Should I stop paying into my pension as I've previous one? I work part time, get CA?

joe565

Thanks everyone for your help, will see if I can transfer Clerical Medical pension into NHS one

pip895

joe565 wrote: »

Sorry for asking, but not sure what you mean by saying are they matching my contributions?

Guess this is answered now

Sounds like they are better than matching your contributions so definitely worth holding on to your new pension. Good luck with transferring your old pension over.

joe565

pip895 wrote: »

Guess this is answered now

Sounds like they are better than matching your contributions so definitely worth holding on to your new pension. Good luck with transferring your old pension over.

Thanks pip895, think I can transfer within 12 months so fingers crossed!

DairyQueen

joe565 wrote: »

Hi everyone

I get Carer's Allowance and work part time, 15 hours per week in the hospital trust,

I don't mean to worry you but have you checked whether your part-time job has affected your entitlement to Carer's Allowance?

There is an earnings cap on Carers Allowance. You must "Earn £116 a week or less (after taxes, care costs while you’re at work and 50% of what you pay into your pension". See here.

tibbles209

As the NHS pension scheme is a Defined Benefit scheme, you will not be able to transfer a pension pot into it. Do you know what type of pension your Clerical Medical one is? I'm not sure how much you know about different occupational pension types, but just in broad terms there are 2 types;

-A Defined Benefit scheme such as the NHS pension does not involve the accumulation of a pot of money, but rather you are building a guaranteed entitlement to a defined annual pension from your retirement age. The NHS pension is a 54ths average salary scheme, which essentially means when you retire, you will receive each year 1/54th of the average salary you earned during your employment with the NHS, multiplied by the number of years service. As a simple example if you earned an average of £5.4k during your career with the NHS, and worked for the NHS for 20 years you would end up with a guaranteed pension of £2k/year from retirement until death.

-A Defined Contribution scheme involves making pension contributions (often matched by employer up to a certain point - for example you put in 5% of your salary and your employer will match it with another 5%) which build a 'pot' of money which is invested. You then either use to buy an annuity at retirement, or draw down from the pot for income. How much you end up with depends how well the underlying investments perform so there are no guarantees.

Defined Benefit pensions are few and far between nowadays - they mostly only exist in the public sector. The NHS pension is not as good as it used to be, but it is still exceptional value for money. As, however, there is no 'pot' of money, you would not be able to combine it with a pot from an old defined contribution scheme (you can of course hold both types of pensions, just separately).

OldBeanz

My son is intending paying his DC stakeholder into the Teachers' Pension Scheme. I would be very surprised if you could not do this with the NHS.As it has to be done within a year and is a labour intensive and pedantic method you need to get your skates on. You do lose the pot but are given an equivalent amount of pension payment dependant on age and inflation linked.
https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/member-hub/transferring-scheme Suggests transfers in are possible.

tibbles209

I had no idea that was an option! Thanks for the info .
OP apologies for my misleading post.

joe565

DairyQueen wrote: »

I don't mean to worry you but have you checked whether your part-time job has affected your entitlement to Carer's Allowance?

There is an earnings cap on Carers Allowance. You must "Earn £116 a week or less (after taxes, care costs while you’re at work and 50% of what you pay into your pension". See here.

I'm lucky my part time job is just under the CA threshold so thankfully all's ok there!

Silvertabby

As the NHS pension scheme is a Defined Benefit scheme, you will not be able to transfer a pension pot into it. Posted by tibbles209

Wrong. The NHS would use the in-coming pot of money to 'buy' an (index linked) amount of CARE (career average) pension in the NHS scheme.

Ditto other public sector career average DB schemes - Civil Service, LGPS, etc etc.