The Labour Government

[stonerblue]

That makes no sense, if you're not claiming for what you're entitled to but kicking off that you will lose your warm home allowance then you're a fool.

Yep

 

[stonerblue]

Who is your current supplier? Can swap to edf or octopus and get £50 credit, also 2 bank swaps worth £175 each at the moment one ends tonight takes 5 minutes to fill out. If you and your Mrs do that it should cover the loss of the wfp.

There will always be people on the threshold unfortunately, just have to hope in October they revise it and go off council tax band instead, which would surely be easier to implement.

Labour have also said they will be putting a proper windfall tax on energy suppliers

 

[stonerblue]

My Mother in law and her late husband worked their arses off and right now she’s paying out over £2k a month for a flat and care in a sheltered complex when more than half of the other residents get it for fuck all because they sat on their arses doing the bare minimum and now the state are paying their bills…

It’s fucking scandalous.. she never claimed a thing now she has all the financial worries

Some good points but as always it won’t be as black and white as that.

Many people of pensionable age won’t have paid into a private pension scheme or had access to a company pension at their place of work so will only be getting the state pension.

Awareness of pensions - along with choice and accessibility - is a lot greater these days of course and while the workplace pension isn’t great as you quite rightly point out, someone paying into it from an early age - say 21 - could end up with a tidy sum come retirement age. We’ve got someone aged 17 who has just started at our place and I’ve advised him to start paying into a workplace pension as soon as he’s eligible to do so. I wish that option had been available to me when I started my first job 35 years ago but it wasn’t. On the flip side though, who knows if there will even be such a thing as a state pension in 30 or 40 years time? My suspicion is that that is why the workplace pension was introduced in the first place. Either that or the state pension age will be something stupid like 75.

Fuck that.
I'm sure all those that were told a workplace pension would see them set for life are more than a bit pissed off when it turns out they're not.
Tell the kid to do 12 months, save as much as possible then jack it in and explore the world..

 

[stonerblue]

I don’t want to get into arguments about this but please can the youngsters remember that things were very different when we old oldies started out. I was born before the NHS started for example and when I first started work at 15 pensions were the last thing on my mind.
Renting or council accommodation was our choice (only choice in most cases) and some firms still didn’t keep women on after marriage (some not all). When you had children lots of us gave up work to bring them up. There weren’t as many Nursery schools as today at all.
Eventually, when the children started school some women got part time jobs, again without pension facilities, although times were starting to change.
I’m not going into more detail but some, myself included, managed to get enough money to get a deposit for a house and mortgage.
In my early 30s with 4 children I managed to train to be a teacher and paid 6% of my salary into a pension.
I could write a lot more but just want people to think before they judge us old oldies. As I said in an earlier post I manage and I’m not pleading either poverty or wealth. I manage because my only real expense is a certain football team. :-)
We don’t want pity, we don’t want sympathy we would, well I would, just ask the remembrance that times have changed.
Nobody really supports me except me. By that I mean I am not asking for anything from the Government except fairness.
Thank you for reading this ‘essay’ and I apologise for having to say it but I really dislike it when Blue judges Blue as if everyone is in the same boat with the same problems.

Sorry. :-) :-)

Your story is very very similar to my Ma's. She had 5 kids, council house, lots of part time jobs and nightschool before getting her first teaching job and then buying her first house. I remember her fighting with the bank because they didn't want to give a mortgage to a woman.
After years of moving around the country she ended up in a nice little bungalow. Self sufficient til the end.
Massive respect to you Eccles )

 

[Eccles Blue]

Sorry, but I suspect your rent wasn't half what you earned. And married women could give up work to raise a family because one average wage was enough to get a mortgage on a house that didn't cost ten times annual salary.

And if you have a teacher's pension, and state pension (at 65), and no housing costs, and £10 to travel anywhere in Greater Manchester , how would you not manage?

I said I wasn’t going to argue and I won’t. Suffice it to say you are wrong. :-)

 

[Eccles Blue]

Your story is very very similar to my Ma's. She had 5 kids, council house, lots of part time jobs and nightschool before getting her first teaching job and then buying her first house. I remember her fighting with the bank because they didn't want to give a mortgage to a woman.
After years of moving around the country she ended up in a nice little bungalow. Self sufficient til the end.
Massive respect to you Eccles )

Thank you. I also fought with a bank, changed to another one and had the best Bank Manager ever there. So much so that whenever he got promoted I changed branches! *lol*
I remember when I went for the interview at Teacher Training College the interviewer asking me what my husband would do if I was earning more than him!

The things women weren’t allowed to do or sign is a whole other story isn’t it? :-)

Well done to your Mum @stonerblue. :-)

 

[I'm With Stupid]

I said I wasn’t going to argue and I won’t. Suffice it to say you are wrong. :-)

People love to look for someone to blame and so we end up in this BS old vs young debate, when in reality, ordinary working people have been screwed pretty consistently throughout history. Houses were cheaper back then. What about food? Or clothing? I could only find figures for America, but I assume the UK is the same, but in 1947, people had to spend 23% of their income to feed their family. Last year, that was 7%. Clothes accounted for over 10% of annual spending in the 60s, but that was down to around 4% last year.

"It was easy for you with your £4 a month mortgage" and "I managed it, just stop buying takeaway coffees" are equally unhelpful comments. "Look at these rich bastards taking all the money for themselves while all of our costs go up" is a far more useful comment.

 

[metalblue]

Sorry, but I suspect your rent wasn't half what you earned. And married women could give up work to raise a family because one average wage was enough to get a mortgage on a house that didn't cost ten times annual salary.

And if you have a teacher's pension, and state pension (at 65), and no housing costs, and £10 to travel anywhere in Greater Manchester , how would you not manage?

You know @Eccles Blue life better than her? Behave yourself.

 

[Kompany Car]

Sorry, but I suspect your rent wasn't half what you earned. And married women could give up work to raise a family because one average wage was enough to get a mortgage on a house that didn't cost ten times annual salary.

And if you have a teacher's pension, and state pension (at 65), and no housing costs, and £10 to travel anywhere in Greater Manchester , how would you not manage?

It does feel like you are blaming her for societal change which was one of the things that made housing and rents unaffordable for people on a single wage. The major downside of more women entering the workplace was that of more disposable income for couples and in particular in the 80s/90s the rise of the so called professional couples known as DINKs (Double Income No Kids). This coupled with banks giving away pretty much free money to those with capital, the selling of council housing stock and the move to private rental without any reasonable controls, screwed the system.

As for pensions it depends when she retired, if it wasn't relatively recently it wont be on the new state pension but on the old one which is significantly less generous (yes I know its not generous at all by comparison to most EU countries).

 

[M18CTID]

Fuck that.
I'm sure all those that were told a workplace pension would see them set for life are more than a bit pissed off when it turns out they're not.
Tell the kid to do 12 months, save as much as possible then jack it in and explore the world..

I’m talking about the workplace pension scheme that was brought in around 2016 mate. Starts off at 1% employee, 1% employer in the first year, then 3%/2% in the second year, and 5%/3% for each year after that. It came in way too late for me to end up with a nice retirement pot from it as I was 46 at the time but mine is still worth nearly £20k already. Someone saving into one of those from the age of 18 or 21 ought to see it grow considerably over the next 35-40 years. And 5% deducted from your wages at source isn’t really going to be missed. He could do that and still save enough to take a few weeks off and travel the world. Especially as the lucky fucker isn’t even paying any keep to his parents yet!