Should I stop paying AVC into my pension?

[CarGirl]

So it's looking likely I will be 75 before I can retire, dh probably older still as he's 5 years younger than me. We are both civil servants.

We've both been paying AVCs into some sort of pension via the civil service and yes they've just changed the scheme so it will no longer be based on final salary.

As I will be 80 when dh retires is it really worth me paying AVCs because the chances of us getting to retire as such is so unlikely! For that matter is it worth dh continuing to pay them.

Money is tight at the moment

Is your DH paying the Spouse and dependents component of the CS pension? one and a half per cent of his salary.

Don't you still get tax relief on AVCs?
If you die before retirement then your heirs get all of it (minus the tax relief), I believe.
What is your pension projected to be if you continue the AVCs, what if you didn't? Ask an adviser for those answers and thnk about what you could live ok on.
Would the AVCs in your case make that much difference to the tight money situation now, bearing in mind they'd get into your pocket minus ~25% NI and tax?

I have no idea which type of AVCs we are both paying it works out at 3.5% of salary each.

Perhaps the question I am really asking is are we likely to be alive long enough to really benefit from a decent pension. Our mortgage will be paid off by then, we could down size a little by going into one of those retirement apartments.

Obviously we automatically have spouse and dependents on our main non-contributory peniosn.

I thought male civil servants had to pay 1.5% for the widows and dependents part of the pension.

Perhaps that is something for men born before a certain year/starting employment before a certain year?

Only item we have is a premium Ees

A financial advisor who came into advise work colleagues on this very matter said that they were only worth it if you didn't have a good pension already. If you already had maximum contributions then it was better to use the money to save into an isa or pay off mortgage. That was his opinion though, I do not know much on this matter.

Have a look on your pay slips to see if there is a deduction marked WDP and a deduction of 1.5% alongside that deduction from Gross pay.

No def no WDP dedecution just tax, then NI, then the premium which is 3.5% of gross. Dh will easily do his 40 years maximum he started there at 19, and I've still got time to get my 40 years in even though I've had a career break

Perhaps I need to try and find a financial advisor, are they generally free???

Only if they are trying to flog you something!

You might be able to make a free appt. with a pension adviser working within your company or for the pension managers who will give you relatively impartial advice (part of their job description); they have always given us sensible and seemingly impartial advice (I've been told that it's not in my interest to put AVCs in, for instance).