Being older is normal

Sometimes one feels that a real change has taken place in people’s attitudes. We now have a black American president, we have a had female prime minister in the UK, celebrities no longer have to pretend to be heterosexual in order to be successful. Age has perhaps remained more stubborn an obstacle than any of these issues. Certainly in the workplace older people suffer rejection purely on the basis of age, and in wider cultural issues ‘youth’ is taken to be a virtue, while old age is looked down upon. We all know that this doesn’t apply in many other cultures, but certainly our UK culture loses interest in the older person very easily.

We have tried to make the point that older people actually are a powerful group in both the society and the economy. A couple of developments in our culture recently suggest that perhaps things are changing.

Firstly, and perhaps perversely, I was enormously cheered up to see that older people are figuring much more in crime statistics. I think it was Monty Python that had a sketch on dangerous hordes of Grannies beating up young people on the streets – I certainly wouldn’t hope this happens to any significant extent, but apparently it is now less of a comic idea. Partly this has come about because the passion for new laws under our government has produced all kinds of excessive reactions by the state to quite minor infringements, so people simply find they have criminal records for petty acts – I recently forgot to put my new car license on display in our car, and received a note from a parking warden which threatened a criminal prosecution and the seizing and crushing of our car. Seemed a bit over the top to me. But somehow the burgeoning criminality of the older person seems a move into mainstream society – it just makes older people seem normal. Without in any way approving of criminality, I do rather like the drift away from the grey-haired, harmless image of the over 50s.

On a more positive note, older people have traditionally been kept out of certain areas of advertising. They obviously crop up on a lot of financial advertising, because even banks know that that is where a lot of money is owned. They appear on cruise advertising, although now younger people have crept into that sector. One area where there was an absolute and irrational embargo was the advertising of top brands of car. I did once discuss this with the advertising director on BMW, and he quite simply said that while the average age for buyers of their more expensive models was into the 50s, they would always show the drivers as in their 20s or 30s – that was what people wanted to feel when they bought a BMW.

Miracle of miracles, the new BMW campaign quite clearly shows older drivers. Somehow, the image of the brand will no longer be sullied by seeing grey hair on the driver. The passenger no longer has to be a 25 year old blonde. We are officially normal.

The last bastion in advertising will be lager commercials. It is OK to sneak an old man into Guinness ads if he is a ‘character’, but mass lagers simply will not be shown in the hands of the 50+ sector. I haven’t seen the figures, but I have a feeling that draught lagers are getting ‘older’ in terms of who drinks them – the young are buying bottles and other kinds of drink. The day I see a perfectly normal 50+ person shown drinking a major brand of lager in a commercial I will feel that we really are losing the cultural prejudices against age.

Thanks

‘The Economist’ has suggested that “Some of the benefits now provided look ripe for cutting. Pensioners, for example, get free bus travel and also receive tax-free winter fuel payments on top of their state pension…” I know that economics is called the dismal science, but this is taking it a bit too far.

We really need to make sure that this does not happen. Political parties tend to be pretty much uninterested in the older end of the population, for all kinds of reasons. A journalist at the Conservative conference has commented that the obvious difference between this and the Labour conference is that the Conservatives look much younger. If this is correct, then expect even less interest in older people, and hence a greater risk of this kind of cut, if the Conservatives win the next election.

Free bus travel is one of those benefits which are virtually impossible to quantify. The bus still goes if fewer pensioners get onto it (actually, it is wrong to call them pensioners – free bus travel starts at 60), so the fact that these passengers are not paying a fare has scant impact on the system. Figures show that more elderly people travel because of the free offer – would the country really be better off if they sat at home instead? An awful lot of town centres would be even quieter during the day if this happened, and a rise in daytime TV watching is not going to boost our cultural life too much, and I would suggest will only bring forward the onset of dementia.

While I see nothing wrong with the winter fuel payment, it is a bit arbitrary, and harder to justify. I had no sense of suddenly needing two extra loads of logs when I reached 60, but I’m happy if the government decides to give them to me. The sensible thing might be to raise the qualifying age for this – it does seem a bit odd that while we are talking about making people work for longer in order to collect their state pension, we are also suggesting that six or seven years before they cease work, they need heating up a bit. State-supplied thermal underwear – that’s the kind of forward thinking we need from political parties. Carbon-neutral vests rather than burning more fuel. And we could train the over 65s to make them, thus creating a virtuous circle.

There we are – Invest in Vests. Reduction of the government deficit, keeping the elderly in work, and a solution to global warming all in one go. Let ‘The Economist’ spend its time explaining why bankers desperately need million pound bonuses in order to do their jobs well, and we’ll stick to the knitting.

