Pensions

treliac

Pobby wrote: »

Agree with that. So struggling on a state pension you are well screwed if the boiler goes on the blink or something like that. Sell your place and rent. Lets say you realise £150k. Ya stuffed again as you will be the one paying full rent and ct.

Don't save into retirement. Spend it all on holidays, cars, family, whatever turns you on, while you're young enough to enjoy it. You'll only be relieved of your savings if you've still got them in your dotage.

wageslave

Pobby wrote: »

Agree with that. So struggling on a state pension you are well screwed if the boiler goes on the blink or something like that. Sell your place and rent. Lets say you realise £150k. Ya stuffed again as you will be the one paying full rent and ct.

Unless you sell your house for £150k then buy a smaller one for £100k. Tell them you spent the profit on home improvements for your auld age and stuff the cash under the mattress.

If I had no pension I might just do that.

The present system will end up making crooks of us all:rolleyes:

doire_2

I opened a stocks and shares ISA instead of a pension (mainly due to hearing all the stories about people loosing their pension).

Im getting married next May and as we are saving for a house deposit (and hope houses come down a bit) we are putting all our money into our wedding fund and house deposit fund.

I haven't added to my S&S ISA all year. Its just not possible when i have so much to save for. Plus, like other people, i have other bills like car fuel, heating fuel, electricity to pay for etc. All of which keep going up and up.

Graham_Devon

PasturesNew wrote: »

I always thought you were single .... or did you read all the benefits threads and decide to bank yourself some tax credits etc??

It was the milk tokens that did it

kennyboy66_2

treliac wrote: »

Don't save into retirement. Spend it all on holidays, cars, family, whatever turns you on, while you're young enough to enjoy it. You'll only be relieved of your savings if you've still got them in your dotage.

A dangerous idea.

Whatever you think of them, Labour has been relatively generous to pensioners - particulalrly poorer ones. The minimum income guarantee has the peverse effect of providing a disincentive to save. I doubt that it is sustainable in 20 years time.

Old_Slaphead

treliac wrote: »

Don't save into retirement. Spend it all on holidays, cars, family, whatever turns you on, while you're young enough to enjoy it. You'll only be relieved of your savings if you've still got them in your dotage.

Don't you think old people like nice cars, holidays, decent wine, being able to turn the fire up when it's cold, not worrying too much when the boiler breaks down etc etc. If not, you really ought to get out more.

Despite it's relative generosity, I don't think the state provides for all of those.

Harry_Powell

PasturesNew wrote: »

For pensions, I don't have one. This is for many reasons, such as never working for anybody that provided one, starting once then being lad off so not managing to keep it up so they shut it down and then because of that never bothering again in case it happened again (which it would have done).

Now there are these new fangled stakeholder things, which I've thought about, but I have no pension.

Using a calculator, it seems if I pay in (say) £100/month every month, without fail (with or without a job) from now until I retire, then I'd get back £100/month every month until I die. Now, maybe I am missing something but I didn't see that as such a great deal.

I'd qualify for the basic single pension + minimum income guarantee - and, as I've always understood it, for every £1 pension I'd get, I'd lose £1 from the MIG. So, unless I could save enough to pay out more than the MIG I'd effectively be living in poverty and scrimping and saving for the next X years for no end benefit - and as by the standards of others I've never "had a life", right now doesn't seem a good time to live on less bread and dripping than I have scraped by on to date.

Single pension: £95/week
MIG top up: £35/week

So, if I save £150/month every month from now until I retire (if possible), then I wouldn't need the MIG top up as I'd get that much from my own pension.

Now, £150 is a LOT of money - and I'd have to find it EVERY month. It's one big gamble isn't it.

But, getting MIG would open up a whole raft of other goodies than my own pension wouldn't I bet (e.g. stuff that you get cheap rates for if you're on one of XYZ benefits).

So, unless somebody can point out where the flaw is in my thinking, I can't really see that I could gain anything from starting one now.

I guess it depends when you're going to retire, PN, but I read some stuff over on the Pensions board that indicated the MIG will be disbanded eventually. This is will be due to the number of contribution years being reduced down from 44 years to 30 years (meaning a lot more people will get a full state pension), the link between earnings and state pension being reinstated (meaning that state pensions are more realistic). There are also a much higher number of women who have their own state pensions and so don't rely on their husbands NI contributions (they now get added years for home responsibilities - i.e. looking after kids).

The whole MIG aberation, where people who have saved nothing towards retirement are better off than those who have, was created by Labour and over the time-scale of a working life, has only been in place for a short amount of time. I have no doubt it will be addressed by the Tories.

I'd therefore advise against planning your retirement based on a financial aberation brought in by a labour government who seem to have wanted to reward shiftlessness through their entire term of government.

Harry_Powell

doire wrote: »

I opened a stocks and shares ISA instead of a pension (mainly due to hearing all the stories about people loosing their pension).

Im getting married next May and as we are saving for a house deposit (and hope houses come down a bit) we are putting all our money into our wedding fund and house deposit fund.

I haven't added to my S&S ISA all year. Its just not possible when i have so much to save for. Plus, like other people, i have other bills like car fuel, heating fuel, electricity to pay for etc. All of which keep going up and up.

The disadvantages of using ISAs for retirement are that you are missing out on the tax rebate (20% for lower rate tax payers), ISAs are means-tested for benefits (pensions are not) and if you go bankrupt your ISA savings will be taken away to repay the debt, whereas pensions are untouchable.

The other disadvantage is that you can 'dip' into them whenever you like and use the money for non-retirement purposes.

IveSeenTheLight

Pensions - Havent we as a society becomed very disillisioned with them? I certainly have.

I have a frozen final salary scheme from which I paid 13 years into.
I now have a defined contributions pension which I pay 20% of my salary into.

The concern is, what will this secure me and my family as a pension in the future?

I've seen mant a company pension go down the tubes and read reports of people who diligently paid into a pension for years only to find it wasn't worth very much.

So how do people prepare for their retirement?

I guess a lot of people like myself have invested into property.
It may not generate the best returns, but certainly has proven to be a steady investment.
The problem is that this option is not open to all.

So how do other people gaurantee a decent pensionable return?

Cidersid

I'm 34, with 3 kids and have no ongoing pension...2 very small ones as i moved jobs twice in the last 10 years....Saving for a pension is right at the back of the queue as buying a house is right at the front of my mind..

But i thought about buying a dozen small properties and renting them out and in 25 years they would have all paid for himself and I'd be well rich!!!! hang on a minute.........why hasn't anyone else thought of this??/