Pulaski

She's go to have to live well into her 80's just to recoup what she has deferred. IMO deferring more than five years is a risky gamble that you will live long enough to recoup what you deferred.

Editha

I agree, although since she reached pension age at 60, her ten years is the equivalent of a man's five, if you see what I mean.

robin1234

I feel it's not a gamble, actually a prudent, conservative choice.

Obviously, if you need the income, you won't defer, you'll take the income as soon as you're eligible. But if you can afford to defer, then if you lose the gamble and die relatively young, then big deal. If you die, you no longer need income. BUT if you live to extreme old age (95? 110?) then it could be that the extra income every year for life is very useful.

scot47

People should pay more attention to these matters.That is the end of my rant.

robin1234

You call that a rant??

You short changed us

Pulaski

There is a third option, which my father took, perhaps with uncanny prescience, to draw your pension and save it. My father didn't need his pension, but use the (state) pension to fund additional tax-advantaged pension savings, ...... but died before the break-even point had he just deferred his state pension for the five years until he actually retired.

nun

For me the issue isn't notification, but removing the ability to get a pension using a spouse's NIC record. People that didn't work and were relying on a spouse's pension in retirement can't now go back and get their own NICs. These people need to be given pension benefits under the new scheme similar to those under the old scheme.

Editha

There are transitional provisions for women in this category.

holly_1948

I submit that those are the same poor wretches who are living hand to mouth. Or paycheck to paycheck as they would say stateside.
When you have no money at all, none, long range planning becomes quite short. Which is why people find the prospect of total collapse of the present world financial system so scary.

I was curious as to why retirement age was ever different for men and women. Others may be interested to know also. Various theories were advanced to me, none were entirely convincing. A historian friend looked it up and explained to me - It was 1942, during the war, when pensions were changed. The reason the retirement ages were set to 65 and 60 were to avoid a situation in which a man, sole breadwinner in a marriage, and married to a wife of 60, retired at age 65 and received only the single person's OAP (old-age pension). In that situation he would receive the married couple OAP and not have to wait until he reached 70 (wife reached 65).
It was the norm in those days that married women didn't work a paid job and most women were (or had been) married to a man less than five years older.

Editha

Be fair: most people find the prospect of the total collapse of the present world financial system scary, also atomic war, anti-biotic resistant bubonic plague, and the impact of a giant asteroid (that's just my personal list).

But I agree that if you are on a low income it is difficult to make long term provision, but even so there are usually some things you can do to anticipate future needs.

Novocastrian

The very first retirement pensions were established in Prussia by Otto von Bismarck in 1889. They were funded 50/50 by workers and employers and kicked in at the ripe old age of 70.

The average life expectancy for workers in Prussia at the time was 58.

Because it was 1889.

Editha

I'm probably being pedantic, but I think you mean state retirement pensions. Occupational pensions and war-service pensions both pre-date national insurance.

Novocastrian

Yes, you're being pedantic, but it would be a travesty if I complained.

I love pedantry.

Pulaski

In which case I feel compelled to ask what the life expectancy figure means, because to say "life expectancy was 58" was only true for people of a given age, and which you did not give. At birth life expectancy might have been 58, but if you survived all the childhood illnesses then at age 16 your life expectancy might be a whole lot longer, and people who had already reached age 58 still had a finite life expectancy.

Novocastrian

Now this is a step too far even for a pedantry fan. I said average life expectancy in 1889. Which is perfectly self explanatory.

Implied, of course, is that the figure applied to Prussia not for example Iceland or Swaziland.