Who is able to build up this sort of pension pot?

[NetballMumGrrr]

£1 million and now £1.7 million’ who can put £40k a year into a pension? And now £60k?

such disparities in wealth in this country!

BBC Pension Article

Doctors and consultants do very well. Headteachers. NHS directors.

Massive pension pots

Still time aplenty for you, even now, to retrain for these easy pickings, no?

Indeed I can't see why anyone doesn't just go for the many vacancies for these easy to get and easy to do and easy to stick at jobs throwing easy money at anyone. 8 years ago, you'll be what, an extremely junior doctor by now if you took the fastest route, assuming you're up to having your intellect, skills and character tested continuously? Customer services worker abuse can be bad but nothing compared to what a lot of doctors face from far more of their patients.

Doesn't that amount also include the employer's contribution as well?

God this is sickening.

Wealth begets wealth. Meanwhile those with nothing will have even that taken away.

This is just fundamentally wrong, to be in the position to stash so much cash away into a pension that it's not worth working the full length of service that the rest of us will be forced to.

The focus should be on leveling the playing field, not removing the limits on the fortunate few

My husband is on the verge of the threshold. Over the years we have avoided expensive holidays in favour of UK camping trips (the occasional overnight hotel stay was a rare treat), we've always driven second hand cars and lived in a moderately priced house.

Rather than pissing money up the wall, we have prioritised our pensions and intend to enjoy every single penny when we do retire and probably piss it up the wall

And that’s why the annual allowance is a nonsense for DB schemes.

Get rid of the lifetime allowance for everyone. Keep the annual allowance at £40,000 for people in DC schemes and exempt anyone in DB schemes from the annual allowance charge for their “standard” scheme benefits - but reduce their annual allowance if they’re paying extra over and above this to £4,000 or something.

Allegedly a lot of doctors including GPs were retiring early because of the lifetime allowance thing with their pensions, so the rise is to encourage them to work beyond late 50s.

Plenty of people. If you earn a high salary, and live fairly frugally/make sensible decisions

Why is it sickening? When these people have paid 40% or more tax, paid increasing amounts of NI, etc. Are you saying they should not provide for themselves and rely on the state for their pensions? Who do you think pays into the pot to support those who are not earning as much or at all?

What really, really annoys me is I had to give up work 7 years ago to care for DD. Her autism made working undoable as she was constantly out of school with breakdowns etc, in the end work just couldn’t keep giving me time off. Her adulthood hasn’t been much better tbh, so the chances of me being able to go back to work ever are zero.

But I can only add £2880 a year to my pension. The government top up is £720 - which is nice, but I’d rather be able to add more to my own pension and there just be a set amount the government would contribute. Say I come into some inheritance, or we use some of our savings to top up my pension I can’t do it. Meanwhile DH can kick 60k into his every year if he wanted to. I’m so screwed when I retire.

The budget itself shows the usual Tory priorities. I’ve put £0 in my pension for over a decade since being permanently disabled in an RTA.

But this budget promises to remove the tax free limits on the lucky few who can save more than the average household income every year in their personal pension while at the same time promising to force genuinely disabled people into work by instead of assessing that we cannot work, forcing us to dream up jobs we CAN do so we don’t need our pittance in disability benefits. I mean, some of us literally cannot do any job at all. Would a blank application mean zero benefits? Will an assessor say I can do x job and then I have to apply, get hired and then fail at it to prove the assessor wrong? Or pay £ for a consultant letter to say the assessor is wrong, which the DWP will ignore and then I’m off to tribunal again?

They are promising a complete overhaul of the disability benefits system with the stated objective of make the disabled work. So for us there is a lot of fear and uncertainty but the sinking conviction that whatever they announce tomorrow will be bad news.

I think you can contribute more but you only get the extra tax relief on the first £2880.

In that situation I'd probably use a S&S ISA instead though or a LISA if opening when under 40 as the tax relief is the main benefit of locking money away in a pension, and with those you wouldn't pay tax when withdrawing in retirement.

@boatyroo I asked an accountant and they said no I couldn’t -but maybe they were wrong? I will ask a different one but if anyone knows for sure I would be very grateful.

Annoyingly I’m 51 so I can’t start a LISA but if you’re younger and in my position open one! I have opened one for my daughter and we put money into that. We need to look at her NI contributions as well as they aren’t covered by her PIP allowance.

Wealth begets wealth but it also contributes to society. Would you prefer that these high earners didn't pay tax at the level they do?

I was taxed £76K last year - that's surely going to help those less fortunate is it not?

Totally agree, as said in my post. Not sure why you are questioning me? I think you have the wrong quotation!

Just because some senior consultants earn large salaries doesn’t mean junior doctors who have just studied hard for 5 years and have 90k debts, should not be paid properly.

older public sector workers. I've worked with a few, not on ridiculous salaries but higher rate tax payers.

This is about stopping the allegedly poorly paid doctors retiring early and ensuring they'll take extra shifts.

I've had 3 different doctors in recent years complain about the treatment of their pension contributions - no idea why as it's irrelevant to my career, knowledge base and the body part I've gone to them for help with.

I'm going to possibly sound naive know but someone I know reckons her husband who works at a car factory will get a pension of one million on retirement- how likely is that?

A friend of mine has retired at 52 precisely because he maxed his pension pot.

So I do think it's losing a certain percentage of very experienced people from the workforce.

But I think my friend would have retired at that point anyway tbh.

A lot of them will be senior doctors and consultants, apparently. You know, the ones who were junior doctors once, that’s the ones who are on strike today because they don’t think they get enough money? Them.

there's a lot of intergenerational inequality though. A junior doctor 20 yrs will have found their money went much further. The issue with increasing pay is that is also goes up for those in the higher brackets

Many people will not be able to put in 60k a year, but some people can pay this in for a few years before retirement after the mortgage is paid off and the kids have left home.

people talking about starting early & compound interest are ignoring the fact that the majority of schemes are far less generous.

I'm not questioning you apologies, but it is hard to see as I was quoting both of your posts - the post from you and the previous poster. I actually agree with you and was answering the previous poster. If you expand my quote you will see that I actually included both of your posts.

Not unlikely for sure.