Pensions Age to ..... 72 !?

I don’t think you read my answer. Read my answer again. there will be private pensions, probably forced, there will be top ups, there will be a reduced state pension for most.

what we won’t ever have, unless society collapses, is no State pension for everybody.

People are not going to magically live for ever. The average is increasing because we can battle cancers, asthma, pollution, workplace deaths, etc.

There is an upper limit before old age just does its thing.

Naw. The rate of change is slowing down or reversing.

Well it’s not so bad if you have a mortgage paid off and some savings

Private pensions will become obligatory. Should have happened by now.

The non-contributory state pension is I think about €237 a week. Contributory is more. But take 237, which is over 12k a year. Under your scheme, if you take out a private pension, the first 12k you get every year is just what you would have got for the state pension, and you had to make private contributions on top of paying prsi (to pay for state pensions, among other things but that’s the big ticket item). So basically you paid prsi just for the benefit of others, while you made provisions for yourself with a private pension. That’s penalising people for taking out a private pension, which is the opposite of what we want to do if we want people to make provisions for themselves.

Main thing is to have a job that you don't loathe so much you want to escape at 66 (or whenever). Simply because if you need to escape your job that badly you're already wasted a lot of your life in it.

I know loads of men who have gone to complete ruin once they retired. Not sure why, maybe their identity was too tied up in work, maybe they couldn't handle the empty Tuesday afternoons but for whatever reason, I'd rather work on at some level than go completely off the reservation. The flip side of that is we should all start working part-time earlier in our lives to enjoy the years of good health we have.

Certainly some jobs you can't do beyond a certain age but a certain amount of those jobs are being automated away every year as it is.

Btw most of those devising this 72 year old retirement age will have their own feet up at no later than 65.

I dunno, we'd need to know whether free travel, medical card, rent assistance, etc was all still on the table

No two people hitting 65 are necessarily in the same set of circumstances and very few people aged 65 have the costs associated with being 25, 35, 45, 55.

The non contributory amount is essentially the dole and like having the dole as your only income at any age, lots of other costs are covered for you

The conversation really does come back down to the govt being told consistently: we will need to take action now to ensure the safeguarding of our pension system

The essential issue is the same as it is with anything- who pays for it and what do they get relative to those not contributing

B will be calculated differently. At the moment you lose significant income for very little savings. In the future, provided private pensions become a common thing, the state pension becomes a top up. No income from private pensions - full state pension. With a private Income of A you get B-A where B is the state pension. Can’t be negative of course. PRSI might change of course.

Yes, it’s good to keep working at least part-time as long as possible, in principal good for the body and brain if the job is suitable. But not all jobs can be done in older years. Some are head-wrecking or body-wrecking. And saying “we’ll get a job you enjoy” isn’t always an easy solution. There are very unpleasant jobs out there are somebody has to do them. Traditionally students, younger people, or immigrants have gone these less pleasant jobs. But some fairly “responsible” jobs are tedious or unpleasant enough too, and not everyone gets to enjoy being happy in their workplace.

I worked in a pensionable job until minimum retirement age where there was a great deal of unaddressed and very toxic bullying going on. Stuck with it as far as I could, thankful to have a very modest pension with a little supplementary income and my own decent roof over my head. The thought of having to stay there until my 70s to collect my pension would have done my head in and I simply would not have survived.

Others work physically hard and as the need for joint replacement etc sets in, the physical work cannot always be continued. I know the current thinking/practice is is keep up education and re-training, so that a manual worker could eventually do less physically based work if needs be. Lifelong learning needs to be a thing embraced by all. There are also people, by virtue of health conditions, who lose a certain aspects of cognitive function (maybe not overall intelligence per se) and simply can’t suddenly turn around and retrain , and this can happen younger people too.

Overall the idea of “lifelong learning” is a great one. Something started as a hobby could become a source of income at a later stage, so whilst working in one line, a little gradual learning of something completely different but that has the potential to become a means of income, is a mindset that needs to be adopted from the start of anyone’s career.