "£155.65 a week" if & when she moves back to the UK

Since she has been in Canada since 2001, she qualifies for & likely gets some income from Canada in the way of OAS + GIS + provincial top up

maybe if she waits another 3 years to move back to the UK she can port her Canada OAS old age pension

source: Government Canada

Receiving benefits outside Canada

You can receive your OAS pension benefit payment outside the country if you:

resided in Canada for at least 20 years after turning 18; or
lived and worked in a country that has a social security agreement with Canada and you meet the 20-year residence requirement under the provisions of that agreement.
If you do not meet either of the above requirements, we can only send your OAS pension payments outside Canada for the month you left and for six months after that. If you decide to return to Canada after an absence of more than six months, every additional year in Canada will be counted in order for you to reach your 20 years of residence needed to receive your OAS pension outside the country.

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Yes...and also other stuff too. Possible errors in the article.

She's 90 so she retired about 30 years ago. That means RP under 'old' rules not the £159.55 that applies to new pensioners. Full rate is £122.30 for those already getting it under the rules back then, so that's her maximum not the £159.55. As wrong as it is, her shortfall is much less than the article suggests.

And no service pension?

This is a good example of what happens when the subjects don't "tell all" and the journalists don't check things that are easily checked.

An article making some good and reasonable points loses its power because when you can pick a couple of holes in it you wonder how many more there are.

Bristol @ post#4

excellent

Don't forget that women miss out impending pensions in other ways. She may have been part time which would have affected her work pension. As would time off to gave and to rise children.

True enough.

It's entirely possible she was single and didn't qualify for the full rate or she was married and 'inherited' her husband's rate.

But if it's the former then the shortfall between what she gets and her maximum is even less again which strengthens my point about the misleading reference to what her pension would be.

And if her pension(s) was reduced leading to a claim for what was then called Supplementary Pension, "lived a comfortable life in Stroud" might not be too accurate a description.

It's perhaps more likely she was married and got her husband's pension(s). But that would still be the £122 not the £160.

Although there was also reference to savings so maybe she had that instead and was able to manage comfortably until income was frozen and the exchange rate fell.

But these omissions of detail and glaring inaccuracies don't help the argument.

from the chart in the link below it might appear that she was getting maximum state pension in 2001 before coming to Canada

and will if she returns today get full state pension based on the old rules as pointed out up thread by Bristol

Basic state pension

Then if she stays in Canada another three years before going back to the UK she can port her Canadian old age pension

Not bad, not bad at all eh!

This lady moved to Canada when she was 76 years of age. I assume she must have been sponsored by her daughter.
This may be an old fashioned view, but how about her daughter taking some responsibility for her welfare.
I am glad the rules for sponsoring parents have been changed.
In some immigrant communities in Canada there was so much abuse of this system.

The second section of the article is even more ridiculous, the papers are a mockery with all the nonesense

Retired at 50 ex-fireman with a (I'm guessing a fire service ) pension,

https://fullfact.org/news/how-genero...ters-pensions/

he & his wife have indexed state pension, she likely has a post office pension, own their own home in Spain.

"Chris Tudor, 70, moved to Spain from Bristol in 1997 with his wife, 66-year-old Ray. The fall in the pound has meant Ray, a retired postmistress, must keep working as a cleaner in a local hotel, despite having planned to retire this year.

“The deflation of the pound is a big deal for us,” said Tudor, a retired firefighter. “It’s hit us very hard and happened so quickly: it happened in a single month. All our bills are much more expensive.

“If the exchange rate stays this low for another three years, we will have to sell our house and rent instead, and just hope that the money we would release would tide us over for the rest of our lives.”

edit:

The above is all BS. I just looked at the past 10 years exchange rate for the GBP -Euro.

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Like the British immigrants perhaps?

such as the recent case of Joan Morgan aged 96 in Picton Ontario on a supervisa who has had an application in process for PR since January 2016

Time is running out for Joan Morgan, 96, to get permanent resident status - Toronto - CBC News


.

The gist of the article is a fair one though.

Forgetting the freezing of State Retirement Pension (where relevant) my Civil Service Pension when it began (and was unchanged for the first 5 years) was £350 a month.

On the exchange rate at the time that was worth $784 in Canada.

Three years later it was worth $535. That's a big fall.

Fortunately I had Canadian Income.

After 5 years of fixed Civil Service Pension, it went to the rate that it would be had there been annual, inflation linked rises. But no back pay.

The new rate was £450. An increase of 28%.
The exchange rate was still low then and my 28% higher pension in ££ was worth $711.

So I'd seen my pension go up that much but the exchange rate made it worth less than when it began.

Imagine that was Retirement Pension and stayed frozen the whole time, not just the first 5 years.

After 5 years, what started out as $784 falls to $553 - having dipped to $535 for a year along the way.

Now imagine all of your income is from the UK. You can't make it up with local income in whatever country you are living in.

A chunk of it may lose value because of the freezing rules and all of it loses value, dramatically, because of the fall in exchange rates.

Of course the rates may go the other way and you might gain. But the article is about how the reverse has happened.

My pension lost $80 a month in value within a couple of days of the Brexit vote. It's recovered a bit but I'm still $57 worse off.

I am surprised there is no mention of the daughter. That being said said daughter is probably 70+ so maybe she's on a very low income/pension too.

Bristol @ post #13

yes & no to the fluctuating FX GBP & yes to how the devaluation has crunched us seniors that are not on indexed SP

In your situation, any less income can make the difference for whatever & just $50, even a $100 less each mth can make or break paying the utility bills

The second person in the OP linked article 'the fireman' has been in Spain since 1997 & has lived through major swings in the FX, even more so on low side than it is today

What was his point of hurting financially with two indexed state pensions + a fire service pension

The media is BS