Why you shouldn’t rely on the state pension

There is to be no relief for the women demanding transitional pensions arrangements, says Merryn Somerset Webb – one more reminder that you can't rely on the state pension.

Go to the government petition site and you will find one with an unusually high number of signatures 155,288 at the time of writing. It demands that the state "make fair transitional state pension arrangements for 1950s women".The government has (quite rightly) been attempting to raise the age at which those of us not yet retired get our state pension, and to equalise the ages at which men and women receive their pensions.

So the state pension age for women is to go up to 65 in November 2018, and then to 66 by 2020. That represents an acceleration of the original scheme (it was to go to 65 by 2020) and leaves some women having "to rethink their retirement plans at relatively short notice", saysThe Daily Telegraph. Those with a particular grievance are women born in 1953 and 1954, who have seen their state pension age rise by up to 18 months.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.