My poor husband has gone to work with a very long face today.
Not only is he miserable with Hay Fever, but he was born in 1951. That means he was looking forward to picking up his State Pension in 2016.
Not any more.
It looks very much like he's going to have to wait an extra year as the Coalition Government add to a painful week by raising the Pension age.
There is some good, though, as this comes in tandem with a fantastic plan to abolish the default retirement age so that people can choose for themselves when they want to stop working. Some will want to retire at 65 or even 60, but others are keen to continue working and why should they be forced to retire? This potentially is a good move for women whose careers are often broken up by caring responsbilities. I'm in my 40s and I still haven't sorted myself out with a proper career so it potentially presents an opportunity for me to develop one (assuming I can decide what I want to do when I grow up) and not be shown the door in just over 20 years' time. Also it will give women the chance to build up more retirement income.
We'll have to see the details, but I think that this was inevitable. Whenever you make the change, the people who reach the former threshold that year are going to feel pretty fed up. A year from 65-66 is not going to be too difficult, but I don't like the idea of forcing people to wait beyond 70 for their State Pension as is also mooted.
2 comments:
The good thing about this is that it had to be done at some point - we can't go on with an ever increasing proportion of the population living off the work of an ever decreasing proportion.
It is better that it is done sooner rather than later, and far enough in advance that folk can plan for it.
My Dad hated being forced to retire at 65 and carried on working part time for a while. He enjoyed it and now struggles to enjoy retirement.
I very much hope to still be fit enough to keep working when I'm 65 for at least a few years!
You're right - and it's something we've been about in our house for years. Ironically, the change is made in the year Bob reaches his state pension age.
I think that once you hit your 70s though, full time work, particularly manual work, is just not going to be possible for people so it's wrong to make them wait for their state pension that long.
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