New Deals

You have probably by now noticed the change in ISA limits for our age group – it has been covered in most of the press, with a lot of advertising as well. It looks a though most of the providers are offering to top up at the same rate as they offered earlier in the year – but do check on this. If they are not offering this, then of course what you can’t do is open another cash ISA somewhere else for the top-up amount. One cash ISA a year is the rule. This isn’t going to make anyone vastly wealthy, but it may be worth doing for a lot of us.

More worthwhile generally is to make sure that you are registered for the winter fuel allowance. We mention this each year, because it is not automatic to start with, unless you are on some kind of government benefit. It starts at 60, and many people are just surprised to know that they qualify at that age – most 60 year-olds just don’t see themselves as frail creatures clustering round any available source of heat. Still, £250 from the state is worth getting, and if you miss it there aren’t any back-dates available.

A useful book has also just been published, by a financial journalist who is very aware of ways to economise and save money. We have had conversations with her in the past, and Oscaruk.co.uk has figured in her articles and in this book. The title is ‘How to get the Best Deal’, by Sue Hayward, £9.99 published by Prentice Hall. There is a lot of useful stuff in this book, not just on senior discounts but across a whole range of consumer rights and other issues. Well worth getting hold of it. You could be sneaky and see if you can get it cheaper on Amazon!

Income from a spare room?

An increasing number of the over 60s are picking up extra income by renting out a room in their house. This can make a lot of sense if, for example, children have left home (although they do seem to return!) yet you do not want to down-size or move. We have previously looked at ways of raising money on one’s home, by various mortgage schemes and equity release, but renting out a room may be less onerous. This scheme allows one to earn a tax-free income, even if you yourself are renting your home.
If you do rent out a room in your home, you can get up to £4,250 tax free income. A government scheme called Rent A Room was specifically designed to encourage people to take in lodgers. The basic rules are:
· You let out a room or part of your main property (it can be more than one room but not a self-contained flat).
· It must be furnished, an unfurnished room or rooms don’t qualify.
· You don’t have to own your home, if you have your landlord’s consent you can take advantage of the scheme as a tenant.
· If you don’t normally fill out a tax return and the income from letting is below £4,250 (around £350 a month) you don’t even have to do anything, the tax exemption is automatic.
· If the amount you earn from the let is above £4,250, just let your tax office know.

If you usually fill out a tax return then the scheme may not benefit you. You cannot offset any of the expenses of renting the room against the income, so wear and tear, insurance costs, any furnishing or decoration cannot be deducted from the income.

There are several websites which specifically deal with finding rooms and tenants under this scheme, or of course you could try the local paper or a more general community website.

Influence the care debate?

Oscaruk has had a clear response to our question about care for the elderly.

You now have the opportunity to influence government policy on this issue, as ‘The Big Care Debate’ is being rolled out across the country. There is a website – www.careandsupport.direct.gov.uk - which gives details of the meetings which are being held for public consultation, and through which you can make your own views heard by the government.

There is also a leaflet with a questionnaire, which may be distributed through workplaces, or other organizations. If you want a copy of this, or more than one copy to distribute, go to www.orderline.dh.gov.uk and quote 297527/Join the big care debate – quick guide.

We get few enough opportunities to make a real influence upon government policy, and in such a massively important topic, it does seem worth the trouble to take an active part.

One little grumble; so many government questionnaires ask for our ethnic origin or group. I never fill this in on census forms, and it appears again on the questionnaire with this document. It is such a meaningless phrase, and is one of those attempts at political correctness which only go to make the underlying problem worse.

Since my recent discovery that one of my ancestors was a mounted archer during the Hundred Years War – on the English side – I guess English is my ethnic origin, even though one grandmother was Welsh. ‘Ethnic’ can relate to either a race or a nation, and I do wonder which the government wish me to use. Granny makes me a bit of a Celt, so to speak, and it is always possible that William Douce, mounted archer, was a French mercenary. Uncle Guillaume. That might mean he was Norman French, so he would actually be descended from Vikings.

Really, if they want to know what colour I am, I’m mostly pink with some browner bits during summer. I don’t know what information they are looking for with the question, and as someone who has worked on questionnaires since around 1968, if I can’t figure it out, nobody else will. Much better to forget about issues of race, and concentrate on delivering a robust system of care for the elderly.

Tried Opening a Bank Account Recently?

I guess that a lot of older people are suffering from the fall in interest rates on bank savings accounts – sensible advice is always to shop around for the best rates, especially when some accounts are offering virtually nil interest. If you can tie money up over a number of years, then slightly better rates are on offer, but for instant access, things are grim.

