What is/was your attitude to pensions?

Thank you - believe me, I get as sick as anyone else at the constant sniping at teachers but I am also a mathematician and a retired tax inspector, so I felt obliged to quote the correct figure. Teachers and other public sector employees are not responsible for the poor situation in the private sector, which seems to generate so much envy and bitterness. We paid our contributions and thought we had entered into a contract with our employers. Are we now supposed to forfeit our pensions out of solidarity with the private sector?

Sorry Greatnan

Good heavens, I merely posted the fact - why on earth are people jumping on me now! I certainly did not intend to fuel any fire and I did not say a word about the private versus public sector debate. Give me a break!

Granted AlisonMA but was answering the pint by JackiePS who said that teachers' pensions went up 5% against only 2% of others, which was not the case. Plus Greatnan seemed to be adding fuel to the fire!!!!! Perish the thought, I am sure that was not her intention.

But Nana most private pensions are not index linked at all!

Absolutely AlisonMA In the five years since I retired the average rise in Teachers and other Public Sector pensions has been 2.7%. This is based on hard fact and the calculation I have just done as a mathematician AND takes into consideration the yes, we did have a better rise this year. But as I said that was a one off and when we, as Greatnan pointed out, resort to the CPI it will fall back again. I don't know how helpful it is to quote just one unusual yearly rise as it gives credence to the untruth that public sector pension holders are benefiting when others are not.

Greatnan I think everyone in the private sector would be delighted to have an increase anywhere near that level!

A one off me thinks

My teacher's pension and my Civil Service pension both increased by 5.2% from April, 2012, in line with the RPI last September. They are now changing the rate they use to that of the Consumer Price Index which will mean lower increases.

Nfk it's a hard one this. I trained first then had my children. There wasn't much in the way of child care I agree, but although there is child care freely available now it costs about £50 per child per day, that's £13,000' per child if you work full time - the equivalent of paying for private education.

My DiL wants to retrain but with two children under 3 the cost is inhibitive, even if I look after them 3 days a week that is still £10,400 for the pair attending nursery two days a week. Can't be done.

An urban myth JackiePS it's not true that teachers' pension rise by 5%. They too are index linked and like your prnsion have been around 1-2%. In fact about two years ago we had no increase at all. I keep hearing this .... 5% if only!

When our children were young there wasn't the child care available there is now. We had three close together and there was no way we could have afforded it anyway. Had affordable care have been available I would have retrained as a primary teacher as it was I was a child minder instead. No indexed linked pension there!

I think the young teachers who demonstated earlier this year were genuinely supprised that the public weren't with them over proposals to bring their pensions more in line with the rest of us.

My eldest is a manager and won't willingly change her job simply because it's one of the few offering a good pension. Neither of the other two have employers offering pensions and they can't afford to pay privately. Goodness only knows when or even if they will ever be able to retire.

I stayed at home with the kids till they started school and then started work part-time and decided to pay the reduced NI stamp and I paid into a company pension. I did not get a Govn. pension till my DH retired (it's reduced) which is fair enough as I had not paid enough in. However, mine and my DH's company pensions only rise by about 2% each year whilst friends who were teachers or civil servants have rises of over 5% a year. Therefore our standard of living is reducing each year whilst friends' standards are much better.

I have just retired on a teacher's pension and have about 24 years in service, having time out when the children were small and not paying in when I was part time. I have to wait until I am almost 66 years old to get my state pension, but was not prepared to keep on working until then. I shall see how I manage from next month, but I think we shall be comfortable in retirement as my OH has a reasonable pension.
I also think that my own children will have it harder - working for more years and for less generous pension schemes. They all have more material possessions and have better holidays with their families, than we did with them at the same age though.

My 'pension plan' is: learning to live on less! jokes aside it's very reassuring to read that it's cheaper to be retired than to be in the rat race! Also having had a self-employed husband and me a sometime fulltime mother, we started quite late on the pension thing. But with a bit of luck and we should be "okay".

Bags posted just what I was going to say Tweedle. I never gave a thought to pensions either but was luckiy enough to have mu children (mainly) duing the time when HR was active. Luckily my husband has a good NHS pension so we are 'comfortable' but we never gave it a thought when we were yound - too busy having children and caring for them.

