Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?

[weeksy]

Retirement is ace

Well, unless the wifes mindset changes, winter will still be cold... but you never know how things will pan out. I wouldn't necessarily pick your island... but in some world, i'd deffo be further south than where i am.

[Yorick]

Retirement is ace

Well, unless the wifes mindset changes, winter will still be cold... but you never know how things will pan out. I wouldn't necessarily pick your island... but in some world, i'd deffo be further south than where i am.

I had to get away from the 5 months cold dark winters.

[MyLittleStudPony]

Well that was interesting.. Just had a Webinar with Johnson Fleming/Scottish Widows and gone through some of my pension stuff.

Massively impressed with how the pension has done in 2023... Gone up by a fair bit.

According to pension calculator it should (in theory anyway) be worth £45,000 a year at retirement.

I wonder how accurate their calculator is? Or if they just want you to keep paying in.

By my reckoning, you'd need a 'pot' of about £900,000 to generate an income of £45k a year. When I looked the best annuities paid out about 5% of the total pot value (and the worst were more like 2.5%). Maybe that has all changed with interest rates at their current levels.

I still don't trust pension companies and will steer clear of them myself going forward, along with other 'financial services'.

[weeksy]

Well that was interesting.. Just had a Webinar with Johnson Fleming/Scottish Widows and gone through some of my pension stuff.

Massively impressed with how the pension has done in 2023... Gone up by a fair bit.

According to pension calculator it should (in theory anyway) be worth £45,000 a year at retirement.

I wonder how accurate their calculator is? Or if they just want you to keep paying in.

By my reckoning, you'd need a 'pot' of about £900,000 to generate an income of £45k a year. When I looked the best annuities paid out about 5% of the total pot value (and the worst were more like 2.5%). Maybe that has all changed with interest rates at their current levels.

I still don't trust pension companies and will steer clear of them myself going forward, along with other 'financial services'.

I trust them more with what is to me a massive chunk of cash than I trust myself to get it right. In this year since June it's gone up by £25k. Maybe another company would've done better, but I bet I could have got it more wrong if let loose myself.

[gremlin]

[ Maybe that has all changed with interest rates at their current levels.

Short answer: yes.

[Yorick]

Our pots would have been mega if I'd worked the extra 12 years.

5* pension at 66
Or
3* pension at 54.

But we had to move somewhere cheaper.

[MyLittleStudPony]

[ Maybe that has all changed with interest rates at their current levels.

Short answer: yes.

I wonder if interest rates might go down before some of us retire and that uplift may be lost to some extent.

Not that I wish to piss on anyone's chips.

I'm sure some people do get a big pot and a big pension and well done to them. Not me though. I've got all of mine in rusty Peak Frean Family Assortment tins, up in the loft.

[Potter]

I wonder how accurate their calculator is? Or if they just want you to keep paying in.

By my reckoning, you'd need a 'pot' of about £900,000 to generate an income of £45k a year....

That's what I was thinking, my first thought when I saw £45k PA was "wow that's good", but then I remembered it's probably projected on him retiring at 67yrs old, so ages to go yet and probably quite possible, but then my next thought was about the pension pot and how much he must have in there.

I was looking at options for buying annuities and I was doing the calcs with a pot of a million quid, but I was disappointed with all of them that I looked at.
It would give me a massive comfort knowing I've got £45k a year coming in no matter what, because it's not a fortune but it's a decent life if you have no kids/mortgage/etc.

But to buy an annuity that guarantees that for the rest of your life (especially if like me you want to retire at 52yrs old) means you'd have to throw a lot of money into it - and that money is probably better parked elsewhere.

I think the only people keen on annuities are the people selling annuities.

[weeksy]

Our pots would have been mega if I'd worked the extra 12 years.

5* pension at 66
Or
3* pension at 54.

But we had to move somewhere cheaper.

You need both people to agree on that of course, with having the mother in law and our boy, moving abroad isn't an option that's likely.

That said, realistically we're talking 8-10 years, a lot can happen in 8-10 years

[Yorick]

Our pots would have been mega if I'd worked the extra 12 years.

5* pension at 66
Or
3* pension at 54.

