Have you saved enough money for your retirement?

[The Great Cornholio]

Well at my previous job I paid 5% of my salary to a pension the company paid 10%.

I'm currently paying 5% of my salary and my employers are paying 4%.

I intend to up this still further in the future. Trust me this is a shit load more than a lot of people my age.

I also own my own house and my well invest in property in the future.

If that isn't enough then I'm going to quit and go and live in India.

Don't forget I will still get a state pension too!

I sound like the editor of the Independent but they reckoned you need to be putting in between 15-20% of your salary now. The later you leave it, the less it will accrue. That is a hell of a lot of money. Methinks I will investigate our flexible beneift option of increasing contributions.

 

[JJ McClure]

Sod it, once I retire I'll use my savings to top myself in drink and drugs binge

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Teachers and people in the NSC get a final salary pension of 1/80th. That means if they work for 40 years they get a pension of 40/80th or 50% of there final salary , which is obviously the highest it would be over their working lives. They also get 1.5 x their final salary as a tax free lump sum.

Therefore on a final salary of £ 40000, they would get £ 20000 pa index linked and guaranteed for the rest of their lives and £ 60000 tax free cash at retirement.

Whats so funny about that Phedrus ?! .

The only people who get better pensions are the Police but they pay a lot more in.

 

[The Great Cornholio]

What the hell! Cut and pasted from the Indie's website

£57bn A report for the Government today identifies this figure as the total gap between how much people are saving and how much they need to save to ensure a comfortable retirement

13m The number of British people not saving enough to provide for a secure retirement, almost half the 28m working population

£110,000 The amount a non-smoking female needs to have saved at age 65 to buy a retirement income of £100 a week

£500,000 Amount a non-smoking male needs to have saved to retire at 55 to provide an inflation-proof annual income of £20,000

£30,000 The average pension pot at retirement age, buying an income of £30 a week

1m The number of UK pensioners living below the poverty line

22 per cent How much of your earnings you need to put aside each month if you don't start saving for your pension until 40 years old

£70,000 The gap between how much people think they need to save for retirement and the reality

5 per cent The level of GDP the UK government spends on pensions

11 per cent The level of GDP other EU governments spend on pensions

18 per cent Percentage of the British population currently over pensionable age

25 per cent Predicted percentage of the British population over pensionable age by 2040

15 Average number of years people were living beyond 65 in 1978

18 Average number of years people live beyond age 65 today

21 Average number of years people are predicted to live beyond 65 by 2030

60 per cent The percentage of Britons working to pay the pensions of the 21 per cent who have retired

56 per cent The percentage of Britons working in 2030 to pay the pensions of the 27 per cent retired

 

[Hungry Joe.]

Sod it, once I retire I'll use my savings to top myself in drink and drugs binge

#

I'll drink to that

 

[Set of Tracksuits]

Teachers and people in the NSC get a final salary pension of 1/80th.

People in the NSC eh? Excellent, I've done a year's service already, only 39 to go.

You use this far too much mate.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

As long as people think that keeping taxes low is the most important consideration in British politics, we will have a problem with pensions.

The so-called "Pensions Time Bomb" is one of the most dishonest political campaigns I have ever seen. It amounts to nothing but a conspiracy by all of the main political parties to shift the blame for the fact that they are managing the nation in a way that will deliver poverty in old age to millions. It's not their fault - it's your fault for not saving enough.

BOLLOX!

Getting security in old age was probably the main reason why working people fought to get the vote all those years ago. We are now expected to believe that politicians can't deliver this basic human right.

My vote will go to the first party that promises to RAISE taxation to solve this problem.

 

[Hungry Joe.]

Teachers and people in the NSC get a final salary pension of 1/80th. That means if they work for 40 years they get a pension of 40/80th or 50% of there final salary , which is obviously the highest it would be over their working lives. They also get 1.5 x their final salary as a tax free lump sum.

Therefore on a final salary of £ 40000, they would get £ 20000 pa index linked and guaranteed for the rest of their lives and £ 60000 tax free cash at retirement.

Whats so funny about that Phedrus ?! .

The only people who get better pensions are the Police but they pay a lot more in.

Your information relates to Teachers currently in post. I can't speak for NHS workers but as a Civil Servant who knows many teachers as friends and family I can tell you that our pensions and conditions of service are being changed and erroded all the time. Most new recruits do not have the option of joining the pension schemes you describe, are expected to jump through hoops to get performance pay for the job they already do anyway and most never get to the £40k you alude to. My sister-in-law is Head Of History and at 50 has worked as a teacher since leaving Uni. I assure you she is not on £40k. I doubt many NHS workers are on that kind of money either. Another sobering fact is that if you do work as a public servant until your retitrement age you are not likely to live to enjoy whatever pension you do end up with for very long.

 

[fatboy]

Teachers and people in the NSC get a final salary pension of 1/80th.

