Pensioners' loss of interest on savings

SGE1

Fair enough.

Now what about the pensioners who didn't earn enough while working to save up a big pot of cash, so who have no big pot of cash to earn interest on? They don't seem to get a mention. And they're technically worse off.

Oh and I don't want to hear anything about "pensioners who didn't save when they were working shouldn't be entitled to a decent retirement". Not everybody earns enough to save, and no, it's not always their fault they don't earn enough.

Cleaver

Generali wrote: »

Bit tough isn't it. The Luftwaffe rains bombs down on your house as a kid, you spend your teenage years in austerity and your kids bombard you with the bloody Beatles as an adult. You endure power cuts because of the unions in the 1970s and have to listen to a load of lectures from a Grocer's daughter through the 1980s.

You finally get to retire and just as you're starting to enjoy life, someone nicks your life savings in effect and gives them to a bank.

You get free bus travel though.

Every cloud and all that.

baby_boomer

SGE1 wrote: »

Oh and I don't want to hear anything about "pensioners who didn't save when they were working shouldn't be entitled to a decent retirement". Not everybody earns enough to save, and no, it's not always their fault they don't earn enough.

Sorry to disappoint.

The diminishing taxpayer base can't afford to pay for a "decent retirement" for everyone - especially as we baby_boomers cross over to retirement.

That's the rational starting base for any discussion about pensions that takes place outside cloud cuckoo land.

beaujolais-nouveau

kennyboy66 wrote: »

You are healthier than the lardy !!!! people to day (by accident of rationing). ... You work part-time because you are fit and healthy.
As a poor pensioner you still manage a weeks skiing plus regular trips around the world.

Unless you have osteoporosis because either a low wage (when only one adult in the family worked) or rationing meant that you did not have enough calcium in your diet when you needed it.

Or unless you are unable to breathe easily or walk any distance, because of the industrial disease you acquired (eg asbestosis) when these things were not yet understood and the causes banned.

beaujolais-nouveau

bubblesmoney wrote: »

i remember reading somewhere that pensions arent taxed in france. dont know if this is true. if true might be an interesting option to explore for some even if the exchange rates have gone downhill

That's interesting. France would be my first choice, if Britain becomes uninhabitable.

lukekelly_2

beaujolais-nouveau wrote: »

You are not looking at this as if you were a pensioner. Capital is not for spending, unless on something unavoidable like replacing a boiler or having an operation to remove cataracts. If you have to spend your capital on daily living, you start to feel very anxious, if you are a pensioner because there is no way that you will ever be able to replace that lost capital.

If people have enough capital for the interest to make a substantial difference to their quality of life then they have enough capital to provide a comparable income for say 25 years by spending that money. If they choose not to do so then that's their choice. It may be a choice made subconsciously through years of social conditioning and prevailing attitudes to savings in their formative years, but it is still a choice. As such I am infinitely more sympathetic to those without savings who don't have reserves in the bank. There is a plausible, if intentionally provocative, argument that someone who is suffers from poverty whilst having enough money stowed away to provide a reasonable standard of living deserve no more sympathy than someone whose quality of life suffers from them burning a proportion of their income in the wood burner each month.

Interest isn't some moral right. There's moral justification in receiving money for work you do. Getting paid twice though, as is happening when you receive interestt, is not a moral issue. It's pay for no work, a bonus whose justification is that it encourages people to lend money to those who can use it more effectively and thus create economic growth. When that pragmatic economic reason for paying interest disappears there is no moral imperative left, and so no grounds on which to demand interest as if it was some God-given right.

StevieJ

beaujolais-nouveau wrote: »

Unless you have osteoporosis because either a low wage (when only one adult in the family worked) or rationing meant that you did not have enough calcium in your diet when you needed it.

Or unless you are unable to breathe easily or walk any distance, because of the industrial disease you acquired (eg asbestosis) when these things were not yet understood and the causes banned.

You have a great deal of empathy with the old :A

PasturesNew

When I shoved my savings in the nearest bank, it paid for my rent, my bills and a spot of life.

I tried chasing some rates around, but opening up accounts is quite a long-winded process so I lost the will to live and wherever they are they're stopping ... but the rates are dire.

My savings interest income is now not enough to pay half my rent.

But my savings aren't savings - they're my one chance in my lifetime to buy a house. I sold a house, they'll buy another, but I don't know when, where or for how much, so I don't want to dip into them for a bit here, a bit there. That's a slippery slope. So they're not what most people would call "savings", which is "a bit left over from everyday life". They are the SUM total of my entire life - and I'm pretty much too old now to ever add to them again, or start again etc.

PasturesNew

Mary_Hartnell wrote: »

And the reliable store of value is.........?

Fags and cans of beer.

PasturesNew

baby_boomer wrote: »

The diminishing taxpayer base can't afford to pay for a "decent retirement" for everyone - especially as we baby_boomers cross over to retirement.

That's the rational starting base for any discussion about pensions that takes place outside cloud cuckoo land.

They've chucked too much at the plasma-tv-watching and stella-drinking classes.

We didn't need more beer drinkers, we needed more socially-responsible workers and good neighbours.