"Living with dignity" in retirement

[johnofwessex]

Next year I will have done 40 years paying Housing Benefit.  I have many a tale to tell!!

 

My father and Grandfathers each served in a World War, I had an ex whose schoolmates ended up in the US Army in Vietnam, me. I got the short straw.

 

Well, got my first Pension last year, what turned out to be a very good move when changing employers I didnt 'link' my pension.

 

The two youngest are 13 & 14 so far from out of the woods with them plus they are autistic but at least we have two strapping young lads to push our wheelchairs when we need them.

 

Yes, must get to know the wife better but whose>

[SM42]

50 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Henry VIII did quite a lot for the poor as well. He got rid of the tithes that they had to pay to the monasteries for starters.

 

🤓

 

 

Jason

 

We got chancel repair liability instead

 

Andy

[The Johnster]

8 hours ago, spikey said:

is it right that everyone, irrespective of their financial circumstances, gets a winter fuel payment each year once they hit State Pension age?

 

I do, and benefit from the government's fuel payouts as well, in fact I'd have been in real trouble last winter without them, and am very relieved that they are going to be repeated this winter!  I have said many uncomplimentary things about Tory governments in my time, so it is only right and fair that I applaud this initiative, more socialist than any Labour policy introduced in my life!  People needed help, they helped, no messing, bish bash bosh, effective and immedieate!

 

I'd still take an axe and cut off my own hand before I'd use it to vote for the 'stards, though...

[J. S. Bach]

Deleted, wrong thread!

Edited June 30, 2023 by J. S. Bach

[spikey]

10 hours ago, AndrueC said:

Depends on the individual. A lot of people hate having to beg the government for money or justify their circumstances ...

 

Yes, that must be it.  Their choice to see things that way though.  Over the last 10 or so years I've had to claim benefits, answer searching questions about our circumstances and indeed on one occasion be interviewed after "the computer" thought something amiss, but I've never chosen to see this as begging the government for money.   I see it simply as simply claiming whatever I'm entitled to. Maybe that's because I don't have a television or read the red tops.  Dunno.

[33C]

There is a hell of a lot of money allocated for all kinds of benefits regardless of your circumstances. If this money is not claimed it is reallocated to other community groups as grants. You can claim for anything and everything, from a spoon to a car, if you fit the criteria. When I was made redundant, many years ago, and you could just walk into a Citizens advice bureau, I was shown the "Blue book" of claimable items and took full advantage as/was a tax payer. And the range of services available was second to none, and helped me over a difficult couple of years until I managed to find gainful employment. If you are unsure of the future there are a lot of good people out there, on the end of a 'phone or email, who can really make a difference. You just have to find the right person! One guy at the DWP was a godsend...

[melmoth]

9 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Henry VIII did quite a lot for the poor as well. He got rid of the tithes that they had to pay to the monasteries for starters.

 

 

Not quite correct, Tithes were still paid by many in one form or another into at least the 19th Century. See the 1836 Tithe Commutation Act, which as it's name suggests, commuted tithes to a cash payment. A number of further acts of parliament regarding tithes followed over the next 100 years or so, with the last one (IIRC) being the Tithe Act of 1951. 

[Michael Hodgson]

The DWP is a government department that seems to change its name every time there a change of government.  It was called the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (MPNI) when it was first set up.  Probably a better name for it than Department of Social Security (it was never abbreviated to DoSS for some reason though).

 

Pensions are essentially an investment.  You pay in all your working life and you have earned the money when you reach the relevant age. 

Most people see it that way.  But state pensions are unfunded, that is your pension is not a direct consequence of how much you paid in yourself (in the way the private pensions are your personal pot of money), rather it is paid out of contributions paid by later generations of workers.  That is, our pensions would collapse if future generations all gave up work and stopped paying their NI.

