Pensions

I will reach the age of 65 this Sunday but i have been on a very good ( final salary) company pension since i finished work on ill health in 1999.From Sunday i will also recieve my state pension but my company pension will be taxed accordingly which is rather annoying but thats how it is.The O/H is still in full employment

peter.

Have a great birthday, Peter, celebrate in style

I took early retirement a few years ago. I actually loved my job, and wondered if I'd get bored without it. The company were relocating, and, due to family commitments, there was no way I could move with them. Never looked back, and, of course a final salary scheme pension really helped.

Agree about the tax set up, not exactly straightforward is it? The state pension is taxable but paid tax free.  You then pay the tax on your company pension. Works out the same anyway!

I find it quite disgraceful that companies were allowed to simply end final salary pension schemes, with no consultation with employees. It was the equivalent of a massive cut in salary, over-night.

Those companies were perfectly happy to take a break from making their contributions to the pension funds during the good times (one of the main reasons for the huge shortfalls in many funds now) but we're very quick to renaige on their agreements when things went less good.

This is a scandal that they got away with simply because of most people's poor understanding of how pensions work. It was done with little proper explanation and in a very one-sided and under-hand way. It is a scandal far bigger, in my view, than the so-called PPI mis-selling and other bank related scandals.....

My sister worked for a company that had these "pension holiday,s" as they were sometimes called and she would go years and not put anything into her pension.In the end the company went bust and what pensions were paid out were very poor.I could never understand any company doing that.Was there a reason ??.As regards the final salary pensions many were scuppered by Gordon Brown as i understand it. He took many of the tax breaks away from them and it badly affected the way they made money too keep the funds going.Most final salary pensions are made up of money put in by the company,contributions from the members and money made from investment in stocks,shares and bonds etc,etc.Many of them ran at a loss and it was up too the company too make up any shortfall in the way of extra contributions on top of what they would put in each year.I will dig out some more info on this concerning numbers.

peter.

I will reach the age of 65 this Sunday but i have been on a very good ( final salary) company pension since i finished work on ill health in 1999.From Sunday i will also recieve my state pension but my company pension will be taxed accordingly which is rather annoying but thats how it is.The O/H is still in full employment

peter.

Have a great birthday, Peter, celebrate in style

I took early retirement a few years ago. I actually loved my job, and wondered if I'd get bored without it. The company were relocating, and, due to family commitments, there was no way I could move with them. Never looked back, and, of course a final salary scheme pension really helped.

Agree about the tax set up, not exactly straightforward is it? The state pension is taxable but paid tax free.  You then pay the tax on your company pension. Works out the same anyway!

 

 

I also had a job i liked until the last three years when the threat of relocation,demanning and redundancy fell upon us all and it all went sour.In the end i had a breakdown worrying about my pension and was sent home and i never went back.Nine months later i was given a full pension and finished on benefit 3.That was over fiftenn years ago and i,ve never looked back I count myself very fortunate despite what happened.

peter.

I took early retirement at the age of 55 (with a much reduced final salary pension) but now look back and think it was the best move I ever made. Reaching the dizzy heights of 60 next month and ain't looking back. 

Currently we're in the planning stage of driving the mid life crisis Merc SLK down to Venice in May and then on to a friend who lives in Umbria. 

Yes, your finances change drastically with a pension but you cut your cloth accordingly - and lets face it, you can't take it with you!

Too true Paul there are no pockets in shrouds.

peter.

My OH lost his 'final salary' pension, when his company changed the rules, so he joined the 'private pension' scheme which replaced it, and he put any extra money into the company share scheme.  We lost that too when the company eventually went 'belly up' and the banks took it over!   Instead of shares worth about £5.50 each, each share was 'revalued' and we ended up with each share being worth  only a fraction of a penny!!!  We had a substantial holding, which in total turned our to be worth next to nothing. However our shares have risen again since then - and we have enough to bring us in the grand sum of 3p worth of dividend last year!

He could have taken his pension at sixty, but chose not to, and just over a year later we lost everything including his job!  People who were already receiving a pension continued to do so!  My advice would be 'take it now' before it disappears in a puff of smoke!

Eventually last year he did get a small pension, and a small lump sum from the Government Pension Protection Fund but nothing like we expected to receive.

It's surprising how your expectations can change, but we are still managing on two state pensions, my very small NHS pension, and his various other small private pension schemes, some of which have paid out surprisingly well!  And more importantly, we're healthy and enjoying life!

I think final salary schemes are too expensive or too generous. I was fortunate to be in a non-contibutary final salary scheme which work on the basis of paying so many 60ths as a pension. So if you had 40 years persionable service you got two 40/60ths of your final salary. They did take into account the State Pension in their calculations and did not contract out of SERPs. So anyone with a reasonably long service would end up with a total pension (company+state) of about three quarters of their final pay. However things change and the company I worked for has recently changed from 60ths to 120ths so virtually halving the likely pension of those new to the scheme although they can, of course, make voluntary contributions to maintain the value of the pension. It does actually make you wonder whether we have had the best days of pensions?

David

We've been retired just over 4 years and our combined pension income is only 25% of salaries.  We have had to cut our cloth accordingly but wouldn't change our current lifestyle 

We took early retirement in our mid 50s and it was the best career move that we  made.  It meant living on reduced final salary pensions and interest from savings and investments (remember the days when you got a good rate?), but without a mortgage, debts etc.. we had a comfortable enough  life.

I've just turned 65 and  get a state pension too, so life is even better (and busier) now.  I would certainly recommend retiring as early as possible.

I took early retirement ( redundancy by any other name!) at 50 with a pension of about half my salary. It did enable me to work part-time for the remainder of my working life and reduce my stress levels. Since my state pension kicked in, things haven't been too bad. The downside is the poor return on savings. I am surprised at the amount of bleating about mortgage costs given the low rates that people are enjoying notwithstanding housing costs.