Question about pensions - especially for recently widowed

kazd

My husbands grandmother receives a state pension of £104.28 per week. She is 84 years old and has been retired about 25 years or more. Her husband was slightly older than her and got her to retire with him but unfortunately he died six months into his retirement.

I have now heard about a lady who is 68, who's husband has just recently died and her state pension is now doubling from approx £100 per week to £215.

Is this a mistake or is my husbands grandmothers pension being underpaid. I have never looked into it because I assumed this was the right figure. However, it always seemed pretty low as her weekly rent is £70 so she only has £34 to live on, this is to put clothes on her back, feed her, and heat her house.

Unfortunately despite us taking over the gas bill we cannot get her to put the heating on. We have tried cajoling, threatening her with the council, but she still keeps turning off the heating clock. Everytime we go round we reset it and tell her to leave it on that its only a clock but everytime we go back it is switched off at the wall. We have even thought of hardwiring it in so that she can't turn it off.

One day I went round (middle of winter) she was expecting me, when I arrived I thought it was remarkably warm for her house. The radiators were on and when I looked at the thermostat it was on 10deg, that tells you how cold it was in her house.

Grateful for any light on the subject.

Noozan

kazd wrote:

My husbands grandmother receives a state pension of £104.28 per week. She is 84 years old

I have now heard about a lady who is 68, who's husband has just recently died and her state pension is now doubling from approx £100 per week to £215.

Is this a mistake or is my husbands grandmothers pension being underpaid. I have never looked into it because I assumed this was the right figure. However, it always seemed pretty low as her weekly rent is £70 so she only has £34 to live on, this is to put clothes on her back, feed her, and heat her house.

.

Hi there

Is she entitled to pension credit to top up her income? Also, has she (or someone on her behalf) applied for housing and council tax benefit? £104 seems to be a very low income to have to pay £70 per week rent.

Is her house well insulated? There are grants available to help with insulation if you are on a low income. Hang on, I'll have a hunt...

Noozan

http://www.direct.gov.uk/Bfsl1/BenefitsAndFinancialSupport/BenefitsAndFinancialSupportArticles/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=10018661&chk=MjGOPK

Info on Warm Front scheme.

margaretclare

kazd wrote:

I have now heard about a lady who is 68, who's husband has just recently died and her state pension is now doubling from approx £100 per week to £215.
Grateful for any light on the subject.

This could be because the 68 year old widow has inherited her late husband's SERPS. If he was like my DH, was never contracted-out but had good earnings, his SERPS is valuable.

My DH gets state retirement pension and SERPS on top of it. This makes his weekly income up to £162 rather than £84. If he dies before me I can inherit 100% of his SERPS which will double my SRP as in the case of your 68-year old lady. (If I die before him he can inherit my SERPS which is smaller because I was contracted-out into the NHS pension scheme - he was never contracted out).

HTH

Margaret Clare

CIS

How much pension has has would depend on er own record and her husbands records. Shw would have retired around about 1980, so would have accrued at most 2 yrs Additional Pension, her husband would have accrued even less as he was older.

She would only have been given a increase to take her state pension to 100% by using his record, plus any very minimal additional pension and graduated pension.

I have a suspicion that that £104 includes a top up of some form, from her circumstances I would have thought that £104 would have been hard to get otherwise, I would find it strange that they accrued £22 of AP between them in at most 2 yrs working between 1978 and 1980.

Does she have an occupational or private pension income of some sort ?, or receive some other benefits ?

As for the other person;

Most of the £115 increase is almost certainly from the 50% inherited SERPS, although as its quite an increase (it couldn't all be SERPS as it would have taken him over the maximium) , I would guess that she probably didn't have 100% state pension in her own right , but had a reasonable amount of SEPS of her own.

She would then have got her pension increase to 100% + the 50% inherited SERPS + 50% inherited graduated pension, + her own additional pension and graduated pension.

kazd

She does have some savings, her husband got a lump sum on retirement plus pension, and I think basically she has never touched it and it has grown yearly with the interest, not that the interest was much because its in a bank!!

No matter what we do we cannot get her to spend any extra money, it makes her happy to know its just sitting there. I do have a certain amount of control over her money. Currently her money goes into a current account with a debit card which she does not know how to us, this is from when they stopped issuing pension books. It had already been arranged to go in to this account so I just have it forwarded on to her book account which she has used for years. I think possibly she does have too much money in savings to qualify for any benefits. Still I would not like to think that she is missing out on something that she is entitled to.

