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NI & Pensions

You might find it better to stash the cash for now and then use it as 'pension' when you retire while deferring taking your government pension. Just another calculation to run through your spreadsheet ... you have got a spreadsheet for this, haven't you? :geek:
 
I don't pretend to understand all this, but if you've got cash to stash, wouldn't it be better to pay some of your current income into a private pension, and claim (or automatically get) some income tax back?
 
That's not the point. This is all about NI contributions.

If one is in a position to (and allowed to!) top up an incomplete or missing year in ones NI record, each added year adds over £200 PA to ones state pension post-retirement. The cost of topping up a completely missing year is about £700, so the return on investment is around 30% - albeit deferred. It's hard to see how that could be matched any other way.

Under the old rules, one needed 30 years of NI to get the full state pension. I do have 30 years - but I don't have 35 years which is required to satisfy the new rules - except it now seems that only 30 of the years before 2016 will be counted towards the new rules (something which has been kept very quiet), and having opted out of SERPS (as was recommended practice at the time) won't qualify for the full amount anyway.

None of this might matter particularly, except that I stopped working in 2010 for personal reasons.
 
Black Hole said:
and having opted out of SERPS (as was recommended practice at the time) won't qualify for the full amount anyway
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But you should get that reduction in state pension (or more) from your employer's pension scheme that you 'opted out' into.
 
Yeah, but it doesn't work out to be beneficial now (and many people weren't given the choice of not opting out). Another swizz.
 
But for a pension fund to opt you out, they had to 'prove' to HMRC or (whoever) that the return would be at least as good as the Government pension 'fund'.
 
Trev said:
But for a pension fund to opt you out, they had to 'prove' to HMRC or (whoever) that the return would be at least as good as the Government pension 'fund'.
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That wouldn't be possible for any defined-contribution scheme, i.e. "pension pot". Since those are dependent purely on market performance, it is not possible to prove anything about their future performance. of course, they did have projections. And many did not perform as well as projected, especially over the 2001 crash.

For defined-benefit schemes, you might be right.
 
If they don't screw up your pension, they will take your house and belongings away too.

  • Get dementia
  • Need care
  • Local council fund it and charge whatever they like
  • £100,000 protected, but council gets rest when you and partner die
  • You die, leaving estate to partner
  • Council kindly give a loan with interest to cover debts to them
  • Remaining £100,000 swallowed up in interest on loan
  • Your partner dies leaving a debt
 
You missed the winter fuel payments possibly being taken away, so you might freeze to death first.
I notice my (former) MP is being very quiet. Whilst I might agree with Kenneth Clarke on many things, I don't agree with his party.
Which way to vote? :confused: (A rhetorical question!)
 
There is only one party that makes any sense at all without bankrupting the country like one lot did when Messers Blair and Brown were in charge of things. 'Sorry, but there's no money left' springs to mind.

As for the others, they are irrelevant and UKIP don't even care if they don't have any MPs. Just how they think that they can influence anything from that strong position, beats the hell out of me. And as for the Greens! Try parking in Brighton. That's what they would do to the rest of the country.
 
EEPhil said:
You missed the winter fuel payments possibly being taken away, so you might freeze to death first.
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I imagine that between this and the collapse of the NHS the plan is that no one who can't afford it will live long enough to be a drain on care or pensions.


Trev said:
There is only one party that makes any sense at all without bankrupting the country
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I don't know any party that can balance the books and make everyone happy. Closest I've seen is Star Trek :)​
 
Nor do I, but one is trying to balance the books and thus upsetting some people and the other is trying to make everyone happy (except those who have worked hard to get where they are/were and earn a decent salary) and bankrupt the UK with Len McCluskey running the show.
 
Capitalism was built upon not balancing the books! What do you think capital is? Finance? Credit? Shares? What do you think is the reason why you put a pound in the bank and that allows the bank to loan ten pounds to others?

That the money had dried up was such a huge sophistry. I am not saying that the well is infinitely deep, but just of indeterminate depth. Economies are not closed households. I never met any householder who refused a mortgage because they didn't have the cash to buy the house.
 
And there is so much more to life than balancing the GDP books!
 
So the dementia tax will have a cap. A means tested cap? :roflmao: A fixed £5m cap?:roflmao:
 
Keep your cap on young man. This is politicians you're talking about and when you're old and grey you'll either have learnt that this is all perfectly normal and expected ... or you'll have no hair at all :)
 
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