500,000 pensioners pay the price for the indebted.

Jennifer_Jane

kabayiri wrote: »

Err, can we get back to the 499,999 hard done by pensioners please ?

(It was 500,000 , but one has probably passed away during this brief off-topic moment)

Another not very pleasant newbie... just wondering where these people come from.

Jen
x

Bogof_Babe

When we accepted voluntary redundancy a few years ago, we thought we had it all sorted, based on interest rates not dropping below about 4%. How wrong we were . And now, at 62 & 57 and with big gaps in our CVs, we haven't a cat in hell's chance of finding another job.

I suppose we are lucky to have accrued enough capital to live on for a few years, at least until our state pensions kick in. OH is already drawing his work pension of £60 a week. I am still 8 years away from mine, as my company moved the pension payment age for women to 65. I might consider taking it early but obviously it is vastly reduced if I do that. I am lucky that as it stands I should get my state pension just before I'm 62, unlike those younger folk who might have to work to 68, although I am too "young" (haha) to get it at 60.

The plan was that our savings interest would enable us to have a more comfortable standard of living during our old age, but by drawing our capital down now in order to pay the bills, we will be left with just the basic state and small work pensions to fund our declining years. Not good if we need to install a stair lift or there are other major expenses.

It could be argued that we took a chance by retiring early, and should have kept on working. However our three remaining parents were very frail and needed us to care for them by then. It seemed like an ideal solution at the time.

I am glad that we bought outright (with modest inheritances from our late fathers) a small flat last year, as it will presumably retain at least some proportion of the value we paid for it. Don't want to sell it though - the plan was that it would provide almost free holidays for the rest of our mobile lives. That's if we can afford the travel costs to get to it. Don't want to let it either - it was trashed by the tenants when it was previously let, and our vendor had to completely refurb it to sell.

Something else that has really been bugging me is yesterday's announcement about the 10p hike in prescription charges. As only England still pays these, and even in England only 11% of patients pay, that means that those who do (inc. me at the moment) must each be funding the medication costs of about 12-15 other people. Hardly fair is it? No wonder they are so expensive.

Bogof_Babe

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

Another not very pleasant newbie... just wondering where these people come from.

Jen
x

I thought that was quite funny, and I thanked it . It was just a joke wasn't it?

GeorgeHowell

1echidna wrote: »

I think the point is that there are winners and losers in society often through no particular merit or demerit. Life is not fair and even more so in a recession. Personally my ideal in a recession would be for us all to suffer a degree of pain (but perhaps less for those near the breadline) irrespective of so called moral cases of immunity and perhaps not excessively even on those who have a degree of culpability or are regarded as unworthy(having borrowed too much or being reliant on state benefits). I know many here will not agree with me.

I agree with you. Life is indeed not fair, to a very substantial degree. A reluctant acceptance of that fact does make it easier to get through it and to get by. In my experience people who have, or believe that they have, done well for themselves tend to believe that's it pretty much all down to their own merits ("Yes. I've been lucky, but then I think you make your own luck in this life."). Conversely people who do not achieve what they wish for themselves tend to think that it's little do with their actions, but that it's all someone else's fault, or society's fault. The truth almost invariably lies somewhere between the two.

One the subject of savers and pensioners, Yvette Cooper is a Brown-nosing leftie who is unfit to hold any responsible public office. Her pathetic utterings are not worth our time and effort to listen to. Her stance however is typical of this government who think that anyone who has savings on which to earn interest on them should be forced to divest themselves of their capital in the interests of a 'fairer society'.

Having said that, savers have had it good for quite a while and this is the swing of the pendulum. It's a pretty big swing and a pretty big pendulum, but it will swing back -- maybe too far if Brown and King have got the quantitative easing wrong.

Regarding people determined to hang on to their capital, and resentful of having to use any of it up, there are probably a number of reasons for this. One is the fear of running out of money and ending up in penury, which is no doubt a genuine fear for those with severely limited resources. Another is that too many people expect to have as high a standard of living in retirement as they did when they were working -- which for most is an unacheivable and rather a ridiculous aspiration. And then, as someone alluded earlier in the thread, there is the determination of many to leave as much as possible to their offspring. This is the one that I have the least sympathy with (and even perhaps find myself feeling a bit Yvette-Cooper-esque about). If people get a windfall as a result of an inheritance then so be it, good luck to them. But nobody should be expecting, let alone demanding, that their parents make any significant sacrifices in their retirement in order to preserve their capital as a potential inheritance. And any parent willing to make a significant sacrifice for this reason is frankly crazy.

Jennifer_Jane

Bogof_Babe wrote: »

I thought that was quite funny, and I thanked it . It was just a joke wasn't it?

Not deliberately! I just wonder why new people come on and are then unpleasant. Topov was also saying the same thing - and he wants this part of the forum closed down (I disagree with that, essentially I like all the people here, and find the discussions really interesting):

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=19462881&postcount=137

I think that rude people are not helpful.

Jen
x

Jennifer_Jane

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=19466869&postcount=96

Super post, George. Agree with your post, but just want to add, that if people just accept that life is unfair, then standards drop. Do you see what I mean? I agree in part that reluctance acceptance is probably sanest, but if we are too accepting, then we never get change, nor is there any attempt by the very lucky to help the very unlucky.

Jen
x

jay3_2

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

One the subject of savers and pensioners, Yvette Cooper is a Brown-nosing leftie who is unfit to hold any responsible public office. Her pathetic utterings are not worth our time and effort to listen to. Her stance however is typical of this government who think that anyone who has savings on which to earn interest on them should be forced to divest themselves of their capital in the interests of a 'fairer society'.

.

George, I agree with some of what you've said, but I think this comment is unworthy.

Radiantsoul

1echidna wrote: »

I think the point is that there are winners and losers in society often through no particular merit or demerit. Life is not fair and even more so in a recession. Personally my ideal in a recession would be for us all to suffer a degree of pain (but perhaps less for those near the breadline) irrespective of so called moral cases of immunity and perhaps not excessively even on those who have a degree of culpability or are regarded as unworthy(having borrowed too much or being reliant on state benefits). I know many here will not agree with me.

That is basically my point. Many people seem to believe that the mass bankrupcty solution to the credit crunch is preferably because it is morally acceptable as those who have borrowed or invested imprudently will lose and the careful will not have to subsides them.

I understand the view, but feel that ultimately the costs to society are so high that we need to avoid it. The solution involves the careful having to subside the careless to some extent. The overcost to society will be far lower.

In many ways there is a weak analogy to war. Some people have to make disproportion sacrifices. And in this case a few years of low interest rates is scarcely unbearable.

Bogof_Babe

Radiantsoul wrote: »

And in this case a few years of low interest rates is scarcely unbearable.

Are you still earning Radiantsoul? It makes a whole lot of difference to how you view low (i.e. almost zero) interest rates when you have no means of refilling the pot, either now or later.

Sapphire

ad9898 wrote: »

The bottom line to me is PN, the government want you to spend your savings thereby redistributing your money to the fec kless. This is what all this is about, they know there are billions of pounds out there that people are sitting on, the government want this money 'out in the open', they want it spent. And doing what they have done to you and millions of others is a like a back door to increasing the money supply.

Absolutely crazy policies by this 'government'. Reckless spending and getting into debt buying unnecessary fripperies (of all kinds) is what got this country into the mess it is in.

Surely there must come a point where an economy cannot grow any longer? Isn't encouraging people to spend, spend, spend also encouraging them to squander this planet's resources more and more? Shouldn't we be conserving rather than constantly creating new stuff, using up natural resources and incidentally killing off species that we share this planet with? What a horrible state of affairs...