This week marks the hundred year anniversary of the birth of the state pension and I just can’t decide on what to make of the current pension situation, writes blogger Charlie Cashdan.

I, like probably most people my age (young, but not as young as I’d like anymore!) don’t have a private or work pension.  My household needs my entire wage to pay for the ever-increasing cost of living and to pay our mortgage; therefore there isn’t any money spare for luxuries like La Prairie moisturiser and paying into a pension scheme!

Will there still be a state pension when I retire?  Can Middle England possibly carry on sustaining a whole load of work-shy benefit cheats, long-term sick people, asylum seekers, economic migrants and an increasingly ageing population?  When we retire, there simply won’t be any money left in the pension pot for us.

What about all those people who can’t get on the housing ladder until much later in life?  If they take out a twenty-five year mortgage, they’ll still be paying it long after retirement.  My husband will be exactly sixty-five when we finish ours, just in time thank goodness!

I don’t think the state pension will survive another hundred years, and even if it does, it won’t be anywhere near adequate to help people cope with the situations the next generation of old people will face like still paying off mortgages and debts beyond retirement age.

We are just not looking after our elderly properly.  Pensions are not in line with earnings therefore the state pension is not enough for many current pensioners to cope with ridiculous council tax bills, soaring utility bills and taxes on absolutely everything, let alone the pensioners of the future like myself.

If a pensioner gets a part time job to help subsidise the state pension, the two earnings are added together and they are taxed on the lot, which seems horribly unfair.

Wealthy pensioners are laughing all the way to the bank due to the massive equity stored up in their houses, which they bought years ago for twenty grand, and are now worth hundreds of thousands.  They get private pension, state pension, fuel allowance, free bus pass but might even be millionaires!  Other pensioners live in their council house relying on nothing but state pension and can’t even afford to put the heating on!

Is means testing the answer?  But then is it right to deny state pension to someone who has worked hard and paid into it all their lives?  Should people receive less if they haven’t paid into the pot or would that be cruelly condemning people into poverty?  Would it be better to have an opt-out system where wealthy pensioners could choose to not receive their state pension on the condition it was given to someone who needed it more?

Whatever the answer, isn’t it time that we at least had a debate about this to ensure that we do a much better job of looking after our elderly over the next hundred years?

Agree with Charlie? Post your comments below.