To be furious that as of 2015 I will be forced into a significantly worse pension scheme (NHS)

[Theboulderhascaughtupwithme]

Ok so not sure how I missed this but it came to me attention yesterday that as of 2015 I will be forced out of the final salary linked pension scheme into a career average one. A version of the new scheme came into effect about five years ago but no one was forced over.

I work part time as a nurse so I am not a high earner by any means, and in common with a huge proportion of my female nursing colleagues I have been relying on the fact that I could redress some of the hit my pension has taken by having to drop down to part time due to having young kids, later in my career at which point I will be going back full time. Now there will be no effing way to make up the balance.

I am feeling so pissed off about this, how the fuck can any one plan for retirement when the goalposts keep on changing every few years. I already pay more into my pension than most other people I know on 'normal'salaries and now I will have to try my best to start another pension or I will still be poor in retirement.

And before anyone starts going on about how fantastic public sector workers have it pension wise, that has never Been the case for nurses ( our pensions are no where near comparable to teaching or civil service for example) and on top of that the nursing pension pot have never been in deficit, in fact currently runs at a excess,with nurses living on average less long after retirement anyway than other professions.

Unfortunately that's life and the NHS. I wanted to continue paying ft contributions when I dropped to pt as I'm the only one with a pension. Would they let me do it, would they hell. So now we are left with a tiny pension as a family

I don't think the new scheme will be much different. Under both schemes your contributions are based on both salary and hours. So in the final calculation if you worked 0,5 wte you are credited as the equivalent of 0.5 of a year. Final salary only really works our better if you have significant promotions at the end of your career so nor dependent on going full time. I worked out that it was actually a bit fairer for low paid and part time staff.

It's short sighted of the government to erode public sector pensions I feel. Decent pension schemes mean that people save for their retirement and are less likely to be dependent on the state. Also they would be up shit creek if too many people choose to opt out of it as they are using current workers contributions to fund current pensions pay outs.

So sorry to hear this op. But not surprised...
At times like this I pat myself on the back a million times over for opting out.
I knew they would f**k us over in the end. We are nothing but expendable drones now, and will be worth even less in retirement. Bastards!
*bitter

ILovePud
Get real. We are all living longer and its not fair to ask the private sector to pay for state workers' pensions that is so far above their own. The old pension system is no longer substainable.

I do feel some sympathy for the OP as nursing is such a heavy physical job. There is no way someone can work to 68 as a nurse. I have an local authoirty pension so in a similar position to the OP. However I have two local authority pensions. One on the old system and one on the new system. Surely the OP does not have transfer her old pension over into the new scheme

Governments don't think long term really - they'll likely be out of power by the time it happens, probably dead themselves and if not, rich enough for it not to affect them, why would they care?

Similar happened with my public sector pension this year OP. Luckily I can shift to private sector for work and earn more meaning I can save more money in a private pension. The perks of working in public sector (not that there were many anyway) don't really exist for me anymore.

I can't imagine having the security of a career-average pension.

I'll take yours if you like. You can have my 401K which will be worth who-knows-fucking-what the day I retire.

they did this to those of us in local government too. I am in same position as you. We will be taking my dhs pension pots out when he's old enough and spending them instead.

I work in the NHS, I'm 48 yo
There is no way on Gods Green Earth that I will physically be able to do the same job at 68 yo

At the moment, some days my back needs the next 24-48 hours to recover. Only to be aggrevated again

They've done this to us in the military too - as well as the many other shitty changes we've been subjected to over my 19 years.

We have no right to protest or strike though, and if I leave before my 22 yr point I lose out on lots.

All public sector have been shafted.

Really tired- yes unfortunately we will all be forever onto the new scheme, only people with 10 years or less to go will be protected. Had I known this when I started paying in I may well have opted out and paid into a self managed scheme like SIPPS instead as I would then gave been able to make payments flexibly which would have been hugely helpful at various times. It is perfectly conceivable that I would have ended up with a much better pension at the end going on how friends pension pots are performing.

Also as said previously, I don't consider that I or my colleagues are being subsidised in any way by 'private sector' workers as the nursing bit of the NHS pension fund pays for itself and more when u actually examine the figures, so where is the excess going then???? And why do our benefits need to be eroded? So unfair.

There isn't an NHS pension pot exactly, as it has always been considered as deferred salary, rather than a conventional pension. Payments in continue to significantly exceed payments out, especially since the previous recent imposed changes. But that money isn't going into a pension pot. It's going into the Treasury. Who aren't using it to provide for any of our futures... And it's a very False economy. Because the NHS survives on goodwill, and that's pretty much run out. So people will start actually recording all that traditionally unpaid overtime, and all those breaks they couldn't take, and all the work they did on days off, and start demanding payment...

In my department, we've been diarying: it averages to an extra day per week they've been getting out of us for free. Well screw that.