The concerns about money laundering have made the whole process of shopping around vastly more difficult. I have tried to open accounts with the best rate suppliers twice, and in both cases given up the attempt as, by the time they actually managed to get the account open, they were no longer offering the best rate.

I have made a new attempt to open an account with Alliance & Leicester, who are consistently pretty high on the rates chart for instant access savings. My error, about which I can do little now, is that my wife is Dutch. She has lived in the UK for around 20 years, has had a bank account with another bank in the same group as A & L for 9 years or so, runs a business here, and is even on the parish council of the village where we have lived for 10 years. However, the moment a bank hears that an alien is trying to open an account, shutters go down everywhere.

I filled in the required information on the internet. A letter then came through asking for further confirmation of identity and address for her, with a need to have this countersigned by someone with ‘Status’ – a very odd mix of professions qualifies for this. We pestered our solicitor neighbour for this service. Off this went, and then another letter came through saying that even more information was need – in fact two letters with utterly contradictory requirements came though.

Sensible thinking – we went to a branch of A & L, where they apologised but said it was nothing to do with them, as it was an online account, and they couldn’t understand the two letters either. However, they agreed to copy the pile of documents we carried, and to send them off by internal post.

Now, five weeks after the initial attempt to open the account, I have phoned them to see what is happening. I am told that they often take a long time, and to leave it to the end of the week and check again. Well, thanks, but I had noticed that it takes a long time. During that time, our savings sit in an account with 0.15% interest.

I understand the desire to avoid money laundering, but wonder why it should be assumed that the holder of a Dutch passport is more likely to try this than the holder of a UK one; and why it is assumed that an international drug dealer should be incapable of getting a utility bill in his name, or should not have a passport? Couldn’t the banks agree on one set of proof, and once it is passed, accept it for any new account?

A very strange place

We don’t want to turn OSCARUK into a travel advice centre, but after the comments on how well older people are treated in the USA – which was part of the inspiration for starting this website in the UK – the latest trip was rather an opposite experience.

Work took me to Dubai. I have a list of countries in my head which I would only visit if someone else was paying, and Dubai was pretty close to the top. Higher up the list would be countries posing a real physical risk, or those with a cuisine based on unusual approaches to cabbage. Dubai is utterly safe, in that there is very little crime in the formal sense, and you just need to take as few taxi trips as possible to avoid the obvious physical risks. Dubai likes having the biggest of anything, so buildings, shopping malls, fountains, even the proposed airport, have to be the world’s biggest. My first taxi driver, weaving along inches away from the variety of huge 4X4s which populate the roads, told me with pride that Dubai had had the world’s biggest car crash – 250 cars on the road to Abu Dhabi, around 50 deaths and hundreds of injuries. Another taxi driver told me that it was 350 cars with 70 deaths. Who’s counting?

Travel apparently becomes even more alarming during Ramadan, this year held during the summer months. After a long day of fasting – non-Muslims are allowed to eat during the day, but not in public, so no picnics – there apparently is a mad scramble of drivers with zero blood sugar trying to get to the special tents set up to provide the after-sunset meals. They eat until 3.30 in the morning, at which time prayers and then fasting take over. I was told that everyone puts on weight during the fast.

Part of the risk during this traffic period derives from an astounding statistic; in Europe, the average age of a buyer of a new Porsche is well into the late forties – an age group popularly known as the menoporsche. In Dubai, the average age is 19. Fill a 10 lane highway with low-blood sugar 19 year olds in Porsches, and stand back.

Or you might prefer the ski slope. With an outside temperature that hit 50 degrees, I felt a visit to the giant ski slope – the world’s biggest etc. – was a good idea. There are few things more bizarre.

I talked with some retired expats now living in Dubai. If infinite shopping and self-indulgence are your thing, there is obviously a lot to be said for the place. Best to ignore the fact that the carbon footprint per person is (of course ) the biggest in the world. Property is in abundant supply, prices are dropping faster than in the UK, so if you want to live in a beige concrete block on an artificial island, in a gated community, this may be the moment to pounce. Around 500,000 people have left in the past year, so finding a flat should be simple.

If you are a married female, the deal is perhaps not so attractive. Most financial activity is in the name of the husband. A will is definitely needed, at risk of the estate being distributed after death according to local laws, in which a woman counts as 50% of a man, and the distribution may go to male relatives rather than to the wife. That is incidentally a point for anyone living out of the UK – Napoleonic law also has a rigid way of disposing of an estate, which certainly applies in both France and Holland.

So, a good place for shopping fanatics with no social conscience. Not recommended for dog lovers, fell walkers, National Trust addicts, or people who drive slowly in Morris Minors.

