Pensioners: an article from "the Telegraph" so it must be good.

[NormanH]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/millions-pensioners-forced-take-debt-cope-food-energy-bills/

[Noisette]

The article is behind a paywall/publicitywall but I get the gist.  Another (temporary) option is to sell off belongings, until there are no more. It'll take a while for things to get that bad here, but it's on its way.

[cajal]

31 minutes ago, Noisette said:

The article is behind a paywall/publicitywall but I get the gist.

If you possess digit dexterity, rapidly keep hitting the 'esc' key a fraction of a second after hitting the link, et voila, over/thru the wall you go. Might require a few attempts and some practice.

[ssomon]

My wife and I have OAP's from both the UK and Spain, each for a similar period of work in each country.

When we first claimed, the total of both our UK pensions, converted into Euros, was roughly equal to the total from Spain, but now there is a significant difference.

Last year, the total of our Spanish pensions was 68% higher than that from the UK.

The rot set in for our UK pensions when, instead of the expected annual increase in 1997, Gordon Brown introduced the Winter Fuel Allowance but did not increase pensions; the value of UK pensions paid outside the UK has fallen ever since as the WFA payments increased. For 2022 we expect this to continue.

We just received our January Spanish pension payments, and were pleasantly surprised to find our total has increased by 26.6%!

This is because the predicted inflation rate used to calculate pensions for 2021 was lower than the actual rate, so the shortfall for last year of 1.6% has been paid as a lump sum. Part of the increase is due to the 2.5% increase in pensions for this year.

What a contrast to what is happening in the UK.