In recent years, with the aim of maintaining the pension system, it has been seen how different countries have decided Increase retirement age. In Spain, it has been gradually being made from the first pension reform in 2013 until the last executed in 2021 by the then Social Security Minister José Luis Escrivá, and will remain until 2027.
Right now, in 2025, the ordinary retirement age in Spain is 66 years and 8 months for those who have quoted less than 38 years and 3 months. People who exceed this price period, can retire at 65. This increase has been even greater in other countries, such as Australia, who has forced people who have been working even being a minor to have to remain active due to the impossibility of accessing the pension.
You may be interested
Olga Viza (66 years old): “With active retirement, charge half of your pension, social security listed and work is still without limit”
Manuel Álvarez, pension expert: “You have to start saving for retirement before 30, almost from the first salary”
This is the case of Ross. He began working as a mason at age 15 and, now, with 66, says he has the body “shattered.” In fact, for this reason he has not been able to work during the last 4 years, surviving thanks to social aid and his savings. “It has been a real struggle and life should not be wasted, but a long time ago I want to have retirement age,” he told the Australian medium ‘ABC News’.
“All of us who are older have the destroyed body”
Australia decided to increase retirement age from 65 to 67 years in 2023. And, for Ross, this has turned out to be unfair to many people, considering that the legal age should be reduced according to each case, as for those who, like him, have spent their entire lives doing manual work. “It is very important because all of us who are older have the destroyed body,” he said.
So, he states that his medical history “has 50 millimeters thick.” His dream, after more than 50 years working, would be to be able to spend his retirement traveling, fish trout or devoting himself to other hobbies such as looking for gold or detecting metals, but his bank account does not allow it.
On the contrary, he is surviving with many difficulties thanks to social aid, since he also did not meet the requirements to receive a disability pension. So many years of work made him have to operate on his knee, to be placed a prosthesis for which he had to wait three years, just as he has to go through the operating room to operate the column.
Under these conditions, he assures that the fact of having had his own house has been a great help: “It is quite hard … I have my own home, that is the only reason I can survive.” At the same time, he claimed the aforementioned medium that, for many years, manual workers, such as masons, were paid much less than now, which harms them for the pension. Thus, he denounces a system that, for sustainability, has loaded hard with professionals traditionally of trades that lead a lifetime working.