Does it depend on your postcount?

 

[fatboy]

Don't forget I will still get a state pension too!

I doubt it.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Gareth -

Your figures about public sector final salary pension schemes omit the most important fact about them.

Public sector workers pay contributions into their pension funds throughout their working lives. The amount varies across the public sector. In local government, it is 6 per cent of gross salary.

Some public sector workers have non-contributory pensions.

But public sector pay has always been based on a massive on-going "comparability" exercise that takes account of salary levels elsewhere in the economy. This exercise takes account of pension benefits. In effect, ALL public sector workers have their basic salaries adjusted downwards to take account of the pensions benefits that they get.

In other words, NHS staff get their pay held artificially low to reflect the fact that they have a more secure pension scheme.

It's a form of compulsory saving, I guess. People who save nothing ALWAYS whinge about those who do save.

 

[Lammy]

Can someone let me know what average inflation is?

 

[Lammy]

I doubt it.

I probably will. I have paid my NI and a proportion of that gets paid into a state pension scheme. It is not the FULL state pension scheme as you have to opt out of that when you set up your company or private scheme.

If they decided to not bother give me a state pension then they would have to buy me out as I have given them money on that premise.

 

[Hungry Joe.]

Gareth -

Your figures about public sector final salary pension schemes omit the most important fact about them.

Public sector workers pay contributions into their pension funds throughout their working lives. The amount varies across the public sector. In local government, it is 6 per cent of gross salary.

Some public sector workers have non-contributory pensions.

But ALL public sector workers have their basic salaries adjusted to take account of the pensions benefits that they get.

In other words, NHS staff get their pay held artificially low to reflect the fact that they have a more secure pension scheme.

It's a form of compulsory saving, I guess. People who save nothing ALWAYS whinge about those who do save.

Thank you LB, you are spot on. I have worked for what is now the Dept For Work & Pensions for over 11 years and my salary has shot up to an amazing £13900pa. I have to spend much of my own time collecting 'evidence' for an appraisal system that expects you not only to do your job (under increasingly difficult conditions) but to collate and note everything you do just in order to get a grade you, and everyone who works with you, knows you deserve. This system has now been introduced for Teachers and NHS workers, and most other public sector workers. The increase in pay if you do acheive what is a pre-determined % target (ie if too many people acheive the marking they move the goalpoasts andf mark everyone down) is minimal. Top this with the threat of looming redundancies (my job is moving to either Hastings or Cosham) and increased amounts of verbal and sometimes physical abuse public sectors are faced with then you will hopefully forgive me for sounding annoyed by Gareth's comments, comments I hear all the time from Daily Mail readers who believe the crap they read in that rag.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Look get silly if you want but people in the public sector get a pretty damn good pension which is guaranteed and not subject to the stock market where prices may plummet as well as fall.

That is in comparison to other people not in final salary schemes and self employed. At age 40 with no pension provision you need to put in around 20% of your net income each month into a pension to get less than half your equivalent salary at age 65.

I would put spare money into ISA's, Unit Trusts and Property and build up a buy to let portfolio instead.

Anyone wanting figures on the buy to let mortgages available can PM me !.

Regards GG

 

[readingstockport]

I intend to invest as much money as I can outside of my pension, I have a final salary one currently and 2 frozen personal ones, and then I can do what I bloody well want with it. Currently on target to have about £100K in the pension pots and about the same saved in cash. Then I get to spend the £100k in cash how I want I don't have to buy one of those sodding rip-off annuities.

If I was starting out now I wouldn't put a single penny into a personal pension, I'd save the lot myself outside.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

LB - the guaranteed element to FSP's is something other people in Personal Pensions do not get which is a very important element.

 

[CHAPPERS]

Live fast, die young.

f*** pensions.

 

[Hungry Joe.]

Look get silly if you want but people in the public sector get a pretty damn good pension which is guaranteed and not subject to the stock market where prices may plummet as well as fall.

That is in comparison to other people not in final salary schemes and self employed. At age 40 with no pension provision you need to put in around 20% of your net income each month into a pension to get less than half your equivalent salary at age 65.

I would put spare money into ISA's, Unit Trusts and Property and build up a buy to let portfolio instead.

Anyone wanting figures on the buy to let mortgages available can PM me !.

Regards GG

Gareth, read LB's last post again and re-do the maths. The only person getting silly on this thread is you.

 

[MattBackHome]

People who save nothing ALWAYS whinge about those who do save.

I save precisely sod-all and have never whinged about people who save. Then again, I am only 24 and am just about to go round the world so I tend not to whinge about much at all really. It's taken this long since finishing Uni to get myself out of debt (bar the student loan) and when I get back in a couple of years I'm definitely going to begin sticking money away.

A more immediate problem for me is house prices, considering that in the long term I really don't want to move out of central Brighton. But what can you do?