Taking pension at 55

mark55man · 9 January 2013 at 9:36AM

Good luck with your plan - I don't disagree if you can afford to live on £9K.

You will pay tax on pension income if you are over the limit £10k or so, and it seems you will be in that zone, but not by much.

I am not sure if you are non resident or not and that will effect your tax and what you can do with ISAs (you should ask), so your investment income may also be taxable but even so not a large %age of it

You may also need to check exactly how much UK pension you get if you have been abroad - you need an expert for that

For me the worst case scenario booklet has 2 cases
* that you die with money unspent
* that you survive but have spent the money (and may be in an unsympathetic foreign country!!)

kevelesopnic · 9 January 2013 at 5:29PM

mangrego wrote: »

Hi Mark

Thanks for your reply I am not ill i took ill health retirement from a stressfull job with stress and i currently live abroad so as long as i am aware i am healthy, I am not sure what my lump sum would be yet and wont know how much i will lose from my pension if i take it, all i know at present at 60 my pension will be about 12K at 55 about 9K. If i stay living abroad i will be able to live on 9K If i take a lump sum i will invest it and wont need to spend it though not sure how much it will go down from the 9K. Then at 66 i will have my state pension, will i pay tax on any of the pensions? as my allowance will be higher than the 8K ish now. My logic is if anything did happen to me in my 60's o 70's i would have at least had 5 yrs pension payments from 55? instead of waiting until i am 60. My reason for thinking like this is my mother retired at 65 and then was told she had incurable cancer and died at 70 so i said i was going to retire early in life at least if the worse happened i would have at least had some retirement. Bleak thinking i know but this is the worse scenario.

regards:eek:

How did you manage to do this?. I'm not taking the P, genuine question.

dasherman · 9 January 2013 at 5:59PM

Mangrego, I work for Royal Mail and it seems to me that you're not reading your yearly illustration properly.
Your benefits at 60 assume you will work for RM until you're 60. Similarly your benefits at 65 assume you will work until 65.
So if you took ill health retirement 3 years ago at aged 48, the figures shown on your statement are null and void.

In addition to that, the career average pension(CSDB) only came into force in 2008, so presumably you only paid into it for about 2 years, so it's highly unlikely that you'll have a built up £4,510 worth of pension in such a short time.

mark55man · 9 January 2013 at 7:49PM

Dasherman - in the LGPS (Local Govt) which I know more about than royal mail - if you get given ill health retirement your pension is normally made up until your normal retirement date so the forecast may be right.

LGPS has 3 tiers - never going to work at anything again, never going to do your precise job again, and the third is something to do with 3 years

If there is any doubt though, Mangrego you need to double check as my (private company) pension statements were done on exactly the basis that dasherman suggests - ie assuming I worked until normal retirement age

mangrego · 10 January 2013 at 10:25AM

dasherman wrote: »

Mangrego, I work for Royal Mail and it seems to me that you're not reading your yearly illustration properly.
Your benefits at 60 assume you will work for RM until you're 60. Similarly your benefits at 65 assume you will work until 65.
So if you took ill health retirement 3 years ago at aged 48, the figures shown on your statement are null and void.

In addition to that, the career average pension(CSDB) only came into force in 2008, so presumably you only paid into it for about 2 years, so it's highly unlikely that you'll have a built up £4,510 worth of pension in such a short time.

Hi Daserman

I am reading my illistraton right i telephoned Pensions the other day and they stated this is the figure my pension is worth at the moment!!

I was a Manager for Royal Mail and was ill health retired on the terms that i was unable to do that job again.

I get a yearly statement as to what my pension is worth as of today and i had an indepth conversation on Tuesday with pensions and the figures are correct i worked for Royal Mail for 21 years.
regards

dasherman · 10 January 2013 at 3:59PM

mangrego wrote: »

Hi Daserman

I am reading my illistraton right i telephoned Pensions the other day and they stated this is the figure my pension is worth at the moment!!

I was a Manager for Royal Mail and was ill health retired on the terms that i was unable to do that job again.

I get a yearly statement as to what my pension is worth as of today and i had an indepth conversation on Tuesday with pensions and the figures are correct i worked for Royal Mail for 21 years.
regards

Ok.:T Fair enough.

Taking pension at 55

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