 

Benefits are the form of income that people tend to have issues about claiming.  Insurance is a good way of looking at these other entitlements.  You are legally entitled to them if you meet the criteria determined by government in the legislation (and of course if you don't meet the criteria, claiming them is fraud).  But like your house or car insurance you pay your bill and hope you don't need to claim - but it's there if you do need it.

 

[Neil]

A further thought it's not just the old who should be able to live with dignity, we all should be able to do this.  Here the Joseph Rowntree Foundation compare poverty rates of children, working age adults with children, working age adults without children and pensioners set against the average level. It's children where poverty is most prevalent and has remained stubbornly so over the years while pensioner poverty has seen an improving trend and now is the group where it's least prevalent.

[Oldddudders]

3 minutes ago, Neil said:

 pensioner poverty has seen an improving trend and now is the group where it's least prevalent.

I feel almost ashamed when I read of the strictures endured by others in this thread. 20 years after taking my occupational pension, I have just done my French Government tax declaration for 2022 - their tax year is calendar. Despite only having an occupational pension and a state pension - no stocks, shares or any other form of income whatever - my income is now only just short of my final full-time salary, and I have neither mortgage nor dependants. Wife Sherry, living in the UK, is richer than me, although her teacher's pension is rather less. Our finances are necessarily separate.

 

I can certainly afford a few toy trains..... 

[TheSignalEngineer]

16 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I made sure to make frequent legstretcher stops the rest of the way, about every 15 minutes for the circumnavigation of a Fiat Punto which took about five minutes (!)

I would blame the Fiat Punto rather than the walk. About 30 years ago I was working on two major contracts. I had to drive from Birmingham to do a site visit and project meeting in the Nottingham area, then south for a morning meeting in Swindon and an afternoon one in Cardiff then  on 3rd day site visits and meetings up the Taff Vale before driving back to Birmingham. I was given a hire car but at short notice the only one available was a Punto. It took me a week to recover full mobility.

 

Regarding the heavy walks when my wife worked for a High Street bank, yes they did exist but are a distant memory for us who used them, it had an active walking club. We used to arrange monthly trips but for the most arduous ones used a coach. To finance this we offered alternatives of dropping off gor a day in the countryside or small tourist town, a low level walk, or for those of us known as the 'Irresponsible Club' an A Grade high level trip. Not sure how we got the name, but we always reappeared on time and unscathed even if we had to do 15 miles across two mountains to catch the coach back.

[alastairq]

10 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

Dignity?

 

Having suffered much humiliation at the hands of the system (the DWP, their predecessors the DHSS, and the council HB desk) in the years before I was able to claim State Pension (rarely, it most be said, at the hands of the front line counter staff who have often been very helpful and sympathetic, but powerless), I am a big fan of universal non-means-tested benefits paid to all, and a standard basic income sufficient to support a reasonable but basic lifestyle.  You would then have the option of going out to work if you wanted more than this basic lifestyle, which most people would, and employers would have to pay market wages.

 

Dignity?

 

 

 On this sub-topic, isn't that what happens in Norway?

 

I seem to recall that every citizen gets the equivalent of just over a grand a month paid into their account of choice.....Enough to live reasonably comfortably, especially in a country whose cost of living is quite high.

 

From a personal viewpoint, I think everybody should receive an amount equivalent to the current tax-free allowance.  Then tax could be paid on all other sources of income.  State pension could be removed, as could a lot of other benefits. [Except those intended to provide essential, costly, support]

 

 

Or, maybe, remove State pension from being included as taxable income?

 

Quote

I do, and benefit from the government's fuel payouts as well, in fact I'd have been in real trouble last winter without them, and am very relieved that they are going to be repeated this winter!  I have said many uncomplimentary things bout Tory governments in my time, so it is only right and fair that I applaud this initiative, more socialist than any Labour policy introduced in my life!  People needed help, they helped, no messing, bish bash bosh, effective and immediate!

 

I'd still take an axe and cut off my own hand before I'd use it to vote for the 'stards, though...

