logo
Exact age you can get your state pension as millions set to work for longer

Exact age you can get your state pension as millions set to work for longer

Daily Mirror23-07-2025
The state pension age is the earliest you can start claiming the state pension and it is separate to any workplace or private pension you may have
The state pension age is set to start rising again from next year - so how old exactly will you be when you can start claiming it?

The state pension age for men and women is currently 66 - but this is set to rise to 67 between 2026 and 2028. The first people to see their state pension age increase are those born between April 6, 1960 and May 5, 1960.

If you are born between these dates, you won't be able to start claiming your state pension until you are age 66 and one month. The age will gradually keep increasing over the following year until the state pension age hits 67.

Those born from April 1977 onwards are currently set to see their state pension age rise to 68. There have been calls to bring this forward, but a decision on this has been delayed.
It comes after a major review into pension saving was announced this week, amid fears that today's workers face a greater risk of poverty in retirement.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall will revive the Pensions Commission, which last met in 2006, to look at ways to encourage workers to save more money for their retirement.

Get the best deals and tips from Mirror Money
WHATSAPP GROUP: Get money news and top deals straight to your phone by joining our Money WhatsApp group here. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
State pension age rising - see when you can retire
The following timetable shows your date and birth and the age you will be when you can claim your state pension. It was published with the Pensions Act 2014.
April 6, 1960 – May 5, 1960 - 66 years and 1 month
May 6, 1960 – June 5, 1960 - 66 years and 2 months
June 6, 1960 – July 5, 1960 - 66 years and 3 months
July 6, 1960 – August 5, 1960 - 66 years and 4 months
August 6, 1960 – September 5, 1960 - 66 years and 5 months
September 6, 1960 – October 5, 1960 - 66 years and 6 months
October 6, 1960 – November 5, 1960 - 66 years and 7 months
November 6, 1960 – December 5, 1960 - 66 years and 8 months
December 6, 1960 – January 5, 1961 - 66 years and 9 months
January 6, 1961 – February 5, 1961 - 66 years and 10 months
February 6, 1961 – March 5, 1961 - 66 years and 11 months
March 6, 1961 – April 5, 1977

You can check your state pension age on GOV.UK by entering your date of birth. The state pension age is the earliest you can start claiming the state pension.
It is separate to any workplace or private pension you may have. The earliest age you can access your private pensions is currently 55 - but this will rise to 57 from April 2028.
Anyone retiring now will claim the new state pension, which is worth £221.20 a week if you're eligible for the full amount. Most people need 35 qualifying years on their National Insurance record to get the full amount.
The state pension rises every year in line with the triple lock promise. Your state pension is separate to any private or workplace pension you may have.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

‘Neil Woodford cost me £100,000. His £6m fine is an insult'
‘Neil Woodford cost me £100,000. His £6m fine is an insult'

Times

timea day ago

  • Times

‘Neil Woodford cost me £100,000. His £6m fine is an insult'

