NHS Pension

In one word NO!!!!! Is it a final salary scheme with pension calculated as % of final salary? If so you won't be able to get a better offer unless you want to pay at least DOUBLE what you are paying now.

No way, it's now virtually impossible to join a similar guaranteed final salary scheme in the private sector and your pension is backed by the state and not subject to the whims of the stock market. Private pensions have had a bad wrap and Gordon Brown has taken great delight to destroying the system, but public pensions are still extremely plush, you're really quite lucky, you'd be an idiot to cancel it.

In some cases you'd need a 500k private annuity to achieve the same sort of entitlements, not to mention the retirement ages, which are generally earlier.

You think we can answer that with that amount of information?

I have a client who gets nearly £40k a year from his NHS pension so I'm sure he's happy!

Thanks for the help guys!

I'll stick with the NHS...as far as I can

He must be an ex-Chief Executive, or somebody of similar ilk. Somebody who's done a real job in the NHS won't get a 1/4 of that.

He has medical qualifications and he's in his 80s so I don't think he was a chief executive.

Really? How much do you think consultants earn?

Not something that is comensurate with the hours they wor for the NHS. A maximum 11 sessions at 3 hours a session, allowing them to continue doing their private work and earning 2, 3 or 4 times as much. A dare say there are a few consultants who work longer than that, but there are a hell of a lot more doing no more than their maximum, or doing their 'research' (private) hours whilst at work.

About 70,000 - 94,000 basic, full time NHS salary, with the opportunity to nearly double that with various schemes within the NHS.

Salaried GP's earn 50,000 to 76,000. Independant GP's can earn much more.

That is all *NHS* pay, any private work they do is on top.

Are those "real jobs"?

No. The NHS pension is one of the best around.

Bohica has clearly never been rushed into A&E in various pieces!

Bohica writes

Today's Moneybox was very morose about future pensions. The public sector cannot hold on to all their pension rights without bankrupting the economy. The private sector has already taken a bashing, and many have lost everything..... To pay for a decent State pension for the next generation people will have to stay in work longer, or the future working population will refuse to foot the bill.

... and? They will simply tax as much as possible or failing that just print the money in existence, these pensions have the full backing of the state after all and nobody is going to tell millions of public sector workers that their pensions are unfunded and unaffordable, not least a Labour government.

These pensions *will* be paid, even if it results in hyperinflation.

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Virgils Ghost said

That doesn't work very well when they are index linked ... well Ok, the second order effect helps, but the first order effect is just to hyperinflate the size of the hole.

Bird flu, now THAT might help ...

Well I have been paying 6% of my wages into a public sector pension for over

25 years- initially in the NHS then in a funded local authority one. I transferred my pension to the funded one, even though I was advised not to, specifically because it was funded.

My parents both have NHS pensions (not full length ones) and cannot believe how well off they are with 4 pensions coming in each month.

Yet I am coming to the conclusion that mine and those of many people in my position will never be paid in full.

I can see us being given maybe 70p in the rather than the amount we expect.

Neb

You simply 'adjust' (*cough*) the inflation figures well below the actual levels of monetary creation and hope most people are too daft to notice, seems to work so far :)

But of course there is no actual "pot" of sorts, it's simply an on going system much akin to a pyramid scheme. I would also be cheeky and suggest that the magnitude of your entitlements bare no relation to the modest 6% contribution, especially so if this were a private scheme :)

This shall be interesting to watch, no government is going to grasp the nettle quite yet, especially when they can just leave the problems for some future government to deal with.

Yes. And some people are daft enough to think house values have *increased* over the last 10 years! How daft - when there are more houses now than there were then! Obviously the value of everything just changes in direct proportion to supply, and nothing else. Some people are too thick to understand that though, and believe house price indices, and inflation figures, etc.

Quite, bar any significant improvements any given house still the same, if not slightly more knackered than it was a decade ago when it comes to roofing or brickwork. Present house prices say more about the real purchasing power of our money rather than the merits of beige walls and wood flooring.

Of course consumer goods deflation courtesy of China has been the neat trick, combined with wage suppression due to abundant migrant labour, but the real inflation is increasingly reflected in the price of services, energy and commodities, not to mention asset prices.

Given another decade will an "index linked" pension make much dent in an 4k annual fuel bill, for example?