kevinl

I have your average 3 bed semi, nice enough area in the north west of England, might get something close to £200k if I sold (the one over the road sold for that) so should I cash in now, rent or live on my narrowboat for a while then buy back in sometime in the future? Renting would be about £6 or 7K a year for a flat plus the bills so is living alone, rattling round a modest house, but too big for one person should I bother or get out now? Apologies to people in the SE of England who can't imaging having too much room and no mortgage, it might be grim up north but there is an upside. K

The other issue is that as you live in Scotland you're life expectancy is significantly shorter than, say for example, a woman in the south of England but you've still paid in the same. It would be an interesting question how much the north of the border and indeed the north of England send down south in this subsidy. Just for the record my wife lost out too with even less notice she got 2 years, 11 month and nearly 3 weeks added to her pension date so 1 week short of being 63 she gets her pension. To be fair though "equality" means treating everyone the same, you can't have "equality" then treat part of society differently, whether it be because of: gender, religion, colour or ethnic origin, the word by it's very nature means treating everyone the same not just when it suits you. As I say if pensions reflected life expectancy Scotland would have a much lower retirement age than the south of England but it's a one size fits all situation and given the vast amounts of money involved I doubt anything is going to change in the near future, other than getting worse. The new 2014 care act *came into force this year) has in it bits that seem specifically designed to take money from the elderly in need of care that the previous CRAC regulations didn't allow. Seems to be the new policy "Harvest the Old". K