Do you want to retire ?
 

I read an interested article in todays Daily Mirror in the letters column, with Ian Duncan Smith saying that most people don't want to retire (probably to save the government paying out the pension to early).

I feel strongly that people who have work hard all there lives, should retire if they feel it.

I was born in 1951 and have worked in all sorts of places, done some really hard jobs and l have another 5 years to go till my official retirement age of 65.

So when l reach that golden age, l certainly will seriously consider it, especially if the wife wants to also, l have three great kids and three lovelly granchildren to look after.

What does anyone think.:)

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

If i had the cash...then definitely yes.

I work to live, I dont live to work :)

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

With the nonsensical and pointless political jibe in your very first sentence, I'm not sure there's much point in anyone sharing what they think. Are you interested in people's retirement aspirations or are you interested in having another rant along the lines of 'the government owes us all a living, I want my free money'?

On the off-chance that it's the former, I can tell you that I'm setting up my business in such a way as I am unlikely ever to have a set retirement age. I'll just wind things down in line with my ability to keep going. But I don't want to stop completely if I can help it. I don't want my brain to atrophy through lack of activity.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

I personally do not want to work until I die which was the reason behind the original retirement age, now that we as a nation are getting older and the pension pots grow smaller the powers that be regardless of political persuasion decided to change all that in the hope that we may die rather than retire.

I have paid into the state and my various private pensions and I want a period without any need to work so I can at least enjoy the twilight of my life.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Whenever The Mirror is referenced as a source - It's time for another Tory bashing session. :rolleyes:

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

And your evidence is .... ?

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

The changes in retirement law were you can now work into your dotage with no cut off point at 65 plus womens retirement ages going up from 60 as well what other evidence do you need to see that they want you to die without taking a pension.

Also this has no political point to prove as all parties want the same.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Oh I do, I do, I do - but only from my current job. 23 days to go ;)
I didn't appreciate the gov changing the goalposts in the last few years though :mad:

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Why is the pension age being raised? Because people are living, on average, 8 years longer that they did in the 70s. Link

Would people rather going back to dying eight years earlier - if not, how do we balance the books?

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

It was a genuine question, and not a swipe at the government.

When l become 65, l want to carry on working but if my bones tell me different, then l will sit down with my wife and then retire down to the coast, and let my family look after us, and they will keep us busy.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Sounds good to me, Arthur :) But I'd not expect that from my young 'uns.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

I've had enough.Teaching when you are in your late 50s,early 60s is not enjoyable.I want to hand on to younger teachers who have more energy than I do because the job demands a lot these days.The kids need younger teachers.I can't see me doing it into my 70s.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Thats beautiful point possibly what everybody does.

A huge point THE GOVERNMENT fail to understand Nobody wants to work to point that there body cant enjoy there retirement.

To FORCE people to work this late and be lifetime workers is plainfully wrong.

What firms going to do with those they cant retire on grounds agesm basically no longer capable doing the work and forced to keep them in meanual jobs.

Its like the government want the companies to be the pension of the government.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

I can't agree more. OK - we have a wealth of experience etc, etc but...?
I'm bowing out gracefully (as much as I can muster :D )

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

I'd like to retire but not stop work completely. You need something to keep you going and make your brain work and going to work gets you thinking.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

What 'other' evidence? You haven't even provided starters. Let's get that sorted first, eh?

You can't quote a fact and then simply assert that it proves whatever point you want to make. That's not how evidence works.

The facts - for there are many - are that the retirement age is going up, and the average life expectancy is going up, and there are increasing numbers of people who have expressed a desire not to be compelled to stop working at the current age. Women, in particular, have always lived statistically longer than men so it is a long-standing oddity that their retirement age has been lower.

This country faces a massive social care bill for the elderly because the system is being asked to pay out on a scale it was never designed for. As Hugh states, this is basically because it was built on the assumption that it was caring for a relatively modest number of people, as a proportion of the population, who in the case of men were on average claiming from the system for 8 years before dying.

Now, however, we have a proportionally much larger chunk of the population claiming on (male) average for 14 years before dying. Raising the retirement age to 67 or even to 70 doesn't come anywhere near your somewhat hysterical claim that "they" want you to die before you have a chance to claim your pension. In fact, a single male/female retirement age of 70 still gives those being born today an average 9 years of retirement, against the 8 years average when the State pension was set up.

So you see, the evidence says you're talking out of your hat. ;)

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

I go to work to earn money to pay the bills. If I could get them to pay me without having to turn up, I would jump at it. So yes, when I can afford it, I will retire.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

You can draw your State Pension and carry on working when you hit retirement age or you can defer drawing your pension and get a higher pension later. Those that choose to take the money and keep working will get a higher tax code to allow for the pension amount, also NI payments stop as you are deemed to have paid your subs.

Life is good.... ;)

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

I am being hysterical am I when the facts speak for themselves that our retirement age is going up whether we like it or not just to cover the shortfall in monies to pay for pensions, I have no need to provide any facts because that speaks for itself as our parents all were able to officially retire at 60 and 65 respectively.

Cost is the real factor here and if you are to blinkered to see that then so be it and this falls at no polical parties feet, as they have all realised that as a nation we are living longer and they know the money is not available to fund the future pension bill for everyone.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Masque, our parents retired at 60 and 65, but died at (roughly) 72 - we will be getting pensions at 68, but dying (roughly) at 80.

So, we will still have (if you are male) five more years of pension.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

We still should not have the goalposts moved every couple of years or so, as I for one do not want to work until I am 70 plus because I want to enjoy life and I am looking forward to that time.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Have you saved for a pension to support that aspiration?

