WHOOPEE!!! A pension increase!

[red750]

The generosity of Centrelink knows no bounds. We got our pension increase this week.

 

For a married couple, it was $4.00 ( that's right, FOUR DOLLARS---- EACH!) per fortnight. I think I'll book my holiday on the Riviera right now. Yes, my individual pension went from $718.10 per fortnight to $722.10. That's 28.57 cents/day.

[old man emu]

Luckily for you, Seven-Eleven shops have $1 coffee, so that's one cuppa every four days PLUS CHANGE!!!!!!!

 

Or it's $104.28 per annum. Now we're talking the big bucks.

 

I'm so glad that $90 billion of our tax money is not being handed over to those bloody Frogs so that chest of tax money can be dispersed in such a generous manner amongst the people who generated it. And they don't have to wait until Easter to get their maundy money.

[old man emu]

I should be ashamed of myself. Here I am moaning about a miniscule rise in the pension, and don't see the forest for the trees.

 

My wife has been in hospital for 9 weeks now. During that time she has had 24/7 nursing care. She has had major surgery lasting many hours. Each day she is visited by a specialist oncologist, and a specialist plastic surgeon. Twice each week she is anaesthetised for a procedure to clean he site of the surgery wound as well as having a special wound cleaning device attached. Today she will be getting a skin graft to assist in reconstructing the damaged wound area. All this time she is being supplied with medicines to assist her recovery, as well as others used to treat her diabetes and blood pressure. Being isolated from family, and having to deal with the pain and worry of her illness has affected her morale. So she is also visited by a psychologist a couple of time a week, just for a chat.  The family knows that the psychologist is treating her morale, but is being sly about it the way she is doing it.

 

How much is this costing us? 9/10ths of 3 parts of bugger all. It's all on Medicare. Medicare is funded by tax money. So, to Hell with moaning about how little our pensions have risen. Praise and glory to my fellow Australians who have and are contributing to the welfare of my wife.

[Fliteright]

OME can't be easy on you & your misses,mental support is just as important as the physical👍

As for the pension? Cant get it but that's okay as the one thing the old man instilled in me was 'remember tomorrow when you spend'!

[gareth lacey]

I get a part pension, a whopping 127.80 per fortnight, being a self funded retiree and my wife cannot get pension till 67 and then will be meagre , but i think that if i relied on pension as my sole income i could not do  much at all , just survive , i take my hat off to people who do ,it must be very stressful

 

[Dax]

It's a miserly increase, when pollies get huge rises for wasting our money. We are lucky to have such a good inclusive health system, if we had real thinking people in power, pensioners would have at least the minimum wage.

[old man emu]

The problem with your financial support in retirement if you are a Baby Boomer is that during your early working life  making superannuation contributions was often only available to government employees. If you were not on the government payroll, you had to arrange your super personally through Life Insurance companies. The problem was that superannuation wasn't considered necessary back then. People worked until they either died before reaching 65 years, or if they did, didn't last very long afterwards. Maybe it was due to those young people being influenced by their parent's stories of unscrupulous life insurance salesmen, or the fact that the parent's "penny per week" policy taken out in the when those parents were newly-weds were virtually valueless come the 70's 

 

I know. I tried my hand at selling life insurance and super back in the mid-70s. Even if people maintained those policies taken out then, their return would not make it at today's rates. Not that the return would not be more than they paid in premiums, it's just that the weekly premium was a pittance of what wages became in later years. I used to try to sell $100,000 policies, for which the premiums were manageable for young families. I suggested that $100,000 invested at 10% p.a. would return a family $10,000 p.a., which was equal to a substantial amount of what the breadwinner was making per week. Now wages and prices have risen so far that $10,000 p.a., taken weekly, won't buy the groceries.

 

 

 

 

[red750]

You  are right. I was born on 1944, and worked in a bank. They had a voluntary fund where you contributed 3% of your wage.

 

Compulsory superannuation with "preserved funds" came in in 1993. The bank I worked for was taken over in 1991. The new owners wanted the business, not the staff. Most of the staff from my bank were retrenched. As my "provident fund" was not preserved, Centrelink (or whatever it was called in those days) required me to use my own funds before being entitled to the dole. Thus when I got another job, at around 52 years of age, I had to start over. When I reached retirement age, and was again told my services were no longer required, I had very little accumulated. It only lasted about 5 or 6 years, I have been retired for eleven.

