Army pension

jakeblues68 I think your wife is lucky then! I would much rather have a cash payment now intead of a pension which will only be available to me at some point way in the future!

You will be able to build up your own pension?

penny10p wrote:

jakeblues68 I think your wife is lucky then! I would much rather have a cash payment now intead of a pension which will only be available to me at some point way in the future!

Hi

Having a cash sum is a loverly idea but when you balance that with it having to keep you over a period of time it really wont last all that long .

Although the idea of a small pension with a lump sum is a better idea in my opinion but then again you have to also weigh that up too.

Because that lump some will may be pay for things that you want and need but for many people it has to pay the rent and buy food and in my situation if I got paid say for example 23 k lump sum no pension it would properly only last 23 months and thats just paying bills and rent food then no pension nothing at 65 not good long term not even good short term i think .

But say you got the same 23k and small pension 23 months later no money but smaller pension at 65 was it worth it the moneys gone and you still might be struggling and even more so at 65

But then You can be dead by the time your 65 too.

Its all a hard choice but I think its important to say you need to look at now but you also need to look at the future too and sometimes having a little less now may be better in the longer term for many people .

But we are all different with different needs and require things at different times and we all have our own different circumstances which make the decision more difficult .

So If it was me I would really think about talking to a FA before making such a decision because once its made you dont want to look back after 23 months and think is that it oh my god what have i done.

As money really doest last long but a guaranteed income does go that little bit further and last for longer may be an attachment pension order might be better but only if you dont plan on remarrying and if you can live with that then i am sure there are ways you can insure for the death of the payee .

I am not sure but I wonder if you can have the lump sum payed as an attachment umm thats a thought too then that way you could get it payed over a longer period of time and it wouldt affect any benefits such as local housing allowance If it were under a certain amount every month .

It would affect any benefits that you may be claiming or need to claim especially housing benefit for those that need to claim it especially those living in private accommodation

And for those that are unable to work for many different reasons

Because if you had 23 k and claimed housing benefit for example you would not be able to make a claim for it but also they would tell you because you had that23k no benefit would be paid for X amount of months and in this case case at least 23 because renting privately is pretty high so if for example you get housing allowance you wouldt get if had 23k this is what i am saying 23 k would not get many people very far at all may be a few months of being independent then back to square one once the money has gone.

But individual circumstances have to be taken into account also i think so by taking a lump sum there are other issues that do need to be looked at too.

But having a nice lump sum is very nice but how nice for example would 23k be in 23 months would it look any thing like the 23k you hoped it would be .

This is just my thoughts and why I would urge any body to be really cautious before making decisions because this pension one is really one of the most import decisions we will make for ourselves financially .

Dido xx

Hiya Dildo

If I was in your situation tho and got 23k I would seriously be looking at a deposit on my own property somewhere. I wouldn't be renting. I'm hoping for a lump sum for that reason. Where I can rent a room to help me pay my mortgage, I also would be looking to work more hours. So for me the lump is first the pension will be a bonus. because first a nd formost I need to keep a roof over our heads.

I hope your well anyway, speak soon

xxxxxxxx

I also kind of think that it's a shame that my x won't get his money back if any thing happens to me. I think that it should be shared whatever way but if I die it should be reinstated back.

xx

vivi36 wrote:

Hiya Dildo

If I was in your situation tho and got 23k I would seriously be looking at a deposit on my own property somewhere. I wouldn't be renting. I'm hoping for a lump sum for that reason. Where I can rent a room to help me pay my mortgage, I also would be looking to work more hours. So for me the lump is first the pension will be a bonus. because first a nd formost I need to keep a roof over our heads.

I hope your well anyway, speak soon

xxxxxxxx

Hi vivi36

I cannot take a lump sum by its self .

Although had my circumstances been different and I was in a position to get a mortgage and be able to work than it would be different i would be very happy to do so .]

But at the moment and my circumstances are such that having a pension share and may be a share of the gratuity is the best seniro for my self .

This is what i was saying a lump sum is very nice to have i did however for get to say that it could also be a nice deposit too on a house or a flat .

But some times with every thing peoples circumstances are different taking a lump sum can put them in a worse position because of the circumstances they have that is all I meant by what i said.

But yes if my circumstances were different I would be looking to buy somewhere rather than rent i which would be better for me long term but unfortunately for the next year at least i am not in a position to do so also i am hoping to retrain next year which would also eat up a lump sum really quickly so again my circumstances require a different out look.

But only because realistically i am not in a position to be able to get mortgage I wish I was

Not just that paying my legal bill which could come to quite a bit so again how much would i gain from it my retraining will also have to be paid for ect so even if a lump sum was an option for me what would be left for a deposit for a mortgage .

My circumstances all have to be weighed up and mine at the moment out weigh having a lump sum no pension.

At the moment a pension share and a bit of the gratuity is the better option for me

But I am hoping that may be things may change and may be i can rethink my options but for the moment I can only think what is best for me and my family with what our circumstances are at this moment and in the next year or two at least


Dido xx

The problem with Forces (and some other) pensions is that they aren't sitting there as a bag full of money. The pension scheme member is entitled to a bunch of benefits: so much income based on length of service/final salary, a lump sum based on similar issues, and things like benefits for dependents if they die. Such pensions simply aren't defined, basically, in money terms but in terms of benefits the pension will provide.

A CETV tries to take a snapshot of this and turn it into a financial value at one point in time. But if it is correct today, it is slightly wrong tomorrow, and so on. And valuing all those different benefits accurately isn't easy, and there are different ways of looking at some of them.

So, the whole idea of "valuation" has to be treated with some care. If a pension with a CETV of £100,000 gets split equally, you don't get £50,000, you get a bunch of future benefits based on what you (rather than your spouse) would be entitled to for £50,000. There's a whole bunch of reasons why even that is an oversimplification but let's not worry about that now.

So the first thing anyone has to ask is what are they actually trying to achieve? Is it a division of what is there currently? Is it equalisation of what you will both get by way of pension benefits in due course? And do you make adjustments if you are of rather different ages?

A lot of issues arise simply because people use terms like "fair" as if it meant something in itself, which it doesn't.

An actuary can then tell you what division there needs to be to give any particular outcome, as far as it can be worked out. They can't tell you what is "right" or "fair" because those are terms that mean very different things to different people. They can tell you how to divide a pension so that both Husband and Wife get the same income at retirement age, or any permutation on that you care to chuck at them. (within reason!). But you have to define what it is they are being asked to work out.

Very often the problem for an actuary is not trying to find the answer, its trying to find out what people mean by the question! Does equal division mean you want equal pension pots or equal pension benefits? The two could be hugely different.

This is also why you can't look at pensions in isolation from the other elements of a settlement, such as maintenance, houses, other assets etc. They all have an effect. Concentrating on one issue to the exclusion of the others is likely to lead to confusion and to people missing the overall point of making provision that, in the widest sense, is "fair" in doing the best that can be done overall. And sometimes what you lose on the pensions roundabouts you gain on the housing swings.