[jfman]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Thing is, on average, most people don’t fully fund their state pension with their own NI Contributions…

I’ve had to use averages for these calculations, because that evens out those getting paid/paying less and those getting paid/paying more.

Average salary in U.K. is around £30k pa - the employee NI contributions on this are £2,460 pa; if you consider most people will work for 45 years, their lifetime NI payments will be just under £112k.

Current average time between getting the State Pension and popping one’s clogs is 15 years, and as the current State Pension is £180 per week (£9,360 pa), and over 15 years this is just over £140k.

If you add in the Employers NICs of around £2,700 pa for 45 years, you get another £122k, giving (hypothetically) a state pension fund of £234k per person.

Unfortunately, the NI Fund doesn’t just pay the state pension - it’s also supposed to fund the NHS, statutory sick pay, maternity leave, & entitlement to additional unemployment benefits.

One of the most frequent misconceptions out there - I paid in so I’m entitled to. At £2trn of debt the reality is, despite a massive sale of state owned assets, the books never have balanced and successive generations have simply kicked the can down the road to the next one.