Works pension

Silvertabby

Bimbly said:

Your colleague may have transferred in a pot from a previous employer? Giving them a bigger pot than you.

OP says not.

There must be a simple explanation for this, but I must admit it does bring to mind a very convoluted and shouty, (her not me) conversation I had with a LGPS member back in the day.  She had applied to draw her benefits, and I sent her the necessary claim forms along with her payment options (standard pension, smaller pension/bigger lump sum etc)  - but she subjected me to several minutes of telephone hysterics, during which she accused me of robbing her, as her pension was much more than the figures I had provided. 

Eventually got to the bottom of it all.  She had been in the scheme just over 10 years, and had kept all 10 annual benefit statements.  Then, instead of just looking at the year-end accruals on her final benefit statement, she had added the year-end figures from all 10 statements together. 

Marcon

Silvertabby said:

Bimbly said:

Your colleague may have transferred in a pot from a previous employer? Giving them a bigger pot than you.

OP says not.

There must be a simple explanation for this, but I must admit it does bring to mind a very convoluted and shouty, (her not me) conversation I had with a LGPS member back in the day.  She had applied to draw her benefits, and I sent her the necessary claim forms along with her payment options (standard pension, smaller pension/bigger lump sum etc)  - but she subjected me to several minutes of telephone hysterics, during which she accused me of robbing her, as her pension was much more than the figures I had provided. 

Eventually got to the bottom of it all.  She had been in the scheme just over 10 years, and had kept all 10 annual benefit statements.  Then, instead of just looking at the year-end accruals on her final benefit statement, she had added the year-end figures from all 10 statements together. 

Love it!

OP - is it possible your employer didn't actually offer a pension scheme (or you didn't choose to join it) until sometime into your employment with them? You don't say when you were in employment, but auto-enrolment was only introduced in 2012 (and that only applied to the largest employers), with smaller employers becoming subject to auto-enrolment duties over the next six years. 

Willow_70

Bimbly said:

Your colleague may have transferred in a pot from a previous employer? Giving them a bigger pot than you.

no she didn’t 

Willow_70

Silvertabby said:

Such a huge difference in your pensions, based on the information you have given,  can't be right.  

Is it possible that your friend has misunderstood her pension forecast?

No, she showed me last week the letter that she requested from pension company 

Willow_70

Marcon said:

Willow_70 said:

Hi, I have a query about my works pension.
in my old job I was off long term sick & got diagnosed with ms. My work offered me a redundancy package which I took.
My pension will be substantially much lower than my co workers. 

One of my ex work mates pension is over double per month than mine and she has 5 years service whilst I have 16 year service.

All sorts of reasons you could have different pensions. Summarising the comments above:

1. Your former colleague is still contributing to this pension scheme and her projections are based on the assumption that she will contribute until age 66 (or similar)
2. Your former colleague has higher earnings than you had, especially if you were on sick pay and your contributions were based on this rather than your normal full salary
3. Your colleague chose different investments within the pension scheme, and these performed better than the ones you chose
4. Your colleague chose to make extra contributions which the employer may or may not have 'matched' (paid in more)
5. Your colleague is in a different scheme from the one you were in (employers don't always keep the same scheme)

Sometimes people aren't quite sure what they've done, especially when it comes to pensions, so comparing yourself with someone else is often unhelpful. 

The other possibility is that your benefit statement is wrong, or hers is.

Willow_70 said:

is there a chance my employer took their contributions back. ? And could the redundancy package I thought I got been taken out my pension pot too? 

No and no.

Hi, thanks for your reply,

no my work mate didn’t put extra money into her pension,
she’s still not putting money into it either.
it was the same scheme we were in
we were roughly on the same wage 
although I was on sick for about a year or so, I was on sick pay, so my wages were lower,  would that contribute ?

Dazed_and_C0nfused

Unless you are willing to provide some actual details it's all speculation.

If it is a DC pension (a pot of money) then it could simply be a combination of her making (deliberately or not) better investment choices and what she had opted for when taking money out of the pension.

With a DC pension you could turn a pot of £100k into an annual pension of £100k.  But it would only last 1 year.  Or you could take £3-4k/year and it should last for ever.

There an awful lot of variables with a DC pension.

Simon11

Dazed_and_C0nfused said:

Unless it you are willing to provide some actual details it's all speculation.

If it is a DC pension (a pot of money) then it could simply be a combination of her making (deliberately or not) better investment choices and what she had opted for when taking money out of the pension.

With a DC pension you could turn a pot of £100k into an annual pension of £100k.  But it would only last 1 year.  Or you could take £3-4k/year and it should last for ever.

There an awful lot of variables with a DC pension.

This, plus I would suggest you seriously focus and research on your pension situation as it appears your light bulb moment has just come (maybe too late now)!  

Forget your colleague, dig in and learn about your pension. Is this enough for your retirement plans?

QrizB

Willow_70 said:

Silvertabby said:

Such a huge difference in your pensions, based on the information you have given,  can't be right.  

Is it possible that your friend has misunderstood her pension forecast?

No, she showed me last week the letter that she requested from pension company 

What is the pension scheme?

Do you have a copy of her letter? Do you have an identical letter from your pension company with your own forecast? Exactly how do they differ?

LHW99

although I was on sick for about a year or so, I was on sick pay, so my wages were lower,  would that contribute ?

There is an "automatic enrolment earnings trigger" which might mean you didn't make contributions that year perhaps.

dunstonh

The bottom line is that if the contributions had been identical and the dates identical and the investment funds identical then the values would be identical.        Any differences in current fund value mean that something is different.   

If you are using projections rather than the current value, then they would be different as the synthetic assumptions based on age and projection rates used for their particular investments.  If the investments are not identical then you could get significant differences on the projections.

Without some facts being given though, its all guesswork and its a bit like pulling teeth at the moment.