Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

Private pension amounts aren't taken off your state pension. It's not a means tested benefit. They will stop you qualifying for extras like pension credit.

Maybe you are looking at the COPE value quoted on your pension calculation, a lot of people erroneously thought that was a deduction. If you retired after 2016 you came under transitional rules. They calculated what you would have got under SERPS, and also under the new pension, and gave you the higher amount.

 

What year did you retire?

 

https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/blog/retirement/cope-and-the-state-pension

 

2020. but should have been 2021.
Never heard of COPE.
I was advised to contract out then after some years I was advised to contract back in, the set up was changing with every new government.

 

Whilst you were contracted out you didn't earn any SERPS. So your final calculation didn't include any SERPS for those years, but your national insurance payments went into a private pension instead and you have that money. It's fair enough you don't get paid twice! Nothing was taken off your basic pension. Your final calculation would still have compared your old basic + SERPS value to the new flat level pension and given you the higher value.

In 2016 contracting out was abolished and we were all basically contracted in again, but with no SERPS to earn. So younger people are now paying higher NI to get the new flat rate pension. They pay the amount that used to get them SERPS as well.

 

Another thing that's just occurred to me - it seems unfair that younger people only have to contribute 35 years to earn the maximum pension amount. But in practice, with the retirement age going to 67 for both men and women, and the demise of the final salary pension, most people will not be stopping work after 35 years. And you don't have the option to stop paying national insurance when you've clocked up your 35 years. The only time you stop paying NI is after state pension age.

I will have contributed for over 40 years before I claim mine, and I'm intending to retire 5 years before SP age.

 

Well you are probably right, I cant unravel it all.
I definitely contracted back in well before 2016, by then I was on a stakeholder pension with my employer at the time, I probably contracted back in before 2006, but when I dont know.

I gave up and just accept it like the majority of people you are not expected to understand any of it.
I didn't expect to get paid twice for anything, just a letter explaining the whole debacle would have been sufficient, as far as I know I only have one private pension and it's the one I paid voluntary contributions into, had the SERPS been going into that I would have expected it to be much higher.

Over the years I had lots of problems regarding pensions all brought about by government rules, me being in the building and civil engineering scheme regarding lumps sum payments on retirement and not allowed to pay into a private pension for years was just one of the problems.

I'm probably not owed anything, but its not a simple process that is blatantly obvious as to how it works, so the individual just has to take their word for it.

 

I agree that it was all ridiculously complex and not well explained. The new flat rate state pension is a much simpler system and hopefully future generations won't have the same confusion!

 

Until someone decides to alter it.
Starmer?????????

 

It is all a bit of a pig's breakfast. That governments for you! They refuse to do "clear and simple" on anything. I do think the fact they have been encouraging people to buy extra yrs moves it out of the "welfare" and into the "entitlement" category. You are buying a right to extra money each week once you reach retirement age. Rowing back on current provision, eg by introducing some element of means testing, becomes very hard if you have taken extra from people with a promise of a gain.

That said, I would like to see reform, and I am not against means testing per se, if done at reasonable thresholds.

 

Presumably married women seeking work are now paid the dole/job seekers allowance or whatever they call it these days ? It wasn't allowed for me back in the 1970's.
The whole pension issue seems fraught with as many problems as the rest of the benefit/welfare system.

 

I was on job seekers for a short while after being made redundant in 2012.

£70 a week. And you had to apply for about 6 jobs a week or they said you were not trying and got grilled at the job centre by some strange people who only thought everyone should be taking whatever was offered.

If you were a skilled worker they just said you need to retrain, I assume the got brownie points for getting you on a retraining scheme.

I told them to stuff it after a few weeks and found myself a job via the grapevine.

 

Did you notice that the better Raducanu played the louder the screams from her opponent. At the start of the match it was just a loud grunt on service. It's a deliberate ploy to put the opponent off and should be stopped.

 

The problem for older people is that the change is a cliff edge. I hit my 65th birthday just one month before the 'new' pension came in. I lose out to the tune of about £200 per month.

 

Did you not have any state second pension?