My pension is worth NOTHING

[RosieBright]

I had a job for 13 years in Government and kept thinking it was a great pension as folk kept telling me. I looked at my pension paperwork when the annual statement came through and I have £9000.
I thought that was A YEAR!!! But no, it's worth about £30 a month 😱
How can I boost this? I need anoth £100K to even have half a decent pension

Help!!!

Does it say anything like 'invested in X fund' or name a company it is with?

Pretty sure that's per year, OP. Is it your Annual Benefit Statement? Is it the Alpha Pension Scheme?

No

I'm sure that can't be right but as Capita have just taken over the scheme which is in TOTAL disarray, it may take a while to get someone to help you.....

Yes, the alpha scheme from 2015, nuevos before that from 2008

Yeah are you 100% sure it isn't per year? I very worked in a few local govt/civil service jobs and that's similar to what I would think a 13 year pot in an average type job would be?

Were you working part time and/or have your investments performed poorly? Is it invested at all?

You still have time to build a better pot before retirement if you are working now and can afford to put in a decent chunk of your salary. There are target retirement age funds which might be worth looking into.

I would be happy if it was

Hoping that is your annual amount then and you've just misread it.

As for increasing it you'll need to be earning as well as possible, maximising your company pension contributions and saving separately. The state pension will also help you.

That's why I asked what sort of job it was, and what age they started as often in the past you didn't get a pension until you were 23 in some jobs (but could have started work at 16).

However, they have confirmed it is the Alpha scheme, which as I understand it is a DB scheme, so I think far more likely is they have mis-read the statement.

You first need to find out what type of scheme you are in. Are you up to date with your NI contributions as that will give you a boost and it will be the easiest way to top up a pension .

They are defined benefit, it is likely to be £9k a year.

Ok I will scan when I get home and post it here

The way that some public sector pensions work is you get a fraction of your salary paid in per year. True there is no pot, but that amount defines what you get. So depends what the fraction is - sometimes it’s 1/49 of salary. In the NHS post 2015 scheme it’s 1/54. So public sector pensions are not the great riches they are cracked up to be.

so if the scheme’s rate is 1/50, you get this amount x your salary x each year worked.
Assuming a salary of say £30000 that never changes (unlikely) that would be £7800 in total. So a total of 9k is perfectly possible, no reason to think it’s a mistake.

You said you paid 23% but 23% of what? Were you full time or part time? How many years full time? How many years part time? It’s difficult for anyone to advise when we don’t know how many hours you’ve worked for that full 13 years and how much you’ve been earning.

13 years working 12 hours per week is obviously going to mean your pension is much lower than if you’d been working 37 hours per week for 13 years.

I think you have misunderstood and it is more likely to be £9k per year.

Alpha is a defined benefit scheme, so it will be per year. That also sounds about right (if you were working 13 years and earning about £30k pa on average).

What makes you think it's not per year?

You're not answering a lot of questions.
What were your weekly hours?
What was your salary (roughly) during your 13 years?

Do you mean the civil service pension website? Not sure what HMRC could tell you.

OP you may as well wait til you get home and try not to worry.

Saw you’re in Alpha. You’ll likely be on £9k year. The 23% isn’t a real contribution either, you accrue at 2.32% of annual salary I believe. £9k per year is more likely.

Those are both defined benefit. The £9000 is very likely to be a year unless you were only working a few hours.

OP has said she's in Alpha.

£9k a year is not bad and if you are returning there now may be able to increase this. Does that assume anything about a lump sum that if you don't take you would get a higher amount? Do you have any other pension pots from other periods of employment? £9k on top of £12k state isn't loads, but it's guaranteed and indexed.

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