SERPS in or out?

leaskovski

leaskovski

leaskovski

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Joined
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Berkland
After a meeting with the company pension advisor today, he believed that it was a good idea to opt out of SERPS and get the goverment to pay it back into my own stakeholder.

Now i have heard many a thing about this, being a good idea and a bad idea.

Just out of interest, how many people on here have opted out?
 
I had been opted out of serps for years, my insurance company wrote to me and told me to opt back into Serps as the benefits would be greater. So I have opted back in again.

Rob H
 
leaskovski said:
After a meeting with the company pension advisor today, he believed that it was a good idea to opt out of SERPS and get the goverment to pay it back into my own stakeholder.
Click to expand...

Well, if he actually said exactly that then I would say don't listen to another word that he said as he is an idiot as SERPS doesn't even exist anymore! It was replaced by S2P in 2002.
 
Everything I've ever heard says, stay in. The people who left when Thatcher brought up the rule change that allowed people to leave, pretty much entirely lost out. The official pension isn't as good as it was, but it's still better than anything private unless you are VERY lucky.


M
 
I'm quite a bit older than you and opted out when the goverment gave away all the lump sums as incentives back in 1988/89 - that was what made it worthwhile

My understanding is that I'm now in a marginal category where it's a close call whether to opt back in or not - generally people older than me are better off staying opted out while those younger than me are better off in
 
I'm opted out. I took the view that I'd rather have the money and invest it myself than trust the government with it.
 
I opted out in 1995 (and just becuase a mate in finance suggested it)

And to be honest, I have no idea what it is or care. If it's something to do with the government, you can bet they are gonna screw you over with it at retirement anyway - whether you opt in or opt out.

I have been paying into a personal pension fund for the last 13 years (which my company doubles) & should see me into retirement at 55, and 2 ISAs which are the backup plan (because no doubt the gov will want a big slice of my hard earned retirement funds for some reason)

The UK state pension system is a joke to be honest - and if you ask me, it has been designed as complicated as possible to confuse anyone who earns a decent wage and is willing to save for retirement.
 
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I don't see the chances of SERPS (or the current replacement) being around when I retire to be overly high...
 
Opt back in mate, most of the big pension companys opted everyone back in due the better returns from the funds used in the S2P.
 
Hmm, well apart from ME getting the name change wrong (I refered to it as that because thats the name I remember), it seems as though there is conflicting views on this.

A lot of fingers seem to point at the "stay in" group because privately invested funds are not performing as well as they should and thus the goverment payout it better.

The other issue is, is the goverment pension actually going to exists in 30 years when it comes for me to retire!?

Who knows?!
 
I am 40 years old and I pay into the Local Government pension scheme, I suspect I will not be able to retire until I am 70 years old, so my contracted out serps scheme has about 10k in it at the moment so hopefully it will grow but against the increasing inflationary pressures I suspect it will be practically worthless in 30 years time. The dilemma is do you save more now and end up paying more tax on your investments or do you spend your money and hope that the social security benefits will be good in 30 years time?
I suspect that people who have retired in the past 10 years have had the best returns for their pension investment.

Rob H
 
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