5 years today

Will be 21 years this month. Got away early on a company, inflation proof pension. Done some consultancy from time to time at excellent rates. Great flexibility and been away 13 times already this year. Would expect another 7/8 before the year end. Dont see where the yoofs  the club keeps looking for are going to do what we have done. Its today the club wants income and if they ignore us  it may not be here when the next generation or two have the means and time to be members

Wiw! Sounds like some of you have had a very good deal from your employers!

How many of you were in the public sector? The rest of the populous are paying for that and probably not going to have such good pensions themselves.

The next generation are going to be poorer in retirement than we are.

Being in the private sector, no way could I have afforded to retire early, each month before I was 65 would have lost me 0.5%,so 6% per year, plus obviously a corresponding reduction in my available lump sum.

I do have a final salary pension that I paid into for over 32 years, which I did think was a good pension, but it sounds like most of you early retirers got a far better deal!

With State Pension now, we thought we were doing OK......now not so sure compared to others of my age!

We are SKI-ing to an extent, but also helping the kids out of income as much as we can, plus lump sums for as much as we can at Christmas and birthdays, within IHT allowances, so passing on the help we had from our own parents when we were in our 20s.

We help them pay into their own pension schemes so they can have more in retirement.

Not depriving ourselves, we have a bit more than we need for what we want to do, but our spending is modest.......no cruises.....no trips to Canaries or similar....not our style anyway!

Final salary pension ??? ..... I would've had one if Cadbury hadn't bought us out for the product names & shut the site down to send it all abroad. And final salary pensions were a dim & distant memory for new starters in the land of Beanz before I started. And I'm sure Kraft haven't finished yet either in their drive for cost cutting. 

As for retiring before 67  ...... mmm ??? 

Yep, I was one of the lucky ones in the company who avoided by a couple of years having their FS pension discontinued, now they have a defined contributions pension.

Both our children have a defined contributions scheme, DD has a good one as she puts in 10% and her employer matches it, so she is hopefully going to retire on a decent amount.

Her husband is a teacher, so has some sort  of FS scheme, not as generous as before however.

With 2  works pensions and 2 state pensions, assuming they still exist, they should be OK.

In my generation, your wife working was not so common, so OH was a stay home mum, therefor has very little pension....only 60%  of my basic state pension, which  is not a full state pension as I only worked  in UK for 37 years.

In my generation, your wife working was not so common, so OH was a stay home mum, therefor has very little pension....only 60%  of my basic state pension, which  is not a full state pension as I only worked  in UK for 37 years.

Had my wife been alive K we would have had my works pension and, eventually two state pensions. She did do some part time work when the kids were of an age but they were about 10 years apart. Sadly she died aged 43. I would probably have retired at 55 just the same with the same  80% of my full works pension. We would have managed as I accrued a fair bit of capital. 

As it is OH has about £12k works pension and full OAP. I have around £16K (all before tax). My OAP starts November. We are fortunate in that regard. 

If my late wife had been alive money might have been tight for us if we both made 80 

 As for retiring before 67 ...... mmm ?

I was fortunate to be able to get my pension early at just turned 55. I could have held out a couple of years for anticipated voluntary redundancy. However I determined before age 54 that if I could not get an early pension I would still quit at 55 and wait until 60 for my works pension. 

If I had retired at 55, my pension would only have been 40% of what it is now, not enough to have lived on till my state pension kicked in 10 years on.

At age 55 I still had a 12 year old daughter to put through school and university....very expensive these daughters.....not to mention a mortgage to pay.

Our children are 15 years apart, fairly unusual probably.  

Being in the private sector, no way could I have afforded to retire early, each month before I was 65 would have lost me 0.5%,so 6% per year, plus obviously a corresponding reduction in my available lump sum.

I do have a final salary pension that I paid into for over 32 years, which I did think was a good pension, but it sounds like most of you early retirers got a far better deal!

I also worked 32 years towards my pension. To have received a full pension I would have had to work another 8 years until 63. As it turned out I could have taken my 80% of full pension and still been employed 2 days a week. To hell with that though. Too tying. About 9 months after I left I was asked to return on a consultancy basis. Not a difficult decision it took but a moments thought to say 'No Ta'.

I remember my father in law having worked for shell since an apprenticeship and having risen to shipping controller with an excellent non-contributory pension. He could have retired early on a good pension. I remember saying that if I were him I would do and enjoy my time with my wife. He retired 5 years later and my mum in law died within 6 months. I think the thought of the time they could have spent together hit him hard. I know the impact on my dad when mum died at 48. I decided at age 35 when I moved house not to extend myself too much. I increased my mortgage from £10k to £25k and used up my savings of around £7k to do so. At that time those working around me were looking at borrowing 50 to 60k. My wife also started to work two days a week and by age 40, we had paid our mortgage off and started to accrue capital whilst still enjoying life in order to ensure that I could leave work early. 

When working at a job that I enjoyed I was in the fortunate position for at least the last 16 of the 32 years of having 12 weeks off each year. Although I certainly put the time in during the other 40 weeks. 

My advise to colleagues when the generous schemes were available was 1)no dependant children,2) No mortgage or paid off out of lump sum, 3)Was the pension sufficient to live on  4)any part time considered as perk. I was OK it all fitted, Kids Uni finished, No Mortgage. Like another within 12 months I was working as a consultant ( then at £600 per day plus expenses). Far better deal than when full time. No other generation will be so lucky. 

Good advice!

Our company scheme was 30 years for full pension, till they increased it to 40 years, but we old people were allowed to keep the 30 year requirement, any years above that gave a small increase.

So under the plan you could retire at 65 and as long as you had at least 30 years service your pension was supposed to be 2/3 of your final salary.

However, no additional allowances were taken into account, so not as generous as at first glance.

Plus, part of the 2/3 calculation included the full single person state pension, whether you received the full amount or not....so even less generous.

I was aware that that was how it would work. Once they moved the goalposts to 40 years, they stopped including your state pension in it, so I have a sort of hybrid scheme.

I took the maximum lump sum as that did not affect the widow's pension, so we have made good use of that, though it did of course decrease the monthly pension amount.

This now forms our "new car/new caravan fund" and our "helping the kids fund", so has decreased lately, but will build up again gradually.

Only part of the pension is index linked, so increases have been pretty minimal.

I could have gone back to work after I retired, I did a few months of work on diving vessels, which are pretty specialised ships that not that many people are qualified to certify, but then decided to get on with enjoying retirement, you never know how long you may have. My father did not make it to pension age.

When I hit 67, I qualified for a small state pension from Norway as I had worked there when younger, and served in the army there, so that made up for the shortfall in my UK state pension.

With the mortgage paid off before retirement, and DD becoming self supporting just after I retired, we feel we are doing OK.

If we fall on hard times, we can always sell up and buy a smaller place!