Same in teaching too. I.think the whole idea of making us work until we're 68 means that with a bit of luck we die on the job and they don't have to pay our pensions.
And to those who think public sector workers get a gold plated pension: I pay 10% of my salary into my pension, and even then it's not great.

It is really interesting to see what public sector workers think of their pensions! I advise local authorities, and from their point of view public sector pensions have been getting more and more unaffordable for years, as people have been living longer.

Government have put off doing anything until they really have to due to the power of the Unions, and even now they have made the changes, many will be getting a better pension at the end of it, and public sector pensions are one of the best you can get. Career average is generally better than final salary for lower paid and part time workers.

And yet somehow the message that is out there (from Unions?) is that public sector workers are massively screwed over and that any other type of pension than final salary is not worth having. A kind of lose lose situation where govt has not got the reduction in costs that they hoped for, but public sector workers think that they have and more.

What would you like to happen instead?

Public sector pensions have been unaffordable and unfair for a long time.

The government doesn't see its employees as anything other than scum.

I'm not sure what their aim is exactly.

If they want underpaid, demotivated staff then they're doing a good job. Look at the teaching profession.

Pensions have been changed many times since labour were in power. They're not as good as they were 15 years ago. So the Tories can act as if they were the sensible ones making cuts but actually Gordon brown started it.

If they want to cut pensions they should set up a proper pension fund I.e. invest in assets or pay higher salaries so people can buy their own retirement pot. If they make the pension so low it becomes useless then these people will look to the state for help.
They will be pensioners who will vote, as they do now.

There's still pensions for MPs and executives. Why not everyone else?

Most public sector schemes are moving to career average tens.

I remember being involved in a consultation in about 2005 about changes, and was told that career average was better for workers who took breaks or worked part time for a while. I tred it on a tool that make projections between current and proposed versions, and found that despite those assurances I was worse off under all the scenarios I could come up with.

I never trusted Labour after that. And the Tories are just carrying on with the same plans.

I'd be a bit wary of stating bluntly that NHS pensions are running at a surplus. Both NHS and OBR have stated they expect a deficit to be confirmed from 2013 onwards.

And public sector pensions deficit overall is over £16b.

And the demographics are going to get worse.

There isn't going to be a way to magic up more government income, and more than there's going to be a way to eliminate spending with no consequences.

Yes, all governments are going to need to make cuts and raise more. And I'd rather see one that had the guts to say 'we need to make cuts' than one which tried to say 'this flexible new career average is better for women as they take more career breaks'. I don't know how widely the Labour administration used that smoke and mirrors tactic; perhaps it was only in the consultations. But I still saw it as untrustworthy on this.

This is interesting because i thought we had all already moved over to the career average thing a few years ago . Really need to check and see where all my money is going each month .

A good friend got quite nasty about my 'public sector pension' once , she was under the impression that it was non contributory , i did explain how much of my wage was paid out every month and actually got a pay slip to prove it . This friend actually earns more than i do , and i asked her how much she paid out of her wage each month towards her pension and she said nothing

There is a way to magic up Govt income: tax. Stop giving tax cuts to the rich (who can afford it), get the likes of Starbucks and Vodafone to cough up, go after the tax dodgers. Oh, and scrap Trident. Which has nothing to do with tax, I know.

Defined benefit company pensions is my job so I have absolute 100% understanding about the public sector pension changes and the context in which they're being made, ie pensions industry as a whole. DH is a teacher and must be the only one out there who isn't enraged by them.

I don't know the finer details of the NHS Pensions Scheme, but have you checked if the pension from your final salary service will still be based on your final salary at retirement? If so, you'll still be able to stick to your plan for that part. It's just the future service from 2015 that will be career average.

This is how it is for the Teachers Pension Scheme, but much of what they got was negotiated by the unions and from the strikes. Including an increase from 1/60 to 1/57 on the CARE (career average) service.

CARE is a much much fairer and equal way of calculating a defined benefit pension. If someone like OP has paid in on a part time salary and takes a pension based on a full time (or significantly higher) salary, where's the extra funding coming from to pay the pension? It's got to come from somewhere else if you didn't put enough into 'the pot'! In the case of funded public sector pensions that does come from the treasury.

But if the £2billion surplus had been kept in the pot during good years then there would have beem money available to try riding out the bad years.

I used to work in the private sector with a great final salary scheme. The scheme was in profit and the stupid company decided not to pay their contributions for a few years. Then suddenly it was in trouble and the scheme was closed.

Exactly frumpet. A self employed pal of mine goes on and on to me about my teacher's pension and how he doesn't have a pension at all and how unfair it is. He earns about 4 times as much as me, pays as little tax as he can possibly get away with but chooses not to pay into a pension. And this is all my fault for having paid into a pension scheme from when I started teaching over 20 years ago.