State Pension age to rise to 68!

[Anthony Williams]

A government bill outlining sweeping changes to the state pension system has been published.

Central to the bill are proposals to raise the state pension age to 68 by 2050 and to restore the link between earnings and the basic state pension.

Ministers, who say they hope to restore the link by 2012, have set out a timetable for a package of changes.

The package will also cut the number of years it takes to build a full basic pension for men and women to 30.

Pensions Secretary John Hutton set out the government's proposals - already revealed earlier this month in the Queen's Speech - at a press conference in London.

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6194332.stm

is this a bad thing? or, in this day, where people are living longer, is it the right thing to do? what's the opinion of the people on Planet Skaro?

Ant x

[Si Hunt]

Anyone of my age group of younger who relies on the state pension is kidding themselves if they think there'll be any money left in the pot anyway!

You're better off getting your own pension plan, then you can retire whenever you have enough in there!

That said, it doesn't bother me anyway. An extra couple of years is such a small amount at the end of the 30 odd years I have to go anyway, it's a drop in the ocean. And I'd be very dissapointed not to have made my fortune through savings and property by then anyway.

Si.

[Paul Monk]

I get confused. Either we're all living longer, or we're all obese and unfit and our children are all going to die before we do.

Make up your mind government!
I think given silly mortgages and peoples debts that the era of our parents comfortable retirements is a thing of the past. Most people probably won't be able to give up work.

[Si Hunt]

I'd be dissapointed if I ever gave up work completely - I'd like to have saved enough in my retirement pot to be able to get a nice part-time job, selling whelks or as a pavement mime artist.

So should I opt out of SERPS then?

Si.

[Trudi G]

I get confused. Either we're all living longer, or we're all obese and unfit and our children are all going to die before we do.

Make up your mind government!

That was just what i was thinking! I'm 40, i haven't ever had a job that paid enough to enable me to put money into a private pension, and i've spent the last 3 years as a single mum, and i haven't worked in that time.
I will be relying on the state pension as i have no other alternative, but the government has said that my generation will be the first to outlive our children due to obesity, so maybe they're all hoping that generation will be dead before they get to claim their pension.

[Paul Monk]

Its a typical example of government departments not communicating about stuff and doing their own things.
Health Dept telling us one thing. Pensions another.

Luckily I am still in a final salary pension which at the moment is still going healthily so I should be ok.

[Anthony Williams]

and to think that a month or so back, we were being told that my generation would be lucky to get a state pension at all!

tbh, by the time I get to the age where I'm eligible for a state pension, I'm hoping I'll have been already retired for 13 years, with a healthy private pension!

well, I can dream, can't I?

Ant x

[MacNimon]

Luckily I am still in a final salary pension which at the moment is still going healthily so I should be ok.

Same here, but 20-odd years is a long time away and a lot can happen in that time. But if I stay with the same employer (I started when I was 22, joined the pension scheme at 24) I'll have a full 40 years pension payments before I reach 65, so I'll hopefully then have the option of retiring on my company pension alone, if that's what I want. Assuming the company pension scheme is still in decent shape by that time.

[Perry Vale]

I think the government should employ a 'Pensions Czar', pay him an extortionate amount of money to come up with no solution, then retire him on 33% pension of his final salary......

[Si Hunt]

My pension situation is quite confusing. When I was at my old place, they didn't do a company pension so I got a personal pension plan and began paying into that. Then the firm got a pension plan, but I was quite happy with the personal one I had so I allowed them to pay contributions from the company into the work one, while I continued to pay into my personal one from my wages.

When I joined the new firm, I found out that I had to use their pension scheme and I had to pay into it, so I stopped my personal one, transferred the balance of my old work one into the new work one, and began paying into it.

However, apparently the old work one still exists because SERPS contributions go into it (or something). So I have the old work one, the new work one and the personal one which just sits there with nothing going into it.

Si.

[Lissa]

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (the Inland Revenue in a previous life) will advise when they think it is best to opt back into S2P (SERPS) if you ask them.

The problems with the state pension are (a) that it isn't means tested (which it will have to become so that those who need it will get it and those who don't won't) and (b) there is no investment time for the money. What I pay in today gets paid out today to a current claimant. So the pot never gets a chance to grow and needs the paying generation to match the receiving generation at all times.

The problem with private pensions are that there are so many of them that you need advice as to which is the best and that advice is often not given in your own interest (but rather the interests of your adviser). Private pension funds are also subject to government raids if they perform well - Private Eye worked out that Gordon Brown's bombshell of a few years ago that pension funds were XX billion short was almost exactly equal to the amount he had taken from them in a windfall tax a few years earlier. Not his finest hour.

Announcing that the state pension age will rise by 2050 is a meaningless pronouncement but if it makes people think about providing for their futures then all the better. Except that pensions are dreadfully boring and no one listens anyway.

[Captain Tancredi]

My pension from my last job (5 years non-contributory) kicks in when I turn 62.

My pension from this job (contributory) kicks in at 65 but I can take it at 60 if I want to. Most people in the bank who retire at 60 then come back as agency staff to do the same job they were doing before and get their bank pension at the same time.

However, my issues with this are as follows:

- I started paying NI contributions "properly" (i.e. from employment) at age 24 on the basis that I was going to get a state pension at 65. Ten years in the rules have been changed. How is that right?

-Basically this strikes me as another act of selfishness by the baby boomer generation. In this country, the generation born between 1945 and 1960 were the first to have the benefit of the NHS, the welfare state, utilities and nationalised industries run for the benefit of society rather than for the few, free university education and so on. As soon as they were old enough to vote, they elected the first Thatcher government which set about dismantling the lot so they could have British Gas shares and tax breaks, leaving the following generations both dependent on them for handouts and having to work twice as hard to support their parents and themselves. My one crumb of comfort is that when my generation is truly in power, we'll be able to change things again so we aren't subsidising the existence of the very people who took everything away from us.

[Larry]

I'm fortunant that being a civil servant in the Revenue & Customs, I get a non contributry pension which when you consider the pittance I'll get from the state pension will be a god send when i;m old. All though I'm only 35 personaly for me raising the pension age won't effect me as because I'm all ready in poor health I know I'll of retired on health grounds long before i'm 68.

We all know people are living longer and I feel raising the pension/retirement age to 68 is the first step to eventualy seeing it raised to 70 and of course this will all tie in with the new age discrimination laws.

But the cynical part of me thinks that by raising the age limit there will be a few more thousand peole who will of died before reaching 68 meaning less people to have to pay a pension to.