Happy Birthday H

[jacey]

My friend and ex-singing partner, H, is 60 today.

Let me say that again.

Sixty.

We've just been for lunch at the Cooper Art Gallery in Barnsley (very nice) and then had a steady hike around the (charity) shops and bookshops.

We were laughing because as folkies we've always lived on the scrag end of nothing. No one ever goes into folk singing for the money, believe me. As I said to footlingagain  yesterday:
What would the folksinger do if he won a million pounds?
Keep gigging until the money ran out.

So bearing that in mind, H is now looking forward to her first state pension payment because for the first time in many years she'll have a steady income that's actually more than folksinger income[*]! Whoo-hoo. Yay for the state pension! Bring it on!
:-)
Ha!

[*] That's nett income after expenses of course

Comments

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Women get them at sixty, men at sixty-five, but that's changing. They're putting women's pensionable age up to 65, so over the next few years there's a percentage change. I'm in the band that does not get the pension at sixty, but I get it at sixty-and-a-half.

Since women (on average) live longer than men it epuld have been nice to pull men's pensionable age down to sixty. Or a pity they couldn't have levelled them out and had everyone collecting at 62.5

You can choose to leave it longer, of course, but in fact you get very little extra for doing so. Private pensions are still taken anywhere between 55 and 70 depending on the circumstances and personal preferences.