Pensions untouched in the Budget

crv1963

Whether someone retires in their fifties on a £50k+ pension is their decision, they are paying 40% tax on some of that in any case. Of all jobs I thought doctors were supposed to be more of a vocation than many, but it doesn't appear to be the case from what you're saying.[/QUOTE]



Being a doctor/ nurse/ teacher/ public sector employee may be viewed as a vocation but many will have 30+ years of service and many of these not in the headline salary range often quoted in the newspapers.


The average NHS pension of £6,931 is equivalent to a pension pot of £221,155 and the average teachers' pension of £9,358 is equivalent to a pot of £298,596, according to Hargreaves Lansdown, the financial adviser.


Yes of course like all schemes there are those who get much more but to get the above averages there are many, many more people who get a lot less. As in the private sector the company CEO will get a lot more than the office cleaner but the average pension for the pension scheme will also be a lower.


There are many factors that influence retirement and although money or LTA is important so is work pressure and actually surviving long enough to see the benefits of your hard work. IMO being in a profession both lauded as altruistic and vilified as being greedy and holding back changes that can be viewed as questionable whilst being presented as being sensible places many public sector middle managers and especially doctors in a catch 22 so who can blame them for saying enough and I'm off now?

bigadaj

Well the actual value of the pensions quoted above in terms of the Lta, which is what is being argued over here, is nominally far lower because if the 20x multiplier. Which means that many people aren't affected because their pension pot isn't valued at £1 million, or more like £1.5 million if related to the HL figures.

I'm not sure anyone is blaming people for retiring, it's a choice and the argument here is that the Lta is having an effect on early retirement for many including healthcare professionals.

I think the situation for nurses and doctors is very different for middle managers, reduction in the latter would no doubt pay for a few more of the former.

crv1963

bigadaj wrote: »

Well the actual value of the pensions quoted above in terms of the Lta, which is what is being argued over here, is nominally far lower because if the 20x multiplier. Which means that many people aren't affected because their pension pot isn't valued at £1 million, or more like £1.5 million if related to the HL figures.

I'm not sure anyone is blaming people for retiring, it's a choice and the argument here is that the Lta is having an effect on early retirement for many including healthcare professionals.

I think the situation for nurses and doctors is very different for middle managers, reduction in the latter would no doubt pay for a few more of the former.

In which case I agree with you bigadaj, the level of LTA is too low all round even for those who cannot aspire to reach it. The current level was devised to solve one problem but had unforeseen consequences IMO.


However in my cynical view the political football that is the NHS probably suits politicians at present as a nice diversion for the public/ papers with a "rich" target of senior staff and doctors to kick and to provoke into taking attention away from other areas of policy.


The internal market by its' very framework takes clinical staff away from direct clinical care and into pen pushing or more accurately keyboard striking roles. This in turn creates greater frontline pressures, gets clinicians backs up lowers morale and so the cycle goes on.


In an age where we should be encouraging saving in its many forms to help with increased life expectancy and for a not inconsiderable minority later life care costs we have a LTA limited, a system that is stretched in the NHS, care providers needing to use private funders to subsidise LA funded patients/ clients/ residents/ customers/ service users- we can't even agree what to call people that use the service!


Sorry for diverting the discussion- too much office politics about the creaking system today. you are right the LTA should be raised and the pensions calculations made more equitable for all. If there was a level playing field maybe my younger colleagues would appreciate that even with the pension reforms they are onto a good thing and take an interest in their future rather than moan about paying 9% into the pension scheme!

bigadaj

There's a very much wider argument about funding of the NHS and how value is offered, the historic way of running the system is rapidly becoming uneconomic and all the pressures including lack of efficiency, ever increasing demand, waste, abuse of a system free at the point of delivery, ageing population etc etc need to be addressed.

The NHS could absorb huge funding increases but where is this money coming from, no one is offering to pay more tax, the deficit is reducing but the debt continues to increase, everyone wants something for nothing.

I think your younger colleagues need to be careful with their complaints also, public sector salaries may be constrained but it's no different and often worse in the private sector which after all needs to pay for most services. A9% contribution to get a benefit valued at 25-30% of salary is soemthing that many would snatch your arm off for, and as you're aware is pretty much unavailable in the private sector because of the actual cost of funding it.

crv1963

bigadaj


You are right, my wife works in the private healthcare sector and her pension provision is tiny compared to my own (despite an very similar length of service) so we are working on increasing hers (if we prioritised mine we'd pay more joint tax on retirement) as you can see from some of my earlier posts/ questions.


I'm just grateful for the advice/ debate that goes on here I believe that I have learnt a lot on this site.


I don't think that anyone will ever come up with a solution to NHS funding/ staffing or rationing. Because it is so big, so viewed with sometimes rose tinted glasses and could easily swallow the whole of govt spending and more it will always be a hot potato after all it is the second biggest employer in the world after the Chinese Red Army!

capital0ne

mark5 wrote: »

Personal allowance up to 11850 as well.

Whats this got to do with pensions?

mgdavid

capital0ne wrote: »

Whats this got to do with pensions?

it means those of us in receipt of pensions get to keep a little more of it.

bigadaj

mgdavid wrote: »

it means those of us in receipt of pensions get to keep a little more of it.

Maybe some of those people?

lisyloo

bigadaj wrote: »

We're possibly talking at cross purposes, my point was that as a wealthy and developed nation we should be funding more doctors and nurses to qualify, but we aren't and after many decades are still relying on importing qualified and experienced staff, robbing other countries, often developing ones, of the staff they have trained to their cost and future value.

Whether someone retires in their fifties on a £50k+ pension is their decision, they are paying 40% tax on some of that in any case. Of all jobs I thought doctors were supposed to be more of a vocation than many, but it doesn't appear to be the case from what you're saying.

Completely agree with you on the first point.

PAYE earners may well be paying higher rate tax, those running limited companies may not be i.e. taking divs and filling wifes tax band with divs.

I think people start off going into healthcare jobs as a vocation.
After 30 years of work and in today's world of stress and responsibility I expect many would like to stop.
If they still want to contribute then they can always go to Africa and set up healthcare where there is none, so there are options, but there is a big different between doing what you want AS and WHEN you want and the "daily grind" where you have to.

bigadaj

lisyloo wrote: »

Completely agree with you on the first point.

PAYE earners may well be paying higher rate tax, those running limited companies may not be i.e. taking divs and filling wifes tax band with divs.

I think people start off going into healthcare jobs as a vocation.
After 30 years of work and in today's world of stress and responsibility I expect many would like to stop.
If they still want to contribute then they can always go to Africa and set up healthcare where there is none, so there are options, but there is a big different between doing what you want AS and WHEN you want and the "daily grind" where you have to.

The government is addressing the issues around self employed and personal company preferential taxation from IR35 through to more recent dividend taxation and this will hopefully become more of a level playing field.


Financial independence is a good target for most people, as it opens up options whether to retire or do something different.


However I think retiring and going to Africa to start from scratch would make the NHS look like some sort of utopia. When I worked in Ghana I shared an office with the guy consulting on the healthcare for the company, he just found it incredibly frustrating. decent hospital buildings, plenty of state of the art German equipment but very poor management and organization meaning even simple drugs and materials weren't available, with staff twiddling their thumbs and people just not getting treated.