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New UK Pension Update


Keni
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Just a little worrying I thought this morning, listening to the BC Breakfast news.They had on a Pension Minister talking about the new pension regulations, released today.

He was talking about the 35 year requirement coming into force to obtain a full pension in future, saying it will be fairer, and then added as a tail ender - 'and it will make sure we pay the pension to those who require it and not to those who no longer live in the country'......

Anone caught the full information about this statement?

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He was talking about people who pay in for a short period of time while working in the UK, and then leave and go back to their own country. What I wonder about is; will people like me who paid in for 50 years, and paid large amounts of graduated pension, entitling me to an enhanced pension, lose my extra money when flat rate pensions arrive in 2017?
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There has got to be some sting in the tail from reducing the qualifying years for a full pension from 42 (I think) to 30, I just could not understand how they could give so much away without clawing it back another way especially in the face of the growing demographic crisis when they should be doing the opposite, I hadnt coined the phrase back then but it was practically Hollandesque [:)]

Due to some bad accounting advice for several years whilst I was self employed whilst I was paying NIC I wasnt paying the right class which would have given me pension rights hence when I left France I only had 26/40 (or 42nds) of a full pension, I was delighted to find that I now have 26/30 but there just had to be a catch.

Raising it to 35 years seems quite sensible and I have always expected that when my time comes, currently at 68 but will surely be 70+ that they will only be paying it to UK residents.

Nick. If you paid in for 50 years (chapeau to you!) then I assume that you are already recieving your pension, in which case I cant see them reducing it or taking away the component that you volontarily paid extra for.

Something will have to give however especially on this side of the channel.

I was talking to a French friend at the weekend, in the 10 years that I have known him he has worked the incapacity system here in France only working for a total of about 2 years in order to protect his ongoing benefits, he is currently on a state funded formation to become an accredited timber frame house builder (such is his level of handicap[blink]) he had come to the end of his rights so doing the formation not only continues his cotisations for retraite but because he is registered as handicapped he gets paid €2600 per month rather than the €600 that the able bodied on the course do.

Of course he is hardly handicapped if he is capable of housebuilding, in fact at one stage he renounced the statute as it wqs preventing him from doing the formation, then that changed and after he was accepted he learnt that were he to become handicapped again his pay would be calculated as a proportion of his last salary with a plafonne of €2600. His disability is a back problem and he has an understanding médécin.

He wants to trade on a very limited basis for 5 years up to his retirement date of 62 just to be able to continue to cotise towards his retraite so he is going to become an AE and hence only needs to earn (or declare) a few euros per trimestre, he has just had a pension forecast and he will touch €1900 per month [:-))] which I recently read is the average pension in France, that is per person not per household!!!!

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Average for a man, and that is not just the state pension Chancer as private pension contributions always have to be paid. And smicards don't get that. Women's average is about 1300€....... because France has egalité in it's constitution............ which I concede was only ever for men, as in the droit de l'homme.
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[quote user="NickP"]He was talking about people who pay in for a short period of time while working in the UK, and then leave and go back to their own country. What I wonder about is; will people like me who paid in for 50 years, and paid large amounts of graduated pension, entitling me to an enhanced pension, lose my extra money when flat rate pensions arrive in 2017?[/quote]

Don't worry, you won't be screwed by the new system, you will continue to be screwed by the old one [:D]

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In a recent conversation with an Irish neighbour here in France, a holiday home owner, not a resident, the talking moved to contrast the UK state pension rate with the Irish pension rate.

The Irish rate is obviously considerably more and she stated that a UK state pensioner, resident in France, could claim a 'top-up' from the French Government to bring the UK pension up to the level of the French one.

I have never heard of this and to be honest I don't really believe it.

I have no interest in going down this road even if it is possible as I believe it would be less than moral, but I imagine some people could find such a claim necessary.

Any thoughts by anyone?
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[quote user="NormanH"]The figures in this article aren't quite the same:
http://www.europe1.fr/France/Le-niveau-de-vie-reel-des-retraites-1020485/
[/quote]

 

The figures I came across were close to the one in the above article.