When Ian and Linda Duffield planned their retirement, they had dreams of a round-the-world cruise and maybe even a fancy car. Ian had diligently saved into workplace and private pensions throughout his career at a large retail company and, as his salary increased, he put extra money into his and Linda's Isas. This thorough planning, they hoped, would allow them to enjoy the spoils of a lifetime of hard work and saving. But now, aged 71 and 69, their vision hasn't materialised. They retired, but the cruise never happened and Ian ended up buying himself a second-hand car for £6,000. 'We are looking at a different retirement than we were expecting,' said Ian, from Manchester. 'We've had to think more carefully about what we have, and all our plans were shelved.' The Duffields are among the hundreds of thousands who lost money after investing in the Woodford Equity Income fund, the flagship fund launched in 2014 by the star stockpicker Neil Woodford. The fund failed spectacularly in 2019 and Woodford's management of it became the focus of a long-running investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the City watchdog. Of the £234,000 that Ian and Linda invested through their pensions and Isas, they estimate that they will lose about £100,000 — 42 per cent. On Tuesday the FCA slapped the disgraced Woodford, 65, with a £5.89 million fine. His investment firm, Woodford Investment Management, has been hit with a £40 million penalty — although questions have been raised as to whether it has the assets to pay the fine. The FCA concluded that Woodford had made 'unreasonable and inappropriate investment decisions' and held a 'defective and unreasonably narrow understanding of his responsibilities'. Woodford and Woodford Investment Management have challenged the findings and the decision is heading for the Upper Tribunal. But burnt investors say the fines are little comfort to those who have seen their retirements derailed and savings slashed. For many it has left permanent emotional and financial scars that have deterred them from ever investing again. It comes as Rachel Reeves pushes for more savers to move their cash into the stock market and boost the economy. Victims of the Woodford saga say there is a long way to go before trust is rebuilt in the system. When Woodford started his own investment company in 2014 he had a reputation as one of the best and most trusted fund managers in the country. Woodford Equity Income fund attracted £1.6 billion of investors' cash almost immediately. Fast-forward to 2019, and a prolonged period of poor performance and a string of large withdrawals had shrunk the fund from a peak of £10.1 billion to £3.6 billion. • Woodford 'ignored warning signs and blamed others' as fund collapsed In funds such as Woodford Equity Income fund, having liquidity in the underlying assets is crucial — it has to be able to sell them quickly if investors want their money back. Woodford's investments had shifted from large, well-known companies that were easily bought and sold towards smaller, often unlisted companies that were harder to shift. As a growing number of people wanted to take their money out, Woodford was forced to sell the fund's more liquid holdings leaving unlisted, smaller stocks that began to dominate the portfolio. The fund was suspended on June 3, 2019 when Woodford couldn't sell assets fast enough to meet redemptions, trapping about 300,000 investors who were unable to get their money out. In October 2019 it was decided by Link Fund Solutions, the company that oversaw the fund, that it should be wound up. Investors received nothing until January 2020. The fund's difficult-to-shift holdings took even longer to sell than expected and many investors are still waiting for all of their money to be returned. The value of many of these assets declined during this time, exacerbating investor losses. The FCA also arranged a redress scheme that aimed to make up any losses that were caused by regulatory failings rather than market conditions. The regulator said the scheme would return 77p in the pound, but investors say they received more like 7p in the pound of their total losses. The disparity is because the scheme only covered losses which the FCA decided were down to Link's conduct falling below required standards. In the four years leading up to the fund's collapse, Woodford and his co-founder Craig Newman extracted £98 million in dividends from Woodford Investment Management. Alongside the £5.89 million provisional fine handed to Woodford by the FCA last week, the regulator banned him from holding senior manager roles and managing funds for retail investors. Woodford has maintained that he did nothing wrong in the collapse of his fund. In a tearful video filmed last year in Dubai he instead laid blame at the FCA, Link Fund Solutions and the media and said his own treatment had been 'so unfair'. Ian and Linda were able to recoup £134,000 from the fund and the redress scheme, but have little hope that they will ever see the remaining £100,000. As for Woodford's £6 million fine — 'It's not even going to scratch the surface. It's a disgrace,' Ian said. • Neil Woodford's tearful interview left big questions unanswered There are also questions over how much, if any, of Woodford Equity Income's £40 million fine will be paid. The latest accounts show that the company had less than £30,000 in assets and almost £260,000 in liabilities for the year to March 2024. Richard Harris, 77, lost about £79,000 of his £167,000 investment in Woodford's fund. He said: 'Fining Woodford £6 million is small change to him. And fining a bankrupt company £40 million? I have no idea what the FCA thinks it is doing. The company simply can't pay that fine.' The finger of blame is not solely pointed at Woodford by investors. Many feel they were repeatedly let down by the FCA and the investment platforms they used to put their money in the fund. Neil and Mary Taylor estimate that they lost about £32,000 of their £76,000 investment in Woodford's fund. They invested through the Hargreaves Lansdown platform, and are part of a group litigation against Hargreaves for continuing to promote the fund up until its suspension in 2019. Hargreaves is disputing the claim and denies liability. Neil, 67, from Lincoln, said: 'We invested in the funds that were on Hargreaves's Wealth 50 shortlist of best funds. We don't have direct contact with the fund houses so we followed its view. 'When things started going wrong there was news coming out of Hargreaves saying that it still trusted him and that he was a contrarian investor but would get through this hard time.' Hargreaves Lansdown said the company had empathy with clients who had lost money in the Woodford fund but had no responsibility for losses suffered. It added: 'Clients of our platform are responsible for making their own decisions about the funds in which they invest. Our communications regarding the Woodford Equity Income fund, including its inclusion on our Wealth Lists, accurately reflected our reasonably held views at the time.' • Read more money advice and tips on investing from our experts The redress scheme paid by Link stipulated that investors no longer had the right to claim with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), a safety net that refunds up to £85,000 per person if a financial firm goes bust. Some say Link's scheme did not adequately compensate for its failings in managing the fund's liquidity. The FCA also has questions to answer, investors say. Nigel Barton, a retired operations director from Co Durham, said: 'The FCA was asleep at the wheel. There were four or five years of signs that the FCA should have picked up on before that and said, what is going on here? 'It started an investigation when it was suspended, but when the patient's dead it's hardly the time to start an investigation.' Barton lost tens of thousands of pounds of his £84,000 investment. He had deliberately kept the figure below the FSCS's £85,000 compensation limit, but this protection has been removed by the redress scheme. In March a cross-party group of MPs renewed its calls for an inquiry into the FCA's handling of the Woodford scandal, questioning why the regulator took so long to complete its investigation. It said that the FCA's handling of the scandal had 'undermined trust and confidence' in the UK's financial services industry. That is certainly the case for John Oldfield, a 73-year-old who lost about half of his £11,000 investment in the Woodford Equity Income fund. 'You start to see conspiracies everywhere, which is really depressing. But the FCA didn't act for such a long time initially, and then why did all this take so long?' said Oldfield, a retired IT worker from Swindon. 'It's all just highlighted to me the degree to which regulation in this country isn't working. I will not invest in any stocks or shares again in this climate. I would never dream of doing it again. The experience of the last six years is sufficiently bleak that I would prefer to live with what I've got than to throw it away.' The FCA said: 'We have sympathy for those who lost money in the fund. Our aim has always been to hold to account those responsible for managing the fund's liquidity, and investors' ability to get their money out. There are no shortcuts to achieving that especially in complex and technical areas such as this, though we recognise the time required to investigate thoroughly causes understandable frustration. 'All investments come with risk. While regulation can't compensate people who lose money when investments fall in value, we secured up to £230 million for those unfairly trapped because of the failure to manage the fund's liquidity. Mr Woodford, Woodford Investment Management and Link are responsible for those failings.' Woodford and Woodford Equity Income were approached for comment.

