Are today’s pensioners really the ‘golden generation’?

Once again, this is a broad generalisation – yes, there are pensioners who struggle to make ends meet, just as there are young singles, parents, middleaged couples who also struggle. Simply being over 60 , or over 65 or any other arbitrary age, should not mean that we are automatically shielded from the cutbacks which will affect all other sections of the population.The older generation may indeed have worked hard, but who is to say that the younger will not be working equally as hard over their lifetimes? Like it or not, we ARE all in this together, and there is little point in comparing one age group with another – comparing one income group with another would make more sense.

I’m 62 and I have to admit that I have been living quite comfortably on my Basic State Pension and my Pension Credit (currently £107.31 and £25.29 a week respectively) since I retired two years ago! Granted not everyone qualifies for Pension Credit but those who do also get full housing benefit and full Council Tax benefit. In my case these amount to £76 and approx £20 a week respectively. So if you add together my pension, pension credit and housing benefits, effectively my total income is equal to £228.60 a week! Then on top of that, pensioners get a Winter Fuel Payment of £200 a year plus an extra £20 or £25 every time the temperature drops below a certain level! Then there’s the free prescriptions and free bus passes, which I reckon save me about £10 a week. So add the Winter Fuel payments and the money saved with bus passes/free prescriptions to the £228.60 and you end up with about £243 a week. Now whilst this might not be a fortune, I really don’t think it’s that bad at all. I didn’t use to take home much more than that when I was working full time.and I had to pay fares and other work-related expenses out of it! So I wish that Age Concern and some OAP’s would stop trying to make out that pensioners have a hard time financially – because I don’t feel hard up at all.

Well, Susan, aren’t you the lucky one. Your costs of living must be less than many, and not everyone gets pension credits, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, or even want means tested benefits.
Do you live in the London area? Do you have children & Grandchildren who are also struggling? Do you ever manage to treat yourself to anything, or are you just existing rather than living? Do you ever have a holiday, or a meal out? Do you belong to any clubs that require membership fees?
I am not talking about living the high life, but just very modest down to earth living.

My mother in law (now 80) has always insisted since the day she retired that she has been much better off as a pensioner than when she was working…….
As said before, there are pensioners who do struggle, but NOBODY needs to struggle to exist on the basic pension alone – if you refuse to claim the extra to which you are entitled, whose fault is that? And why on earth should pensioners living six months of the year in Spain recieve the winter fuel allowance? There are also some very well off pensioners!

Prepare for the worse my dear friends. Follow the logic > pension age increases = older people will remain at work = less young people will be able to find a job > now add to this growing population and technological unemployment. Does it sound as a bright future to you?

Solutions => depopulation (easy) or moving to the resource based economy (hard), any other offers will be welcomed!

In response to Richard’s reply to my original comment, whilst I agree that everyone who has paid NI contributions should get a pension that is enough to live on, let’s not kid ourselves that pensioners have ever been any better off (even under Labour Governments) because they haven’t! The problem is that no British Government has ever managed pension contributions well enough to provide ever-increasing numbers of pension-age people with decent pensions. Therefore the only way they can afford to increase the income of those who have never paid into a private pension fund, either because they genuinely could never afford to or because they were too short-sighted to plan ahead, is to keep the Basic State Pension low and only pay Pension Credit to those who do not have any other income. And if for whatever reason they haven’t provided for their old age by any other means, then why shouldn’t pensioners need to “suffer” means testing if they want a better standard of living than the Basic State Pension provides? Because the plain fact of the matter is that Governments just cannot afford to pay every single rettired person what the Basic State pension and pension credits amounts to. And until such time as Governments start managing pension funds like the private sector and put up compulsory NI contributions to match, the current system is probably the best we can hope for.

As for not being able to afford to go on holiday since you retired, I couldn’t afford to go on holiday very often when I was working full-time either! In fact, in the eleven years before I retired, all I could afford was a cheap two week holiday to Majorca once and a week staying with a friend in Alicante! So if I couldn’t afford regular holidays when I was working, why should I expect to be able to take regular holidays now, when I’m living on a State Pension? I just don’t think that people like Richard have ever really known how the other half have always had to live!