The post you are reporting:
Interesting question Harry and one that I have been discussing and studying at a financial advisers conference over the last two days.
The last government had plans to increase the State retirement age to 68 phased in over several years. The new government has decided to accellerate the process as part of dealing with the deficit bringing in the age 66 SRP age much sooner.
Some people are saying that the present plans do not go far enough and the SRP age should be raised to 70 but that is not government policy, at least not yet.
Regardless of the deficit situation this is to address a serious problem building up.
The numbers of people working relative to the number over the State Retirement age is falling, people are simply living longer and longer while the birth rate is falling. This is building up huge costs in the system. Add to that the huge and increasing number of working age people who are 'economically inactive' the bad situation is threatening to become a crisis.
The important point to remember is that we are only talking about the State Pension age. You can still retire and draw a private pension from age 55 but cannot take the state one until a year later than before.
At the end of the day it is a matter of priorities.
I know many people who prefer to smoke 20-40 a day, spending £200 to £400 a month on cigarettes instead of saving towards a better standard of living in retirement. This money, even a part of it, can still be invested towards providing a retirement income attracting additional cash input from the government. If someone smoking 40 a day cut down to 20 and invested £200 a month into a pension, they would end up with £250 a month invested and that would help them a long way towards retireing earlier. They earlier they start investing the better it is, even if it is done in a small way. Make no mistake, there are some very good pension schemes out there specially with the right advice back-up.
We all make these lifestyle choices and should remain free to do so however daft it seems.
The government, by the way, is not inactive in this respect either. There is a rather flawed scheme put forward by the last government called NEST, that will force every employee to be authomaically enrolled in to a pension scheme run by, believe it or not, an Indian car manufacturer, Tata.... I do not know if it will survive the change of government but this is certainly an ill-conceived scheme offering a very poor and restrictive pension that will be of no use to man or beast and will do not more than pull people off means tested benefits, at their own and their employer's expense, for no real advantage. UK (European and US) pension providers refused to get involved and be associated with this terrible scheme, hence Tata.