Jobs deserts are holding back Britain, warns employment minister
Jobs deserts are holding back Britain, warns employment minister

Telegraph

time2 days ago

  • Telegraph

Jobs deserts are holding back Britain, warns employment minister

Job deserts and high rates of long-term sickness are holding back towns and cities across the UK, the employment minister has warned. Alison McGovern, a minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, said surging levels of economic inactivity in some pockets of the country had left people 'on the scrap heap' and was damaging local regions. Her warning came as the Government unveiled fresh plans to boost revive recruitment levels at branches of Jobcentre Plus. Figures show just 9pc of businesses use them to hire workers. She said: 'We've got too many people who've essentially been put on the scrap heap and that's bad for them individually … but it's also bad for those places in our country where there are high concentrations of people in that position because that town and that city is also held back.' The UK's rate of economic inactivity stands at 21pc, according Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures. In some areas of the country, over half of working age adults are out of work and not seeking employment. Part of Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham has the highest rate of economic inactivity in the UK, with 67pc of all working-age adults economically inactive, according to the 2021 census. There are also worries about the number of people who have left the workforce since the pandemic due to long-term sickness. Ms McGovern added that the UK's rate of economic inactivity 'comes from the health of the country'. Research carried out by The Telegraph has found that Knowsley in Merseyside has the highest proportion of working age people receiving statements of fitness for work at 31.4pc. As the country grapples with high levels of economic inactivity, the Government is rolling out a scheme to encourage Britain's largest employers to recruit staff through job centres. In a letter to more than 8,000 of Britain's largest businesses, the Department for Work & Pensions said it was investing in staff to offer 'comprehensive recruitment support' for companies. As part of the Government's plan, job centres are also running pre-employment training programs in partnership with businesses. KFC is among the businesses with whom the Government has partnered, with the fast food chain offering young people paid work experience with the aim of helping them get their first full-time job. Shaffra Gray-Read, from KFC, said its scheme was about 'giving young people a fair shot at a first job' because 'so many young people are locked out of opportunity.' The most recent figures from the ONS show there were 923,000 young people aged 16 to 24 not in education, employment or training between January to March 2025.