I have debated telling her that her pension has gone up and just increase the amount that is paid in. As for a private pension, she just gets £60 per month from her husbands pension.

margaretclare

kazd wrote:

She does have some savings, her husband got a lump sum on retirement plus pension, and I think basically she has never touched it and it has grown yearly with the interest, not that the interest was much because its in a bank!!

No matter what we do we cannot get her to spend any extra money, it makes her happy to know its just sitting there.

Maybe she gets a sense of security from 'knowing it's just sitting there' - see the thread above 'what will you do with your lump sum' and comments from Lilac_lady and from me.

I can relate to your grandmother's feelings to some extent - in your words, it makes me happy, knowing that I have money that I can save. However, this does not extend to being cold, leaving the thermostat set at 10C!! We are still getting chilly evenings and no way would I sit in the cold, cost or no cost. When we have to spend money we spend it! What else is it for?

Margaret Clare

exil

It appears that pensioners actually manage to save a higher proportion of their income
that non-pensioners, even when their average income is so much lower. Basically, by not spending money on things they don't need. Unfortunately some pensioners go too far and don't spend money on things they DO need, such as heating. Sometimes it's an attempt to leave a bigger legacy to relatives - nothing wrong with that, but your pension and savings are primarily to keep yourself alive, happy and healthy. Similarly, nothing wrong in claiming pension credit, council tax benefit if you've paid taxes all your life.

margaretclare

exil wrote:

It appears that pensioners actually manage to save a higher proportion of their income than non-pensioners, even when their average income is so much lower. Basically, by not spending money on things they don't need. Unfortunately some pensioners go too far and don't spend money on things they DO need, such as heating. Sometimes it's an attempt to leave a bigger legacy to relatives - nothing wrong with that, but your pension and savings are primarily to keep yourself alive, happy and healthy. Similarly, nothing wrong in claiming pension credit, council tax benefit if you've paid taxes all your life.

Hi exil

Yes, there are things we don't need to spend money on - clothes for instance. I have a wardrobe-full of the kind of clothes that don't go out of fashion and they would probably last me for the rest of my life, given that I mainly wear casual clothes most of the time.

We also don't need to travel to work 5 days a week, lunches at work, collections for colleagues leaving etc.

We're not on a low income but if we were, we have no hang-ups about claiming anything possible. I even phoned the council this morning because I was told there might be grants available to assist with the cost of replacing our 75-year old asbestos-tiled roof. Would you Adam and Eve it - if we were on means-tested benefits they could allow us up to £8000 for the cost (the quote we've had is for £4000) but because we're not on these benefits, there's nothing. Even if we were, the council would send someone round to 'assess' the roof (they wouldn't believe the roofing expert who's actually going to do the work) and would only help if the roof was actually leaking. We don't want to wait until it gets to that stage - it might start leaking in the middle of winter what with frosts and gales, and it wouldn't be very nice to have to get a roofing man in then and have it done when it was most inconvenient!

I am tired of being told by some of the fellow-wrinklies that we're lucky because we have a car, we're lucky because I go to a private dentist. As my DH says, do they think it all dropped into our lap without effort? Neither of us came from a rich family or inherited any money. We live comfortably, we eat well, we do most of the things we want to do, and we're certainly not bothered about leaving anyone else an inheritance. Let them earn it the way we did.

Margaret Clare

thyme_2

kazd,

She should contact or you on her behalf the dwp the current rate of pension credit for a 60 year old is 114.05. If she has savings and is over 65 she can see if she can get Pension savings credit which means she is rewarded for having savings. She may be entitled to Housing Benefit and Council Tax. CT is available for house owners. She could get all or any of these and I have just seen that providing her savings are under 6000.00 she can still get these. Even if she has more it may mean just a 1.00 reduction for every 500.00 in savings over this amount. You do not get unless you apply. She would be entitled to it! She may also be able to claim other help if she is disabled or needs to pay for extra care and if you are 84 years old you probably do need help! Also some rates would be higher as she is over 75. Has she claimed her winter fuel allowance - she should be on a higher amount for this too! Hope that helps

margaretclare

kazd wrote:

She does have some savings, her husband got a lump sum on retirement plus pension, and I think basically she has never touched it and it has grown yearly with the interest, not that the interest was much because its in a bank!!

Hi kazd

You say you have a certain amount of control over her money - you couldn't switch it to a bank which pays better interest, could you?

Have a look at this post: http://boards.fool.co.uk/Message.asp?mid=9930904&sort=postdate

The idea that 'you shouldn't concentrate on the capital value but use it to generate an income stream' is fairly revolutionary to some people. After all, the capital is no use if it's just sitting there, is it? It's earning a piddling rate of interest - there are places where it would do much better, and Martin has suggested some.

HTH

Margaret Clare