Pension

That’s me officially drawing my pension. I had to retire a wee bit early due to shielding our son. At 66 I’m wondering where did the time go…

Earlier than 67 state retirement age you mean? Some might say you're retiring late..

Happy Retirement, Jim!

Welcome to the ranks Jim, oh, and Happy Birthday!

I retired when the pandemic started a couple of years ago, 66 is the official state retirement age for me.

Thanks everybody.

I mean this in the best way possible... Lucky Bar Steward.

Enjoy your retirement Jim, you have worked hard for it, You only get one go at it.

Wishing you a Happy birthday and a long and fulfilled retirement.

Good luck with the retirement jim, live as long as you can to pay the b******s back for keep puting the age back! Alas it's even harder for the women.

Nice one Jim, now you can join us youngsters - I still have to wait four years for the state pension but I've been collecting one pension since Feb 2020 and another since 2010 courtesy of a redundancy that gave me immediate company pension without discount as I was over fifty!

Thank you all very much, I appreciate every one of your messages. Like everyone else I have a story. My wife and I had plans to travel all over the UK to the hidden gems we sought out over the years once we retired, our lovely son will have his own house with a team to support him. Sadly things are not playing out as they should due to obvious reasons the last couple of years or so. The pandemic has put the brakes on our adventures. Hopefully time may see a change and we can start our journey.

I hope that forum members stories all play out as they should…..

Best wishes on your retirement Jim I still have a few years to run before mine but am sure it will be welcome after all the trials and tribulations over the last couple of years.

We had similar plans to tour Europe at a whim. It hasn't worked out too well so far. But things will get better again.

Aye Neil, it’s a bugger, hopefully we do get to something a bit more manageable and share stories of our experiences.

It's great being retired. You can drive slowly into town, at rush hour, queue outside the chemists at 8.50, go shopping at peak time and ask to pay by cheque, afford expensive clothes that make you look really cool, joke with young men, who think that you are from outer space, flirt with young women, who wish you were in outer space, it goes on and on.
Until death 😎

That had me laughing

One of my favourite quotes is from John Updike in Rabbit at Rest something along the lines of: "When I was a young man the roads seemed to be full of old men driving too slow, but now they're full of young men driving too fast."

Congratulations Jim, hope everything works out and you get to enjoy retirement.



I'm still hoping to stop early, about two years, despite some changes that have reduced what I was expecting.

Best of luck for the future Bob, it’s obviously not the best of times, the last two years have really affected everything.I was lucky in the fact I had a personal pension all through my years in the oil industry, I met a money man when I left the industry when I was working at a window factory in charge of stores. We had a chat and he shifted my pension pot and things became very rosey indeed. My wife has a good pension as a lecturer, we also other savings. My biggest fear is if I pop off before we can enjoy the benefits

Again I wish you well Bob.

In 2020 when all this COVID started a colleague, who was worried, due to previous ill health, was permitted to retire early without penalty. He had been very careful to avoid everyone but at Christmas 2020 he caught the mess from a family elder. Sadly after entering hospital he never left, he passed away in early 2021. He didn't get a year out of his rather significant pension, nor did he get to move up to the Yorkshire Dales, the dream of him and his wife

During the pandemic our company then closed our DB pension scheme, which has lost me just over two years. Fortunately the company offered a lump sum, which you could take as cash (Taxed) or place it in the DC scheme. They also offered three years of improved contributions. for every £1 paid in by me they put in £1:50. All this should easily compensate my pension shortfall, so long as I stay until 60, though I could sell the TT and leave tomorrow if I really wanted to.

When we were young it was a tough decision to invest for retirement. I was fortunate to have a reasonable wage and a job that offered a pension. But it was still quite tough deciding to pay 7% plus extra AVC's taking it to almost 10% to save for the future. For over 30 years I've been planning, and paying to retire at 60. Initially I had to fund a 5 year gap to 65 before any state pension could be added, but that shifted to 67 and so I had to fund another two years.



Hopefully I'll make it to 60

My advice to all the younger folks is to make plans, the sooner you start saving the more options you will have when you get older.

This. It is much easier to be making a pension payment from day one than to suddenly decide you need to start paying - at a higher rate since your payment will be shorter - when you're already up to your ears in kids and mortgages.

I started at 21; the company had a final salary scheme which had been running for a century. I planned to retire at sixty - normal age for the company, though I'd been made redundant at fifty - but curiously covid and working from home meant I continued half a year past that; I would probably have worked longer but the insanity of brexit forced me out of the country: to get residency that had to be before the end of 2020.

I still need to wait until 2026 to get the state pension.

Pensions weren’t something I worried about when I was younger. I joined the RAF as a youth and at that time the pension wasn’t something you made a contribution for. I did take out a freestanding AVC but decided beer was my main priority and stopped putting in after a year. Within a year of completing my 12 years in the forces I then joined the Police. With a 14.5% contribution I couldn’t afford to be in the pension scheme as going through a messy divorce. However things improved and I got into the ‘1987 scheme’ with a couple of months before it changed from retire at 55 to retire at 60 plus. I am lucky in terms of what my pension provides me but it came at a personal cost of occupations that required me to put my opinions to one side to be completely impartial. I think money education needs to start way earlier- including how important it is to save for retirement

Looking back, I wish I had started sooner, as I always wanted the extra money in my pay to help pay towards the coupe and in the couple of jobs I had when I was younger only netted me around £5k in pensions, but where I am now for work, I get 21% pension (I put in 7%, work pays 14%) so the pot is building up quite nicely now and I've got no intention of leaving my work either Still, at 42 I've got a few years to go yet before I can think about retirement

That's quite a good return for a DC scheme and it should build and start compounding quite nicely. I'm sure that our basic company DC scheme is minimum 5% max 7% contribution with the company only matching that. So not great!