How will my pension be impacted by inheritance tax?
How will my pension be impacted by inheritance tax?

Times

time3 days ago

  • Times

How will my pension be impacted by inheritance tax?

Q. I understand pensions will be brought into the realm of inheritance tax (IHT) in the next couple of years but I wondered if there was any information concerning how the value of the pension will be assessed? Other assets have a financial value which is easily understood. They may also be given away and, provided that the rules are adhered to, may avoid IHT. I do not believe the same can be said for pensions. My understanding is that they cannot be given away during your lifetime, which is why the government is looking to include them within the IHT assessment. The real value of a pension may depend on the tax treatment it will be subjected to. When a pension is assessed for IHT purposes, is it the full value of the remaining pension that becomes part of the estate for IHT? Please note I live in Scotland — will this affect the income tax charged to my beneficiaries?Neil As you note, from April 2027 the government has confirmed unspent pensions will count towards your estate for IHT purposes, meaning more people will be affected by the tax. That said, despite IHT being one of the most unpopular taxes in the UK, it is levied on a minority of households — so it might not affect you at all. About 5 per cent of deaths result in any IHT being paid, though the inclusion of pensions may double this proportion. You will need to exhaust your nil-rate band of £325,000 and main-residence nil-rate band of £175,000 (an extra allowance for those leaving their home to a direct descendant on estates worth up to £2 million) before any of your estate is exposed to an IHT charge of 40 per cent. Furthermore, if your estate, including any pensions after April 2027, is being inherited by your spouse or civil partner, there will be no IHT to pay at all. And in general terms, it is best not to let the tax tail wag the pensions or investment dog. To confirm, it will be the full value of your pension, before income tax, that is assessed for inheritance tax. Tax, including IHT, is clearly a consideration when making retirement decisions, but it should not be the only consideration. If you die before age 75 your pension, up to a limit of £1,073,100, can usually be passed without your beneficiaries having to pay income tax when they withdraw it. Above the limit they will pay tax at their normal rate. If you die after age 75, your beneficiaries will pay income tax on all of the funds at their normal rate. These rules will still apply when defined contribution (DC) pensions become subject to IHT from April 2027. For those unfamiliar with the jargon, a DC pension is a retirement pot where how much you build up is based on what you pay in and investment growth. Your contributions benefit from upfront tax relief, the growth is tax-free and your money available to access as you wish — with up to a quarter available to take tax-free — usually from age 55 (rising to age 57 from April 2028). The alternative is a defined benefit (DB) pension, where you are paid an income for life, though these are increasingly rare as they are so expensive to fund. Where it can be passed on (usually to a dependant) this income will remain free of IHT when the rules change. Annuities, an insurance product that pays an income for life, which can sometimes be passed to a named beneficiary, will also remain IHT-free. However, certain lump sum death benefits from defined benefit (DB) schemes will be subject to IHT from April 2027. Broadly, any money left in a DC pension pot on death — whether it's untouched or has been put into 'drawdown' — will count towards your estate for IHT purposes. IHT will only become a factor if passing it on to someone other than a spouse or civil partner and the total value of your estate exceeds your IHT nil-rate bands. In terms of valuing DC pensions, that shouldn't be a problem as they are all cash amounts. On gifting, there is nothing stopping you accessing your DC pension and handing the money to loved ones. Provided that you live for seven years after making the gift, this money should be IHT-free. On income tax, these proposals are UK-wide but it will be the income tax rate that applies to your beneficiaries in the country they live that will apply. Income tax rates in Scotland are different from those in England and Wales, with a lower starter rate of 19 per cent on income between £12,571 to £15,397 a year, but a number of extra income bands and a top rate of 48 per cent on income above £125,140, instead of 45 per cent. Any beneficiaries living there could pay a higher tax bill if they withdrew a large sum in one year than if they lived elsewhere. Tom Selby is the director of public policy at AJ Bell and has successfully campaigned for retirement reforms such as banning pensions cold-calling and increasing pension allowances

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store