Maximising moribund pension fund

kidmugsy

jamesd wrote: »

The baby boomers ... living with a much higher risk of nuclear war.

I stopped worrying about nuclear war once the drug-addled Kennedy's reckless behaviour (invading Cuba, for heaven's sake!) was over. Clearly the Soviet tyrants were evil, but rational.

kidmugsy

agarnett wrote: »

Did those things really bother us baby-boomers? As a graduate recruit straight from university and buying my first home with a 100% mortgage inside 18 months of starting work

Not everyone had it that easy. I had to work a second job to afford a mortgage, seven years after graduating. Maybe the Treasury should open a special fund so that former spoiled brats like you can pay in some conscience money.

agarnett

Not everyone had it that easy. I had to work a second job to afford a mortgage, seven years after graduating. Maybe the Treasury should open a special fund so that former spoiled brats like you can pay in some conscience money.

I sympathise. I do remember the worst of the mortgage rate rises. With two incomes and amazingly no kids until later, we were insulated. I realise I was lucky to survive that bit. I am also lucky that my parents are still alive, but little thanks to the current NHS unfortunately, and I am dreading the next ten years.

We so easily get each other wrong, kid. My Dad had a stick and a belt. I remember them! I also remember digging the allotment for vegetables. No supermarket vegetables for us, kid. I remember sticking the blasted digging fork through my wellies when I was 7 or 8 - I still have the scar in my left foot!

My father spent his entire working career as a labourer. His father died when he was 4 part as a result of gassing in WW1 and part from the flu epidemic which also killed his grandfather (my great-grandfather) and my mother's mother. Until he was called up in WW2 my father supported his Mum and his siblings by shooting rabbits for the pot, and growing vegetables in the garden.

He returned and ten years later married the new girl next door. They were given a new 2 up 2 down council house. They still live in it. I just had a brain which was spotted at Junior Mixed Infants and was lucky enough to be able to use what was then a great state education system for brains that were spotted! I also got a cub scout badge when I was still young that said I knew how to operate a telephone!

I did A levels and went to university, whilst my parents had sleepless nights over their first and only mortgage of £3,000, and wondered how they could afford to install a telephone line for the first time ever in order to stay in touch with me, I survived on salad sandwiches on my local authority grant and money saved from a holiday job.

I see now that I missed out on a year's pension qualifying NI contributions for want of paying a really small amount of shortfall in 1976-77. I'd paid £37 in NI over my summer holiday job but that wasn't enough. The next year I paid £44, and that one did qualify as one year towards my pension!

I hit the ground running straight out of university and didn't stop for breath for ten years, but then I finally asked myself what it was all about. I am still asking.

Spoiled ? Not the first 21 years I think, unless you define receiving a proper birthright type state education as being spoiled.

oldguy9519

I think it depends on exactly when you reached adulthood and where (and also, to a certain extent, when/if you moved around during that time). Some of us missed out on cheap housing, got a mortgage in the wrong place at the wrong time (e.g. South East England just as Norman Lamont cocked things up over Black Friday) and saw interest rates rocket to 15% and ended up with negative equity. Others who'd bought in to property around the same time in other places may not have been affected so badly.

atush

oldguy9519 wrote: »

Thanks for the considered opinion, but I thought that's what I was paying an IFA for all those years ... strikes me that IFA is a misnomer, as the I bit doesn't always appear to be correct.

FYI I've not had any reason to poke around inside the investment vehicles, I suspect most normal people don't either. Not an excuse I know.

But was he an IFA- or just an FA?

greenglide

I think it depends on exactly when you reached adulthood and where

And whether we have reached adulthood or whether we ever will!

oldguy9519

atush wrote: »

But was he an IFA- or just an FA?

Good point, will have to check.

atush

I just LOVE this ignoring thing (not you OP lol). I've just done it for the first time and it is wonderful.

he who shall not be named not longer makes my eyes glaze over and roll back in my head

agarnett

oldguy9519 wrote: »

Good point, will have to check.

Actually, I wouldn't bother - the sad fact is that the 'I' isn't really what it ought to be, and many who were FA's have become IFA's with out sufficient real qualification or motivation to keep them sharp or truly independent.

When you consider that at least up until 5 years ago you could walk into a City bank branch and see someone behind a desk who gave you a top 5 bank printed business card headed "Financial Expert" or "Money Expert" when the only qualification they held was purely incidental to what they had got printed on the card, then you have to take it all with a pinch of salt. They were tolerated by managers and by actual FA's as long as they were selling.

BTW, I wonder where atush fitted in to the mix? FE, ME, ME, ME, FA or IFA?

If you once fell into a dismal negative equity hole, OP, I sympathise. That was probably around 87-95 ? We had a good house that went seriously backwards in value in that period. Then of course there have been other blips quite recently.

But if you now pay 40% tax and you are still working, with those pensions you've already got, especially the 15 years in USS, then you are probably set up better than average baby boomers.

Can you get a transfer value on the USS one just out of curiosity, primarily as a feel good factor?

jamesd

greenglide wrote: »

Was it not 35% with higher rate bands (15% wide?)

Not sure but basic rate was cut from 33% to 30% in 1979. In general income tax was much higher but VAT wasn't around so much and a lot of the income tax drop was replaced by VAT.