Widow pension refund (I have no potential widow)??

FatherAbraham

trelore wrote: »

I was simply asking whether the RULES were the same, but thanks to those that actually attempted to answer my question rather than bang on about the financial viability and fairness of such schemes.

Gosh, someone else must've stolen your online identity and posted these inflammatory comments about fairness under your name:

It seems unfair that single people should contribute the same as a married person with a potential widow! When I die the pension automatically stops, whereas the pension scheme for a married person who dies first has to continue to paying 50% of the income until the widow dies!

Warmest regards,
FA

anotherdollar

An annuity provider would give a higher income to a single person for a fixed amount of money, since they are only paying out on one life and not two! Hence my comment about fairness!

taktikback

Yes they would -but you don't have to worry about that because the benefits you are being offered far outweigh what you would be getting from an annuity.

The stick you are getting is related to people's perception that you are trying to bring a technical point on fairness into an environment where you are already at an advantage to the vast majority of the population..

System

Perhaps you should quickly marry someone much younger in order to get the maximum benefit.

rpc

trelore wrote: »

An annuity provider would give a higher income to a single person for a fixed amount of money, since they are only paying out on one life and not two! Hence my comment about fairness!

Except the annuity provider only comes into the picture at the end of the game when you actually retire. At that point, you can be assessed on your individual circumstances and that goes a lot further than just whether you are married.

With a DB scheme, you don't have the flexibility at the point of retirement. What you do have is the exact knowledge of what you gain every payday when your pension payment is taken. Someone in a DC scheme can only guess and estimate what they will get when they retire based on their monthly payment.

opinions4u

I will seriously look at whether paying 9.2% of my salary is actually worth it in the future!

You don't know how lucky you are.

rpc

I just ran some numbers on HL's calculator, all in today's money terms. I am not deducting the cost of the death in service benefits that an opt-out might need to pay.

Assuming a 21 year old retiring at 65 (44 years service). Very simplistically, say they earn a flat £30k and want to retire on £20k and make a flat 9.2% contribution.

With a level annuity (no guarantee) and 6% return net of charges they will have 90% of what they need.

With a 4% net return, they will have 45% of what they need (look how valuable the DB guarantee is!).

Back to a 6% return and an annuity rising 3% pa puts them at 64% of what they need.


It's a very simplistic analysis but all in, even for a single person, it looks like the DB scheme wins hands down. I thought it would be a closer result in this scenario.

Andy_L

In classic, at retirement age, you can get a partial refund of the 1.5% widows pension scheme (WPS)contribution if unmarried. Its partial to cover the risk that you might still get married.

IST(vaguely)R that the contributions stopped being specifically for the WPS some time ago and became a generic pension contribution so there may be a cut of date. Although that may have just been for the newer pension schemes

Andy_L

Prothet_of_Doom wrote: »

Get married. I have a sister, she's always wanted to meet a bloke with a decent pension, she's single available, works for a University, so probably if she dies you'd get half her pension as a widowers pension.

I can sort it. Just give me a nod.

Note: I'm going to leave my wife with sod all when I go.

Pictures? filler

DigForVictory

You're not going to get the refund, so you may as well upgrade from the 'potential' widow to an imminent one.