 

I agree

 

Although I do feel the present government's target for this assistance wasn't the less well off, lower economic slew, but those  further up the economic chain, who might have constituted a significant portion of the voting public?   

 

Anyhow, personally I have yet to pay a power bill out of my own funds, since!  But then my sole heating since lockdown has been provided by my own efforts, drying, storing and chopping a couple of free trees donated by a good friend. I have central heating available, but it is oil fired. So my oil supply solely got used to heat water for a  nightly hot bath.   

In other words, I was being frugal.

A lifestyle choice that probably wouldn't suit the vast majority on here?

 

 

 

 

[Talltim]

22 hours ago, melmerby said:

When we had the guest house, we came to hear of a certain retired lady "of independent means" who lived solely in guest houses/small hotels, every day of the year.

When we moved into our house, we discovered our next door neighbour was doing this. Apparently she'd had some plumbing mishap in the house a few years before and just upped and left it. As it happens my parent had met her before, when they stayed int he same guesthouse while visiting us.

[TT-Pete]

1 hour ago, Michael Hodgson said:

The DWP is a government department that seems to change its name every time there a change of government.  It was called the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (MPNI) when it was first set up.  Probably a better name for it than Department of Social Security (it was never abbreviated to DoSS for some reason though).

 

Back in the day when it was called the "Department of Health and Social Security" my Dad (a civil servant) would refer to it as the Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity.

 

[BR traction instructor]

Retiring at 49 (max free time being my biggest priority) with only a modest dependents pension and some savings (I could just scrape £15,000 per annum until 62, no debts, narrowboat owned outright) to get me through to my occupational pension at 62 and old age pension at 67, I had to scrutinise my so called essentials list very carefully. A girlfriend of independent means was essential too. Over the last seven years of moderate but not frugal retirement I've listened to numerous older individuals tell me that they can't afford to retire...clearly because their so called essentials are preventing it happening. If retirement was important enough then those so called essentials would get a good pruning.

 

Probably the worst example that I heard was a father of three feckless adults, that should have long been of independent means, ensuring that their dad was too frightened to retire at 70+ because he was still supporting them in their forties. It would take me around 5 mins flat to deal with a situation like that.

 

BeRTIe

Edited June 30, 2023 by BR traction instructor

[45655]

12 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

Henry VIII did quite a lot for the poor as well. He got rid of the tithes that they had to pay to the monasteries for starters.

Not quite.  They just had to pay the tithes to lay rectors (the courtiers who bought the monastery properties, including the attached rectories) instead.  

 

Keith

Alton.

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, TT-Pete said:

 

Back in the day when it was called the "Department of Health and Social Security" my Dad (a civil servant) would refer to it as the Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity.

 

Not obscure if you live on Tyneside (located there to create jobs in an area historically of high unemployment).  The Dept was looked down on by those working in Whitehall because it was in the North East.  My Dad was a civil servant too.  He was there when it was set up -  his first job on being demobbed from the RAF was welcoming clerical staff (a hundred at a time) to "The Ministry" at Longbenton as it is still called locally.  The workforce was so large the LNER had to build a station (now a stop on the Metro).  The MNI's job was to issue every worker in country with the NI cards their employers had to put stamps on.

[Talltim]

4 hours ago, spikey said:

 

Yes, that must be it.  Their choice to see things that way though.  Over the last 10 or so years I've had to claim benefits, answer searching questions about our circumstances and indeed on one occasion be interviewed after "the computer" thought something amiss, but I've never chosen to see this as begging the government for money.   I see it simply as simply claiming whatever I'm entitled to. Maybe that's because I don't have a television or read the red tops.  Dunno.

As an example, I think the people who have to prove they are missing a limb every year probably have a cause to find it a bit degrading.

[kevinlms]

1 hour ago, Talltim said:

As an example, I think the people who have to prove they are missing a limb every year probably have a cause to find it a bit degrading.