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

I have 4 company pensions plus anything else I may or may not get of the state.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

I am in the same boat.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

At least I only have a little over a year before the mortgage is paid which is a plus point.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

I can find plenty to do..:)

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Tough. Someone has to pay for your retirement. That would be me and my children. Why should we pay to keep you for 15 years when my parents only paid to keep the generation before them for 8-10 years?

Your generation has gone right through life expecting this handout, that handout and the other from the State. You've mortgaged all our futures, so forgive me if I'm unsympathetic at the thought of you sharing the pain for your generation's failure to build all of us a robust, sustainable economy.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

I am older than you Chris so wrong generation.

I take it you noticed that I have 4 pension funds as well.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

People could always sacrifice a little and save for their own retirement rather than assuming the government will pay.

Odd concept for many I know.

---------- Post added at 21:47 ---------- Previous post was at 21:43 ----------

I'm aiming to retire at 55, 60 at the latest and am contributing to pension funds accordingly to make it a reality. In addition I have other savings and will continue to accumulate them.

I'm cutting back on expenditure to permit saving to buy a home and then pay that mortgage off in 20 years, and to ensure a reasonable quality of life, I'm assuming that the government will give me nothing.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Er no, that was exactly my point. You are older than me. You will retire before me. My taxes and possibly those of my kids will fund your retirement. And I see no reason why my taxes should fund a 15-year retirement for you, when my parents' taxes funded only an 8-10 year retirement for those that went before them - especially as it was you baby boomers that urinated so much of this country's natural wealth up the wall.

Congratulations on having 4 pension funds though, it's nice that you have lived through an age when there was enough spare cash about for that sort of thing.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Not me never been my style and I disliked those people.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Erm, one size does not fit all.

I did without to contribute to my company pensions (often adding additional payments), and overpaid my mortgage when possible - how did I do that? By not going on overseas holidays until my kids were teenagers, only having one car, and not eating out much. We spent our disposable income on opportunities for our kids (things like riding lessons, music lessons, PGL, school trips, etc).

My personal opinion is that the "baby boomer wasting their money" is a bit of a myth - after all, I don't remember the previous generation leaving a lot to us, yet we are leaving what we have accumulated to our children (anything we haven't spent on them already......)

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Hmm.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pinch-Boomer.../dp/1848872313
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jilted-Gener.../dp/1848311982

Amongst others present a number of persuasive arguments.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

So I have ruined my children's future?

Never claimed anything but child benefit (and only so I got the Carers contribution to NI),never went on the dole even when I was entitled.Opted to pay full NI contributions when many of my married peers were paying reduced married women's NI contributions.

Saved for my children's presumed forays into FE,struggled when my husband was made redundant 3 times..

I suppose the naval pension my husband receives might possibly have contributed but he did spend 24 years in service so it could said he earned it.It's only enough to cover our basic outgoings and has helped us to survive those three redundancies with very little help from the state..we still had to eat however.

In the last 40 years I've had 4 holidays abroad.Not exactly gone overboard compared to some.

Trying to see how I peeded away my children's futures.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Hm, I think the biggest underlying problem is the fact that people are getting older and there not being enough young people to foot the bill. If that means the baby boomers stealing their children's future, then they did so by not having many children.

Personally, I blame their parents for having the audacity to breed so many children when things were looking up after WW2, thereby skewing the population distribution.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

So it's smaller families to blame..I thought the reason why there was so much poverty in this country pre the 60s was too many people having too large a family..Of which you might lose anything up to 50% of them and have no one to take care of you in old age(if you lived that long) and end up in the workhouse

So the pill arrives and we have smaller planned families of which 100% survived into adulthood and have increased better health.Which was wrong because there aren't enough people to keep the pyramid of social care going.

I can't see going back to having big families will help though..because each of those will eventually be a charge on the system as they reach their 200th year.I can see everyone being forced to have a minimum of 10 children.

Sorry I'm getting a bit carried away here..To be honest there is no quick fixit except we all die in harness.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

One solution would have been to save North Sea oil revenue instead of spunking it up the wall.

I'm also struggling to see what long term legacy has been left behind. I can't think of much as far as huge infrastructure goes. When you look at the enduring investments in the past the boomer generation's legacy is pretty weak.

Nothing to do with most individuals of course. Down to fatally flawed government policy using the future earnings of those who can't vote yet to buy the votes of those who can.

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

But again, I think if we spent our children's future (and this all seems to be based on property prices), we (mostly) spent it on our children (ungrateful wretches ;)).

I have never used my property to get a larger mortgage to buy something other than moving to the next property (and that only twice) as my family got bigger, and will leave that property (or whatever I am living in at the time) to my children.

I was left nothing from my parents (because they had nothing to leave), and have paid more taxes and spent more on my kids upbringing and education that was ever spent by my parents - new definition of "spending the kid's future" I haven't come across before, methinks.

Anyhoo, a review of the The Pinch from the Grauniad shows (imho) perhaps it's not that simple. The problem in the future (everyone living longer and requiring pensions to be paid for longer, and the associated healthcare costs) was ignored by all politicians of all generations, and when the current lot try to do something to sort it out, they are cried down by all generations.

Man up, move on......;)

Update - just read i's post above mine, and we appear to be in (mostly) violent agreement.:D

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

same here all my dad left was the Bill
since then ive squandered every thing on my kids [i must be a right swine ]

Re: Do you want to retire ?
 

Would love to retire ( I wish )
but have a meeting next week about a Private Pension...........