'Flexible retirement' in local government: anyone doing this or planning to?

[Wauden]

I have only recently heard about taking "flexible retirement" where you have access to your LGPS pension but are working PT. I think that you can take all or some of your LGPS pension.

Is anyone doing this or looking into this? It looks tempting although I would lose some LGPS pension.
I have three years to go until state pension age and no spouse to share bills with.
I work full time.
Thanks.

I know quite a few people who have done this.

Firstly, you should contact pensions to do the number crunching and work out the different scenarios. My Mum took flexible retirement because her figures showed that there wasn't much difference between the flexible and continuing to work.

My Local Authority has a policy where your part time hours and pension can't exceed your full time salary, so you'll need to bear this in mind, when considering your options.

@purpledagger Thanks for responding and please can you elaborate on what this means: "her figures showed that there wasn't much difference between the flexible and continuing to work."
Unfortunately I find this sort of thing not easy to understand at first but I will get there!

Sorry, I wasn't clear, what I meant was that for my Mum, working a few extra years full time didn't make much difference to her overall pension, when compared with taking flexible retirement plus working.

I know a lot of people who did it in the Civil Service, mainly people who had their maximum number of years service for their pension & then went part time. Don't forget once you get your pension you don't need to pay any more contributions.

While you don't need to pay more contributions, you can opt to start a new pension pot.

You would lose three years of pensionable pay but you'd be receiving a pension and a part time salary. Another alternative is to go part time but continue to pay into your pension but check how much this will impact on your final pension. I agree with someone above about contacting the scheme who will go through the figures with you. They were very helpful to me.

You can continue to pay contributions into a new pension record which will mean you retain death in service benefits and also have another small amount to claim when you full retire

@purpledagger @Polkadotties @Oblahdeeoblahdoe @skilpadde @Nat6999 I have also been paying AVCs (additional voluntary contributions) run by the Prudential and the council and in it, I have spread the money into different pots including shares and bonds. Unfortunately, the current world financial downturn has probably depleted that. Thinking in more depth, I guess that if I took my pension out before age 66, then I will not have time to recoup any losses. Bad.

Ah that's a shame but do talk to Prudential as well. You might have a pleasant surprise.
Hope you manage to find a good conclusion and enjoy your eventual retirement.

We are noticing AVCs with Pru starting to increase again

I did it OP and it was brilliant for me, but I had 27 years protection of the old LG pension so only had reductions on the latter years and even these were tapered. Unfortunately, I think these would probably not apply to you now.

As I had had my post downgraded a few years previously my old pension rate was protected for 13 years. This, plus my half-time salary, meant I was working 2.5 days and I was taking home more money than when I was working for 5 days!

Because I was only there half a week, a lot of urgent work was dealt with in my absence so it was so less stressful and it was a great easing into full time retirement, and opportunity to join mid week clubs etc.

I'd highly recommend exploring the options. I was probably lucky; although I had missed out on retiring at 60 and had to work an extra 6 years I did get some protection but this was very short lived. If you can afford it it's a great way to avoid the "cliff edge' of sudden retirement.

In my last couple of years I put all the salary I could into AVCs, paid hardly tax and lived on other savings It's tax free on the way in and on the way out, but this was in boom years, trickier now of course.

Good luck.