Pension, 43 and part time

[carrottopper]

I work 2 days at the moment. I'm thinking ahead about my pension. I don't really understand it all. I went on my pension website the other day and I have a pension from when I worked full time which is now frozen and my current one which happened to start when I went part time. I really don't want to increase my days but the prospect of just over £600 a month isn't great! I know this is the current value but it won't really increase. I'm hoping someone wise will tell me if it's worth increasing my days to top ip my pension or not. Our other option is to downsize and free some money up but then that's leaving less to our children.

@NotAnFA I thought I could collect my SLT pension at 60 and then the second pension at 67. My aim would be to retire about 62 but I've no idea how that works with it all!!

@Lilac57

Why do you think you're only going to get £600 a month, is that because you've looked up your statement, and that's what you'd get if you retired now (not that that's possible)? The TPS doesn't project an annual payment at retirement like other schemes, so your annual pension can only increase in value with additional years worked. You have potentially more than 20 years left until retirement, if you stay in the scheme, your annual payment WILL increase (and by a lot) because your I've been paying in for longer. Every additional year you work adds to the pensions payment, when you say you don't think it will increase by much, that is incorrect. On the statement that is generated, the annual figure is what would be paid if you stopped paying in and took it at retirement age, it's not what you'd get it you kept paying in at your current rate. Don't leave the TPS.

Thanks. I was just looking at the figures. I thought that was the prediction

[quote carrottopper]@NotAnFA I thought I could collect my SLT pension at 60 and then the second pension at 67. My aim would be to retire about 62 but I've no idea how that works with it all!! [/quote]
Seriously, get the numbers looked at.

I have recently seen a head teacher who had dropped back to the upper pay scale not realise that their £70k salary from 2012-2015 was about to be replaced with a £40k one in the calculation of their final salary pension. If they had taught for another 3 years without having a break then their pension would have been virtually cut in half!!!

Will teachers pension look at the figures for me even though I'm not near retirement?

@carrottopper

Will teachers pension look at the figures for me even though I'm not near retirement?

Generally, no.

They are not interested in discussing anything to do with the future.
To be fair to them their hands are tied because they cannot give 'advice' - that is a heavily regulated area.

The easiest way to check is to look at your benefit statement and if the Method B is the best check whether it is coming from the bottom part of the 10 year table...if it is then there's a good chance your final salary is going down.

Does anyone know how it affects your pension when you take a full year's maternity? So therefore go down to zero pay for the last few months.

Sorry @NotAnFA, I'm confused!
I have an 80th final salary which has annual pension amount of £6k and a career average at 2k. The 80th has a pension age of 60 and the other is 68!

My 80th one was frozen as far as I know in 2015 and I started on the career average scheme. I'm struggling to make sense of it all

@carrottopper

My 80th one was frozen as far as I know in 2015 and I started on the career average scheme. I'm struggling to make sense of it all

You are struggling and need help.

Contact Dave Fountain as he will talk you through what is happening if you share your pension statement with him

@LyndaLaHughes

Does anyone know how it affects your pension when you take a full year's maternity? So therefore go down to zero pay for the last few months.

Whilst you are receiving maternity pay or SMP your pension will be added to as though you were employed before you started your maternity.

Once you stop receiving these your pension will maintain continuity but you are in effect on 0 hours/pay and so it won't increase. Further it won't act as a break in service so the ten-year window used in calculating your final salary pension will continue to move on and you won't qualify for a hypothetical calculation. This continuity of service though is useful if you were to, later, be made redundant.

@NotAnFA @Clarabellawilliamson did you opt out and back in again? How do we do this? I can't believe how the value goes down each month!

Hi @carrottopper not yet, I have a few months wiggle room (till August) I have looked up the form for opting out, and I just want to find the opting back in form before I hand it in..

@Clarabellawilliamson how do you know you have until August? I think mine goes down each month

Contact these people for a review.
They gave us a talk at school and several colleagues had follow-up meetings.
www.wesleyan.co.uk/campaigns/teachers-retirement-planning?gclid=Cj0KCQjwjN-SBhCkARIsACsrBz6hN3Ti0hGkkWlHEqJ9muoqA190M_JrI1BQOP7z56-BV2mIBJCCjoQaAoukEALw_wcB

I am thinking that saving as and when I can is a good idea too. Pension and pension age isn't guaranteed. It's hard to know what the right thing to do is. We have a rental that we hope will give us options to top up a pension too

On the TPS website you can log in and download a PDF version of your benefit statement. That shows you what months and years are included in the 3 year best period. If it starts on 1 September 2012 then you have until the 31 August 2022 to opt out. If you carried on without into September 2022 then the earliest month in your best 3 years, that is September 2012, would then become too old to be included.

Bringing this up again. Can I opt in and out at any point?

@NotAnFA my best average salary period starts on 1/8/2012. Is it too late for me to opt out? So confused!

It is too late to opt out to save even August...as we are now in August even if you put your opt out application in NOW it won't be activated until 1 September and so your current ten year history runs from 1 September 2012 and not 1 August 2012 (the statement normally runs at least a month behind because they have to wait for the schools to send the data)!

Wait until September before opting out and it won't take effect until 1 October.

However, if you ALREADY have a break in your past then it may not be necessary to take another. The statement is only an estimate and it does NOT include calculations based on previous breaks in service...so even those who have had breaks will be seeing falls in their final salary pension on the statement when in fact this may not be what is actually happening.

If you started teaching in 2015 you were auto enrolled into CARE scheme

Older teachers, thanks to the McCloud judgment will have all service up to April 22 counted in final salary scheme

please watch the Dave Fountain videos in YouTube they are really good.

also check your TPS online. There are some good calculators to use and I have used them to do some ‘what if scenarios’.
Your benefit statement will show what you best three years are