The Early Retiree Travel Thread

westv

Wasn't it Sam Goldwyn who originally said "The harder I work the luckier I become" - and obviously totally ignoring the benefit of talent in the equation!

JoeCrystal

Nikond4 wrote: »

Friend of mine works in the avation busniess he told me they were asked by the employer that if they wanted to keep their FS scheme they would have to contribute abit more themselves however as a form of compensation they would be annually given vouchers to spend of their named hobby. His vouchers this year have equated to £500, and he tells me the extra hes having to put in to keep his FS scheme which hes been in for 30 years plus is less than the voucher cost work that out. I had mine pulled in 2008 . It doesnt help either not having a pay rise in 11 years now and the company forced to take on staff on more money than the long servers because they cant get staff, I know one ex plod retired some years early of course 4 big overseas holiday a year

I would kill for having a deferred FS pension scheme; you are so lucky to have some foundation in for your retirement planning on top of the state pension. My employer didn't make any pension contribution until they were forced to by auto-enrollment regulation. Even so, only at the minimum and with qualifying earnings aspect in place so only 3% of the earnings above £6,136, which is dire. Before the auto-enrollment rules kick in, only the minority of the private sector has access to a pension scheme contributed by the employer.

Remember, there is an awful lot of people who are in a much worse position than you are. So focus on what you can do to improve your retirement planning and make the best of it. There is no point moaning about other people are doing. In the end, they have nothing to do with you at all. Life is too short, after all.

Terron

Nikond4 wrote: »

Friend of mine works in the avation busniess he told me they were asked by the employer that if they wanted to keep their FS scheme they would have to contribute abit more themselves however as a form of compensation they would be annually given vouchers to spend of their named hobby. His vouchers this year have equated to £500, and he tells me the extra hes having to put in to keep his FS scheme which hes been in for 30 years plus is less than the voucher cost work that out. I had mine pulled in 2008 . It doesnt help either not having a pay rise in 11 years now and the company forced to take on staff on more money than the long servers because they cant get staff, I know one ex plod retired some years early of course 4 big overseas holiday a year

In my first job the pension schem was only open to managers, so I paid into a private one.
Then I got a job with a FS pension Unfortunately it turns out that rises once it is in payment are "entirely at the discretion of the trustees", After 2 takeovers there have been two 1% rises since 2003.
in 1994 my job was sold to another comapny, which had a hybrid scheme, DC with a DB underpin on part of it. That was partly covered by the 1997 law that DB pensions had to give rises in line with inflation capped to 5% (later reduced to 2.5%). The company has said they will honour that even for earlier contributions. However that schem was ended in 2003 . It was replaced by a pure DC scheme with contributions matched up to 5%. Later they decided to out-source the pension and to encourage people to swicth said they would match contributions up to 6%.. Such matching contributions are worth quite a bit.
Between 2001 and 2013 when I lost the job, I had one rise of 3% in 2005. My workload was declining and the alternatives they were offering were more junior positions with little chance of advancement.

ratechaser

JoeCrystal wrote: »

I would kill for having a deferred FS pension scheme; you are so lucky to have some foundation in for your retirement planning on top of the state pension. My employer didn't make any pension contribution until they were forced to by auto-enrollment regulation. Even so, only at the minimum and with qualifying earnings aspect in place so only 3% of the earnings above £6,136, which is dire. Before the auto-enrollment rules kick in, only the minority of the private sector has access to a pension scheme contributed by the employer.

Remember, there is an awful lot of people who are in a much worse position than you are. So focus on what you can do to improve your retirement planning and make the best of it. There is no point moaning about other people are doing. In the end, they have nothing to do with you at all. Life is too short, after all.

I think Nikond4's point is that they don't have the benefit of such a scheme. Just like most of the rest of us.

I got all of 9 months entitlement in my first employers FS scheme before they closed it. And that is estimated to be worth £3k/year when I become eligible in another 10 years or so, index linked plus spouses pension... absolutely nuts... not sure if I should be grateful that I managed to get even that little bit, or mightily cheesed off about what I've subsequently missed out on...

MallyGirl

My only FS from my first job is predicted to pay me £1,875 pa - might just about cover the gas bill! I couldn't join till I was 25 and I moved jobs shortly after. To be fair they did have an under 25s money purchase scheme which I joined and is now worth about £20k.

