A 37 anni ho solo un fondo pensione di 480 sterline dopo anni di congedo di maternità
At 37, I only have a pension pot of £480 after years of maternity leave
di endofdays2022
A 37 anni ho solo un fondo pensione di 480 sterline dopo anni di congedo di maternità
At 37, I only have a pension pot of £480 after years of maternity leave
di endofdays2022
41 commenti
>Karina, a mum-of-three, has been out of work for a decade after having children
Three children, ten years out of work? That’s not maternity leave, that’s just being unemployed.
If you’re giving up work to raise kids make sure that both people’s retirement accounts are being topped up. If not earning anything you can still put £3600 a year into a SIPP and £4k into a lifetime ISA. So the employed person should pay into their workplace pension and then contribute to the stay at home parent’s retirement accounts.
Most organisations continue to pay pension contributions if you’re on maternity leave.
She’s clearly just not worked but they’ve buried in the article rather than being truthful in the headline.
We all make choices in life. Hers was to have 3 kids.
Who’d have thought that if you don’t make pension contributions for 10 years your pension pot will have hardly grown in that time?
Well, it’s time she got cracking then, 37 isn’t too late to start investing.
Im sorry but who cares? What has this got to do with anything she was unemployed for a decade. Pension contributions are still paid during mat leave, she wasnt on mat leave, she was just unemployed.
Gender pay gap? Let’s say she did a 4-year degree until 22, and worked until her first kid at 26. That means she paid in £120 a year (less as that’s including inflation) for 4 years then decided to not bother looking at it until 10 years later. I don’t understand how you can pay in so little unless you actually opt out of paying in, or just didn’t work? I think that’s about 1% of working minimum wage (at the time, around £6?).
Also, Karina only wants to be known by her first name, but lives in Bromley and is happy to pose for a national newspaper.
If I was unemployed for a decade I wouldn’t expect to have built much of a pension either? ‘Gender pay gap’ this is not.
On the face of it and not knowing his side of the story, it seems her partner has been unkind to her, here. Something he could do would be to make a voluntary £2880×5/6 for all the previous years she is allowed to fill her private pension. No doubt this would make his daughters proud of him, as well as doing the right thing by his ex-partner.
> “My partner, who was a project manager, persuaded me to be a stay at home mum and said he earned enough to support us, and why would we pay for someone else to raise our kids when we could afford it?
No way I’m doing that as unmarried.
Also they were engaged for a decade. Bro was never planning to commit to her.
> If a couple are cohabiting but not married, they do not have any automatic rights to the other’s pension – even if they have children together
Yup. I don’t think many people consider this in the uk. All just rushing to get on housing ladder…
But I’m confused where gender pay gap concern is here. She’s out of work for 10 years. Have i missed something?
If the Green Party get in she’ll be absolutely fine and dandy. So with her remaining 30 years of work she can take that off as well.
Having a significant pension pot (or wanting one) has only become more of a thing in recent years with the govt making you opt in automatically to a pension.
“For those nearing retirement (aged 55-64), the average pension wealth is generally around £137,800”. This is the UK today.
My nan retired in her 60s and lived off the state pension until her death 20 odd years later.
It’s actually younger generations that have become more focused on their pensions, encouraged by the govt. Of course, trying to predict what the world will exactly be like in 30+ years is difficult. Currently, young people fear high house prices/ rents. But once a lot of baby boomers are dead, we could be living in quite a different situation. Also, what will happen to immigration/ the size of the population…
It’s good to put money aside but equally who’s to say you won’t get hit by a bus the day you access your pension? So worrying about the far off future is often waste of mental energy, albeit something humans find hard not to do.
*Karina’s former partner persuaded her to be a stay-at-home mum – they were not married, so she cannot claim his pension*
*Karina, who only wants to be known by her first name and lives in Bromley, has stayed in the house, which is owned by her partner, and are splitting time with the children between them while trying to sort things out financially.*
*However, Karina has realised that she only has a pension pot totalling £480 – not helped by the fact that she was out of the workplace for a decade while raising her children.*
*She believes the gender pay gap that exists in pensions is “terrifying” and also “deeply unfair”, as a lot of women end up taking time out of work to bring up children or work part-time or reduced hours to fit around family life.*
This should be a cautionary tale for women to protect themselves financially – this woman had three kids with a guy but didn’t get married and so didn’t get the financial protections which come with marriage or civil partnership, she also took 10 years out of work so has no established career to go back to, she also seems not to own any part of her home so presumably will be at risk of being made homeless at some point in the future once the kids are old enough and possibly may not even qualify for the full state pension if she hasn’t got enough NI credits.
She has let herself get into a really horrific financial situation here, no one should put themselves so comprehensively at the mercy of someone else financially.
It’s unfortunate her cards fell that way concerning her husband’s advice, I’m sure it’s a more common issue than we realise. But there’s plenty of the current workforce who’ve been working full time and probably won’t be on course to have enough in their pot for retirement.
What is the problem? She’s got 30 years of employment potential ahead of her to build a great pension and resolve any missing NI contributions for state pension.
This is basically, young woman who didnt really work during her early adult years has no money from not working. Which you’d expect. If she had 3 kids that’s a total of what 18 months paid maternity she got. So she just chose unemployment for the other 8.5 years.
surprised pikachu? she didnt work and is surprised she doesnt have savings. if i could not work and still expected a pension, i would do it, but i can’t, and its crazy she think it’s should be different for her.
Boo hoo. She says there needs to be more information and education. Well, when she was sat at home with kids she could’ve easily read about it on the internet and done some of her own research.