Not many of us consider pensions when we're young. I like Pete during my service days found Beers, parties, cars & holidays far more important.

What brought it home to me was my Dad. He had not joined the very generous company pension scheme available to him as he said he could never afford it. But as he approached 65 he couldn't see how he was ever going to manage and was really quite worried about it all. It was then that we realised that we had to ensure we had, if nothing else, options at retirement. For my Dad it didn't eventually matter. He had one of the most curable, at that time, cancers but because he ignored all the warning signs, when he eventually went to the doctors he was given a very bleak forecast. He was told he had just weeks, and that's all he had!

That panic of not knowing how he was going to manage past 65 really terrified him. Back in the early 90's you could not stay of after 65, you were forced out.

Well, I'm f*****d!
Never had a job with a decent pension and never earned enough self employed to put much aside. After a great deal of effort, I managed to discover that the French pension I paid into for 17 years turned out to be worth next to nothing and I'm missing 19 years from my UK contributions, most of which I can't catch up - even if I was earning enough.
I'm 56 and expect to be working until the day I throw a 7, because I certainly won't be able to afford to stop.
So, if anyone wants lessons in how NOT to prepare for your future, I'm your man!

Oh crikey Jim, that's heart-breaking to hear. Hopefully your work is not too physically demanding and remains enjoyable, if so it should be quite possible to continue well into the future. I do truly hope that at some point you begin to see some better options though. Not getting anything from those 17 years is a proper kick in the teeth too. Do you have no redress for that? Surely the French had some rules on pension investment and protection, are you sure they're not just trying to fob you off? Depending on the contributions you, and they paid, 17 years of investing into a private pension fund should have realised a reasonable sum. I thought it was only in the UK where someone, like Maxwell, could embezzle pension funds from his workers and force government to bring about new laws.

For the NEW state pension I understand you need a minimum of 10 qualifying NI years total. They do not need to be consecutive years. However, if you paid into the social insurance whilst working in France, then you should be entitled to a French State pension. It may only be for the years you were there but it should top up your UK pension. It might be worth looking into this, if you haven't already.

I am, sadly, fully aware that there are many among our age group that slipped through with no pension provision and have to continue to work to survive long past retirement age. Hopefully the self enrolment rules for younger generations will make this less likely but I have to say that I'm not totally convinced it will as many low paid jobs seem to have opt-out options

A question which always puzzled me, but given my circumstances never excited me enough to investigate properly, is:

How the hell does anyone survive on even a full state pension which might total seven or eight k a year?

Are means tested benefits provided over and above?

And incidentally, we just discovered that even living in Germany, Anita is apparently eligible for the winter heating allowance...

To obtain a full UK state pension you would need a total of 35 national insurance qualifying years. If you have full years the NEW state pension would be £179:60 PW - £9339 PA.

If you have fewer than 35 years, but more than 10 then a pension will be payable but it will be proportionately lower. Neill, I see in a post above that you are aware you are entitled to some UK state pension, here is a link to the latest guidance, if you haven't seen it.

Pensions & Benefits for UK Nationals living in the EEA

Yes, seen that thanks Bob. Just forgot the exact number... the original question still remains, though. (I've got forty-two or -three years in, most if not all full - there's a bit of vagueness I can't quite recall from when I was a company director.)

Hmmm. Looking at Age UK, if my other half were living on her own at our old place in Hemel (and assuming the mortgage is paid off), she'd be due her pension and about seventy quid a week in extra support... still not a lot to get by on. It wouldn't pay the rent here.

My mother in Scotland gets by on somewhat less, as she has some money in the bank, which she won't spend because then she wouldn't have any money in the bank, even though she'd get more supplements if she had less in... we keep telling her to spend it, but no...

Get paying into your pensions, boys and girls!

Aye! This. I was encouraged at an early age about a pension from my father and place of work. It was very little however back then, it wasn’t until my oil yard days that descent sums of money were saved. It’s just like yesterday my apprentice days, here I am drawing a pension…….

I will have a full basic uk state pension,as I continued paying my contributions @ class 2 when I moved to France 20 years ago. I will also have 22 years of French pension. Which won't be much but will help.

In the uk I had private pensions etc but along with good equity in my home I would have been well provided for in retirement. Unfortunately divorce came along and it all got broke up.
I still came out of it owning a home in France,some pension which I took cash lump sums when allowed and I recieve a couple of cheques every year on my birthday.
They alone have already given more than I ever invested.
I invested in property and land so I didn't spunk money on Italien cars etc!!! They will be sold to bolster old age,hopefully.

Gill will get the same uk state pension as me and also a French pension of about 30 years input.

Not too bad.
My outgoing's are covered by my uk state pension when it kicks in.
I've been lucky to have salvaged something from a messy divorce and the bonus was meeting Gill here.

Pension planning is classically a thing you get interested at a point it is too late to rectify serious shortfalls! I didn't start looking into it until I was over 50 and then it became a very important and interesting topic. I have also had enough of the job I do and yearn to do something I enjoy and that has no stress overheads.


I've been lucky to work for an organisation that had a final salary scheme but not long enough to be comfortable, but it helps and I'm busy topping up with a contributory scheme. One worry/dilemma is whether to remove my money from the final salary scheme. This was always considered a big no, however when the Pension commitments of that company are now 3 times the value of that company it seems prudent to consider!