About working once retired.

Living_proof

A thought occurred to me last night, thinking about Candy and this thread. In her opening message she seemed to imply that all would have been well had the state retirement age for a woman still been 60 (and how many of us know all about that!). i.e. that both spouses would have taken pension around the same time.

I don't see what difference overall that would have made if hubbie is to receive pension credit, housing benefit, etc. as surely these would have been reduced to take account of the additional income due to the wife? I imagine they would have more or less the same to manage on as they will in the current scenario.

Or am I missing something?

Ilona

Thank you both. I think between us all, those 50 +, we have a lot of experience and knowledge to pass on. Sometimes it's a difficult job to get through to people. For those nay sayers, WE ONLY WANT TO HELP. We may be seen as old fashioned, what do we know, old pensioners past their prime, but Hey, we have lived our lives and come out the other side in a good place. I for one will continue my brilliant life on a pension for as long as I can.

Lots of love xxx

dorothy52

I thought the same, LP, but not knowing enough about it decided not to comment. As others have said, renting and on low income, the state provide ample to live on assuming that you manage the money well and live within your means. The fact that we all met on this site suggests that we want to be able to do just that. We have all learned and many generous posters share their knowledge. In RL once I guided a friend who was in debt. She learned the skills and with dedication and tenacity changed the way she lived and spent. Years later she told me that she felt rich. Nothing had changed in terms of income but she was debt free with savings for the first time in her life. At the time she asked me to help her get a consolidation loan".........she would still have been paying it off. Such is the power of this community

badmemory

I wonder how much of this feeling of being on the breadline comes from a sense of insecurity from renting. I've been in the fortunate position of always having owned (along with various mortgage cos) & I know that I would hate to think that someone could decide to sell the house from under me.

I think some of my feeling on that comes from what used to be called my "maiden aunt". For years she paid my grandparents mortgage when they were unable to work. But when the time came for her to get a mortgage in her own right she had to have a guarantor. So she rented for a while & hated it. To her embarassment & my father's she had to ask him to guarantee it for her. My father's embarassment partly caused by him earning less than she did & having a family to keep too.

When I came to get my first mortgage my father came along too, just to save time with the paperwork. I was lucky, they had just stopped requiring women to have a guarantor. Another advantage we had then was that things lasted a bit longer so everything I had was a hand me down. The family joke is that I STILL have never bought a settee.

lessonlearned

At least with council houses you had security of tenure. I do feel sorry for those in privately rented accommodation. They can be turfed out for no reason, and getting a new lease can be very expensive, around the £2 to £3k mark.

It must be awful when you have children, never knowing if they will be able to stay at the same school, always fearful you might have to uproot the family and move to another area and start all over again.

A very insecure way to live....

Those living in Housing Association properties enjoy security of tenure but there just aren't enough of them.

lessonlearned

Yes, woman used to have to have guarantors for mortgages, car finance, anything on HP.

The good old days, eh. :rotfl:

iris

Yet another brilliant post Ilona.

moneyistooshorttomention

I don't know whether people in public sector housing do enjoy security of tenure any longer. I know I had it whilst I lived in some. But, since those days, I think at least some public sector tenancies are given out on a temporary basis (ie only a few years - rather than indefinite as before).

I've got an idea from somewhere that more recent Council house tenancies, for instance, might only be for 5 years. Obviously "half a loaf is better than none" and that's better than the private sector - but I'd feel pretty uneasy at wondering if I was going to be able to stay put as long as I decided I would or no.

I'm just glad I've never had it that bad - back when I was in grotty bedsits in my 20s - we had pretty darn secure tenancies then. Then my public sector housing was totally secure (in the event they sold it on themselves - but they'd have had to rehouse me if I'd decided not to buy what I had).

It brought another level of security again when I could think "Whew - that's the mortgage paid off now. Now I've got an absolute cast-iron guarantee written in blood that I'm 'safe as houses' bar the Council getting up to the compulsory purchase malarkey and grabbing some of my house equity in the process".

I guess the fact that even the very once-in-a-blue-moon chance of a rapacious Council trying for compulsory purchase has now totally gone now I'm living over in what I can safely describe as "back of beyond" (as one of the locals did so themselves the other day....). Some things the Council do get up to here have to be seen to be believed!!! (and I doubt I would have believed it prior to moving).....but at least, in this sort of area, that will be one thing that my current Council isn't ever going to get up to.

Savvy_Sue

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I don't know whether people in public sector housing do enjoy security of tenure any longer. I know I had it whilst I lived in some. But, since those days, I think at least some public sector tenancies are given out on a temporary basis (ie only a few years - rather than indefinite as before).

I've got an idea from somewhere that more recent Council house tenancies, for instance, might only be for 5 years. Obviously "half a loaf is better than none" and that's better than the private sector - but I'd feel pretty uneasy at wondering if I was going to be able to stay put as long as I decided I would or no.

I was intrigued by this, because I don't think things were like that when I worked in social housing, and what I found was that yes, councils may now use 'starter tenancies', and then offer secure or flexible tenancies thereafter. Secure is for the rest of your life, flexible is renewable and if they decline to renew they must give their reasons and give you a chance to appeal. Link here.

Housing associations are similar, link here, but it looks as if renewal isn't as much of a given.

I don't know if over- or under-occupation would be valid reasons for not renewing a tenancy with a social landlord. I know housing large families was always extremely difficult, because even if the family was prepared to move into a property which was technically too small, we couldn't do it. We'd have to leave them in a very over-occupied property rather than move them to one which was less over-occupied. And there were of course very few properties which were large enough.

Going back to whether Candy's of an age to have been taught dress-making and cookery, she probably is, but some schools were better at it than others, IMO. My school was VERY hot on dressmaking - it was compulsory for the first three years, but then we were required to produce two garments a year in our own time for the rest of our school days! My siblings did not learn as much as I did. I prefer, however, to haunt the charity shops. You need space and time for dressmaking ...

On the other hand I remember next to nothing of any cookery lessons there: rock cakes and leek and potato soup is all that springs to mind. What I learned came mostly from my mum.

But this is not very much use if the OP is not well enough to cook - which she may not be.

moneyistooshorttomention

Well - I wouldnt blame Candy if she didnt want/had never wanted to do dressmaking. Some of us just don't have any specifically "female" interests and/or are useless at them.

Cooking is one thing - and men do that too and one has to eat.

Gardening - men do it too.

But dressmaking - and other more traditionally "female" type stuff along those lines just isn't for some of us - never has been/never will be.