No doubt she will be expecting a bail out in retirement
This. This is why I warn other women of quitting their jobs to take care of the children, especially for a man they’re not even married to. Fast forward 10-20 years and the relationship breaks down, and they’ve got nothing in their pension pot and can never stop working. It’s why I’m back at work full time, my job pays well and I work now so I can stop working one day when my body and mind slow down and my health declines.
‘Studied accountancy and finance’ but ‘didn’t know anything about pensions’. Ok then…
3 kids and off for a decade?
Choosing to be unemployed.
Before the state pension, often having children was your pension, as they would take care of you when you could no longer work.
I love the amount of vitriol she’s getting for being “unemployed” when she’s basically stayed at home to bring up three kids — people talking like that isn’t work 😂 chances are she would be just as badly off if she did go to work and paid for childcare.
30 years contribution is sufficient for her state pension plus the top up of whatever she pays into it.
If she joined the civil service now, she could accrue 30-40k in under 8 years.
Looking after kids and claiming child benefit automatically opts you in for state pension contributions for those years at least
I wish I had the brass neck to be 37, not work for 10 years and expect a decent pension.
Also keep in mind she chose to do this shortly after getting her degree so squandered a lot of potential there.
>“The degree included a work placement year, which is why I chose it,” said Karina. “I had a placement in London and the company was very happy with me and offered me a job. They waited for me to finish my studies and I had a job lined up as a purchase ledger clerk in a finance department.”
>After finishing university in 2012, Karina moved to London and began working for the company. She worked her way into different positions and the firm paid for her to do various courses.
>“I was enjoying my work and they were investing in me and I was happy,” she recalled.
>Karina met her partner in 2013 and the year after, she had her first baby and ended up not returning to work after maternity leave and having her other two daughters.
Woman who hasn’t worked in over 10 years is shocked to find she hasn’t contributed to her pension in over 10 years.
Like… Ya duh?
“Person decides not to go back to work due to ‘flexibility’, blames it on a long commute, doesn’t check her pension pot for a decade and is now complaining”.
A decade of poor choices will do that to you, yes. If a man isn’t committed enough to you to marry you then it’s probably a bad idea to have kids with him and agree to give up your separate life for that family unit.
But it does seem like she is learning from her mistake and her intentions with this publicity are good, in terms of warning others rather than chasing the compo train or anything.
> Karina has now started looking for work as she wants to build up her pension pot. But she is determined not to just take any job, and wants to find one that fills her skillset.
>
>“I want to warn women to think about pensions earlier and to also know their rights as if their relationship breaks down and they are not married, they could be entitled to nothing.
>
>“I regret giving up work for so long because now, I am not even starting out from the point where I left – I am starting from the beginning. I am starting at the same level as people leaving university, but they are much younger than me.
>
>“Having such a massive gap in my career throws me back. I have the skills from working in a junior position and I was progressing well. […]”
She’s got 30 years to build savings before retirement, time is not an issue. Her bigger problem is that she has had 10 years out of the workforce so she needs to start from scratch building her earnings up. This is why women shouldn’t give up their careers to be a stay at home mum.
If I were her, I’d be concerned about the house too. It doesn’t specify whose name it is in and, contrary to common belief, having kids and being a stay at home mum doesn’t prevent the house being sold even if the kids are minors. Another area where being married makes a massive difference Vs unmarried
Because you left work earlier, you still have 30 years to retirement age so plenty of time to build it up. Having kids starting at 27 rather than in your 30s is probably all round a good decision, your pension might suffer a bit but you’ll probably catch up.
Under some pretty minor assumptions, she could build a 500k pension pot fairly easily by retirement (on top of state pension). Whats the issue?
Aren’t we well under replacement birthrate at the moment? Which will have catastrophic effects on the economy where younger taxpayers can’t sufficiently fund pensions and NHS etc for the elderly who are living increasingly longer? Seems like having children is something we’d want to encourage.
Articles like this have to be ragebait, there’s no way people think these claims of “unfairness” are substantiated.
Doesn’t say what she did the 2-3 years her first 2 kids were in full-time education and the 3rd wasn’t in? Ideal opportunity to focus on your career I’d have said.
This is one of the problems with being a stay at home mum, it’s a full time job with no breaks or holidays and it’s unpaid. So if you separate or your partner dies, you can be very vulnerable financially.
Can’t be the only person who couldn’t care less in regards to their pension pot.
Like, pensions gov wise shall not likely exist for this 37 year old and a private pension she can easily over the next 30 years get to a ‘decent level’.
Life working away stressed and barely making ends meet to put aside a pension pot you may not even see one day and if you do you’ll be lucky to get a decade of ‘enjoyment’ out of it.
>Karina, who now has three daughters, aged 11, nine and three, separated from her partner in January this year after their relationship broke down. Although they had been together for 14 years and they had been engaged for 10 years, they were not married.
This is the heart of it. Don’t be a stay at home servant to a man who refuses to marry you. You won’t have adequate legal protections when he decides he’s done with you.
Raising children is important, it is hard work and it is difficult to juggle with working life. There is nothing wrong with choosing to take time out of your career to do it.
That is exactly what she did for ten years. It was her choice to do so and I am a little sceptical that she was persuaded by her partner to stay at home. The vast majority of mums who do take time out to raise their kids do so because they want to.
She wasn’t in paid work but could have got a part time job to build some national insurance contributions.
The whole story sounds like she made a choice that she wanted to do but didnt think of the implications of that until now and the only reason she is going back to work is because they have broken up.
Its not a great situation for her but she did this to herself so I have limited sympathy.