to call people out on their public sector pensions when they complain about changes and insist they are self funding as is

[sPJPPp]

Got into a bit of a discussion with someone I don't know that well, anyway she was complaining about her pension changes and kept insisting it was self funding (civil service). I just started a nodathon, but I wanted to tell her it sounds a lot better than my private pension and hers even with paying a bit more money for a few more years is probably still massively unfunded.

Aibu to actually tell her what I think next time?

Theoretician maybe people do realise they are value. Maybe those people factored their pension into their financial planning and now they are being left with less money (as increased contributions while earning and reduced income once retired) they are justifiably upset. Maybe they joined the public sector in part because of the valuable pension. You could have been a policeman and retired at 50.

Public sector workers are taxpayers too. Just saying.

On a related note, with the lifetime allowance (maximum size of pension savings pot) being cut again last week, there is now a huge discrepancy between how big defined benefit pensions are allowed to be, and defined contributions ones. The way the rules work is that someone in a defined benefit scheme can get a 50K pension whereas someone in a defined contribution scheme will be limited to 25K. (Obviously only affects people who manage to accrue £1 million pension pots.)

www.moneyobserver.com/news/18-03-2015/budget-2015-pension-lifetime-allowance-to-be-slashed-to-1m

It does indeed suck Efferlunt hence why we now throw every spare penny into Buy To Let.

boomer generation pulling up the ladder BINGO!

Lonely Whilst you seem to be pushing for a scrap, I'm not getting into an argument with you about the precision of wording I might have used in a brief MN post. The vast majority of public sector schemes also have a very large employer contribution. I know this since I spend a large chunk of my working time calculating pension entitlements.

Anyway, off now to a meeting (about a public sector pension issue as it happens!)

Lonely: by definition the people I was talking about don't understand the value of their pensions. I've no doubt there are others who do.

With regard to people being switched to career-average schemes, I do think they have some right to moan, but not as much as some are making out. My understanding is that if you were leave such a job the day before the new scheme comes in, your pension would be no worse than if entirely determined by the old terms. So people have lost nothing that they earned in the years they've actually worked, so far. I think what they have lost (if anything) is the prospect of future pay increases, assuming we include pension accruals in a broad definition of pay. I think it is understandable to complain about that. The reason they don't get sympathy is (to use a great MN analogy) that someone complaining about a stubbed toe can't expect to get much sympathy from someone with a missing leg. Far worse things than a reduction in prospective earnings happen to workers every day of the week, for example they get made redundant.

Who's scrapping?

Theoritician - the changes to the civil service scheme (career average, higher contributions, lower lump sum, later retirement age etc) are being phased in so that those close to retirement age aren't affected; some get a choice which scheme to be in at retirement; then everyone else has their current position frozen and then start building up entitlement in the new scheme from next month.

Of course there have been some good changes along the way too (eg extending the spouse benefits to people in civil partnerships, extending the age when disabled children can receive benefits) but basically the scheme I signed up for doesn't exist anymore