Pensions, On-Call Firefighters, Childcare

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When will you retire? And will you have enough money to live comfortably? Big questions and this week the government announced two major reviews to study them after concerns that today's workers will be poorer in retirement than their parents. The first is a revived Pension Commission with a wide remit. The second is a review into the state pension age. We'll speak to Pensions UK, which represents pension schemes that together provide a retirement income to more than 30 million people.

From September working parents of children aged 9 months to school age will get 30 hours of childcare funded by the Government. It simplifies the present system which has different rules at different ages and means working parents of children under three will potentially save thousands of pounds on the cost of childcare. Who is eligible and how does it work?

Thousands of people who were retained firefighters are being urged to claim pension payments worth thousands or tens of thousands of pounds. Retained or on-call firefighters generally work part-time. Sixteen thousand of their colleagues have already claimed but a further 10,000 could be eligible to buy back pensions after two legal changes in the past few years.

And some money saving tips for anyone going abroad for their summer holiday.

Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporters: Dan Whitworth and Jo Krasner Researchers: Eimear Devlin and Catherine Lund Editor: Jess Quayle

(First broadcast 12pm Saturday 26th July 2025)

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.
0:09.0	In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?
0:16.0	Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.
0:20.0	A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by
0:23.1	their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism
0:27.8	with me, Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, welcome to this Moneybox podcast.
0:40.0	Working parents of young children in England could save thousands of pounds a year after funded childcare is doubled to 30 hours for children under three from September.
0:49.7	The on-call firefighters who could be entitled to thousands of pounds in a pension they don't know about.
0:55.9	And if you go abroad this summer, give us little as possible to the banks and the phone companies.
1:01.5	But first, when will you retire?
1:03.8	And will you have enough money to live comfortably?
1:06.4	Big questions.
1:07.5	And this week, the government announced two major reviews to study them. The government
1:11.7	said it was concerned that today's workers will be poorer in retirement than their parents.
1:17.2	The biggest task was given to a revived pension commission with a very wide remit as the
1:22.5	work and pension secretary Liz Kendall set out on Monday. The commission is looking at in the long term, how do we make sure we have decent incomes in retirement?
1:33.3	How do we bring in low earners, young people, many women who are working in sectors like
1:39.3	hospitality, retail and social care and the self-employed.
1:43.3	You know, we've only got one in five of all self-employed people
1:46.4	saving anything for their retirement. That needs to change and that's what we've asked the
1:50.4	commission to look at. Separately, the government also brought forward a review into state pension age.
1:56.9	Reviews have to happen every six years, but the last one only reported in 2023.
	...

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