State Pension help! Please

margaretclare

krisskross wrote: »

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.

This is what I mean about a con trick being perpetrated on the female part of the population, those who decide to be married and to work as well. This con trick was set up following the Beveridge Report of 1942, although there was a critique by two feminist writers, Abbott and Bompas, 1943, but Beveridge's proposals were enshrined in the Welfare State which started in 1948. This con trick lasted for 30 years and even when the possibility of the 'small stamp' was abolished for women marrying after April 1978, its effects still rumble on to the present day.

Getting divorced will not solve your problem, krisskross, you'll get 100% state pension, but it will still be on your husband's contributions. As DH's ex is doing to this day, and they split 10 years ago.

Margaret

krisskross

margaretclare wrote: »

Getting divorced will not solve your problem, krisskross, you'll get 100% state pension, but it will still be on your husband's contributions. As DH's ex is doing to this day, and they split 10 years ago.

Margaret

LOL. Getting divorced will mean another £35 a week in the pot....we would still live together, nothing would change other than the bank balance. there can't be many of us dinosaurs left, it probably wouldn't cost an awful lot to treat us more fairly.

EdInvestor

krisskross wrote: »

there can't be many of us dinosaurs left, it probably wouldn't cost an awful lot to treat us more fairly.

Not sure about that: at present only 35% of retired women are entitled to the full basic state pension ( though that may include some women who get almost the full amount.)

This was due to rise by 2010 to something like 50%.

Under the new 30 year rules coming in then (which will also deal with other unfairnesses such as the "incomplete year" issue Chesky mentions) the figure will rise to 70%.

I wonder how much difference it would make if women were given a 50% credit for years when they paid the small stamp?

Krisskross, how would that affect you?

krisskross

I think it would need to be more than 50% for me. I worked from age 16 to 59,but was married at 17. I had about 4 years off because we have 4 children. It is not possible to claim HRP if you only paid the small stamp, which of course can make a big difference to the amount of contributory years needed. i would have abour 20 years if it was 50%, not sure how that would pan out as opposed to the 60% of basic pension I get now.

EdInvestor

If they counted in the HRP as qualifying years, it would mean you'd get about what you get now.Which suggests to me the calculation is about right.

Not what you want to hear, I know.

Did nobody ever tell you about SERPS/S2P, which came in in 1978?
That's where you've really lost out.

margaretclare

EdInvestor wrote: »

Did nobody ever tell you about SERPS/S2P, which came in in 1978?
That's where you've really lost out.

Would she have qualified for SERPS/S2P if she paid the 'small stamp'?

I can't believe that someone was advised to pay an inadequate contribution when she worked for a total of 43 years. Did no one give you better advice/information in all those years? I realise you didn't think of it at 17, but did the idea of changing to full contributions never occur to you?

I suppose you didn't realise that you'd have a full working life totalling 43 years. That was part of the con trick - women's jobs were belittled, sneered at as 'pin money' and only the male breadwinner's efforts counted. I've met women who thought they'd only be at work for a short while and they ended up working for decades. I even met a woman at the CAB, one of the Benefits Advisers who had every opportunity to know better - she'd worked in the then DSS for 25 years, a supposed 'temporary' job! and then she went on to work for CAB as one of the salaried staff. She really was in a position to know better, but she didn't.

I also met a woman who had chosen to pay the reduced contribution because, she said, her mother had paid full stamps all her working life and then died in her early 60s - she hadn't lived to enjoy it. She said that had convinced her that it wasn't worth doing - 'her mother could have had the money in her hand all those years...' I could have said the same, my mother retired at 60 on full SRP and died aged 63. Why didn't it convince me that it was a 'waste of money, could have had the money in my hand?' Well, it didn't, that's all.

Margaret

krisskross

I was 'contracted out' of something as I was paying into an occupational pension, would this be Serps? I was telephoned by someone in the then DSSS in the late 1980s to ask if i wanted to change to full stamp but when I asked about pension she was adamant that i couldn't improve my pension entitlement beyond the 60% that I would get anyway. So there seemed very little point in giving the exchequer even more money.

I am not unhappy about it, we have plenty of money to live on, in fact we save £250 a month but do feel it was a bit of a con trick, as I paid an awful lot of NI even on the small stamp as I was earning £36,000 a year when I retired.

EdInvestor

I'd be very surprised indeed if this were so.Paying the small stamp makes you ineligible for even the basic, much less the state second pension.It seems very unlikely you could have been contracted out of something you weren't eligible for in the first place.

krisskross

EdInvestor wrote: »

I'd be very surprised indeed if this were so.Paying the small stamp makes you ineligible for even the basic, much less the state second pension.It seems very unlikely you could have been contracted out of something you weren't eligible for in the first place.

Thank you, I obviously had forgotten what was said. It was 2 decades ago and boy do I feel old when I think of that!

Happily no other women can fall into the same self inflicted trap now.

margaretclare

krisskross wrote: »

Happily, no other women can fall into the same self inflicted trap now.

Yes, very happily. It's nearly 30 years since that trap ended, and any woman who married after April 1978 didn't have that 'choice'.

The climate of opinion, the zeitgeist, was changing throughout the 1970s, maybe partly as a result of those of us who were in the Women's Movement in those years? One battle I was involved in was getting Child Benefit paid directly to the mother. Another was women's independent taxation.

It's a thousand pities that the wise words of Abbott and Bompas, 1943, were ignored, but that's what happens when you're ahead of the times.

Margaret