State Pension help! Please

getting-sorted-sarah

Gosh, didn't mean to start a row. I worked for the DWP and in training it was acknowledged that many women had no idea what effect the small stamp would have on their pension. If the DWP can say that it is a bit of a mess (to their staff, at least) then I think it must be.
Things were very different then.
Perhaps the solution would be to allow affected women to make up their contributions - as this is what (in my experience of being shouted at by disgruntled new female pensioners whilst I was with the DWP) really galls most.

getting-sorted-sarah

I think, from quite dodgy memory, the small stamp was half the full one - I think if you pay half you should get half? If you get nothing you should pay nothing.... (although I know, NI conts are not just for State Pension....)

djohn2002uk

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Just out of interest, how much difference was it financially to pay the 'small' stamp? I really can't remember.

I think in the early to middle 60s the 2 rates were £1-5s and £3 -10s or thereabouts. The difference being approx a weeks rent, so you can see how tempting it was with a couple of toddlers and just one wage coming in.
getting-sorted-sarah really sums it all up, the DWP (and they haven't been in existence for many moons) have known for years that due to the scant info that was available at that time that it wasn't totally the fault of those concerned but the fault of the government. And they've failed to put it right.

krisskross

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Yes Edinvestor, I agree that, at least with the people I knew, that was the choice they made.

So I don't actually see why they should get a full pension now, if they knowingly made that choice then.

A lot of us made that choice. Until the DWP phoned me in the 1980s i had no idea what a huge error of judgement I had made and at that time I was told with only 20 years to go to retirement that I could not improve my state pension beyond the 60% I would get on my husbands contribution. I don't think there was HRP then, not that it would have made a great deal of difference to me as our last child was born in 1970.

I do however think everyone is thinking that those of us on the 'small stamp' paid a few pennies only. I can assure you it was well over £100 a month that I was paying for many years. The injustice comes with the fact that if a woman today has a few children and then claims IB or JSA for another few years she won't have contributed anything like as much as I have paid in for my £52 a week yet she will get a full pension.

EdInvestor

The married women's stamp issue doesn't seem unfair to me.

It's not as though these ladies don't get anything at all: they get a pension in their own name based on 60% of the husband's basic (and nearly 90% of men get the full basic).

If they're divorced or widowed they get 100% of their husband's basic.They also get any SERPS they have earned.

Isn't this a reasonable deal for paying half or less of the NI contribution rate?

vix2000

how does claiming on your ex's contributions work?

krisskross

EdInvestor wrote: »

The married women's stamp issue doesn't seem unfair to me.

It's not as though these ladies don't get anything at all: they get a pension in their own name based on 60% of the husband's basic (and nearly 90% of men get the full basic).

If they're divorced or widowed they get 100% of their husband's basic.They also get any SERPS they have earned.

Isn't this a reasonable deal for paying half or less of the NI contribution rate?

I personally don't really care as we have plenty to live on. However I do think we were 'missold' the principle. Plus as others have pointed out it was a totally different age, in fact as a working mother in the early '60s i was the odd one out.

Personally as a couple we have occupational and private pensions worth 12K a year. Plus serps of almost 3k and both our pensions. This however has been accrued by darned hard work for many decades. I know people who have full state pensions plus pension credit who have NEVER worked and I bet there are a lot more like them to come. At least 'small stamp' women worked and paid something in.

seven-day-weekend

To recap then, it appears that many people genuinely didn't know the choice they were making, or were not even given a choice.

It does seem unfair that, if they did not know or were not given a choice, that they cannot make it up now. I think that should be allowed. Or to be alble to claim 100% from their husband's pensions instead of 60%, like divorcees can.

As for people who have never worked getting full pension, they would only get this if they have been signing on or receiving sickness benefits all their life afaik. Otherwise it is Pension Credit, isn't it? And this is a means-tested benefit whereas SRP is not.

Unless of course they are divorced or widowed in which case they can claim the full 100% from their husband's pensions.

I'm sorry if I seemed hard, it just appeared that with a lot of women my age, that they wanted the money at the time, but still want the pension now and it's just sour grapes. If that is not the case then I apologise.

chesky369

I do remember when I got my first pension forecast, probably way back in the late 80s, that I was surprised that I was not allowed to make up the missing years' contributions when I asked if I could do this. Things seem to have changed for the better since then. I also remember digging out an NI contributions stamp card still in my possession from the 60s which had not been taken into account and sending it off to the pension service and being told that, because it was a couple of weeks short of a year, it would not make any difference. I remember I was rather pee'd off about that.

krisskross

I have no feelings of 'sour grapes' about the whole issue, but certainly feel that having worked for almost 40 years whilst bringing up 4 children. Never claiming sickness or unemployment benefit, that my eventual reward of £52 a week is somewhat paltry. Merely because I was rather naive and not thinking much about a pension when I was 18. Plus it is somewhat 'feudal' to be in the position of having to claim on my lord and master's contributions.

I have decided that the answer is to get divorced. We celebrated our 46th wedding anniversary yesterday so perhaps I'll tell him today.