Can I compare a CARE pension with a standard pension?

Right. So assuming your final salary back then is £53,000, you got index-linked pension of £6,183 already. Not bad for seven years work! If your CARE pension accrual rate is the same, then you already got £2,650 due to three years service. If your salary is £53,000 and went on like this for twenty five years (assuming CARE haven't closed due to ruinous cost on the employer) , then your CARE will be boosted by 1/60th of the salary (of that year) every year For the sake of simplicity, assuming your salary remains unchanged and kept up with inflation, Your 7/60 of the final salary back then = £6,183 and 28 years of 60th accural rate equals £24,733 per year so combined, about £30,916 a year.

However, if you leave your DB pension schemes and went for the new job, you will keep your index-linked pension of £8,833 which is already better than your state pension. So in order to do something similar in a private pension (In order to produce £22,083 per year you will be missing out in your current job) (and assuming you are 25 years away from SPA), you would need to contribute £3,350 per month or 67% of 60k salary.

Yes, I am saying that the HL pension calculator is suggesting a million pound pot to generate £22,000 index-linked pension (up to 5%) with 50% spouse at age of 68! So... never underestimate the value of the DB pension scheme, especially on a high salary!

I seriously need to get a job with that kind of retirement remuneration somehow! My altruism is taking a bit of a battering here.

You need to remember though that they will not change the CARE scheme tomorrow, it is going to be about 5 years down the line at least.

Yorkshireman1977 wrote: »

Thank you so much, you're really quite good at this!

It's certainly made me realise just how good my pension is in my current job, however I think what I've failed to see, is that like they did with our Final Salary scheme, they could so easily close the current CARE scheme. If you then factor in the current economic climate and uncertainty, and I start to feel that there's no point basing a job decision based on what might happen 28 years from now.

True however, the fact they changed it over to CARE rather than closing it outright does suggest that they want to keep it for a while. As badmemory pointed out, if they do close it eventually, it would likely to be few years down the line. At that point, you can always change job since your remuneration took a real hit in term of retirement provision.