Early retirement options

You have a warped mind.

Quite so. I get the distinct impression you think that's meant to sound absurd. It doesn't.

All true, but the history of the real car is irrelevant. The expected car has undergone a colour change virtually as real as though the actual car had once been red. It *is* a blued red car.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Hehe - who did you say had a warped mind? ;-)

"Expected car"? - The only car that has changed colour is the imaginary one in your mind - certainly *not* the real one!

Yes, *expected* car. The only imaginary thing is your story ("Let's imagine", you said, "I'm going to buy a red car. Really. It's going to be red."), but *within* the imagined story, the red car is not just imagined, but expected. "Really", as you so succinctly put it.

Where, later on, you say 'In this analogy, we see that the "imagined" car may have been red initially ...', the word "imagined" was wrong. In the story, you didn't just imagine you were going to get a red car, you were much more positive about it, you as good as *knew* you were going to get one. You expected it.

It doesn't really matter whether you had a particular red car in mind which you might have seen before, and were now going to buy, but found it had already been sold to someone else, or you simply had your heart set on a boy racer colour, but they either didn't have any red ones in, or else they had this TVR you simply *had* to have (oops, for a moment I thought of you as Troy - apologies to both of you) and the fact it wasn't red suddenly was no longer important.

Indeed not, but that's irrelevant. You fully expected to have a red car on your drive that evening. And now it's blue. That's a change.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Not quite. I never *expected* the car to be red. I may have just mentioned to somebody how nice it might be to have a red car.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Not at all! This is **my** story - not yours to change as you will. The word imagined was perfectly *correct*.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Where (do you think) I said that? [Perhaps you misinterpreted the "Really"? Never mind. You know now!]

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

You've mis-read my thoughts again. I didn't get to the "full expectation" stage thinking that the car would be red. I just hoped it would be. By the time I *knew* (rather, "fully expected") what colour the car would be, I expected it to be blue. C'est la vie.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Even if it is a change in thoughts, it is not a change to the thing received. You are trying to suggest that the "expected" LS is a tax-free LS which is taxed. It aint. Just like the car was not made red and repainted blue.

The LS being received wouldn't exist until taken at retirement - at which point it is definitely *not* tax-free (under the scenario of a change in the law).

It too late to back-pedal now. You've told the story and it's on record. It says in no uncertain terms that you *were* going to get a red car.

Pah! This isn't like "it's my ball and I'm taking it back so you can't play with it", you know. It may be your story and I can't change it, but you can't change it either. Sorry.

It doesn't need to be.

It is. No-one in their worst dreams would have expect the bastard government to slap tax on the LS which was always (in everyone's expectation) going to be TF.

You don't seem to understand that the physical car doesn't have to have been red for there to have been a change. It was *planned* that the car would be red and now it's blue. Think of it as a change of plan. But a change it is.

Wrong. Even leaving the question of tax aside, the LS itself was certainly very much expected, and therefore certainly existed in the planning, just like the rest of the actual pension. It was real enough for you to rely on it and plan for your retirement on the assumption that it would be paid. Now if, for whatever reason, such as the pension company going bust, there's only enough money left in the pot to buy the annuity for the actual pension, but they tell you "Sorry, folks, the lump sums are off", then you can't say "there was never any lump sum at all". There was, but then it vanished before it could be paid.

This is just silly. TFLS is just a label - it means free of income tax for the year it applies to (it probably means something even more convoluted and complex but that doesn't alter the argument). Any income derived from it, or any capital gains made from its investment, or even the sum itself if it passes to someone else on death will be taxed. There's no ring fence.

"Chris Game" wrote

Eh?

"Chris Game" wrote

Did you think I was suggesting that there is??