Retirement

I was "fortunate" enough to rake in a public service final salary pension. The downside was that you accepted piss poor pay and conditions (honestly) throughout your career relative to how equivalent work was rewarded in the private sector. Pay was additionally held back "to take account of your contribution-free indexed linked pension" and your "contracted-out" NI contribution status meant you got nowhere near the "standard" NI pension. My missus gets a far bigger NI state pension than I do, and the majority of her qualifying years were made up of "domestic responsibility" periods at home looking after the kids. I accepted all that shit in return for job security and peace of mind. Although these days job security has gone as has final salary schemes. And the Govt even changed the law to decimate the redundancy package just before they started making tens of thousands redundant, and froze (i.e. killed off) pay scales, so new recruits joined at the bottom of the pay scale and never move up to the pay supposedly rewarding increasing experience and value to the employer. So don't believe the crap you read in the Daily Mail. Having said all that, no-one has a gun to your head and we all stand or fall by the choices we make. Although of course not all choices are available to everyone, for example if you are thick or bone idle. Bad starts in life can usually be overcome unless you decide to make a career of being a "victim" and feeling "entitled" and somehow expecting the State (i.e. the rest of us) to provide for you, over and above of course the social security safety net for genuine cases which underpins society. Hopefully.
 
I'm 53 and as soon as the house is paid off(6 years) i'm not getting up at 5.30 in the morning and going to the factory!Might get a part time job in something i enjoy i.e driving.We are lucky being left a few quid from my parents.
 
Problem is these days Haardass that public sector average pay has overtaken that in the private sector.

That means in the long term the economy is fucked
 
It’s not for me Elmet. Some are the retiring type and some aren’t I guess.

Ive never been able to sit still. Will probably come in useful as it’s my generation and those below who won’t have the luxury.
Snap aged 44 self employed carpenter work 6 days a week can’t sit still either ,not got a pension or a pit to piss ,in I’m going to work till I drop What a way to go out lol 😂
 
As a 31 year old, this is possible the most depressing/scary thread Iv read on bentleys! Come on then gents, give me a clue, use the power of Hinde sight and tell me what you would do, private pension? Bricks and mortar? You’ve got me worried with all this talk of over 70 years old and 500k!
 
As a 31 year old, this is possible the most depressing/scary thread Iv read on bentleys! Come on then gents, give me a clue, use the power of Hinde sight and tell me what you would do, private pension? Bricks and mortar? You’ve got me worried with all this talk of over 70 years old and 500k!
Make Micky an offer for the roof, give it five years, sorted. 👍
 
I wouldn't worry at all about a pension, Blue Streak.
After 30 years of Brexit you'll all be wandering around homeless and jobless dressed in rags, sleeping on straw and eating grass. With your ribs sticking out of what little flesh remains on your emaciated, scurvy infested carcass preparing yourself for another 10 hours of street begging next to the sole surviving communal water pump in your neigbourhood which will have been reduced to rubble through decades of neglect.
A pension won't even be a distant collective memory.
 
As a 31 year old, this is possible the most depressing/scary thread Iv read on bentleys! Come on then gents, give me a clue, use the power of Hinde sight and tell me what you would do, private pension? Bricks and mortar? You’ve got me worried with all this talk of over 70 years old and 500k!
I think all our responses just serve to underline what a minefield this is. There is not a handy one size fits all solution.
At 31 though you've got a good chance to decide a personal route that might work for you if you stick with it long enough.
Good luck!
 
Snap aged 44 self employed carpenter work 6 days a week can’t sit still either ,not got a pension or a pit to piss ,in I’m going to work till I drop What a way to go out lol 😂
Me too. But how defhuck Im going to do this stuff for another 15 years, I dont know! Everything hurts.
 
So, shropie says invest in the internet, Bowden says spend it on Leicester tickets, beer and strippers (basically) Hampshire makes a great point with the lack of straight forward answers and soho thinks I’m F*cked haha cheers gents, love this board 😂
 
Very interesting thread.

I am 61, and fortunate to have had decent private sector pension provision throughout my working life - two final salary schemes from my early days, though one of these is now with the pensions rescue fund (so no inflation increases etc), and then a generous money purchase scheme with one of the big accountancy firms. I haven't really added to this in the last 7 years, during which I have done some consultancy work, and started working part time for Citizens Advice.

My advice is, whenever you can, pay into a workplace pension, because your employer is adding extra salary (in the form of pension contributions), which you just don't get if you opt out of the workplace pension. I am lucky to have found fairly late in my working life a new job, at Citizens Advice, which doesn't pay that much, but which i enjoy a lot, and which generally allows you to work part time. I expect to still be doing some work for them, either paid or voluntary, past my state pension age.
 
This is the same old shite bbb recycles every so often in his anti public sector crusade. Instead of moaning about them having it so good you should join a union and not tolerate private sector employers eroding your rights and expecting people to work longer for less.
Yeah, comrades – everybody out! :LOL:
 
This is the same old shite bbb recycles every so often in his anti public sector crusade. Instead of moaning about them having it so good you should join a union and not tolerate private sector employers eroding your rights and expecting people to work longer for less.
Hahaha join a union ......bollocks .I've watched the GMB where I work who have collective bargaining rights oversee the company decimate our company pension and force more weekend working and longer hours for no extra pay ....just keep paying the subs lads !
 
Hahaha join a union ......bollocks .I've watched the GMB where I work who have collective bargaining rights oversee the company decimate our company pension and force more weekend working and longer hours for no extra pay ....just keep paying the subs lads !
So the GMB negotiated bringing that in then? Was it their idea?
 
I wasn't privy to the negotiations but they are consulted about contractual changes and did jack to stop it ...they are toothless
 
As a 31 year old, this is possible the most depressing/scary thread Iv read on bentleys! Come on then gents, give me a clue, use the power of Hinde sight and tell me what you would do, private pension? Bricks and mortar? You’ve got me worried with all this talk of over 70 years old and 500k!
Yes it is scary, and as someone more than twice your age it is scarier still because hindsight is not that much use as the conditions have changed so much over the last 25 years. Our pension planning was based on final salary pensions. Forget that. And being to afford to buy a house in your twenties. Forget that. One thing that could be said to have changed for the better is that there is a chance your parents will be able to pass on some decent money to you from the sale of the house when they pass on, but people are living so long these days that this is no guarantee. But this has driven the (undeserved) popularity of equity release.

My advice would be start getting into the saving habit as early as you can. Save for a house (bricks and mortar); if you can find an employer that contributes to a pension scheme it is advantageous; then drip feed spare money into stocks and shares through a unit trust, hindsight does show that over a working lifetime equities have a better than average return. It may not get you to Micky's £500k, but if you have to live off the state pension alone you are stuffed.

Good luck.
 
Just as there are many companies giving zero hour contracts, for example, and screwing people over, so there are companies that offer decent market-based salary and benefits packages, including good holiday allowance, private healthcare and pension contributions - without a union rep in sight.
 
He’s talking bollocks.

You simply can’t stretch pension 3 times as long. Add to that interest rates at 200 year lows and hey presto.
 
Just as there are many companies giving zero hour contracts, for example, and screwing people over, so there are companies that offer decent market-based salary and benefits packages, including good holiday allowance, private healthcare and pension contributions - without a union rep in sight.
There are some very good employers, but there's also many bad employers. It will be interesting to see where we go now we've not got the protection of EU Law for workers' rights.
 
Back
Top