Retirement

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ah, I didn't know that.
Thanks for the clarification.

[ahinton]

I hope the government won’t raise the pension age again.

There's now talk of raising it to 75 gradually but whether that will actually happen I have no idea. It would not, however, surprise me if it's eventually phased out altogether, not least on the grounds that, with ever fewer people actually retiring (either though choice or necessity), it will come to be regarded as a misnomer at best and an irrelevance at worst.

[ahinton]

Slightly annoying that they make you pay to park at Oxford Park and Ride. Bath P & R has free parking.

I have a bus pass but hardly ever use it because the nearest bus is some 3km distant; I only ever take advantage of it when visiting Bath and using its P&R.

[gurnemanz]

So much for U.K. unionism. eh? I remember being taken aback when, back in the 1980s, my British Rail Privilege Card did not cover Northern Ireland. I took it as a pretty clear indication f the colonial regard in which the Six Counties were held. The 11 pm curfew on national bus pass holders (except for travel on TfL controled buses) also irks.

A few years ago I tried to use my bus pass in Belfast, feigning innocence since I was pretty sure it wasn't valid there. The driver was very friendly and said he would double check, whereupon he grabbed his mobile phone and came back with the reply I had expected.

In 2009 I was lucky to scrape in among the last to get a bus pass at 60. The next year the women's pension age , which is the deciding factor, was raised. My wife is 3 years younger than me and didn't get hers till 5 years after I got mine. It did affect my travel behaviour, since I hardly used the bus before I had a pass. I used my bike more and we decided we didn't need two cars. So a positive outcome environmentally and health wise ... and of course financially.

[gurnemanz]

I have a bus pass but hardly ever use it because the nearest bus is some 3km distant; I only ever take advantage of it when visiting Bath and using its P&R.

We're lucky enough to have a bus stop about 50 metres away - visible from kitchen window. This obviously makes a difference.

[Serial_Apologist]

I have a bus pass but hardly ever use it because the nearest bus is some 3km distant; I only ever take advantage of it when visiting Bath and using its P&R.

Do you travel anywhere, apart from Bath? If so, how do you get there? By car?

[Serial_Apologist]

May I suggest one of the many fine recordings of Michel Legrand's 'What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?'

Ever since retiring, and therefore not making any more money for my employer, my song has been "Spread a Little Happiness".

[cloughie]

Ever since retiring, and therefore not making any more money for my employer, my song has been "Spread a Little Happiness".

I just enjoy singing ‘Cornwall my Home’.

[teamsaint]

There's now talk of raising it to 75 gradually but whether that will actually happen I have no idea. It would not, however, surprise me if it's eventually phased out altogether, not least on the grounds that, with ever fewer people actually retiring (either though choice or necessity), it will come to be regarded as a misnomer at best and an irrelevance at worst.

Well the more people buy in to the attitude that it is an irrelevance the more likely it is that this will be the outcome.

The retirement pension is absolutely vital for many people, including especially the self employed.

If attempts are made to raise it beyond the already too high 68, one might hope that todays recipients will be in the vanguard of very noisy protest.

I’m unlikely to be able to fully retire before 67, not through profligacy but because our priorities have been educating our children , not privately I might add. By that time I would have paid 45 years full NI contributions, with little if anything to show for the 10 years of contributions above the required 35 years. If the pension age gets raised further, then I , like many others will have to try to deal with it as best we can. But it will be a real injustice, to add to the already inflicted injustice of the rise to 67/68, one that is very easy to see in generational terms.

[ahinton]

Do you travel anywhere, apart from Bath? If so, how do you get there? By car?

The answer to both of your questions is yes.

[Richard Barrett]

Well the more people buy in to the attitude that it is an irrelevance the more likely it is that this will be the outcome.

The retirement pension is absolutely vital for many people, including especially the self employed.

This is David Graeber's "bullshit jobs"* phenomenon in another guise. Raising the retirement age means that people will have to work for longer, when automation and AI in the next few decades will make an increasing proportion of jobs unnecessary. The result should be that people ought to have a massively increased amount of leisure time, but the result will be that people are forced either into penury because the jobs aren't there, or into doing jobs that don't really need doing at all, while the "1%" enrich themselves further. Raising the retirement age is class war, nothing more or less.

* "In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century's end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There's every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn't happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless."

[ahinton]

Well the more people buy in to the attitude that it is an irrelevance the more likely it is that this will be the outcome.

I am not suggesting that it is one - merely that an unscrupulous government might consider itself entitle to justify such a stance on its part on the grounds that retirement itself is just so last century. There are already many people drawing state retirement benefit and private pensions who continue to work because they cannot afford not to do so.

That said, let's not kid ourselves that the tax quaintly known as "National Insurance" has anything to do with state retirement benefit entitlement other than as an arbitrary qualifier; none of those tax payments goes into a pension pot to be vested when the taxpayer attains state retirement age, hence it being a benefit rather than a "pension" (even though administered by the Department of Work and Pensions).

[Bryn]

Well the more people buy in to the attitude that it is an irrelevance the more likely it is that this will be the outcome.

The retirement pension is absolutely vital for many people, including especially the self employed.

If attempts are made to raise it beyond the already too high 68, one might hope that todays recipients will be in the vanguard of very noisy protest.

I’m unlikely to be able to fully retire before 67, not through profligacy but because our priorities have been educating our children , not privately I might add. By that time I would have paid 45 years full NI contributions, with little if anything to show for the 10 years of contributions above the required 35 years. If the pension age gets raised further, then I , like many others will have to try to deal with it as best we can. But it will be a real injustice, to add to the already inflicted injustice of the rise to 67/68, one that is very easy to see in generational terms.

teamsaint, have you ever served in either the Civil Service or the Arned Forces? If so, you might not need the full 45 years to qualify. I served less than a year in the Army (getting a free honourable discharge before having to do anything other than basic and continuation training plus Outward Bound (the latter, great fun) and a couple of years in the Scientific Civil Service. Losing the non-contributory pension seems to automatically qualify one for a full State Pension at State Retirement age.

[teamsaint]

I am not suggesting that it is one - merely that an unscrupulous government might consider itself entitle to justify such a stance on its part on the grounds that retirement itself is just so last century. There are already many people drawing state retirement benefit and private pensions who continue to work because they cannot afford not to do so.

That said, let's not kid ourselves that the tax quaintly known as "National Insurance" has anything to do with state retirement benefit entitlement other than as an arbitrary qualifier; none of those tax payments goes into a pension pot to be vested when the taxpayer attains state retirement age, hence it being a benefit rather than a "pension" (even though administered by the Department of Work and Pensions).

“Arbitrary qualifier “ or not, it still takes 10% of my salary over about £150 pw , and is also effectively a levy on work, one that helps to subsidise the wealthiest and earliest retiring generation(s) of pensioners we have ever had, and which according to some calculations has better incomes than equivalent cohorts that are still in work.

[teamsaint]

teamsaint, have you ever served in either the Civil Service or the Arned Forces? If so, you might not need the full 45 years to qualify. I served less than a year in the Army (getting a free honourable discharge before having to do anything other than basic and continuation training plus Outward Bound (the latter, great fun) and a couple of years in the Scientific Civil Service. Losing the non-contributory pension seems to automatically qualify one for a full State Pension at State Retirement age.

Thanks Bryn.I’ll qualify at the age limit ( whatever that turns out to be) anyway. Currently I have about 33 full years, and about 3 where I had a civil service contracted - out pension, which leads to a Cope deduction of about £15 Pw. But I’ll easily make that up over the next few years anyway.