Your home as a pension?

We have previously discussed ways of using your home as a way of finding extra funding in retirement. Times obviously change, and it now looks as though this may be less useful a route than previously. Falling values of houses means that there may be less capital in the property to use for equity release, or any other similar arrangement. Of course if there is still an existing mortgage on the property, then the available capital will be reduced by more than the fall in the property value – the amount you owe stays the same, the drop in house price impacts on the difference between the mortgage and the full value.

Recent research suggests that over 3 million people in the UK are relying on their home to provide a pension for them. The fall in house values over the last couple of years means that the capital available by this means has reduced by around £29 billion.

While this makes good publicity for pension companies, they do sort of forget to mention what has happened to pension funds over the same two years. If you had money in shares for the last two years, then during the period the FTSE has fallen from around 6500 to around 4700 – depending upon where your house is, you could well have been better off with the house than with the pension fund invested in the stock market.

The other point the pension sellers will make is that your pension will carry on for the rest of your life, whereas a lump sum released from your house will offer very poor returns at present if placed in a savings account. You could buy an annuity – at the moment, £100,000 should buy an annual £6,400 or so for a 60 year old male. This is single life rate, so if you have the misfortune to die at 61, the annuity seller does pretty well out of the deal. You can take a guarantee to ensure that a dependent benefits within a certain number of years, but that will of course reduce the pension paid to you.

Private pensions are, frankly, pretty poor at the moment. What you can buy with a fairly large sum of money pales utterly in comparison with what is seen as necessary for people at the top of our businesses and government. An MP with 13 years’ service will retire with a pension which would take the average earner in the UK 60 years to acquire –and after 20 years service an MP will have a pension of some £30,000 p.a.. The pension which Gordon Brown will enjoy would need something like £1.75 million to buy.

Suddenly, having £200,000 capital from downsizing or equity release doesn’t seem too spectacular. Things would be so much easier if we knew how long we will live.

Over 50s in America!

Oscar is on a reconnoitring trip across the Midwest from Chicago to Washington. What do we notice that is different to back home for the over 50s?

Firstly, respect. Americans genuinely seem more respectful of age than we do in the UK. There appear to be more over 50s centred facilities and activities and more time for the elderly if they need it.

Secondly, age matters. Americans are much more used to lower cost deals for seniors as they are generally referred to. However, the age at which you become a senior seems to be creeping up. A few years ago at 55 you got the seniors deal, now it is widely 62.

But American over 50s still all do not have access to healthcare as we do in Britain. With only just over 50 per cent of citizens with health insurance, President Obama’s healthcare reform is the hot topic in town right now.

Real Old Age

We have aimed this website at the active over 50 population, but some recent news stories do make one think about the later years. The extraordinary Henry Allingham, who died this week at the age of 113, makes 50 seem a bit weedy. After all, Mr. Allingham kept going for nearly 50 years after the usual retirement age. A BBC4 programme, The Time of Their Lives, also featured some amazing ladies, whose intellects were as sharp as knives at the age of 102. One lady was still able to march in anti-war protests, albeit with a back-up wheelchair just in case.

It may be that that generation had a childhood which toughened them up very well, and then an old age which gave them vastly superior medical care. Earlier generations would have missed out on the medical care, while our young now often have a diet and exercise regime which does not bode well for their future. So perhaps this cohort of age will be the one which has the longest life-span of all.

Even if most of us in our 50s and 60s now do not make it to 100, we probably face a much longer life than most previous generations. This is forcing some major re-thinking on care for the elderly. At present, provision of care varies between local authorities, as they have the final say on what ‘needs’ are accepted by the state. The rules are quite complex, and differ between countries in the UK, and in England there is a general requirement to contribute towards ones own costs if one has more than £23,000 in savings (and authorities have the power to catch you out if you try to give savings away just before calling on the state!).

The Dutch, as is so often the case, have an excellent solution in which the money is available to the individual, who can then make a choice on how to spend it – either going into a care home, or paying for modifications to their own home and for daily care. Our bureaucrats prefer to keep control over such things themselves.

Several proposals are being made at present, with variations on the idea of an insurance scheme. These are available to look at on this official site –

careandsupport.direct.gov.uk

Everyone in our age group should take a look at this, and the site allows you to input comments and observations on the alternatives. It is so easy to assume that one will never be in this situation oneself, that somehow all those elderly people who were in the care home on the BBC4 programme are different. The reality is that an awful lot of us will be needing the services of care homes – statistically far more women than men, incidentally – and it does make sense to take part in the discussion now, while we have the chance, rather than waiting until the situation hits us and we have no say in the matter.