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Retirement Living Standards
Comments
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That's brilliant and great to hear but how then to balance pensions between spouses? For many years I kept adding money to the wife's pension but harder now as using sal sac to stay within the low Scottish BRT limit.
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I'm not too sure about that 9% - it seems very low. Mr S and I were both brought up in what would be, in today's terms, abject poverty. We then had to leave school at 15 because our parents needed us to bring money into the house instead of 'swanning around in school' (my parents words) so no 'free' Uni education/professional jobs for us
We both peaked at higher than average salaries, but never did reach the dizzy heights of 40% tax. Yet we are retired on joint pension incomes that take us (just!) into this alleged 9%.
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Hmmm......so how does the surviving member of a couple, with only the one NSP now coming in (£12548) - suddenly get that to jump to £14232 (for a net £13900)......
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Congratulations!
You've hit it right on a number of fronts. Getting DB pensions when it mattered - you know more than most how valuable they are. Having the pension income spread between you, many couples would have it skewed - generally towards the male. Having (if I remember correctly) two post- 2016 state pensions.
Once we reach state pension age we will also be doing surprisingly well, but most of the other pension income is vested in me, which makes it difficult to get to the comfortable level without being into the 40% tax level, particularly in Scotland.
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Thank you! Yes, two post 2016 pensions. Mine is full because I had enough time between 2016 and SPA to pay voluntary Class 3s, but as he's a little older his State pension is £1K lower. However, his RAF pension is higher than mine so we are pretty evenly matched.
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They start drawing down the DC pot they were not drawing before because they neither needed nor wanted it.
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This is us too. Wife was never an HR taxpayer and never will be. I was just when I was in the police and then after I retired from that and carried on working elsewhere, I was consistently (but owing to reading on here I bunged all the excess into a SIPP which i'm now trying to drain!)
With two full SPs which we both have being post 2016 cohort. We took early retirement and with four DB pensions between us and a bit of Drawdown we are halfway between Moderate and Comfortable and once the SPs kick in then we'll be over the Comfortable and I'll be back to being an HR taxpayer. There must be many others in our position who will be a lot better off in retirement than they were when they were working.
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Or they join the 18% of people who are under the minimum level…..
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They could, but that rather assumes they actually have one to draw down from…….if they did, they'd most likely have been drawing it down from the start and wouldn't have been at the "minimum" level to start with……(and even with just two full NSPs they actually wouldn't be anyway)…
Another interesting point is that a couple below two full NSP's, reliant on pension credit to boost their state pensions (assuming they actually claim it) are expected to live on c£18900pa…….a fair bit below the "minimum" level…….and there are more OAPs in that boat than you might think…….
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Abject poverty v relative property - It would be really i interesting to explore this fully and critically without falling into mud slinging and whataboutery. One might consider the same type of decision making that leads to relative poverty might also drive out the situation where people are living on the minimum state pension
We have both given over half our lives to public service, in various guises, and in exchange receive DB pensions. Yet people still feel it necessary to denigrate that commitment and we are considered leeches, especially by the foam and spittle mongers that read the Telegraph.
Life decisions is a very apt term.
Your life is too short to be unhappy 5 days a week in exchange for 2 days of freedom!
One can always make more money. No one who has ever lived can create more time.4
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