Increases in Tax to Pay for Health and Social Care

The politicians are trying to appeal to the younger voters now and the view seems to be that a National Insurance hike is unfair to the young, I think they mean anyone under 55 because as you just pointed out oldies don't pay NI anymore and folk like me will only be paying it for a few more years.

Whereas if they hike tax rates everyone including pensioners has to pay it, saying that the over 60s and pensioners will still be paying less actual cash tax because of lower incomes and shorter remaining lifespans.

I have always been for higher tax in order to fund a more supportive state system, the Scandinavians have put in place some very good systems in their countries very good socially democratic care systems and it has worked, they are heavily taxed but very well cared for.

The problem with our lot is that they will not be equitable about it and it will end up being more expensive because they will want a profit motivation for private providers.

I am thinking of working after age 66 for maybe 6 months fulltime then another 6 months part time in part because of the extra money from the NI saving, the personal tax allowance is frozen till then anyway and that is going to start acting as a tax on better off pensioners right now.

My state pension combined with my Scottish Power Defined Benefit (DB) pension will come in under the tax allowance, I could salary sacrifice a lot of extra last minute cash into my main pension after having taken my lump sum, actually I could sacrifice almost all of my salary into my pension in that final extra year as long as I spent a little bit of my lump sum along with my state and DB pension, that would get me out of the 40% tax bracket for that year and make good use of the savings in NI.

I should be able to choose how much I pay in tax by choosing how much I eventually decide to draw down each year, the lump sum if large enough will give me that flexibility, I expect you have the same freedom but ultimately we end up paying the going rate at the time.

Annuity rates are awful and I don't have any other assets for Janna or Gemma to inherit so drawdown is better for me as whatever remains can be passed to my kids and won't go to waste.

This is me being Mr Pessimist again. I'm not sure I will live long enough to get reasonable value out of an Annuity and the company that provides it

I could live with that amount of NI increase, I would expect that they would not raise enough from that alone to meet the costs involved and that there will likely need to be a similar or larger increase in Employers NI, that's just a gut feeling.

For me personally if this were brought in next April that would amount to an extra cost of about £43 a month.

There is an argument for removing the triple lock as a special case for this year because the increase in average wages this year is artificial, but as inflation is likely to be up a lot they should switch to a double lock for this year only then bring back the triple lock after that, however it's a great opportunity for the Tories to penny pinch so I expect it will be removed for longer and pensioners will end up being worse off in the long term.

The UK state pension is still lousy compared to many other first world countries.

Well if I read it correctly pensioners in work will have to pay this 1.25% levy, but maybe that is not until it becomes a separate pay item in 2023, from April it will be a straight increase on NI and change to an itemised levy the year after that.

I see nothing in the proposals that are not still going to impoverish anyone who has available resources when the time comes that they need some kind of care, plenty of people are still going to lose their house.

PM says government working with the financial services industry to innovate so people can insure themselves up to the threshold of £86,000, so mostly old people trying to get insurance for 86 grands worth of social care, who thinks that's going to be cheap.

Still have to pay UK tax in the Philippines, although I would not be working so no NI and no levy.

A 1.25% levy or additional NI after retirement is not that onerous and I have no property at this point in time, but in the UK I would have assets as my drawdown pot would be seen as an asset.

Personally I would rather be dead than in a care home, I have said before that retiring in the Philippines would likely shorten my lifespan but at least I would have the family and extended family around me, I am sure they would provide care for the shorter period that I might need it.

The nightmare for me would be something like Alzheimer's in the UK and having no choice but some kind of institutionalised care.

From the assets angle, my plan is as I have said before to try to buy a half decent flat in Scotland when I retire, budget up to 80 grand, maybe a little bit more but if I manage to get that I want that to go to Janna when I die, so I would have to rely on being mostly in the Philippines in my later years in order to escape potential seizure of that asset to pay for care if I suddenly needed it while back for a short time in the UK.

This insurance lark they are on about I find that very insidious, underwriters would have to calculate premiums based on the number of people who die early while still able to look after themselves never having needed care.

Will take a look at the link shortly.

Triple lock pension pledge suspended for one year - BBC News

Looks like my guess was right triple lock suspended for a year and a double lock instead, not too bad as inflation could be up at 4 or 5% by April.

The major inflation issues for me are energy costs most other expenses are within my control, there is a certain minimum amount of energy required to run this flat each year and I've reached the limits of what I can cut it down to.

I'm all electric here, I can get it down to 4.5 units a day some days but with it being warm just now it's creeping up

So far today, it'll end up at about 5.8 units by midnight today.