(Image by Sandro Gonzalez via UnSplash)
A chum of mine is an Old Age Pensioner.
Or a Senior Citizen, if you are American or Woke.
Every year in April, UK pensions rise and you are told the amount of your new weekly payment in a letter which arrives in late February or early March.
That happened this year to my chum. The increase in the pension happens on 11th April this year. Every year, in February or March, she receives the letter informing her what she will get from April onwards.
But my chum has somehow managed to lose the letter she received from the Department for Works & Pensions in February, telling her the new pension rates which she will get from April. The one she gets, updated appropriately, every year. And she can’t remember the new amount, which is made up by adding four separate smaller amounts together.
So she phoned up the Pensions Service to ask if it was possible to send her a duplicate of the lost letter.
However…
Franz Kafka
She was told it is not possible to send her a duplicate of that letter because they are not allowed under government rules to send out the letter until after the new pension rates come into force on 11th April.
She said, not unreasonably:
“But you already sent the letter to me – at the end of February…”
Yes, she was told, but they are not allowed to post the letter to her until after the new rates come in.
“You are not allowed to send me until April a letter you already sent to me in February?”
“Yes. We cannot send you that letter until April. You could phone up after 11th April to ask for the letter to be sent.”
“…The letter which tells me what I am going to be paid from 11th April?”
“Yes.”
“But I can’t get a duplicate of the letter I received in February telling me how much I will receive in April until I have already received the money in April.”
“Yes. We are not allowed to send you the letter until April.”
“The one you sent in February.”
“Yes.”
The search continues for the letter always sent every year in February or March which cannot be sent until April…
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 
Pensions are complicated.
They shouldn’t be.
The choice to retire or not should be easy.
It’s not.
The government want to encourage the 50’s and over back into the workplace but at the same time put pressure on the BBC to remove the 62 year old presenter of Match of the Day.
I would not be surprised if the small print relating to the removal of the lifetime cap on pension contributions and a £60k max allowance isn’t tied into an increase in pension age to 68 and the minimum age where you can take your private pension loving from 55 to 57 or higher.