[gareth lacey]

We could live on the full pension , our all up cost which include groceries,car rego(x2) insurance ,phones ,rates,,repairs ,internet,and sundries comes to $18,700 per annum so doable on the couples pension , not much left over for anything else and flying would be impossible as well as owning n aircraft 

[facthunter]

I  know people who do it but you have to be a good manager with money not play pokies or smoke and not drive new cars, and own your house where the rates are not like rent. It would pay to live in the country and run a few chooks as well.  Some used to be permanents in a country caravan park but I think they are moving them on.. More and more there's NO place for the Poor. Nev

[Yenn]

I paid tax when I started work and that included money going in for the OAP. Then the government did away with the OAP and brought in superannuation. I had contributed to a company fund before then, but when i left the company all I got back was my own contribution.

I bought a house in the high mortgage rates times and payed it off when rates went over 12%, sold it and built where I am now on wages. I was never in the high income bracket, so never in the high spending bracket, so the part pension I am now on does me very well.

Looking after what little you have and looking after your health go a long way towards surviving on the pension.

[spacesailor]

Gareth

Thats the reason to building an ' Hummel Bird ", cheaper to build & Super cheap to run.. 3 or four litres of fuel per hour, 

But

How to cheat those Bureaucrats, that chang the rules !.

$200 for a covid release certificate. How much for the RAa certificate.  

OR

Who,s has a big block of land for us uncertified flyers.

spacesailor

[octave]

1 minute ago, spacesailor said:

$200 for a covid release certificate

 

What is a covid release certificate?

[spacesailor]

A piece of paper to say you are double vaxed.

Instead of paying thousnds for a new phone, internet provider. And whatever those bureaucrats demand.  After your fully vaxed.

spacesailor

[octave]

It is free.   If you don't have Mygov you can do this

 

If you can’t get proof online

If you can’t get proof online, your vaccination provider can print your immunisation history statement for you.

You can also call the Australian Immunisation Register and ask us to send your statement to you. It can take up to 14 days to arrive in the post.

 

https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/subjects/getting-help-during-coronavirus-covid-19/covid-19-vaccinations/how-get-proof#dc-54059-s-209329-209333-209339-209343-209346

 

 

You could get mygov account.  Even my 88 year old mum has a mygov account. 

[octave]

Spacey here is the phone number to get your vax proof

 

[spacesailor]

Tried ' my gov ' 

But

They wanted ALL My bank details, even thro thery,r on THEIR ledgers.

Leaves people vulnerable to online scams,

spacesailor

[facthunter]

I feel a suicide tendency coming on space. Just once.......  please can something good happen? Nev

[Fliteright]

$200 is cheap to get around the criminal Andrews discrimination act!

[octave]

Just now, Fliteright said:

$200 is cheap to get around the criminal Andrews discrimination act!

 

The need to prove vaccination status is not specific to Victoria.  Oh and it does not cost $200

[facthunter]

Who should sit by the fire ? Those who gather the wood or those who don't. The whole deal is now based on vaccines whether we like it or not and we are being bullied into rushing it for some sort of political end by Sco Mo. A POX on a/holes who politicise something that takes lives and causes inconvenience to many. In my view that is a pretty LOW act. Nev

[pmccarthy]

To get the vax certificate I have to link my Medicare card to my credit card. Have never done that before and it doesn’t make sense to me.

Edited September 28, 2021 by pmccarthy

[Marty_d]

3 hours ago, octave said:

 

The need to prove vaccination status is not specific to Victoria.  Oh and it does not cost $200

I think that Fliterite's talking about a fake certificate.  Apparently it's something for absolute idiots who want to be both at risk AND ripped off.

 

1 hour ago, pmccarthy said:

To get the vax certificate I have to link my Medicare card to my credit card. Have never done that before and it doesn’t make sense to me.

What the?  I just went in and viewed my certificate.  Nothing about a credit card.  Are you sure you're going to the real MyGov site and not a scam?

[onetrack]

Peter, are you not getting the full pension for some reason? (income or assets over the limits?). Because the OAP went up $22.40 per fortnight for a couple on 20th Sept 2021, which is $11.20 each extra, per fortnight.

 

https://www.superguide.com.au/in-retirement/age-pension-rates

 

 

[red750]

Thanks for the heads up, OT. I'll have to check it out when I get out of hospital. We are on the full pension, so I don't know why we have been shortchanged. Pacemaker change went without a hitch. Should be home tomorrow morning. Now have a monitor to sit beside the bed. Overnight, it reads the pacemaker wirelessly and transmits any adverse events to the cardiologist.