When you’re young, it’s easy to imagine something you’re going to do as an older person very differently than how it transpires. To be honest I can’t say I ever gave much thought to drawing my state pension, the British equivalent of Social Security, but if I had, I would have seen it like this.
Scene: A country post office deep in rural England. It’s a quiet morning with just a couple of people in line. Behind the counter are postal workers sitting behind metal grids calling, “Next, please.”
There’s my future self, age 60 — the age a woman had to reach before becoming “old age pensioner” when I was a kid. At the time, I would have imagined my future self as very old indeed. I would have seen her as bent double over a walker, wearing a long tweed coat and a wooly hat and taking 15 minutes to hobble over to the counter.
Taking out a small paper booklet from her battered leather handbag, she thwacks it on the counter.
“Here you are, my dear,” she says, because in the 1960s all old people called everyone “dear,” probably because they couldn’t remember anyone’s name.
The post office worker takes the booklet, tears out a page to stamp and pushes it back. Opening the drawer, she pulls out a five pound note and slides it through the window.
“See you next week!” I say merrily, thinking of all the canned foods I’m going to stock up on with that money.
There are numerous reasons why my younger self was wrong. For a start, the nearer I got to British pension age, the further away the government pushed it. It’s now age 66 and between 2026 and 2028, it will increase to 67 as life expectancy rises. Secondly, I had no idea I’d be living across the pond and, lastly, I know people in their 90s who are sprightlier than the future self I envisaged.
What I also hadn’t considered was how I would apply for said pension. If I had thought about it, my younger self would probably have assumed a booklet would have magically appeared in the mail along with my 60th birthday cards. While this isn’t true, my English friends tell me all they had to do is fill in a simple one-page form online.
More Top Picks Best Wearable Migraine Devices For Relief
It’s not the same for us expats, unfortunately.
I’m currently looking at 22 pages of explanations and blank squares to complete in what’s known as a State Pension Claim Form and, yes, it’s just as exciting as it sounds. The only part I can fill in without having to search the house for information is my name. The irony of all this doesn’t escape me. At a time in life when we can become a little forgetful, some of the details they request astound me.
Since this particular form is only for Brits living abroad, it seems reasonable they would want to know when we left the country. That’s easy. We moved here in 2007. I know that because it’s written at the foot of this column.
However, they also want to know about all the visits we’ve made back since then. Do you know how many times we’ve done that in the past 16 years? No, neither did I until I spent hours trawling through passports, the calendar on my phone, Facebook and the blog I wrote for the first five years. Turns out it’s been 12 times to date.
As if that weren’t enough, I’ve had to note all the dates. For the first time I was almost pleased about the travel ban during the pandemic.
Can you name every place you’ve lived, with Zip code, your entire life? Although the addresses were simple enough, when I was born we didn’t even use the postal code system in use nowadays. I also discovered that the hospital in central London where I was born closed in 2005. I can’t believe they didn’t invite me to the final reunion.
By the time I reach the employment section, my life is literally spinning before me. Not only do they require every employer’s name and address, but also dates, payroll, staff or any other reference number. And I thought Chicago was the red tape capital of the world!
Rifling through a box of paperwork we brought over from England, I am surprised to find I actually have more useful information than I thought. It goes without saying it is all in a jumbled mess alongside payslips for my entire family, but I am able to find information about jobs I’d almost forgotten I’d had.
This included a creative writing class for adults that I taught and running a program for Weight Watchers. I can see how the first one might be less of a surprise to you than the second, but it brought back fond memories. My favorite class was the one where I encouraged my students to use all their senses to write about chocolate. Thinking about it, that could have been one of the factors that led to the other job.
As I plow through the form, I do feel thankful for a few things. I’m relieved I’ve only been married once, have never been divorced and am not a widow. Not for the obvious reasons but because that would have meant an extra six pages to complete.
For the same reason I’m pleased I’ve never served in the British armed forces or spent time in a specific hospital in Dublin, Ireland. If I had, they would not only have required the dates, but probably the ward number and the color of the bed sheets.
All joking aside, I can only assume all this attention to detail is to prevent identity theft. Or it’s the British government’s way of penalizing people who leave its pleasant shores for life elsewhere.
But for me it’s been an interesting journey back in time, and certainly one I never thought I’d take when I was a young girl.
Hilary Decent is a freelance journalist who moved to Naperville from England in 2007.