Sea_Shell

DH left two jobs that had FS schemes he was in!!! But his sanity was worth more than that.

Terron

ratechaser wrote: »

I think Nikond4's point is that they don't have the benefit of such a scheme. Just like most of the rest of us.

I got all of 9 months entitlement in my first employers FS scheme before they closed it. And that is estimated to be worth £3k/year when I become eligible in another 10 years or so, index linked plus spouses pension... absolutely nuts... not sure if I should be grateful that I managed to get even that little bit, or mightily cheesed off about what I've subsequently missed out on...

It was clear that he had a limited benefit from such a scheme.
My point was that not all DB schems are equally good.
My first one which appeared to be a standard 1/60th of final salary per year scheme has tunred out to be not so good, due to having close to zero indexation. I took the maximum TFLS from it (and bought a car last week). The remainder will pay me about £3k per year basically fixed.
My next one which had the underpin of 1/80th of salary per year is much better. I will be taking the maximum underpin - nearly £10kpa indexed with a 5% cap on most of it (3% on the GMP part). OK unless Corbyn gets in and we have inflation like in the 70s

arnoldy

Index linking of final salary pensions is a myth (outside public sector).
Outside the public sector final salary pensions are not index linked usually. They almost always have a cap and once in payment pre 97 pension rises are often discretionary.
So Silver Plate compared to Public Sector Gold Plate.
But both are (unstainable and unfairly?) much better than the DC reality for most people in private Sector now.
Therefore it’s worth thinking carefully about the inflation risk when taking private DB pension, maybe taking personal accountability and investing the tax free lump sum via an ISA rather than splurging it.

Skibunny40

Planning our travel in retirement is my favourite topic! To answer the questions:

1) Budget is around £6k pa - when we first retire, the plan is to do any long-haul trips we want as well as cheapie "week in the sun" breaks. As we get older, there will be more of a focus on UK trips.

2) Budget is probably about the same as we spend currently ( travel is very important in our lives!) At the moment, it's tricky for us to get away as a family due to various circumstances so we're stuck with school holiday dates ( and paying the exortianate prices accordingly) and/or going separately. So we're working through places that I want to visit that OH doesn't, and vice versa for individual trips just now.

3) At the moment, we're also restricted to the amount of holiday days we can take from work so direct and comfortable travel is our main criteria. Once retired, we'll consider indirect flights, cheaper hotels etc and also hopefully take advantage of cheap last minute deals.

4) Depends how much travelling we get done before we retire! At the moment, we're both in good health so want to pack in as much of the exotic stuff as possible. We're also assuming that flights will become more heavily taxed for environmental reasons so again, the more we can do now the better. (No environment guilt here - we reckon we offset the flights with being ecogically careful in lots of other areas. Probably not true, but works for us!) We really like the idea of spending several months in various city locations to live like locals so Airbnb will be great for that.

Terron

arnoldy wrote: »

Index linking of final salary pensions is a myth (outside public sector).
Outside the public sector final salary pensions are not index linked usually. They almost always have a cap and once in payment pre 97 pension rises are often discretionary.
So Silver Plate compared to Public Sector Gold Plate.
But both are (unstainable and unfairly?) much better than the DC reality for most people in private Sector now.
Therefore it’s worth thinking carefully about the inflation risk when taking private DB pension, maybe taking personal accountability and investing the tax free lump sum via an ISA rather than splurging it.

There are two bits of unfairness I can see for my FS pensions are that when I joined it was clearly implied that they would aim to index the pension. Since treating the company's pensioners fairly would have an impact of the current employees The company was taken over and the new trustees continued to index the pensions in payment. Then that company was taken over and the new owners have stopped doing so. That is legal (it has been challenged) but feels unfair.
The other unfairness is that the government promised to pay the indexationon the GMP part above 3%, but quitely dropped that with the new paension system, except for public sector pensioners. Treating one class of people with GMPs different from another seems unfair.


When I started wotk only some jobs offered pensions. It was considered a significant part of the pay package,. Some people took lower paying jobs for the better pension. My first job did not have a pension scheme. Now having a pension scheme for almost all workers seems a lot fairer.



I took the maximum TFLS fom my FS pension and splurged on a (nearly) new car. Even after I started getting the regular payments (next month) most of my income will come from my BTLs. I plan to use some of my other TFLS and the proceeds of a property sale to pay down mortgages in my own name to reduce my inflation risk whilst increasing my income.