The boomers ate all the avocados

Which generation doesn't have to work?

Oh stop being such a cliché. 😛

I'm feeling got at!

Through no fault of ours we're apparently boomers. We'll eat the occasional avocado but TBH think they are overrated.

We own a modest house, mortgage free for a few years now. (Although the low cost endowment mortgage left us with a shortfall we had to fill) Don't remember feeling we had it particularly easy though, especially when raising the kids. The year after we bought this house the interest rate peaked at something like15%, and I recall evenings poring over bank statements wondering where all the money went, and racking up credit card bills when cars broke down or appliances exploded. Holidays were few and far between, and rarely beyond these shores.

I'm a pensioner but still work, kind of. More to keep mind and body stimulated than out of financial necessity. Now the kids have fled the nest we'd like a smaller, newer, more efficient home with less garden to maintain, and pass our extended 3 bed semi / garden on to a family who'd appreciate it. But all the developers round here are building is estates of family homes with more bedrooms than we need, or retirement flats with no garden or room for a shed to store and work on bikes. Sadly we're not in the financial position to buy a plot and build something suitable, so we're stuck. We feel like unwilling bed blockers in the housing market.

If you want NI abolished, guess which party has started to do that and vote for them.

Keep wishing then. I would think that most taxpayers expect to get decent services for their money.

until the government ceases to make ni 'qualifying years' the entitling factor for receiving a state pension, it's unambiguous that paying ni (or receiving credits) is what entitles an individual to receive state pension

not enough qualifying years, not entitled to state pension

never pay a penny of income tax, but get the ni qualifying years, entitled to state pension

therefore it's perfectly reasonable for people to say they paid their ni so they're entitled to a pension

imo this is an inappropriate way to do it, and has been for a long time, but it's clear

See sungod's post above - I've paid in for the required number of qualifying years so I am most definitely entitled to a state pension.

I mean, so have I tbf.

Well you haven't paid 35 years of NI contributions, so no you haven't. Yet.

And plenty pay more than 35 years if they started work at 15 or 16 and work to 66, rather than start work at 23 or 25 having done lord knows how many degrees of one level or another.

It's one or the other, not both

You can buy a spoof of the old car tax discs which say 'Yes I've paid my road tax - now go fix some ****ing potholes' 🙂

I started paying at the age of 15. At 62 I retired on my NHS pension only to find that even though I had 40 years plus years of contributions due to some part time working after I had retired. I had pay a top up fee in order to get a full state pension. As I have lived nearly two years since getting my state pension I’m now getting my money back.

I’m like Pb you start work you pay tax NI and they tell you are entitled to X because of it. Well that’s fine by me.

Kinda missing the point 🙂

Right. Here we go again.

A pension is one of the reasons given to justify N.I. Just the same as NHS, unemployment benefit, maternity pay or child benefit. We pay it on the expectation that we will collect. I have already said that I would scrap N.I. and increase income tax to balance the books as that is the reality of how the system works. It would also remove the entitlement but as long as N.I. exists with those justifications then the entitlement will remain.

"Introduced by the National Insurance Act 1911 and expanded by the Labour government in 1948, the system has been subjected to numerous amendments in succeeding years. Initially, it was a contributory form of insurance against illness and unemployment, and eventually provided retirement pensions and other benefits."

The government could introduce another amendment to remove the state pension tomorrow this is true. It wouldn't surprise me, to the extent that I have made provisions should it happen, but I (and other voters) would certainly take note so I doubt it will happen.

I think someone born in the 90s should expect a state pension but I'd hedge against it (if possible) as I have done.

Losing free university was a bad decision imo, but then so was the expectation of going to uni. When I left school with the prospect of free further education the only people who got it were the wealthy (who were used to paying for education) or those in the top 10% of grades. I.e. very few actually gained from it.

It is you that says the pension is unsustainable and want to scrap it, not me. You are completely misrepresenting my opinions, and projecting your own.

Collectively we've decided that part of what those taxes pay for should be pensions though, and that's incredibly difficult to unwind. As previously mentioned, I find it very difficult to see how a government would go around scraping pensions, in a way that would be financially beneficial to them, but also politically acceptable.

The triple lock needs binning though.