I agree, Alison MA. I am lucky to have a good NHS pension. I did stress that I have a 'healthy' NHS pension, so was not complaining.

Having said that, until my last few years at work I was earning, as a nurse, a good deal less than what was the average wage at the time. However, I did consider myself very lucky be be doing a job that I loved. Sadly, the long hours and shift work caused the break-up of my marriage so, swings and roundabouts......

Why should a stay at home mum be regarded as not having a job, just because she is unpaid, whereas, if she got a paid job and used that money to pay someone else to look after her kids, they both have a "proper" job, simply because they are paid? I've never understood that. Either raising kids is a job or it isn't, whether one is paid or not. Somebody has to do it.

I have a copy of the NHS pension scheme and you are very lucky Tweedle many of us would love to have what you have. I wonder if all publix sector pensions are as good?

How I agree with Jane, above! It is almost impossible for youngsters to save up the deposits required to buy their own homes, particularly in the areas of high housing costs.

I have a healthy NHS pension and receive a full state pension but, only because i continued to pay full stamp and contribute to the NHS pension scheme, when a lot of my contemporaries were taking out their contributions to buy things for the house.

I too feel a bit 'miffed' that those who chose to stay at home to look after their children will get the same state pension as those who chose to work and pay towards their pension. Having said that, I do not wish to be seen to belittling the importance of child rearing. There must be a middle way so that it is fair to both.

Five years of my working life was spent in the RAF when there was no opportunity to pay into a pension scheme. Service pension is only paid to those who have served a minimum of twelve years.

Really interesting to read all your stories. I too was a full time mum and did a variety of casual work while they were at primary school. It suited me and I'm not sorry. My three appreciate what I did and my eldest is doing the same. Like me, she has plans to retrain when the children are older. I went for teaching, but my ex thwarted me my moving down south just as I was struggling with my post grad certificate. I didn't finish it and it was another 9 years before I got the chance again. Then he left me. It was hard, but once I picked myself up I never looked back and built The Best of independent lives for myself. So I've got a small teaching pension, 10 years worth and was very surprised to find that all my years as a mum counted towards a full state pension. But I didn't get it until this year at 61. I also made sure I did well in my divorce too...he owed me.
I have to say, my lovely partner has always been a high earner and has saved and payed into a private pension fund but he's delaying retirement because due to the low interest rates and Gordon Brown's raiding of funds in the past, his savings have bombed. we have many a lively discussion about my so called "gold-plated" pension! Ha!!

Alison the years I was credited with were the mid eighties. It was called Home Responsibilities Protection.
At one time you could only buy back years from 1996 onwards but in 2009 they changed the rules and you could buy back another 6 years as far back as 1975.
I did this as we lived abroad from 1974-85 and I had a big gap in my contributions.
The letter I got from the pension service said that under the new rules, 'people will have up to six years from when they reach State Pension age to pay voluntary national insurance contributions'.
I have to say that I wouldn't have known any of this but for an article in the Daily Telegraph.
However, once I contacted the Pension Service they were very helpful. www.thepensionservice.gov.uk
I realise this may be too late for you but it might help others. The other way to increase your state pension is to defer - for every year you put off taking it, it is increased by 10%, a no-brainer if you work beyond 60 and don't need the extra income at the time.

That's correct alisonMA I worked all my adult life as a teacher, only taking off a few years to look after the children. As soon as they were at school I went back to full-time work. Unfortunately the time I took off does not count as it was in the early 70's before this benefit was introduced.

jean many of us stayed at home to look after our children before they started crediting years for child care. When I asked about buying the extra years, before I retired, I was told it was not possible but I can't remember why. Maybe it was because those years were a long time ago?

Mishap why didn't you get credits for the years you were looking after your children? I was credited with 5 years which I thought was the usual thing. Or did you mean you were childminding other people's?
Also I would check the terms of your OH's NHS pension.
I have a small NHS pension and if I die before Mr A he will continue to get half of it.
It is also possible to boost your state pension by 'buying back' missed years - but whether you can do that once you have started taking your pension I'm not sure.