Yahoo News Struggling Sheila, 81, slams 'absolutely deplorable' pension - despite 8.5% rise
A pensioner says she has cut the amount of food she buys in half - after labelling the basic pension 'absolutely deplorable'. Sheila Correll, 81, said the rising cost of living is causing her to cut back on food, heating and electricity in order to make ends meet.
Sheila, who lives on the basic state pension and pension credit, described the pressures on her finances as "terrible". The retired legal secretary has started growing her own veg and cooking meals from scratch in order to save money and avoid waste.
Sheila said the two Co-ops and Tesco in her town offer "rip-off" prices, the Mirror reports. She said: "It affects me an awful lot because the prices are so much higher. If you go out of town, which I don't very often because I don't have transport, you find stuff in the shops miles cheaper.
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"Shopping used to be quite a pleasurable experience but it's not any more. You have to have an inbuilt computer in your head because the prices are so high."
She added: "What I do is halve the amount I was buying before. I make a piece of fish last two days and pad it out with vegetables and anything I can get from the garden. You have to put yourself on a diet to be honest."
Sheila doesn't turn on her central heating and relies on a small electric heater to keep warm. She also saves money by washing her clothes by hand, rather than running her washing machine.
She said: "It's impossible because you cannot live on the amount of pension money. They go on about the fantastic rise and everything but in the grand scheme of things, it's around £18 a week. That's swallowed up by everything else going up - water, gas, electric, all the other bits and pieces you have to pay."
She added: "You can't afford to have any luxuries. Shopping for older people is mentally bad for older people like myself. You can't afford to have a coffee any more.
"A cup of coffee and a tiny piece of cake, and I mean tiny, will set you back about £6 and £7. You think for that, 'I could have got a meal'. You have to think like that all the time."
She said things were "much worse and not getting any better". She added: "People seem to think every pensioner is a millionaire. But the basic pension is absolutely deplorable."
Analysis of Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) figures by Labour found the number of elderly people living in food insecurity rose from 160,000 in 2021/22 to 350,000 in 2022/23, in the wake of the economic chaos triggered by Liz Truss's mini-Budget.
Pensioners with mortgages were struggling with getting enough to eat, as numbers in food insecure households more than quadrupled from 9,000 to 41,000 over this period. Even those who own their homes outright were left counting the cost, with the amount of these older people in food insecurity rising from 43,000 to 114,000.
The state pension rose by 8.5% at the start of April under the triple lock guarantee, which means it rises every year in line with whichever is highest out of wage growth, inflation or 2.5%. But retirees are still being clobbered by rising prices, energy bills and mortgage payments.
Economists also warned last month that that older people were the biggest losers from Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's Budget, as they won't benefit from National Insurance cuts and they are being hit by stealth raids on income tax All 8 million working pensioners would see their taxes rise by an average of £1,000 by 2027/28 due to frozen income tax thresholds, according to the Resolution Foundation.
Shadow Work and Pensions Minister Alison McGovern said: “Pensioners have paid a heavy price for 14 years of devastating Tory economic failure. The Tories crashed the economy and unleashed a cost of living crisis, pushing pensioners into poverty, or having to rely on their savings just to get by."
Official figures revealed recently that the number of pensioners living in deprivation has risen to 8% - the highest level since 2016 and a 2% increase since before the pandemic.
Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK said: “We know that many older people are still extremely worried about how they’re going to manage but these figures are still distressing to read. While inflation is not as high as it once was, bills still continue to rise, and many older people have shared with us harrowing stories of how they’re cutting back on life’s essentials including food just to get by. This can have a devastating effect on people’s health."
A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: “We are committed to backing all pensioners, having made the biggest ever cash increase to the State Pension and delivering a further increase of 8.5% this week, and since 2009/10 there are 200,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty after housing costs.
“We also increased Pension Credit – with the average award worth over £3,900 a year – to support nearly 1.4 million pensioners most in need, and we paid 11.9 million Pensioner Cost of Living Payments as a top up to the Winter Fuel Payment – totalling nearly £5 billion – to help with essential costs last winter.”