But we had to move somewhere cheaper.

You need both people to agree on that of course, with having the mother in law and our boy, moving abroad isn't an option that's likely.

That said, realistically we're talking 8-10 years, a lot can happen in 8-10 years

She hated teaching and we had no kids, so was easier.

And the MIL is here on hols

[Horse]

[ Maybe that has all changed with interest rates at their current levels.

Short answer: yes.

It was gilts etc., last October, that tanked much of mine. I decided (and was financially able) to leave them alone, hopefully to recover.

I should probably check their (there's three separate pots) current values.

FWIW, a year ago, a pot of about £125k would get a guaranteed annuity of about £9k.

But I no longer had £125k Also was considering flexible draw-down anyway.

[Scotsrich]

My pot has dropped about 15% in the 4+years since I retired.

Fortunately thanks to my late FiL I haven’t had to touch it for a couple of years and won’t for another couple yet so hopefully/maybe it’ll make some of that back.

Them’s the breaks.

[Dodgy69]

These pension values are usually calculated on your "normal retirement age". Currently that's either 66, 67 or 68 depending on your age. Early retirement will reduce it.

I didn't want an annuity and exchanged mine for a drawdown. Withdraw as and when. I'm now 57 and have withdrawn some of the tax free allowance for house job's. The 75% taxable will hopefully be untouched for a good while yet.

You can request a transfer value from your pension provider and stick it all in a drawdown, but this will have investment risks and can go up or down.

Imo, it's not worth working your bollox off until your ( nra ) and then being a millionaire when you're knackered.

[weeksy]

These pension values are usually calculated on your "normal retirement age". Currently that's either 66, 67 or 68 depending on your age. Early retirement will reduce it.

I get that yes. However, my work is different to digging holes in so much that a bit longer won't be a massive issue. I won't be 67 though that's for sure

[Count Steer]

If it's £45k at current values that's pretty minted. If it's at the predicted values in 17 years time after paying in for those years. It's not so minted. Inflation's a bugger.

[Buckaroo]

Well that was interesting.. Just had a Webinar with Johnson Fleming/Scottish Widows and gone through some of my pension stuff.

Massively impressed with how the pension has done in 2023... Gone up by a fair bit.

According to pension calculator it should (in theory anyway) be worth £45,000 a year at retirement.

Sounds about right.

I retired 1.5 years ago with a fund of 97% maximum government private pension allowance. With this amount, it's around £49k per year, taxed of course, plus two times state pension. We're doing just fine on this, but it took many decades of final salary pension to achieve this and some pretty hard jobs along the way. Paid off though

[Horse]

it took many decades of final salary pension to achieve this

And that's the thing that most won't benefit from.

I had 16 years in one when it was closed, so 16/60 of the projected final salary. Luckily, Filly is still working

[Dodgy69]

These pension values are usually calculated on your "normal retirement age". Currently that's either 66, 67 or 68 depending on your age. Early retirement will reduce it.

I get that yes. However, my work is different to digging holes in so much that a bit longer won't be a massive issue. I won't be 67 though that's for sure

Thinking about it ... you have got a bloody soft job. You might aswel keep going .

Also the 55 moves to 57 from April 2028.

[Yorick]

Was talking to a lad a few years who was hoping to retire after 35 years with a company who made racking systems. Well know and American owned. Along the way there were 4 buyouts by other U.S. companies.

The shit hit the fan last year when the pension pots had got lost in the transactions. He lost about £300k IIRC. He's still working.

[gremlin]

I am, in financial jargon, what's known as 'arsehole lucky':

I have a 60/40 DB pension, which we were all moved out of a few years back, but will still pay out nicely when I hit 65. It's all index-linked and more gold-plated than Ratners could ever have dreamed of.

Plus, as the evil mill owners had evicted us from the DB scheme, they made the DC scheme very attractive to stop the workers revolting, contributing 25% of my salary into it every month. They also matched my recent AVCs up to 3%, so I can't really grumble.

Having both a DB and a DC pension gives a bit of flexibility around how to fund my, hopefully early, retirement.

All I have to do....is keep breathing.