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!!!

It's very difficult to know without knowing anything about OPs salary.

That can’t be right. I have one (not gov) for less time than that and it’s around £700 a month. It sounds like a yearly amount.

Thats not how it works with DB. The OP has already confirmed the schemes she was in.

OP, sorry but I'm going to ask it: did you really NEVER check your pension in nearly a decade and a half?

That seems low. I haven’t touched / added to one of my pensions in over 10 years and it has increased by £26k just by sitting there, but I think I have a % of it in some sort of shares.

Public sector pensions are not invested in funds. They’re not like private pensions.

And still hasn’t thought it necessary to post whether she was full or part time or her salary. Despite people asking…

I hope OP wasn't in a finance position

AND CAN PEOPLE STOP POSTING ABOUT THE TOTAL AMOUNTS - THEYRE ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT IN A DB SCHEME AND JUST CONFUSE PEOPLE.

£9k a year would be much more likely for LGPS.

@RosieBright The way NUVOS and Alpha pensions work mean you are given a £ figure for your annual pension at 65 for NUVOS and state pension age for Alpha. As pp have said it’s more likely to be £9k a year.

My advice is:

• get your annual benefit statement and really carefully read it.
• Over a period of time look at the guides on the Civil Service pension website that explain each type of pension.
• I know there are issues with the pension portal but there should be calculators you can use to forecast your pension if you take it early.
• Do a state pension forecast https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension to check you qualify for a full state pension. If not check if you have missing years when you were getting child

Depends if the OP is still working and could move back into a CS role. Alpha pension age aligns with your state pension age so, for OP, this will be 67. Loss of approximately 5% per year for every year taken before 67 so 6x5% loss of max pension payout for the OP if claiming it now. But, if don't claim now, it continues to build. They are in work, from the sound of previous posts, so do they need to claim this pension yet? And, is it possible to move back into the CS and continue to build some Alpha pension? Still too much we don't know.

That is completely irrelevant to the OP though she's in a DB civil service/local government scheme. There is no pot to grow.

I’m retired now but worked in local government and know a little about the pension.
Someone on £25k would have an annual pension of about £8k after 13 years. What were you earning op, if it was slightly more than that then £9k a year sounds about right.
You don’t have a pot of money with the LG pension the statements show you annual pension.

if You are on the LGPS defined benefit scheme it will be £9000. Each year 1/49 of your salary becomes your pension. So say you’re earning 49k each year 1k is your annual pension so over 9 years it’s £9k per annum. You don’t have a pot in the way you would with a normal pension

@Kpo58 how does one check .I can't make any sense of mine.

I want to know if I stoped working where I am now ,what pension would I eventually get ?

And if I worked another 5 years on the local gov pension scheme what would I get ?

I just can't find this info.

I earn about 16 grand a year.

@christmassytimeagain what would mine be please I can't understand the figure
8 years 15 grand

Key words here are ‘annual statement’. So you’ve been aware that it wasn’t growing…however, you are where you are now.

Best advice I can give is look at your finances overall, not just your pension.

If you have any debt (bar mortgage) - get a plan to get that paid off asap.

Then build up an emergency fund (generally 3-6 months worth of you bare bones expenses).

Then focus on savings and pensions.

Do you have just one pension or do you have anything from previous jobs - you need to track them all down and look at how they are all performing.

Highly recommend you take a look at Rebel Finance School…it’s free on FB and YT. Long (each week of the 10wk course is about 2hrs, but it’s a great investment of your time.

Would mine be about 302 per month ?

It's not a total though, it is what is paid every year of retirement. Your post saying that it is the total is misleading and confusing.

I suspect you are mis-reading your statement. You do not have a "pot" of money in a DB scheme (civil service or local government). Ask yiur employer if there are any pension courses provided and telephone somebody in pensions for a explaination of benefits accrued.

Tell me you haven’t read the thread without telling me….

We really need to simplify pensions. So many people get so confused about the different schemes, how they work and which ones apply to them.....

They're not that complicated.

The alpha pension is the civil service pension. It is an unfunded final salary scheme. Other posters have explained how the OP may have £9k a year so I won't repeat that here.

The Local Government scheme is a funded scheme. There are investments backing up the pensions. But having mentioned Alpha I'm assuming the OP was with the civil service. I'm also guessing she's completely wrong about what she's built up because if she's been a member of the scheme for 13 years and only earned £30 a month then her salary throughout has been £2200 a year.

The civil service scheme is generally a 1/80th accrual. So after 13 years OP will have earned a pension income of 16.25% of her final salary.