The State Pension Age…Again!

The State Pension age is again under debate, this time at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham.

Already the government is looking at increasing the State Pension age to 66 from the current age 65 with this change likely to start from 2016.

Now I should disclose an interest here because I was 55 this year and you can see that for me this means waiting an extra year to get my hands on the State Pension that I have paid for through National Insurance contributions since I started work at age 18.

I have to say that I am not going to bleat too much about this change. If anything a one year increase in the State Pension age sounds for people like me to be “the least-worst option”.

That isn’t true however for everyone.

Many people may not have the flexibility in their working lives or savings to easily cope with a change like this.

The argument is that we are all living longer and the cost of funding State pensions for an increasingly long period of time is getting more and more expensive.

This may well be true but it proves the point that we have been trying to make for the past 20 years.

If you want choice in retirement, choice about when you retire and choice about the sort of retirement lifestyle that you have, the only option is to build up private pension and savings provision and not have to rely upon the State