Government Petition to pay state pension early

[Woody Guthrie]

Yes, there is a chance that you will be in the 50% who don't live that long, but there is an equal chance that you will be in the 50% who live longer.

It doesn't work like that unfortunately.
We're already below 50% because we're in the manual labour group, don't have private medical access and will be working beyond 65.

Then there's lifestyle choices associated with not particularly being very rich.

Then there's lifestyle choices associated with not being very well edumacated..

Then there's just plain dumb lifestyle choices...

It's not an equal playing field.

[Schiff]

Yes, there is a chance that you will be in the 50% who don't live that long, but there is an equal chance that you will be in the 50% who live longer.

It doesn't work like that unfortunately.
We're already below 50% because we're in the manual labour group, don't have private medical access and will be working beyond 65.

Then there's lifestyle choices associated with not particularly being very rich.

Then there's lifestyle choices associated with not being very well edumacated..

Then there's just plain dumb lifestyle choices...

It's not an equal playing field.

Well I've always been the type of person who believes in taking out insurance. An increased annual pension is effectively insurance against living a long time in poverty.

People can take their pension pot and blow the whole lot on a flash new car, believing that because they have done a manual job, haven't had private health care etc they are going to die early. It will be a bit of a bugger if they find themselves heading into their late 80s and having to choose between heating or eating simply because they blew that pension pot in the first few years of their retirement, including on that car which is now sitting rusting on the driveway.

If I live a long life I will regard that as a win. I'm certainly not going to gamble that I will pop my clogs in my 70s, and then potentially have 15 or 20 years of regretting that gamble.

[Woody Guthrie]

That's why people should make individual and informed choices when they decide what to do at retirement and not base it on a one size fits all idea of how long they will live or indeed be able to live independently...

Care home costs and how you pay for them.. another debate entirely.

[RobertT]

We have one of the lowest state pensions in the world in one of the richest countries in the world.

The fact that we're willing to accept that kind of tells you how much chance this petition has.

Never mind lots of already rich people get even richer off the back of private pensions while we keep pumping in more and more of our wages to get less and less back.

If I were a neutral observer I would be pissing myself laughing at our stoopidity...

You think private pensions are better than DB?

Personally I've put a gross of roughly £23,850 into my section C RM pension over the years, but factoring in tax relief and PSE(since 2015), that's more like £19,000 net.
I know because I'm sad enough to have made a note of these things.

I would only need to draw my NRA60 for 2.5 years to get that net payment back!

Someone with just a DC pension would need a pot of about £400,000 at 60 to generate the same benefits as just my NRA60 pension.
For my NRA65 it would be around £130,000.

RM pensions have obviously been cut over the years, but the the DB scheme is still damn good value for money!

[RobertT]

Everyone is individual, just because you might do a manual job, doesn't automatically mean you'll die younger than someone who does another job. It also comes down to lifestyle, family medical history, etc.

Personally I don't consider myself particularly well educated, I've had a manual job for 30 odd years and plan to retire at 55.
I took an interest in my pension/retirement at an early age, realised what I'd get from RM probably wouldn't be enough(we still had a final salary scheme then) and I did something about it, and will be able to provide an income of not drastically less than my current full time RM wage.

I've planned for years, based on my own circumstances and should be ok, but I'm not sure about many others I know.

I've read comments on here like 'I won't need any money in my 70's and 80's', but I have parents in their late 80's and have seen at first hand that they still need money, they just spend it on different things.

They're still living at home any coping but obviously not as active as they once were, and ultimately the longer they live, the more likely they are to need professional care – and the costs are frightening!

The population is ageing and many have a lot of money tied up in property. Unfortunately in a lot of cases that property will be sold to pay for their care, leaving their offspring who expect to get a nice inheritance, with nothing.

[Woody Guthrie]

You think private pensions are better than DB?

That is literally the opposite of what I said.

but the the DB scheme is still damn good value for money!

The DB scheme no longer exists.

Everyone is individual, just because you might do a manual job, doesn't automatically mean you'll die younger than someone who does another job. It also comes down to lifestyle, family medical history, etc.

That's the point I was making, there's no point in quoting average life expectancy to us because statistically unless you factor in individual circumstances which includes job type and retirement age as well as lifestyle and genetic predisposition it's completely irrelevant.

If you're a 55 year old obese smoker with a heart condition the advice to leave your pension until NRA would possibly be reckless
because the chances of you realising the full value of the pot would be slim at best. You might get lucky but you have to know the risks, work out the odds and play the percentages not just be over cautious because your frightened of being poor at 85, an age you are statistically very unlikely to reach.

[RobertT]

The DB scheme no longer exists.

The final salary scheme closed to future accrual on 31st March 2008, the CSDB scheme closed to future accrual on 31st March 2018. They are both DB schemes that pay out pensions based on salary and length of service.

The RMSPS is funded by the tax payer and you could say it effectively doesn't exist because the money's been swallowed up. The RMPP is still open via the DBCBS, has a pot of money of about £12 Billion if I remember correctly, and pays out accrued defined benefits earned between 2012-2018(plus the DBCBS), and definitely still exists.

That's the point I was making, there's no point in quoting average life expectancy to us because statistically unless you factor in individual circumstances which includes job type and retirement age as well as lifestyle and genetic predisposition it's completely irrelevant.

We agree on something - whoopee!

Although both RMSPS and RMPP report and accounts suggest that average members do live to the national average. But in reality nobody is average due to all the various parameters, age, lifestyle, genetics, etc.