55 year old women lose approx £30k in State Pension

custardy

BM_Surrey wrote: »

Amazing how everyone seems very accepting to these rises in retirement age. Equality does not necessarily mean that one party should suffer - they could have reduced the retirement age for men!! Look some more flying pigs!

and how would it be funded?
people now could be living 30-40 years after retirement
many 20-30 years
with a mushrooming population it has to be paid for

if you want to retire early then it has to be paid for,so treble NI payments? or what?

look at the life expectancy here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_Expectancy_2008_Estimates_CIA_World_Factbook.svg

in 1960 a quick google shows life expectancy around 68 for men and 75 for women
so all those men paying into state werent really expected to be claiming for long

jamesd

BM Surrey, do you think you could persuade people to accept your proposal to increase in the basic rate of tax from 20% to 31%?

With that change in female retirement age the Pensions Commission estimated (First Report, page 145) that transferring 13.9% of GDP to pensioners would be needed. Without it, but still keeping men at 65 it estimated 16.1% of GDP. It didn't give a figure to lower it for men but that would probably have increased it by another 2.2%, to 18.3% of GDP. It expected that 70% of this would come from taxes so your flying pig scenario suggests increasing taxes over the long term by 3.1% of GDP.

Current UK taxes are about 37.4% of GDP so you just proposed increasing taxation by close to ten percent, to 40.5% of GDP. About 28.7% of total tax take is income tax so that's equivalent to increasing income tax by 10.8%. For simplicity I'll assume that it would only take that increase in basic rate tax to raise that much.

It's probably right to conclude that pigs will fly before the two generations after you would be willing to tolerate paying that much extra tax to fund pensions for those who have already retired.

jamesd

custardy, that's life expectancy at birth. Cohort life expectancy or someone retiring at 65 is about 22 more years of life, meaning half of people who make it to 65 are expected to live to 87.

margaretclare

real1314 wrote: »

I don't think any system could cope with waiting over 40 years for a change to take effect.
It might be argued that any element paid in up to the date the rules were changed should have been drawable on the original rules, but that approach would have seen an instant rise to 65 for the remaining portion.

i.e if you needed to pay in 40 years to get a pension, and you had paid in 20 years when the rules were changed, you'd get half your pension at 60, and the other half would have to wait until you were 65.

At the other end of the scale, some of us would have liked to go on working for longer. It wouldn't have bothered me in the least. I was doing part-time office work when I was 65, carried on working for an office agency until I was 67. I started work when I was 16. I knew there were going to be changes. Some of those changes I'd been pestering the politicians of all colours over many years. Women's independent taxation was one thing, which didn't happen until 1990. I'd been writing to politicians about that since the 1960s.

wireframe_2

McKneff wrote: »

Im beginning to think I'm glad I hit 60 last October even though i claimed my state pension on my husbands contributions (60%) I did work (and still do) but only had 20 years contributions.
and of course i dont pay any NI now.

How does that work? you claim a pension based on his contributions? What does he claim?

bigheadxx

mumps wrote: »

Not all women will be better off, I have already paid NI for over 40 years and 8 years to go, I also earn more than £13k pa. No benefits for me and 3 years 7 months extra to work.

But you have a higher life expectancy than you initially expected.

McKneff

wireframe wrote: »

How does that work? you claim a pension based on his contributions? What does he claim?

In the 'olden days' there used to be a married couple pension.
This was because most women did not work so the amount was a full pension plus 60% for the female and that is is what the couple got in state pension

I cant remember when this was scrapped.

Now everyone claims a pension in their own right but still some women do not work or have not paid enough NI so that they still can claim on 60% of their husbands contributions.

The husband still gets 100% (if of course he has paid enough NI)
The women claims 60% on top of this.
In reality, its still the same as before but separated.

Does that explain it okay.

wireframe_2

McKneff wrote: »

Does that explain it okay.

fully, thankyou

ed123_2

....life expectancy depends on the year of birth ie a baby today would expect to live past 80 however someone born say in 1950 the life expectancy would be approx 65......if David(call me Dave) Cameron gets in the retirement age will go to 87........

margaretclare

ed123 wrote: »

....life expectancy depends on the year of birth ie a baby today would expect to live past 80 however someone born say in 1950 the life expectancy would be approx 65......

I don't think this can be true. The Queen now sends out a huge number of 100-year old birthday congratulations, far more than she did at the start of her reign in 1952. Anyone reaching 100 now must have, by definition, have been born in the early years of the last century, before the First World War.

Those of us who were children at the time of the Second World War have been described as the 'golden cohort' because we were healthier than any generation before or since. Rationing ensured enough food but not too much. Sweets were severely limited - rationing again. No school buses or taxis, so walking or cycling everywhere - exercise was taken as a matter of course. Our standard of living - health-care, housing, working conditions - has been far better than any earlier generation.

I have also read that, in the case of men who've survived past their 65th birthday, escaping industrial injuries or illness, not having been killed in wars, and avoiding the diseases of middle age like heart disease (which killed my first husband before his 60th birthday), they have as good a life expectancy as a woman. That it presently, into one's middle 80s.

It really makes no sense expecting to live the last 20-30 years of one's life on an inadequate pension from age 60.