USS do you pay in extra?

[flyingonacloud]

Hi. I am only a few years off retirement and have only 4 years in USS (with another small pension from previous employment).

I need to pay more into my pension but don't really know much about USS apart from alll the valuations stuff. It seems like it possibly isn't the best place to put my money though.

I'm looking for a financial advisor but in the meantime I was just wondering if you have done this or set up something elsewhere?

Thank you.

I pay extra in to USS, as I figured it's a safer option than a privately managed pension. I won't get the full State pension as I worked overseas in a country with no State pension entitlement unless you live there & it's mean tested) so I need to make up a shortfall of about 15 years. I'm doing this by paying extra AVCs and the maximum allowed in salary deductions and also working beyond 67.

Don't know if this is financially advisable but I wanted the security of a large pension fund (although the last couple of years might undercut that!)

Thank you for your reply. I think i need to do some reading. Is the max salary deduction your normal pension contribution or something else as well as AVC?

It seems like an easier option to have it sll in one place, no extra admin fees etc so Im inclined to do the same unless I'm told otherwise

There was a time when we could voluntarily contribute more than the standard, as a salary sacrifice thing. My USS contributions are over double my NI contribution!

I do. No fees makes quite a difference. But I don't use the 'do it for me' option as it moves you into 'safe' (bonds) investments from ten years pre retirement. You do need to look into the investment options and performance but that's quite easy. There's a lot of threads on it on moneysavingexpert forum if you search 'uss'.

I do not trust USS after all the pensions fiasco so I just opened a SIPP myself and pay what I can into that. I have to manage it myself but as I did not want USS to have any more of my pension funds than they already do.

I pay in added years, I'm not sure if you can still start added years now, but I am in exactly the same situation as @FarEast except I did also work in the US and didn't realise I could transfer over the Social Security payments I had to make there. And now it's too late.
I pay in as much as I can - I plan to live for many years after retirement base both on the fact I'm female and on longevity in my family.

There are a couple of things you can do to boost your pensions pot. One is to 'take the match'. This is an extra 1% which you pay in if you earn over a certain amount which is then matched by the employer. So that's an extra 2% of salary. You can also make a lump sum deposit into your pension account.

There should be someone in HR at your institution who has responsibility for pension matters. Contact them and they should be able to set out all the options for you. USS is an excellent pension because of the very high rate of employer contributions, far above what you will get in the private sector (and obviously, having a SIPP). There's a fair bit of flexibility in terms of the packages of investments you can choose - cash funds to equities, aggressive to conservative growth strategies, and ethical (ie regular) or not bundles of companies.

I do, because my institution has USS set up as a salary sacrifice scheme, so I save NI contributions as well as tax by making AVCs rather than paying into a private pension. If you're a higher-rate taxpayer you'd also have to do a tax return to get the higher-rate tax back if you pay into a private pension, whereas if you pay directly into USS you'll save it automatically. There's a calculator on MyUSS which will show you the 'real' cost to you in your pay packet of different levels of AVCs.

The match doesn't exist anymore. It's still an option when you log in but the additional 1% is no longer matched by the employer. This changed a few years ago.

Oops. That's embarrassing.

Just a heads up - not all institutions offer AVCs as salary sacrifice. Mine doesn't, so it's worth checking.

Mine doesn't either. I might have decided to do that instead of open a SIPP if it did. Its well worth higher rate tax payers paying in more, especially if you have children (and can afford to of course). I pay into the SIPP to take my net salary below the higher rate threshold, getting the tax back and retaining child benefit (because my net salary is below the threshold). I do have to fill in a tax return form for that but because my tax affairs are otherwise simple it does not take that long (I just have to enter the amount paid into the SIPP and the amount I received in child benefit each year).

Mine neither but I still do the uss extra contrib because I prefer someone else managing my at least part of my funds