In France, the average monthly pension across the board (men and women), is about 1200. In the report I saw, the average monthly pension for WOMEN was 800 euros - which means that for men, it must be around 1400 euros? Very sizeable disparity...

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[quote user="powerdesal"]In a recent conversation with an Irish neighbour here in France, a holiday home owner, not a resident, the talking moved to contrast the UK state pension rate with the Irish pension rate.

The Irish rate is obviously considerably more and she stated that a UK state pensioner, resident in France, could claim a 'top-up' from the French Government to bring the UK pension up to the level of the French one.

I have never heard of this and to be honest I don't really believe it.

I have no interest in going down this road even if it is possible as I believe it would be less than moral, but I imagine some people could find such a claim necessary.

Any thoughts by anyone?[/quote]

She is probably talking about the minimum vieillesse

which guarantees old people with a low income a certain minimum

On that site however it stipulates

Conditions à remplir pour bénéficier de ces allocations

  • Être Français ou étranger en situation régulière en France,

  • Résider en France,

  • Disposer de ressources inférieures à :

    • 9.325,98 €

      par an (

      777,17 €

      par mois) pour une personne seule,

    • 14.479,10 €

      par an (

      1.206,59 €

      par mois) pour un couple
      .

    Which means that anyone with the OAP wouldn't be able to claim

In any case it is meaningless to talk about the 'level of the French pension'  since there isn't a single one.

Each person's pension is calculated on the basis of the contributions paid during the working life.

I have 3 different ones, none paying more than 60€ a month!

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[quote user="NickP"]What I wonder about is; will people like me who paid in for 50 years, and paid large amounts of graduated pension, entitling me to an enhanced pension, lose my extra money when flat rate pensions arrive in 2017?[/quote]Unless it has changed the plan is for those already drawing their pension (including credits if appropriate) to remain as they are on the old system and the new arrangements to only apply to new pensioners.

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I too paid in for far longer than the required number of years and I wouldn't mind a refund. But in actual fact, the way it works is that when you are working you are paying for the ones who are receiving pension at that time; and it's the people who are working now who pay for my/our pensions. It's not like a private pension where you build up a fund.

There's a possibility that some of us will be slightly worse off becasue we have to remain on the old scheme. I haven't been able to work it out yet as none of the figures quoted match my current pension.

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It's certainly not easy to work these things out, and even if you do the next day they'll just as likely change the bloody rules anyway !

Although it would be nice stop paying after you have your 30 years in you have to remember it's called national insurance and like most other insurance policies you keep paying the premiums until whatever event you are insuring for occurs or the policy reaches maturity. In this case it's state retirement age unless you are retired earlier by choice or on grounds of poor health.

They reckon the new pension will be broadly neutral in cost due to savings from a reduction in the bureaucracy required to administer the current pension credits scheme, hmmm, believe it when you see it !

If they really wanted to reduce bureaucracy and make life infinitely simpler for huge swathes of the tax paying population - and possibly take in more to boot - then they would scrap the whole lumbering tax system in favour of a simple flat tax.

They won't of course because it would blow away the smoke and mirrors at the heart of the system by means of which headline tax reductions are as often as not a net increase by dint of some obscure or esoteric backdoor measure.

Useless fact: The UK's tax code extends to some 11,500 pages, the longest in the world allegedly, and the tax yearbook which used to be 2 volumes has grown to 5 and would be more had they not both increased the page word count and the thickness of the paper it's printed on !

It's little wonder then that tinkering by chancellors can so often open up completely unintended and unexpected loopholes which they then have to create another rule to close - and so it goes on. Who says there is no such thing as perpetual motion !

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Norman wrote:-

Conditions à remplir pour bénéficier de ces allocations

Être Français ou étranger en situation régulière en France,

Résider en France,

Disposer de ressources inférieures à :

9.325,98 € par an ( 777,17 € par mois) pour une personne seule,

14.479,10 € par an ( 1.206,59 € par mois) pour un couple.

Which means that anyone with the OAP wouldn't be able to claim

As the UK state pension is approx GBP 108 and our pension income for both is that +60% ie approx Euro 10,600 per year I guess we would qualify.

No claim from me though, I haven't paid into the French system and don't want anything from it.
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