Only a flesh wound, so could have got better!

 

Sorry, but it does illustrate exactly why the Monty Python team had to make fun of bureaucracy. Trouble is some of the media, thinks that everyone is rorting the system and getting huge incomes for doing nothing.

[TT-Pete]

1 hour ago, Talltim said:

As an example, I think the people who have to prove they are missing a limb every year probably have a cause to find it a bit degrading.

 

Or in the case of my step-son having to prove that he still has Down syndrome. Officaldom at all levels seems to have a very hard time understanding that a 31 year-old man has his Mother speaking for him, drawn-out conversations often end with the request of "No, no, I insist  that I must speak to Mr X, or the account holder, or the claimant, or whatever, personally"  is then usually followed with "please pass me back to your Mother" about 15 seconds later. I think the scripts they have to follow are so rigid that there's no room for interpretation or independent decision making on behalf of the call centre agents.

 

[Clive Mortimore]

Retire with dignity? Is that financial dignity or personal dignity?

 

I consider myself lucky I have both.

 

 

I also have my ship called dignity, or to be precise a loco depot on my layout called Dignity Street.

 

 

[Bernard Lamb]

SWMBO had to visit the bank yesterday. She had had two card payments over the phone turned down so wanted to check the situatiom. She explained to the counter staff and was then taken into a private room with the manager, to speak on the phone to the head office. She did not have a driving license or passport with her, so they went through a long identification proces. When the man at head office asked for her NI number she was beaten. However the branch manager saved the day, by pointing out to the man at head office, that if he looked at her statement he would see a payment from the state pension people and this identified her by her NI number.

Bernard

[Michael Hodgson]

40 minutes ago, Bernard Lamb said:

SWMBO had to visit the bank yesterday. She had had two card payments over the phone turned down so wanted to check the situatiom. She explained to the counter staff and was then taken into a private room with the manager, to speak on the phone to the head office. She did not have a driving license or passport with her, so they went through a long identification proces. When the man at head office asked for her NI number she was beaten. However the branch manager saved the day, by pointing out to the man at head office, that if he looked at her statement he would see a payment from the state pension people and this identified her by her NI number.

Bernard

 

I feel sorry for the staff in a lot of companies who feel their job has been intentionally deskilled by distant bosses and are just as frustrated as the customers by the bureacratic hoops they have to jump through to get anything done, and they are the ones at the sharp end who are trying to provide a good service and are in fact doing their best to meet what should the objectives of their employers. 

 

Much the same as I feel for platform staff at main line stations who get the blame and have to put up with abuse from commuters when trains are delayed through no fault of theirs.

 

And these are not the people who walk away with a fat bonus if the accounts show a big profit.

[The Johnster]

30 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

And these are not the people who walk away with a fat bonus if the accounts show a big profit.

Or even when they don’t in the case of banks. 

[kevinlms]

20 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 

I feel sorry for the staff in a lot of companies who feel their job has been intentionally deskilled by distant bosses and are just as frustrated as the customers by the bureacratic hoops they have to jump through to get anything done, and they are the ones at the sharp end who are trying to provide a good service and are in fact doing their best to meet what should the objectives of their employers. 

 

Much the same as I feel for platform staff at main line stations who get the blame and have to put up with abuse from commuters when trains are delayed through no fault of theirs.

 

And these are not the people who walk away with a fat bonus if the accounts show a big profit.

You get a similar type of responce if you ring up to say the internet cable has been damaged - perhaps someone cut it while working in the garden or something.

You get the idiots, who want you to reset the modem and check that the power point is working etc. Or they ask how do you know that it's the cable for the internet that is the broken one. Very tempting to indignantly complain that the internet hasn't work since! But of course you need to be careful, as you risk being hung up on AND they'll list you as abusive!

Their correct responce should be to agree to send someone out, on the proviso (and they can record it) that if it turns out to be a problem caused by you, there MAY be an incorrect call out fee applied.