Retirement (or Last of the Summer Wine)

Hi all, Ok, right, now then, well, pensions & pensioners. Many retired folk are receiving their index linked private company pension advice notes, with heads in their hands as to why they are not receiving the 10.1% increase that is high in the news media. I will try to explain. Twenty years ago, the UK hot news was about company pension schemes going bang, with the Government picking up the tabs by guaranteeing at least 90% of former employees losses. So, act of parliament required all company pension schemes that were current, to agree to certain terms. One was to insert a maximum cap on such scheme increases, of initially 5%. That was so pension scheme controllers wouldn't pay huge increases, so relying on government bail-out. Up to now, compared to state pension increases, private pensioners have faired very well. This year, with triple-lock state pensions increasing by 10.1, the state pensioners are laughing. Two things now. One of the thumb rules in finance, is not to put all of our eggs in one basket. I contributed to state serps, as well as company AVC schemes. That's in spite of the Ctlds pension fund being very robust. I split 60/40 with my contributions. Since 2011, the private company pensioners are still ahead of the state as of now. Let's not be greedy. Hope that helps with a bit of understanding. I try to tell it as it is. It's a bit more complex than that, but that's the gist of it.

Hi all, Many folk in retirement, along with other groups are being squeezed by the cost of living increases that we are all experiencing currently. I right up until yesterday, I was paying a fortune for my tele, landline & broadband. At present I do want good broadband, as well as my landline, even though that will be replaced in two years or so. My tele was brill. It answered the door, made coffee, being silly now, but you get the gist. The thing is, but for YouTube, our tele is never switched on. A competitor was muscling in, but Sky more than matched by reducing my contract to fast broadband, landline & just basic tele. £50 the lot per month instead of £125. So I went on a date with a gorgeous lady yesterday lunchtime. Don't worry, she kept me going at Courtaulds for four decades. She knows me!!! Most folk can do away with landlines nowadays, but as so much of my infrastructure is coupled by my landline, including medical stuff, right now I don't believe is a good time for me to ditch it. Anyway, I thought that I would share that. Hope it's of some help. Sharing what I have, I'm very mindful that we are all different. The first Autumn of me living in my own, I decided to have the best in-house entertainment going. It was novel at the time, but if I'm ok, there might come a time when I might be in a tele mood at some point again. It irritated me to think I was sending £75 a month up the chimney for nothing. The spectacle of folks from the street, crowding around the posh neighbours house to watch a 9 or twelve inch no colour image of a coronation I don't think will happen seventy years on! The picture houses did a roaring trade back then.

BT, at the governments agreement, are planning to do away with 3G phones and landlines with the only phones 4G upwards and broadband. They are running up against the issue of emergency equipment and 'smart' meters needing the older stuff. Not to mention the problem of power cuts. I can understand the government and Civil Service being full of short sighted know nothings but BT should... actually BT is full of short sighted know nothings too. I don't know why I started that sentence. BT were the worst contractor I ever had to deal with at work. Our entire telephone network was registered as a payphone, no matter how hard we tried to rectify the problem. So when we had a problem a) they took their time responding because they didn't deem it urgent b) they sent someone to fix a payphone not a big modern switching unit.

Sadly Helen, B.T., Lost the plot around 2005, their share price crashed, not recovered yet. Even their pensions are up-funded & topped up by we the taxpayers. Quote: "Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/087f551a-793b-4b20-8f8d-5b49a3b2e5d2 BT's £47bn pension scheme has warned it may need to call on the telecommunications group for more cash "support" as it tightens its use of leveraged investment strategies. The 270,000-member scheme, which has a £4bn deficit, said it had become "more cautious" in how it managed liquidity following September's gilt market crisis. That forced thousands of retirement schemes to sell assets, such as bonds and equities, to meet collateral calls". I'm currently not buying shares, but if I was, I would be giving BT a serious consideration.

Everything today has to be linked to technology, Is it an improvement ? I have a mobile, I bought a reasonably priced smartphone (but still not cheap and pay monthly for a sim) for emergencies, and also because you can't log into anywhere these days without a number they send you. If you are having to claim all these benefits which are supposed to be available how do you justify what was once a luxury like a mobile phone ! We have a decent deal with Vodaphone for Broadband and phone calls so I much prefer to ring from the landline. I don't like ringing people on their mobile. If you ring a landline, you know if they don't answer they are most probably out or in and will see you have rung and ring you back when it is convenient for them. If you ring a mobile they could be anywhere. Our daughter works several days from home so I can't ring during the day as she is working. same for our son, often in a meeting ! If you ring in the evening they may be out somewhere.I know it is convenient to be able to ring someone any time anywhere but is it fair, like last week when I rang my brother and he was on holiday. Another thing ! I would like to be around when all these young technically minded people get into their 70,s and suddenly their brain goes blank when they come to do something or put a password in. It was so much easier to go to a shop or a bank counter and ask for what you wanted. I am not dismissing technology, would not be without online shopping but some of it has gone too far. Rant over

I love your sensitive concern about this, Anne.

Too true Anne. My Dad was very into tech and at the point where he couldn't manage anymore it was very hard convincing him. Because he knew he was making mistakes he also became very secretive. He'd trust total strangers over his family. Fortunately we'd been cross checking our Tax submissions before he had his first stroke or I might not have know where to start sorting out his and my Mum's finances. Banks don't even send an annual statement unless asked, so potentially there wouldn't be any physical evidence of accounts, shares etc.

'Everything today has to be linked to technology,' Yes Anne, and there have been enough warnings of the danger of that. Who hasn't been to buy something and found that there is a computer glitch somewhere that stops you? How many times have you tried to contact someone and been foiled by a crashed system. Who isn't in danger of being scammed when accessing a 'secure' system. That is the modern world, younger people seem to be prepared to live with it, as long as it does not interfere with their Facebook access. Without landlines we will be at the mercy of any malicious body wishing to disrupt our basic communication system. My daughter is self employed and recently lost her Vodafone access which went out for three days and that affected her earnings as she could not contact clients. Many people in that area were left without phone access. and there was no explanation from Vodafone. Suppose that situation was created nationwide by malicious action. I want my landline. P.S. take no notice of the rant, I am over 60 years old and so it is common knowledge that I must know nothing.

Hi, Argon. I'm a fully paid up member of the Know Nothing Society. Maybe we need a new topic thread?

Reading this thread I recalled seeing the 1966 TV adaptation of E. M. Foster's "The Machine Stops", a dystopian tale written 1909, foreshadowing the dangers of allowing technology to take over our lives. It must have made an impact on me to have remembered it. OK, what did I do? I became a computer scientist, did some work in artificial intelligence and so (in a very minor part) feel responsible for the quandary now being pointed out by giants of AI such as Hinton. At the back of my mind a memory linked E.M. Foster to Coventry, a little research told me he died there in 1970 and my parents ashes are scattered among his in the rose garden at the crematorium.

I think that is fair to say technology is a good servant but a bad master.

An interesting AI article today about ChatGPT asked which scone method was best and it concluded the Devon version with the jam on the cream. Most people would choose the Cornwall way because of the difficulty spreading jam on cream. It admitted that it couldn't experience the thing for real but it should have answered that it didn't know the better method unless it had a reason.

Any idea what Forster's connection to Coventry was?

He had a friend he had known for 40 years who lived in Styvechale. An article in the CET in 1968 says that he had spent his 90th birthday on the 1st January at their home. He had spent his birthday with them for the past 20 years.

I love these bits of information about our city. Thank you.