UK Pensions Crisis

It isn't a sweet deal if your wages are below the national average. Yeah we may be able to retire earlier, but we get paid fuck all in the mean time.

All I know is, this Turner Report (not Prize, as I keep getting confused) is preventing my mate who works at the FT from coming out to the movies with me, so it's got to be bad news.

The public sector is being lined up as an easy target here, there have already been numerous articles/editorials painting a picture of Sir Humphrey types in Whitehall walking out at 57 with £300k lump sums and £100k a year pensions. None of these articles point out that many civil servants needed a pay rise from the government when they introduced a minimum wage.

For years many of the technical staff in several departments have been fighting to *stay* at work as they were being turfed out at 60, five years from a state pension, with an inadequate works pension and a mortgage to pay. Ever tried getting a decent job at 60?

-- not-goodwin (godwin...), December 1st, 2005.

i've actually worked in the state sector (still half there) but this is a total side-issue isn't it? even if true, which i'm unsure about.

No, I'm being honest, I don't think that anyone in my family has ever willingly retired. My gran had to be told, at the age of 75 or something, STOP COMING TO WORK!!! At which point she signed up to do another degree at the university where she taught, because she couldn't stand being away from it.

I don't think I've ever had it in my mind that some day I'll just stop working and travel the world or something. It's a bizarre concept to me.

They reckon that with the current turnover something like 20% of those currently qualifying for the current deal to retire at 65 will actually get it - with the remaining 80% moving out of the service into the private sector before retirement anyway.

Realistically I have always expected to work all of my life, and instead consider saving for career breaks rather than retirement: which is on the whole wasted on the old. I do have a pension (I pay 4%, employer pays 6% of salary) and it is a pretty good public sector one (USS), though this is more as insurance than anything else.

Some of the pension talk has been ridiculous, enforced saving makes no sense (as Anna points out above) if you already have a mountain of debt. You are much better off clearing that, which of course everyone who is a student these days will have to do first anyway. There is also a question if there is enough work if the pensionable age is increased.

However the gov can afford this, and the Turner report from what I saw was quite sensible. But I think a more radical view of how we consider our working lives is needed first.

The stats aren't that good and - if you look at the years of good health in life expectancy - a lot of people are wildly optimistic about how long and how much they'll enjoy their retirement.

x-post Kate: It's great that work pops your cork for you, but I thought I remembered reading something about your trust fund years ?(I could well be mistaken)...

We finally get the government to agree to a deal (at the threat of a million civil servants going on strike) and because the fucking CBI (and their media lapdogs) start whinging about how it's so much better than what they're prepared to do for their employees the government instantly decides to renege on it before the ink is even dry...Fuckers!

Whereas you've always leapt out of bed to get to t'pit early, I presume?

I think perhaps it's a holdover from the days when most jobs were still based on manual labour, and perhaps those over a certain age physically couldn't do them. People's health has improved over the past century, and there's no mental or cognitive reason they shouldn't carry on working as long as they like.

If you want some time off to do something more interesting, follow Pete's notion of the "career break" rather than this notion that you throw your hands up at 65 and say "right, that's it, I'm not working any more."

There's a lot of sense to the idea that you should plan for your old age - for when you no longer are *able* to work. But you can be incapacitated at any age. I hate the idea of some government or agency saying "that's it, you're 65, you're obsolete, out to pasture with you!"

I don't know, perhaps this is a cultural difference.

nothing except for the ravages of age...

this just in: many people... DON'T ENJOY WORKING. by their sixties some of them find it actively unpleasant!

I'm just saying that the whole concept of retirement is strange to me.

I don't, but I'm a bit of a slow-starter financially. I only just got life insurance last week!

Neither of my parents has a pension, either. My mum at least owns her own house. My dad... f*ck knows! My brother's bagged an heiress, so I doubt he'll have to worry about it. Bah.

£1,000 a year - I feel like a low-ranking Austen heroine.

yes i heard that point being made on radio, but unless that stat could be analysed to factor out the greater/lesser self-preserving practices of diff socio-economic groups wrt smoking/diet/drinking/exercise, does it have any moral/policy weight ?
eg if public sector wages are generally lowest - though i suspect that there are an awful lot of private sector retail/cleaning jobs that are at least as bad or worse - the greater propensity of the lowest-paid to smoking/drinking/eating badly/couch-potato-ness is mixed in with 'the job' in a way that some might regard as a matter of 'personal responsibility'

(to the point that money means it's easier to eat better and join a nice expensive gym etc it might be said that it's also the case that these things *can* be achieved reasonably well with a little effort and not much money (albeit without much 'lifestyle' fun or comfort/convenience) and abstinence is usually (sort of by defn) free...if not easy)

so in what other ways might 'public sector' jobs be more reducing of life-expectancy than private sector ones?

unless we're talikng about foreseeably life-threatening jobs like police/fireservice/military...i can't see why sitting in a council office at a computer is more damaging to long-term life expectancy than doing so in any other office.

if we want to analyse stress/anxiety effects of the activity or the work-environment there's alot of room for argument about that all round i think

(given general collapse of mining/steel/shipbuilding/heavy industry - what are the most dangerous/health-damaging/wearing-out jobs anyway ? emergency services?
building/construction?
social work?
teaching?
air-traffic controller?)

at the moment given the state of nhs/private dentistry in this country, and the reported levels of their remuneration, i do not feel much sympathy

as long as we abolish the nhs that is

Sus3nn3 M3nn, 36, from Barons Court,

"The increase in retirement age was inevitable. People can't expect to work for 30 years and then live on a pension for another 40 years.It just doesn't make sense. Today's announcement is based on simple economics."

ot fuckin' m. me and my mate began sketching this out, when we were bored at work yesterday. it was a work of radical genius that involved - among other initiatives - working until 70, but on reduced hours after 60; a four-day working week for all; the abolition of the "weekend" as such; a compulsory year of "national service" - not in the forces, but in some kind of work that's beneficial to the nation (eg care-home assistant, classroom assistant, building a railway, whatever) ... it was great.

then we realised we were just powerless little mooks and went to the pub.

as for pensions: hmm. maybe i'm just deeply paranoid, but i sorted out a private pension for myself when i was 22 and earning 11 grand. i also began paying off my student loan at the same time, despite being under the earnings threshold: my thinking was, fuck it, i earn 11 grand so i'm skint anyway. i may as well be really skint for a couple of years and try to get all the misery out of the way.

it worked, too.

i'm lucky now in that i'm in a final-salary pension scheme at work ... although the chances of that scheme surviving until i retire are minimal :)

You're going to be working until 68

or

You can marry someone rich and get a pay off of £5m after a marriage of two years, or maybe split £3 million capital assets and receive £250,000 a year indefinitely.

i had a job for 3 yrs in the civil service then quit. during the time i was working there i was paying an amount each month into some pension account. ive no plans to ever go back working for them - can i claim all this pension money back or is it lost to the ether?

i think it's probably still there, waiting for you to retire.

It will be, yes. And it will buy you a tiny little annuity.

So retirement at 66 for men from 2016, with the women's retirement age to rise later.

Not great...average life expectancy is 77 for men and 81 for women, but you can expect to have around five years of ill-health on average before you drop off.

then they're giving you 5 years healthy and retired before you go, which , y'know, glass half full and all that