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!!!

The LGPS have calculators on the site to allow you to model different scenarios

NHS pension requires you to contribute for 40 years to get half of your final salary as a pension. If you’ve been contributing for 13 years then that’s approximately 1/3 of contributing years. Therefore whatever your final salary was 1/3 of that (contributing years) halved (half of salary) I know this is not nhs but gives general rule of thumb.

8 years x £15000 divided by 49 = £120,000 divided by 49 = about £2,500 pension a year.

What’s the point of it then? (Sorry, I’m not financially minded, but have two private sector pensions for less time than OP has been at her job and they pay decentish amounts considering I was both low level and employed for less time).

Agree, the main problem is people just dont read the information.

The NHS pension in common with all other public sector pension schemes is now career average not final salary. It accumulates at 1/54 of salary so if you earned £54,000 per year you also earned a pension of £1,000 that will be paid from state retirement age for around 20 years given average life expectancy. This highlights that the value of a public sector pension can easily be worth another 40% on top of salary.

@rainbowunicorn I try them but i can't get any ansas to my questions

@titchy thank you so much.

You are guaranteed to build up 1/49th of your salary every year you are in the pension scheme. The total is what you get every year of retirement

Doesn’t add up. I have a lgps pension of £4k p.a. from five years service with an annual salary of £28k. which I left 20 years ago.

Modern government pensions are based on your average salary over your whole career, not just your final salary. Also, if you started work before April 2016, you may have paid lower National Insurance because you were “contracted out.” This gave you more take-home pay at the time, but means you may receive a lower state pension, as you were paying into a workplace pension instead. Sadly it’s common practice with the government. To receive a full government pension you need to have minimum of 35 years in service. It sucks. I say apply to be a politician - you’ll get it all then. Even a daily expense allowance or £100 for breakfast, lunch and dinner!!!

If it is your annual LGPS statement then that is your annual pension. £750 per month.

Quite obviously, they are. Read the confusion on this thread for a start. Just because you understand them does not mean the majority do..

Fingers crossed it’s per year!

you are right about the type of calculation, but the figure that you get at the end is then per year. so with a 1/50 rate, you you get half your average salary as a final pension if you work for 25 years. The university scheme used to be similar, but is now largely defined contribution. I'm pretty sure the £9000 will be annual pension.

It is a defined benefit pension so they only state your annual benefit (there is no 'pot'...that is a different type of pension altogether).

I changed employers back in 2006 - I have been in LGPS since 1984

BUT for various reasons didnt 'link' my pension so my old one had been growing in line with the RPI and as a result have done rather well out of it as Locval Govt salaries havnt gone up by the same amount

I think it’s about £2450 a year

1/49 of 15 x 8

Read it or understand it? The first work pension I looked at I admit I found it confusing. The second one, which will come into play this year I have found much easier to understand now I’m not a newbie.

If you looked on HMRC, it will have shown you your state pension @RosieBright. £9k/year. To find out the forecast of your workplace pension , you need to look on their specific website.

@christmassytimeagain thank you and what does it go up by each year ?

15000 /49? So about £309 ?

Does that mean they have no tax free lump sums?

Everyone in the UK aged 50 and over is entitled to a free session with MoneyHelper, the government's own financial guidance organisation which provides free, one-to-one information on money and pensions. You are entitled to a PensionsWise appointment where they can help you with your statement and also help you find out what you are entitled to from the state pension. The people there are well-trained and very thorough: Free and impartial help with money, backed by the government | MoneyHelper

Oh I hope so! The joy she will feel will be like winning the lottery!

If they are putting in 23% then how can it only be that low

what's your salary! What percentage are you putting in